Actions and Events that lead to the battle of Gallipoli
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The battle of Gallipoli did not just happen overnight it was a strategic plan. It may not have been a well strategized plan but it was a solution that the leaders of the British Empire thought to have worked. Though some can argue that the results of the battle was due to lack of planning a lot of thought and powerful minds worked together to solve the questions "What could be done to free up the Dardanelles?" and "How to break the deadlock at the Western Front?". The hope was to bring down Germany through the downfall of her allies, thus bringing the war to a quicker and more victorious end, Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty of the British Government, decided to launch an attack on Turkey. The main aim was to force through the Dardanelles to capture the Turkish capital Constantinople. It would enable them to invade and occupy Constantinople to a downfall as Turkey would soon follow its capital.
The deadlock at the Western Front was a result of modern warfare where tanks, Artillery and Machine Guns were introduced and this lead to more difficult armoury solutions from continuous deaths of either side. To put it succinctly, technology outpaced tactics. The new guns of the Industrial Age were far more deadlier than anything previously experienced or seen. When faced against the deadly weapons, the only way to survive is to dig trenches where you start to outflank the enemy. This creates equal opposing forces resulting in a stalemate. The leaders in charge of the Empire decided to go ahead with their plans as they saw that the Western Front was just ending in them losing men due to the Great War being a defensive war. As resources were running short in the first war and access routes were closed by the German Empire and Austria-Hungary. It restricted trading routes between Russia in the east and Britain and France in the west. The white sea in the Arctic and the Sea of Okhotsk in the Far east were icebound in winter which meant that naval ships couldn’t get through. The Baltic Sea was barricaded by the Imperial German Navy (Kaiserliche Marine). This left the entrance to the black sea which was under the control of the Ottoman Empire. As the Empire entered the war on the Central Power’s side (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire). The easiest solution that the British Empire could come up with to help the requested aid from Russia was to attack the Ottoman Empire firstly with a naval attack.. At the time the Ottoman Empire’s best interest was to remain neutral but in doing so they made sure to keep their guards up for any surprise attacks that the other nations might have forged. As things started to change around the world due to the Great War it did so in Turkey, too. The nation of Turkey was deteriorating as it was having major religious conflicts between the Muslims (majority of Turkey) and the Armenians (minority). The was major dispute between the Muslims and the Armenians (Christians) as they were seen as threats and thought to have been fighting for the enemy. This lead to the Armenian Genocide which saw the death of 1.5 million Turkish Armenians who were either executed to death or walked to death, literally. Those Armenians who were intellects were either arrested or executed. Ordinary Armenians of Turkey were driven out of their homes by “Butcher Battalions” and sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food and water, some were even stripped naked scorching under the sun until death. The British Empire had no mercy on the Turkish men as of what they were doing to their own people at the time, even if they were neutral because it was a war and both the Turks and British troops had to fight for what the believed in. Therefore one of the reasons why the naval attack had the tick to go ahead was because of just simple authority. The naval attack proceeded on the 18th February 1915 as battleships began to bombard the Dardanelles and the 18 British and French fleets had to face German fleets that were sent. The first attack on the Turks seemed appealing due to the lack of troops needed to go through with the plan, meaning a number of soldiers lives saved in the Western Front. The other thing that the British Empire would have considered before go ahead with the Naval attack at the Dardanelles would have been to look at what the upper hand of the English men were. The answer to this was the Navy- the British navy was the biggest navy in the World at the time and it would have been a contributing factor to have acknowledged whilst making the decision on freeing up the Dardanelles. But at the same time there was a Naval Arms race between Germany and Great Britain in the prior years from 1906 to 1914 where Germany had tried to match their Navy to the number of the British and came close to it. Though the naval attack on the Dardanelles was a surprise it backfired. There were too many failures at Gallipoli before the landing attack with the naval attack abandoning after 5 ships struck mines in the strait, knowingly that the naval attack had failed should have alarmed the British empire on further attempting to attack the Turkish but being an ally with the Russian Empire who were in need of support. Plans of attacking went ahead but this time by land. The soldiers that were training in Cairo, Egypt were training to go fight in the Western Front. Than all of a sudden plans changed and their destinations along with it. Now they were ordered to go attack the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey against the Ottoman Empire |