The WWI Gallipoli campaign was a disaster-the British and French took terrible casualties, and never got anywhere toward their goal (closing off the Bosphorus straight to the Turks). The senseless slaughter was apalling-some ANZAC units had over 60% casualties.
In reading accounts of the battles, it seems that the British advertised their intentions very well, and did not gather any good intelligence about the terrain-they wound up landing their troops on a narrow strip of beach, and the interior was a land of ravines and gullies, covered with scrub, and perfect terrain for defending troops. Moreover, instead of moving out and taking the high ground immediately, the British generals allowed the Turks to occupy the hills, and rain fire down upon the nvaders. In fact, the german general commanding the defenders (Gen. Lieman von Sanders) could not believe his eyes-the British allowed him to reinforce his lines without any offensive actions. Later, the British appointed a complete incompentent (Gen. Birdwood, AKA “Birdbrain”) to command the operation-his bumbling lead to missed opportunities and more losses.
In the end, the allies gave up, after losing over 100,000 men.
So, was Gallipoli doomed from the start? Or, if the allies had had a caple, agressive general in charge, could the scheme have worked?:rolleyes:
Not really. Even if the British had charged for the high ground immediately, they still would be stuck in the ravines. The plan was doomed from the start, because the generals who planned it were idiots, and refused to modify things when it all went pear-shaped.
As a semi-hijack, I was wiki’ing this because of this thread and I found this quote from Wiki regarding the Battle of Sarikamish in the Causasus:
You know you’re doing bad when the Russians qualities of leadership beat yours 
I wonder if it did not have a German in charge of the defense if it would have been at least possible for the British to win.
I don’t think so. The 4 week delay between the naval bombardment and the landings would have allowed a brain-dead orangutan the chance to prepare defenses, much less a German general. There were also some very competent commanders among the Turkish defenders.
The British picked just about the stupidest spot on the planet to land, landed with zero to horribly wrong intelligence, and did nothing to fix the situation once it started.
No. For proof, see above. The ANZACs were tossed at a nearly-toothless lion, but one that both held the high ground and had warning. It was good that the Brits mostly (see my Dieppe thread) gave Churchill only imaginary control for thirty years after it.
ETA: Did I say a mere “no?” Make that “No fuckin’ chance in Hell. It was completely idiotic. It was an argument for Prohibition.”
I think it is possible to conjure a Dardanelles campaign could well have worked. But Gallipoli? In any shape or form remotely resembling the historical one? No, that was doomed.
Essentially the British leadership believed that a white soldier would out-fight a middle-eastern one, who would just melt away when confronted by modern soldiery and weaponry.
But of course those qualities in WWI were barely distinguishable from their equivalents at the end of the American Civil War, with the exception of the advances in defensive technology (rifling, entrenching, machine guns, artillery, camouflage) which the British themselves had used in the Boer War and therefore that the Turks had been aware of for over a decade at the least.
And, when it came down to it, the Turks were defending their homeland and the British were attacking yet another piece of foreign soil that would be for-never England. Yet another classic case of a modern industrial power underestimating a less-advanced adversary’s resourcefulness and will to fight.
Thanks for the info. What I truly cannot understand: not all the British generals were stupid-their unpleasant experiences in th Boer War must have shaken them up. But how do you plan a major military operation without even sending in some spies in to reconnoitre?
The British didn’t even have maps of the area they invaded! Part of being a general is making decisions, and when you don’t even have the basic information on which to base a decision, I would say making plans that way is simply foolish.
Simple things-like knowing what the terrain was like, and the fact that there was no water on the Gallipoli peninsula, should have given the staff officers pause. Moreover, I can understand underestimating the Turkish soldiers-but knowing that Gen. Sanders was in charge-didn’t that register?
Of course, this battle came at a time when the Britih were losing tens of thousands of soldiers a day-so Gen. Birdwood wasn’t too concerned.
It would be an excellent example of the old proverb, “Never get involved in a land war in Asia,” except that the Gallipoli Peninsula is on the European side of the Dardanelles. But most of the Ottoman Empire was (and most of present-day Turkey is) in Asia, so that’s just a technicality.
Interestingly enough, the Gallipoli penninsula is in fact the spot where the Ottomans established their very first toehold in Europe. Under rather different circumstances of course 
- Turkish mercenaries garrisoned at a Byzantine fort decided to accept the Osmanli bey, Orhan, as their overlord and handed it over.
And not for the last time. In the Second World War, after expending considerable effort trying to steer the Americans into invading the physically almost impenetrably mountainous and culturally fragmented and hostile Balkans along a line of advance pointing uselessly away from Germany, the Brits settled for persuading the Americans to land in the toe of a long skinny Italy, made almost impassable with a dense series of highly defensible mountain barricades, where the invasion was handily bottled up for the rest of the war.
Perhaps the issue is that the British, being a seafaring people, have trouble imagining mountains as significant obstacles.
Maybe. The British Isles are not generally known for having either exceptionally rough terrain or mountains.
Interestingly, both campaigns were argued for by Churchill, and I think his overall strategy was wise. Of course, the actual execution was terrible, but the concept was reasonable - attack both powers from relatively undefended points by surprise. Despite Britain’s navy, it was easy to forget how quickly they can transport men and material abroad, so it was good to take advantage of it. Either campaign could have seriously affected their respective wars.
Just to quibble a bit: Rifling and entrenching has hardly changed except for some general but minor improvements in mechanism. Artillery changed much more. It was really the machine gun which entered usage too late to affect the Civil War. Poison gas, despite its horrible nature, didn’t affect the war much. I’m still uncertain about how much camoflauge affected matters - it was definitely in its earliest stages. WW2 was the dawn of the camo era.
The other thing to bear in mind is that the Turks didn’t particularly want to fight the ANZACs, or vice-versa. They both did, because their Governments were at war, but your average Digger and your average Johnny Turk really didn’t “hate” each other. In fact, after the war, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk said to the Australian and New Zealand Governments “Look, that whole thing was tragic and un-necessary, let’s put it behind us and be friends.”
In fact, the only reason the Ottomans were even in World War I in the first place was because the Germans wanted the Suez Canal closed and promised the Ottomans the various British interests in North Africa and Palestine if they could make it happen.
The result, of course, was a complete mess for everyone, especially once the British (via T.E. Lawrence) supplied and encouraged the Arab Revolt. To this day, they still haven’t completely rebuilt the Hejaz Railway after Lawrence & Co blew it up.
The British/Commonwealth did learn from mistakes earlier in the campaign. The first landings were made in oar-powered whaling boats. Many men were cut down before they even left the boats. Later attempts saw the introduction of the first special purpose landing craft, in the landing at Suvla Bay. That possibly could have worked, if the leadership in place hadn’t been spectacularly incompetent (the guy in charge was asleep while the landing was happening!)
Strategically, it was brilliant – with the Germans vs. the French, English, and Belgians just about evenly matched in the West, settling into a war of attrition, and what started out as similarly even match between the Russians vs. the Germans and Austrians in the East, taking the Ottomans, and with them German access to a lot of resources, out of the war, and enabling warm-water connection with the Russians via the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, along with enabling attacks on the disaffected Slavic underbelly of Austria, made immense sense.
In practicte, and tactically, it was a disaster – incompetence at both planning and execution of the invasion (NPOT dissing the ANZAC forces’ abilities, but rather what they were asked to do and where), lack of coordination, and excellent generalship of the Turks by Kemal , led to an unmitigated defeat.
I’ve heard that Churchill took a lot more of the blame for Gallipoli than he really deserved because Kitchener was pretty much politically impossible to criticize.
There is one of these whaling boats- recovered from the beach at ANZAC Cove- on display at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. It is thoroughly perforated with bullet-holes and it’s sadly apparent most of those inside probably did not make it onto the beach.
As an Australian you learn about the campaign as a schoolkid, and it’s redone as key cultural history endlessly. You read about how the landing forces had to fight up steep hills and you think you can imagine how hard it would be.
But even knowing that, when I actually went there and saw the steepness of the terrain in person my reaction was still “Holy F#ck, you tried to fight up that?”
There was a PBS or Discovery Channel TV program (perhaps History’s Detectives???) that went to Gallipoli w/archaeologists to “reconstruct” the reasons of the failure (e.g. failure to take high ground, hot/dry weather, etc.).
It was pretty interesting to actually see how much of a non-defendable position ANZAC was in.
You can probably find clips/the entire episode on Youtube or Google video or via torrent.
And one of the many problems was that in terms of hill warfare, the UK troops were, on the whole, woefully unprepared and undertrained. Quote:
Despite the superficial similarities between the two theaters, attacking on the Gallipoli Peninsula was often more akin to hill warfare, and it is noticeable that the units that did best were those, such as the Gurkhas, who had combat experience in similar conditions and knew, for example, that attacking troops should avoid the apparent safety of the ravines and instead pick their way up the spurs, retaining control of the high ground.
From Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War by Eliot A.Cohen and John Gooch ( 1990, The Free Press ).
By the way re-reading their chapter on Gallipoli, they do make the argument that Suvla Bay was a golden opportunity missed ( and not the first ) by excessive passivity. The British had by sheer luck achieved complete surprise and briefly enjoyed a 10 to 1 advantage the first couple of days and if they had pressed strongly and re-oriented themselves to make it a major objective ( which the perceptive Sanders wrongly guessed was exactly what they were doing ), it might have made a difference. Instead they dithered too long and by the time they actually got in motion, Kemal was in place and they were screwed.