THE
GALLIPOLI
CAMPAIGN
G'day folks,
The Gallipoli peninsula is located in the southern part of
East Thrace, the European part of Turkey, with the Aegean Sea to the west and
the Dardanelles strait to the east. It is also where thousands of soldiers died.
The Gallipoli Campaign of 1915-16, also known as the Battle
of Gallipoli or the Dardanelles Campaign, was an unsuccessful attempt by the
Allied Powers to control the sea route from Europe to Russia during World War I.
The campaign began with a failed naval attack by British and French ships on
the Dardanelles Straits in February-March 1915 and continued with a major land
invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula on April 25, involving British and French
troops as well as divisions of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps
(ANZAC). Lack of sufficient intelligence and knowledge of the terrain, along
with a fierce Turkish resistance, hampered the success of the invasion. By
mid-October, Allied forces had suffered heavy casualties and had made little
headway from their initial landing sites. Evacuation began in December 1915,
and was completed early the following January.
Launch of the Gallipoli Campaign
With World War I stalled
on the Western Front by 1915, the Allied Powers were debating going on the
offensive in another region of the conflict, rather than continuing with
attacks in Belgium and France. Early that year, Russia’s Grand Duke Nicholas
appealed to Britain for aid in confronting a Turkish invasion in the Caucasus.
(The Ottoman Empire
had entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers, Germany and
Austria-Hungary, by November 1914.) In response, the Allies decided to launch a
naval expedition to seize the Dardanelles Straits, a narrow passage connecting
the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara in northwestern Turkey. If successful,
capture of the straits would allow the Allies to link up with the Russians in
the Black Sea, where they could work together to knock Turkey out of the war.
Spearheaded by the
first lord of the British Admiralty, Winston Churchill (over the strong
opposition of the First Sea Lord Admiral John Fisher, head of the British
Navy), the naval attack on the Dardanelles began with a long-range bombardment
by British and French battleships on February 19, 1915. Turkish forces
abandoned their outer forts but met the approaching Allied minesweepers with
heavy fire, stalling the advance. Under tremendous pressure to renew the attack,
Admiral Sackville Carden, the British naval commander in the region, suffered a
nervous collapse and was replaced by Vice-Admiral Sir John de Robeck. On March
18, 18 Allied battleships entered the straits; Turkish fire, including
undetected mines, sank three of the ships and severely damaged three others.
Gallipoli Land Invasion Begins
In the
wake of the failed naval attack, preparations began for largescale troop
landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula. British War Secretary Lord Kitchener
appointed General Ian Hamilton as commander of British forces for the
operation; under his command, troops from Australia, New Zealand and the French
colonies assembled with British forces on the Greek island of Lemnos.
Meanwhile, the Turks boosted their defenses under the command of the German
general Liman von Sanders, who began positioning Ottoman troops along the shore
where he expected the landings would take place. On April 25, 1915, the Allies
launched their invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula. Despite suffering heavy
casualties, they managed to establish two beachheads: at Helles on the
peninsula’s southern tip, and at Gaba Tepe on the Aegean coast. (The latter
site was later dubbed Anzac Cove, in honor of the Australian and New Zealand
troops who fought so valiantly against determined Turkish defenders to
establish the beachhead there.)
After the initial
landing, the Allies were able to make little progress from their initial
landing sites, even as the Turks gathered more and more troops on the peninsula
from both the Palestine and Caucasus fronts. In an attempt to
break the stalemate, the Allies made another major troop landing on August 6 at
Sulva Bay, combined with a northwards advance from Anzac Cove towards the
heights at Sari Bair and a diversionary action at Helles. The surprise landings
at Sulva Bay proceeded against little opposition, but Allied indecision and
delay stalled their progress in all three locations, allowing Ottoman
reinforcements to arrive and shore up their defences.
Decision to Evacuate Gallipoli
With
Allied casualties in the Gallipoli Campaign mounting, Hamilton (with
Churchill’s support) petitioned Kitchener for 95,000 reinforcements; the war
secretary offered barely a quarter of that number. In mid-October, Hamilton
argued that a proposed evacuation of the peninsula would cost up to 50 percent
casualties; British authorities subsequently recalled him and installed Sir
Charles Monro in his place. By early November, Kitchener had visited the region
himself and agreed with Monro’s recommendation that the remaining 105,000
Allied troops should be evacuated.
The
British government authorized the evacuation to begin from Sulva Bay on
December 7; the last troops left Helles on January 9, 1916. In all, some
480,000 Allied forces took part in the Gallipoli Campaign, at a cost of more
than 250,000 casualties, including some 46,000 dead. On the Turkish side, the
campaign also cost an estimated 250,000 casualties, with 65,000 killed.
Clancy's comment: The futility of war.
I'm ...
