Australia 1900-1945
Sample from Chapter 3
Gallipoli
Backgound
- On July 30, 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm stated that Germans must :
"….rouse the whole Muslim world …" and "…England must lose India …"
- Turkey looked for allies and desperately wanted to exploit the Balkan crisis
- On July 29, 1914, Britain seized two Dreadnought ships that were being built in British shipyards for the Turkish navy
- In August 1914, the German cruisers Goeben and Breslau were chased out of the Mediterranean by the British navy and escaped to Constantinople
- On September 26, 1914, the Turks mined the Dardanelles
- 90% of Russian imports and exports were cut
- On October 29, 1914, the Breslau and Goeben (the German sailors wore fezes!) and the Turkish fleet bombarded Russian Black Sea ports
- On October 31, 1914, Britain, France and Russia declared war on Turkey
- On November 14, 1914, the Sheikh-ul-Islam, in Constantinople, declared a Jihad (holy war) against Britain, France, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro
Churchill's Strategy
- Winston Churchill was Lord of the Admiralty (essentially the British naval minister)
- He had a weakness for grand military plans and gestures that often ended in disaster
- He developed a plan to control the Dardanelles and then threaten Constantinople
- To succeed, though, thorough and detailed preparation, as well as the element of surprise, was essential
- At the end of the 19th Century, it had been realized that any attempt to crash through the Dardanelles would be extremely difficult
- Indeed, Lord Fisher, who became the First Sea Lord in 1904, concluded in an investigation that such an attempt would be "mightily hazardous"
- This view was supported in 1906 by a joint naval and military investigation
- In March 1911, Winston Churchill wrote in a Cabinet memorandum that "it is no longer possible to force the Dardanelles, and nobody would expose a modern fleet to such peril"
- Despite these reservations, Churchill, as Lord of the Admiralty, was later to ignore this and passionately developed plans to expand the navy's role in the Mediterranean and in the Dardanelles
- This strategy was developed so that Turkey could be forced out of the war
- This would bring the Balkans into the war on the side of the Allies
- Russia would ultimately regain access to the Mediterranean
- The connection with India and much of the Empire would be secure
- The British and French also had designs on controlling the Middle East, much of which was under the control of Turkey
- In broad strategic terms his plans might have been sound, but were fatally flawed at the tactical level
- The tactic would be to crash through the minefields in the Dardanelles with old battleships so that Turkish gun emplacements could be destroyed
- This would then give the British and French control of the strategically important straits so that they could attack Constantinople
Tactic 1 - 18 March 1915
- An attempt was made to "rush through" the Dardanelles using warships in broad daylight
- A fleet of old battleships, French and British, was assembled along with new ships such as the new, super-Dreadnought class Queen Elizabeth
- The naval operation began on February 19 with a naval bombardment of Turkish gun implacements
- On March 18, a fleet of 12 British and 4 French battleships advanced into the Dardanelles
- Support was given by minesweepers, cruisers and destroyers
- It advanced steadily until about 2 pm in the afternoon when, suddenly, the French battleship Bouvet was sunk
- The tide of battle changed and a confident advance was turned into a calamitous failure
- Three ships ( 2 British and 1 French) were sunk by mines and 3 others were out of action and 4 had suffered damage
- Forcing the Dardanelles suddenly became more difficult than anyone had anticipated
- Turkish mines were more effective and artillery resistance was more competent than had been anticipated
- It was then decided that the army would be needed to take the Gallipoli Peninsula
- Churchill's great plan to succeed as a naval attack had failed!
- However, Turkish gunners had poured 20 000 shells onto the British Fleet and had run out of ammunition!
- The war office anticipated only 5 000 casualties and clearing the entire Peninsula in a matter of weeks
- Such was their contempt for the Turkish army!
Tactic 2 - capturing the Gallipoli Peninsula
- The failure of the naval campaign forced Churchill and the British High Command to adopt an alternative
- It was decided that troops would be used to capture the Gallipoli Peninsula and then attack Constantinople by land
- The main landings were to be made by three groups - the British, French and the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps
- Note : the Australian and New Zealand forces came to be known as Anzacs by early 1915
- The aim was to clear the coastline of the peninsula of Turkish troops and artillery emplacements
T he Anzacs at Gallipoli
- At exactly 4.29am, Sunday 25 April, 1915, the first boat was grounded and Australians began to flounder through the shallows to the beach
- A naval officer shouted :
"Tell the Colonel the damned fools have landed us a mile too far north"
- In fact, they had landed at Ari Burnu, nearly 3 kilometres off course!
- This resulted in the Anzac forces having to deal with extremely steep terrain and, unexpectedly, a tough Turkish response
- The young Turkish commander, Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kemal, was largely responsible for rallying the Turkish forces
- Morale amongst the Australian forces came close to collapsing
- Many unwounded soldiers struggled back to the beaches
- Calls were made to evacuate, but were overruled
- Tension arose between the troops, especially the lower level officers
- William Malone, a New Zealand Lieutenant Colonel, wrote in his diary, after the Australians had been relieved:
"It was an enormous relief to see the last of them. I believe they are spasmodically brave and probably the best of them have been killed or wounded. They have been, I think, badly handled and trained. Officers in most cases no good"
- Despite this disastrous beginning, the British Commander, General Ian Hamilton, decided to dig in rather than evacuate the Anzac troops
- It was not until 30 April that Australians at home read the first reports in their newspapers
- What Australians read were positive reports trumpeting military achievement :
"Magnificent achievement"
"The glory of It"
- It was Australia's first real experience of war as a united nation
A war of attrition
- The situation at Anzac Cove soon settled into stalemate
- A network of trenches restricted the Anzacs to a small area of the beach
- By May 1 1915, 27 000 men had been landed at Anzac Cove
- On May 2, the names of 22 wounded officers formed the first casualty list
- On May 19, the Turks launched a ferocious offensive that was repelled by equally ferocious resistance
- This resulted in a massive loss of life on both sides
- A truce was called so that the battlefield could be cleared of dead
- Newspapers in Australia reported by June 25, that 10 000 Anzacs had been killed, wounded and missing
- On the 6 August, a new landing was attempted by British troops at Suvla Bay, which is north of Anzac Cove
- As this was taking place, the Anzacs began a new offensive against the heights controlled by the Turks
- Attacks were made at The Nek, Lone Pine and Chunuk Bair
- The destruction of human life was appalling
- For example - in the fighting at Lone Pine (6 - 10 August) over 2 300 Anzacs were killed - Turkish casualties numbered over 6 000
- This pales into insignificance when compared with the slaughter on the Western Front
- These assaults proved fruitless and the war slid back into a trench warfare stalemate
- By late August 1915 over 120 000 British, including some 12 000 Irish troops, French, British Empire (including Indian troops) and Anzac troops had been landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula
- The Anzac force had suffered 26 000 casualties - between 7 600 and 8 141 Australians dead and 2431 New Zealanders dead
- The British some 30 000 dead; the French 9 798 ; and the Turks more than 86 500
- The campaign had been a military failure