Gallipoli 1915 (eBook)

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The Balkans had seen an almost constant state of unrest since the end of the Crimean War. The volatility of the region was in part due to the parlous state of two of the oldest empires, the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Hapsburgs and the Ottoman Empire, the ‘Sick Old Man of Europe’. Riven by ethnic differences and the birth of new national awareness, the Balkan states turned inwards on each other in 1912–13, creating a powder keg that would ultimately lead to the outbreak of the First World War almost exactly a year later, and a headlong rush into conflict. Within weeks of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, the major European powers were at each other’s throats, with, according to British Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey, ‘the lights going out all over Europe’.

For the Ottoman Empire, the prospect of another war after those fought in 1912–13 was an unpalatable one. Though the Young Turks who had overthrown the Sultan in 1909 had set about modernising the country and the military, it had been inadequate. The Ottomans had been roundly beaten in the Balkan Wars, its European possessions stripped bare to a small component of Thrace and that sliver of land that was to form the northern shore of the Dardanelles, the ancient Hellespont that had fascinated classicists for decades.

1. The Balkan States. The Balkan Wars of 1912–13 were to have devastating results for the Ottomans, already under pressure in North Africa. After losing the First Balkan War, most of the Ottoman territory in Europe would be severely curtailed.

The Dardanelles, a narrow passageway between European and Asian Turkey, is a tightly constrained waterway that was created by geological faulting over millennia. This strategic waterway connects the Aegean Sea and Mediterranean with the Sea of Marmara and ultimately, through the Bosphorus, to the Black Sea, and had been a point of interest to military minds for centuries. Constantinople, (now the modern city of Istanbul), sits astride the Bosphorus and guards the entrance to the Black Sea, thereby controlling entry to the winter ports of Russia. Because of this and a myriad of other reasons, Constantinople had been coveted for centuries, particularly by the old enemies of Greece and Russia.

In European Turkey, the shores of the Dardanelles are guarded by the Gallipoli Peninsula, a narrow finger of land named after its principal settlement (Gelibolu, or Gallipoli). Opposing this is the Asiatic shore, the Aegean expression of the great Anatolian Peninsula, the greater part of modern Turkey, and the heart of the ailing Ottoman Empire in 1915. Fortified for centuries, the idea of squeezing a fleet of ships between the beetling brows of the shores of the Dardanelles had exercised the mind of the military of many nations for centuries, particularly so in the complex diplomacies of two centuries before the Gallipoli landings of 1915.

2. Constantinople from the Bosphorus; Allied hopes were pinned on the Ottoman capital faltering if the fleet got through the Straits.

When war with Germany was declared on 4 August 1914, the Ottoman Empire ostensibly remained neutral; yet already the Ottomans had signed a treaty with Germany that would bind them into the Central Powers. For the Kaiser, the possibility of a Greater Germany, and an influence that would spread through the Balkans and into the Middle East, was an unbridled dream that would manifest itself in the construction of an unbroken railway link from Berlin to Baghdad, through Thracian Turkey and into Anatolia, passing over the Bosphorus at Constantinople. This would pass through aligned nations, with Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire pivotal in this; it was inconvenient, though, that belligerent Serbia sat squarely in the way.

Germany was also keen to ensure that its eastern enemy, Russia, was depleted in both supplies and support. As most Russian war materiel would have to travel, on the southern, winter, route through the Straits and into the Black Sea, the temptation to make certain that the Dardanelles was closed to traffic was pressing. German influence was already strong, with military missions to the Ottomans from the late nineteenth century; it was to grow when, on 3 August 1914, the British clumsily requisitioned two warships being built in British shipyards, at great cost to the Ottoman populace. Tensions came to a head on 10 August, when the German warships Goeben and Breslau were granted passage through the technically neutral Dardanelles to Constantinople, to become symbolic substitutes for the ships ‘stolen’ by the British. A final blow to British influence was the appointment of the German Admiral Souchon to the command of the Ottoman Navy – the Goeben and Breslau now technically Ottoman ships, the Yazus Sultan Salim and the Midilli.

With the Ottomans committed to war, some means was sought to make sure that they would be quickly despatched; for the British and French this would remove the possibility of Ottoman belligerency against their possessions and protectorates in the Middle East. Both had low opinions of the Ottoman military – defeat in the last Balkan War in 1913 was surely indicative of what might be expected in the coming conflict. But how would this be achieved? There were other players in the arena.

For centuries there had been Greek and Russian aspirations to possess the Imperial city of Constantinople, sitting astride the Bosphorus and in ultimate control of the Black Sea route. With the Ottomans in an uncertain period, the gears of diplomacy started to grind – the essential goal was the carving up of what remained of the Ottoman Empire, spreading from European Thrace into the Arabian Peninsula. First to act were the Greeks. On 19 August, the British Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey received notice Premier Venizelos had placed all Greek naval and military resources at the disposal of the Allies. Seizing on this, the Russians approached the pro-German Greek King Constantine; would he consider providing an expeditionary force to assist an attack on the Dardanelles? Both sets of eyes were focused on Constantinople.

A combination of circumstances led to the evolution of the Dardanelles expedition – which would gradually spiral out of control – and which would consume all its originators and have lasting effects on their lives. The entry of the Ottoman Empire into the conflict left the Allies with little choice but to demonstrate their intention that this would not be taken lightly. The Russians in particular sought to show, by arms, that the Ottoman decision to side with the Central Powers was unwise.

Dawning in the minds of the British, was the old concept, exercised since the late nineteenth century, of the ‘Forcing of the Dardanelles’ in order to threaten Constantinople – especially if the north shore of the Straits, the Gallipoli Peninsula, could be taken in force by the Greeks, and if the Russians could be on hand to meet the Allies at Constantinople. This would surely lead to the surrender of the Ottomans, thereby removing the threat to Egypt and the Suez Canal. In November 1914, at the first meeting of the War Council set up to advise the Cabinet on directions in the war, Sir Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, reignited the Dardanelles question by suggesting the best way to protect Egypt and the Suez Canal was to ‘capture’ the Gallipoli Peninsula; he was to persuade the council that this would be possible by purely naval action on 13 January 1915. The scene was set for the Gallipoli landings.

On 3 January 1915, the Admiralty signalled to Admiral Carden, commanding the Eastern Mediterranean Squadron, for his views on the forcing of the Dardanelles. As First Sea Lord, Churchill had hopes that the age-old naval concept of pitting ships’ guns against stone fortresses in ‘Forcing’ a passage through the Dardanelles Straits could be achieved. However, knowing that the Dardanelles were well-defended, Carden was cagey with his political masters, replying: ‘I do not consider Dardanelles can be rushed. They might be forced by extended operations with large numbers of ships.’ This cautious, politically worded statement was taken as positive by the Admiralty, who asked Carden to expand his ideas. His detailed four-stage plan that followed involved the reduction of the forts at Sedd el Bahir and Kum Kale at the mouth to the Dardanelles, destroying the inside defences up to Kephez at the entrance to the Narrows, then reducing the forts at the Narrows and, finally, clearing the minefield, reducing the defences above the Narrows, and advancing into the Sea of Marmara. The plan was careful and cautious, but it caught the imagination of Winston Churchill, who, almost by seeing the plan written down, could imagine it being executed in theatre. It would be Carden’s plan that would ignite the flames; Carden himself would bear the responsibilities heavily.