Read Online World War One: A Short History by Norman Stone - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Norman Stone
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British push into the Levant might just finish off the Turks, and the Straits would be opened again for trade with Russia. The Balkan states and Italy might be encouraged to join in the war on the Allied side. Late in 1914, the British offered Constantinople to the Russians, and went on to plan for partition of the entire Ottoman empire among various allies. No one expected the Turks to be capable of serious resistance. 1 They had almost no armaments industry, and though German help could arrive through corrupt Romanians on the Danube, it was little and tardy. The Aegean, for a classically educated generation of public schoolboys, such as the poet Rupert Brooke, had its attractions, and, for Churchill, it had the great advantage of not being the western front. There were surplus British battleships, datingback to the days before 1906, when the all-big-gun Dreadnought made earlier ships obsolete. These could, it was imagined, sweep into the Dardanelles, the ancient Hellespont, which, only 800 yards in width, had been swum, Sestos to Abydos, in Greek mythology and then by Lord Byron.
On 18 March sixteen battleships met disaster. Their guns were not suitable against the shore batteries, and the Turks had mobile batteries as well; in any case, minefields were unswept. Three battleships were sunk, and three were put out of action. Later, once German submarines arrived, two more were sunk and the fleet had to move from offshore waters in May. The naval commander was always prudent, and expected a land force to cope with the shore defences. But that force had its base in Egypt, and even then there were delays – the supply ships were loaded in the wrong order, and the commander, Sir Ian Hamilton, sent them back to be reloaded in the right order. Malaria became a problem (it killed Rupert Brooke), and in cheese-paring fashion the army, here and in Mesopotamia, did not even provide mosquito-screens for the windows. The Greek island of Lemnos was the forward base, and preparations were all too obvious. But even the Anatolian railways and roads could deliver troops and guns to Gallipoli far more efficiently than could ships, of which fifty were needed for a single division, and seven weeks went by before the landings – weeks well-used by the Turks.
Faced with what was a deadly threat, the Turks resolved on a fatal step. There had been an Armenian rising in the east, at Van, where the Muslim town was destroyed with much slaughter. Just before the British landing, Enver and Talat ordered the deportation of the Armenian population from the whole country, except Istanbul and Izmir, on the grounds that its loyalty was mainly dubious. Appeals by the Tsar, the Patriarch in Russian Armenia, several prominent Anatolian Armenians, and, finally, rebellions just behind the front lineconvinced the Young Turks that they must take desperate measures. The Armenians had for generations counted as ‘the most loyal’ of the minorities, and even in 1914 their leader, Boghos Nubar, was offered a place in the government (he refused on the grounds that his Turkish was not up to it). Scenes of great cruelty ensued, as at least 700,000 people were marched or crammed into trains towards northern Syria, to camps where a great many died of starvation and disease. There were well-documented massacres along the way.
On 25 April, Allied troops were landed at five beaches around the south-western tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula, but they were outnumbered (five divisions to six) and the naval artillery was inaccurate against concealed field guns, or for that matter just in general. The British lost heavily during the landings, and then found the terrain very difficult – wooded, and uphill, with British positions dominated by Turks on the slopes further up. The Australian and New Zealand volunteer force had a particularly challenging area – ‘Anzac Cove’ – but both sides dug trenches and staged frontal assaults. Even water was a problem for the invaders,
On 18 March sixteen battleships met disaster. Their guns were not suitable against the shore batteries, and the Turks had mobile batteries as well; in any case, minefields were unswept. Three battleships were sunk, and three were put out of action. Later, once German submarines arrived, two more were sunk and the fleet had to move from offshore waters in May. The naval commander was always prudent, and expected a land force to cope with the shore defences. But that force had its base in Egypt, and even then there were delays – the supply ships were loaded in the wrong order, and the commander, Sir Ian Hamilton, sent them back to be reloaded in the right order. Malaria became a problem (it killed Rupert Brooke), and in cheese-paring fashion the army, here and in Mesopotamia, did not even provide mosquito-screens for the windows. The Greek island of Lemnos was the forward base, and preparations were all too obvious. But even the Anatolian railways and roads could deliver troops and guns to Gallipoli far more efficiently than could ships, of which fifty were needed for a single division, and seven weeks went by before the landings – weeks well-used by the Turks.
Faced with what was a deadly threat, the Turks resolved on a fatal step. There had been an Armenian rising in the east, at Van, where the Muslim town was destroyed with much slaughter. Just before the British landing, Enver and Talat ordered the deportation of the Armenian population from the whole country, except Istanbul and Izmir, on the grounds that its loyalty was mainly dubious. Appeals by the Tsar, the Patriarch in Russian Armenia, several prominent Anatolian Armenians, and, finally, rebellions just behind the front lineconvinced the Young Turks that they must take desperate measures. The Armenians had for generations counted as ‘the most loyal’ of the minorities, and even in 1914 their leader, Boghos Nubar, was offered a place in the government (he refused on the grounds that his Turkish was not up to it). Scenes of great cruelty ensued, as at least 700,000 people were marched or crammed into trains towards northern Syria, to camps where a great many died of starvation and disease. There were well-documented massacres along the way.
On 25 April, Allied troops were landed at five beaches around the south-western tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula, but they were outnumbered (five divisions to six) and the naval artillery was inaccurate against concealed field guns, or for that matter just in general. The British lost heavily during the landings, and then found the terrain very difficult – wooded, and uphill, with British positions dominated by Turks on the slopes further up. The Australian and New Zealand volunteer force had a particularly challenging area – ‘Anzac Cove’ – but both sides dug trenches and staged frontal assaults. Even water was a problem for the invaders,
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