Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Gallipoli Campaign

Starting point is 00:00:00 In 1915, the Allies launched one of the most ambitious operations of the entire First World War. It was an attempt to force their way through the Dardanelles, capture Constantinople, and knocked the Ottoman Empire out of the war. Instead, the Gallipoli campaign became a costly lesson in bad planning and incorrect 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 Day. Visit BetMGM casino and check out the newest exclusive.

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Starting point is 00:01:46 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 then the Bosphorus Strait. If the Allies could force their way through the Dardanelles, they believe they might be able to threaten or capture Constantinople, open communications with Russia through the Black Sea

Starting point is 00:02:40 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 war, fair 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

Starting point is 00:03:20 difficult to say the least. 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 strait 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 all at once. Winston Churchill, who at that time was the first

Starting point is 00:04:04 Lord of the Admiralty became the most famous advocate of the plan. He believed that a naval attack might open up 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. And 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 it was Churchill who pushed hardest for it, and it was his reputation that would be damaged by its failure.

Starting point is 00:04:43 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 their guns, conceal positions, and fire on minesweepers and warships from higher ground. German officers, including General Lehman von Sanders,

Starting point is 00:05:17 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 simply to batter the Ottoman forts into the enemy. submission and then pushed through towards Constantinople. Instead, the fleet ran into mines and extremely heavy fire. Several battleships were sunk or badly damaged. The French battleship Bouvet went down rapidly after hitting a mine with a heavy loss of life. British ships, including

Starting point is 00:05:51 the HMS Irresistible and HMS Ocean, were also lost, and other vessels were damaged in the attack. 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 were neutralized. This meant that troops would have to land on the Gallipoli Peninsula and seize the high ground overlooking the straits. This decision marked a major escalation in the conflict. What had begun as just a naval operation was now becoming an amphibious invasion. The Allies' the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force under General Sir Ian Hamilton.

Starting point is 00:06:38 The force included British regulars, French troops, Royal Navy Division Units, and the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, better known as Anzac. Many of these troops were inexperienced. The Anzac soldiers had been training in Egypt and had not yet fought in any major campaign. The planning for the landings was both rushed and flawed. Hamilton had limited time, incomplete intelligence, and inadequate maps. The Allies underestimated the terrain that they would be fighting under and the Ottoman Army. They also underestimated the difficulty of landing troops on narrow beaches

Starting point is 00:07:14 under fire and then supplying them over those same beaches. The Gallipoli Peninsula was simply not an easy place to invade. The peninsula was rugged with steep ridges, ravines, scrub brush, and broken ground. A force that landed on the beaches had to move quickly inland before, the defenders could organize. And if it failed to do that, it could become trapped between the sea and the defended high ground. The Ottoman side was commanded overall by Lyman von Sanders, but one of the key fingers was Mustafa Kamal, later known as Adeturk, 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. The British forces landed at Cape Hellas, the southern tip of the peninsula,

Starting point is 00:08:04 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 Hellas. At Cape Hellas, 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 total disasters. At V-Beach, troops were the ones. landed from a converted coal transport ship, which had been turned into a sort of landing platform.

Starting point is 00:08:36 The men came under intense fire and suffered heavy casualties. At W. Beach, the Lancashire fuseliers 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 had been lost. The Anzac landings also went wrong right from the start. The troops came ashore just north of the 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 right from the shore. Units became mixed up in the dark and in the rough ground. Command and control broke down, and despite this, many Anzac troops pushed inland with determination and came close to seizing

Starting point is 00:09:21 important positions. Mustafa Kamal recognized the danger quickly. Without waiting for orders, he moved his division towards 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 high ground, 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, however, did also suffer heavily.

Starting point is 00:10:01 Their counter-attacks 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. But the defenders had the advantage of ground, and they paid for it in blood. One of the campaign's most intense moments came in May of 1915, when the Ottoman forces launched a major attack against the Anzac positions. The attack failed with heavy Ottoman casualties, and afterwards a temporary truce was arranged so that both sides could vary the dead. The truce actually became one of the most remembered moments of the entire campaign, not because it changed the military situation on the ground, 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.

Starting point is 00:10:55 The naval attack had failed to force open the straits, the landings had failed to seize the heights, and the armies were now stuck. But rather than withdrawal, the 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 towards the Sari Bear Range, including Chunuk Bear and other key heights. At the same time, a new landing would be made near Suvla, north of Anzak 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.

Starting point is 00:11:45 The problem was they couldn't hold any ground permanently against Ottoman counterattacks. Mustafa Kamal again played a decisive role, leading Ottoman forces in counterattacks that restored their positions. 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 remain pinned down in three main areas, Cape Hellas, Anzac, and Suvla. Casualties and disease continued. The weather worsened. In the autumn, storms, and cold added to the misery.

Starting point is 00:12:30 The 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 on to serve on the Western Front. The British High Command reviewed the campaign and began considering evacuation. However, that opened up another problem. Evacuation was risky. Pulling troops off narrow beaches within the enemy site 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 actually became the

Starting point is 00:13:13 most successful part of the entire campaign. The Allies used deception, silence, and careful planning. troops were withdrawn gradually. Rifles were actually 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 Hellas was finally evacuated in January 1916. After months of failed offenses and heavy losses, at least the final withdrawal was carried out properly. The cost of the Gallipoli campaign was enormous. The Allies suffered roughly a quarter million casualties, including killed, wounded, missing, and sick,

Starting point is 00:13:57 and the 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 the history of their countries. While for Turkey, it helped elevate Mustafa Kamal, and became part of the story of the 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 of a century later.

Starting point is 00:14:32 The Allies lost the Gallipoli campaign, and the Turks went on to lose the war. But in defeat, it became a legacy for the nations on both sides of the conflict. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere, Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast. And links to those are available in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:15:09 As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you two can have it read in the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Gallipoli Campaign

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