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Podcast Transcript
In 1915, the Allies launched one of the most ambitious operations of the First World War.
It was an attempt to force their way through the Dardanelles, capture Constantinople, and knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war.
Instead, the Gallipoli Campaign became a costly lesson in bad planning and wrong assumptions.
It also helped shape the national identities of Australia, New Zealand, and modern Turkey.
Learn more about the Gallipoli Campaign on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
The Gallipoli campaign was one of the most ambitious and costly Allied operations of the First World War. It was intended to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war, open a sea route to Russia, and possibly break the deadlock on the Western Front.
Instead, it became a long, bloody, and poorly coordinated campaign on a narrow peninsula where terrain, logistics, command failures, and Ottoman resistance combined to defeat the Allied plan.
The campaign took place on the Gallipoli Peninsula, which lies on the European side of the Dardanelles, the narrow waterway connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara.
Beyond the Sea of Marmara lay Constantinople, now Istanbul, the Ottoman capital and the Bosporus Strait. If the Allies could force their way through the Dardanelles, they believed they might threaten or capture Constantinople, open communications with Russia through the Black Sea, and encourage neutral Balkan states to join the Allied side.
If it were successful, it had the potential to change the tide of the war.
If…..
The origins of the campaign lay in the strategic problems of 1914 and early 1915. When the First World War began, Germany and Austria-Hungary were fighting Britain, France, and Russia. The Western Front quickly became a stalemate, with both sides locked in trench warfare from the English Channel to Switzerland. Russia, meanwhile, was under pressure on the Eastern Front and badly needed supplies, weapons, and ammunition from its allies.
The usual routes to Russia were difficult. The Baltic Sea was controlled by Germany; the northern ports, such as Archangel, were frozen for much of the year; and the long route through Vladivostok and Siberia was slow and inefficient.
The Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary in late 1914. This made the Dardanelles even more important. The straits had been closed to Allied shipping, cutting off the most direct sea route to Russia.
The Ottomans also opened new fronts against Russia in the Caucasus and threatened British interests in Egypt and the Suez Canal. For Britain in particular, defeating the Ottomans would solve several problems at once.
Winston Churchill, who was then the First Lord of the Admiralty, became the most famous advocate of the plan. He believed that a naval attack might open the Dardanelles with relatively limited cost.
Older battleships, no longer suitable for fighting the modern German fleet in the North Sea, could be used against Ottoman forts. If successful, the operation might produce a major strategic victory without the enormous casualties expected from another frontal assault in France.
The plan was discussed by the British War Council, which included many senior military and naval leaders. But Churchill pushed hard for it, and it was his reputation that would be damaged by its failure.
The first phase of the campaign was a naval operation. In February 1915, British and French warships began bombarding Ottoman forts at the entrance to the Dardanelles.
The Ottoman defense was stronger and more flexible than many Allied planners had assumed. Forts guarded the straits, but the real danger came from a combination of mines, mobile guns, and artillery hidden on the slopes above the water.
The defenders could move guns, conceal positions, and fire on minesweepers and warships from higher ground. German officers, including General Otto Liman von Sanders, helped reorganize Ottoman defenses, but all the defenders were Ottoman troops and commanders.
The critical naval attack came on March 18, 1915. A large Allied fleet tried to force its way into the narrows. The plan was to batter the Ottoman forts into submission and then push through toward Constantinople. Instead, the fleet ran into mines and heavy fire.
Several battleships were sunk or badly damaged. The French battleship Bouvet went down rapidly after hitting a mine, with heavy loss of life. British ships, including HMS Irresistible and HMS Ocean, were also lost. Other vessels were damaged.
The losses were not catastrophic in terms of the Royal Navy’s overall strength, but they were enough to shake confidence in the plan. The naval commanders concluded that ships alone could not force the Dardanelles unless the minefields were cleared and the shore batteries neutralized.
That meant troops would have to land on the Gallipoli Peninsula and seize the high ground overlooking the straits.
This decision marked a major escalation. What had begun as a naval operation now became an amphibious invasion. The Allies assembled the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force under General Sir Ian Hamilton.
The force included British regulars, French troops, Royal Naval Division units, and the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, better known as ANZAC. Many of these troops were inexperienced. The ANZAC soldiers had trained in Egypt and had not yet fought in a major campaign.
Planning for the landings was rushed and flawed. Hamilton had limited time, incomplete intelligence, and inadequate maps. The Allies underestimated the terrain and the Ottoman army. They also underestimated the difficulty of landing troops on narrow beaches under fire and then supplying them over those same beaches.
Gallipoli was not an easy place to invade. The peninsula was rugged, with steep ridges, ravines, scrub, and broken ground. A force that landed on the beaches had to move inland quickly before the defenders could organize. If it failed to do that, it could become trapped between the sea and the high ground.
The Ottoman side was commanded overall by Liman von Sanders, but one of the key figures was Mustafa Kemal, later known as Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey. At the time, he was an Ottoman officer commanding the 19th Division.
The Allied landings began on April 25, 1915. British forces landed at Cape Helles, the southern tip of the peninsula, while the ANZAC troops landed farther north on the Aegean coast. French forces also took part, first in a diversionary landing on the Asian side and then later in operations around Cape Helles.
At Cape Helles, the British landed on several beaches, identified by letters such as V Beach, W Beach, and X Beach. Some landings met limited resistance, but others were disasters. At V Beach, troops were landed from a converted coal transport ship, which had been turned into a sort of landing platform.
The men came under intense fire and suffered heavy casualties. At W Beach, the Lancashire Fusiliers faced wire, machine guns, and strong defensive positions. In some places, the troops eventually got ashore and established footholds, but the opportunity for a rapid breakthrough was lost.
The ANZAC landing also went wrong from the start. The troops came ashore north of their intended landing site, at a place with steep ridges and confusing terrain. Instead of a relatively more manageable beach and route inland, they faced broken hills rising sharply from the shore.
Units became mixed up in the dark and in the rough ground. Command and control broke down. Despite this, many ANZAC troops pushed inland with determination and came close to seizing important positions.
Mustafa Kemal recognized the danger quickly. Without waiting for orders, he moved his division toward the threatened heights. His leadership helped stop the ANZAC advance before it could break through to the high ground.
From that point forward, the campaign devolved into trench warfare. The Allies held small beachheads, while the Ottomans held the heights and the terrain favored the defenders.
The Allied troops were exposed to fire from above, and movement inland was difficult. The Ottomans, meanwhile, could reinforce threatened sectors and use the ridges to observe and shell Allied positions.
The Ottomans also suffered heavily. Their counterattacks were often costly, and their soldiers endured the same harsh conditions. The fighting at Gallipoli was not one-sided. Ottoman troops showed discipline and courage, and their commanders learned quickly. The defenders had the advantage of ground, but they paid for it in blood.
One of the campaign’s most intense moments came in May 1915, when Ottoman forces launched a major attack against the ANZAC positions. The attack failed with heavy Ottoman casualties. Afterward, a temporary truce was arranged so both sides could bury the dead.
The truce became one of the most remembered moments of the campaign, not because it changed the military situation, but because it exposed the reality of a battlefield where men had been fighting at close range for weeks.
By the summer, the original Allied plan had clearly failed. The naval attack had failed to force the straits, the landings had failed to seize the heights, and the armies were stuck. Rather than withdraw, Allied leaders tried to revive the campaign with a new offensive.
The August Offensive was the last major attempt to break the deadlock. It had several parts. At Anzac, Allied troops would attack toward the Sari Bair range, including Chunuk Bair and other key heights. At the same time, a new landing would be made at Suvla Bay, north of Anzac Cove. If successful, the forces from Suvla and Anzac could link up, seize the high ground, and threaten the Ottoman rear.
The plan had some promise, but its execution was deeply flawed. The attacks from Anzac were difficult and confused, carried out at night over rugged terrain. But they could not hold any ground permanently against Ottoman counterattacks. Mustafa Kemal again played a decisive role, leading Ottoman forces in counterattacks that restored the position.
The landing at Suvla Bay was one of the campaign’s greatest missed opportunities. The landing itself faced relatively light resistance compared with earlier landings. But the commanders on the spot moved slowly. The troops did not seize the nearby heights quickly enough.
After August, there was little realistic hope of victory. The Allied forces remained pinned down in three main areas: Cape Helles, Anzac, and Suvla. Casualties and disease continued. The weather worsened. In the autumn, storms and cold added to the misery. Men who had suffered through heat and thirst now faced exposure and flooding.
Meanwhile, the political situation in London changed. The campaign’s failure contributed to the fall of the Liberal Party government and the formation of a coalition government.
Churchill was removed from the Admiralty and eventually went to serve on the Western Front. The British high command reviewed the campaign and began considering evacuation.
However, there was another problem. Evacuation was risky. Pulling troops off narrow beaches within the enemy’s sight could have become a disaster. If the Ottomans realized what was happening, they might attack during the withdrawal and inflict enormous casualties. Yet the evacuation became the most successful operation of the campaign.
The Allies used deception, silence, and careful planning. Troops were withdrawn gradually. Rifles were rigged to fire automatically after being left behind, creating the impression that positions were still occupied. At Anzac and Suvla, the evacuation was completed in December 1915 with remarkably few casualties.
Cape Helles was finally evacuated in January 1916. After months of failed offensives and heavy losses, at least the final withdrawal was carried out properly.
The cost of the campaign was enormous. The Allies suffered roughly a quarter of a million casualties, including killed, wounded, missing, and sick. Ottoman casualties were also around a quarter of a million by many estimates.
The Gallipoli Campaign failed in its immediate goals, but its consequences lasted far beyond the battlefield. For Australia and New Zealand, it became a defining moment in their nation, while for Turkey, it helped elevate Mustafa Kemal and became part of the story of modern Turkish identity.
Winston Churchill, who was most closely associated with the campaign, had his career hurt for years before eventually becoming prime minister a quarter century later.
The Allies lost the Gallipoli campaign, and the Turks lost the war, but in defeat, it became a legacy for the nations on both sides of the conflict.
