What Really Happened at Gallipoli? Robin Prior, Carolyn Holbrook and Robert Manne in conversation
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- Опубліковано 3 тра 2015
- Robin Prior, author of ‘Gallipoli: The end of the myth’, and Carolyn Holbrook, author of ‘Anzac: The unauthorised biography’, join Robert Manne as part of La Trobe University’s Ideas and Society program.
What really happened at Gallipoli? Spoiler: They don’t attempt to answer the question.
A fascinating debate.
Very enjoyable discussion.
Weird title. There is nothing here about that question. It would be more accurate to call it "Gallipoli and the Australian identity".
My Reference is _Castles of Steel_ by Robert K. Massie
My understanding is that the original idea - was that it was based on the idea that the Goeben sitting a few hundred yards off the Ottoman Capital of Istanbul - _might_ have had an influence on the Ottoman's entrance into the war on the side of the Central Powers. This may or may not have been the case - but - it was what gave them the idea.
They thought that _IF_ they could get Allied Warships sitting off shore from Istanbul - maybe - the Ottomans would withdraw from the war.
One factor in this - was that the Ottomans were attacking the Russians through the Caucuses and the Russians were asking for help.
Britain's main service was the Royal Navy - not it's Army - so - by using Naval Power where they could - in the Dardanelles - they might be able to help the Russians out.
What they were initially going to do was to have the Army land at the base of the Peninsula - to cut it off - while the Navy tried to force the straits. The Army did not want to participate - so that left it up to the Navy.
They were going to use Battleships that were scheduled to be scrapped anyway so the loss of ships by the British wouldn't matter. Given the massive casualties being suffered by all sides elsewhere in the war - the casualties the Allies might suffer in trying to force the straits - were not that great given what might be achieved if they could get the Ottomans out of the war.
It was in this sense that the Gallipoli Operations were conceived.
The Turkish guns were to a large degree suppressed during the battle that followed - but - the main defenses of the Straits - were mines. There were ten lines of mines stretched across the straits - so - these would have to be swept. Not having many if any dedicated mine sweepers available - they were going to use trawlers manned by their civilian crews, who would be familiar with them, as mine sweepers. The problem was - that as soon as they came under fire - the civilian crews would flee.
The Turks observed the courses of the Allied Ships as they made their attacks on the Turkish forts and laid a string of mines parallel to the eastern coast, in the little bay the ships were turning about in. The next time the Allies attacked multiple ships sailed right into this line of mines and were heavily damaged or lost.
The crews of the lost British Ships were going to be put on the Mine Sweepers and they were going to try again. The British had intercepted a German message that the forts were running low on ammunition but with the loss of those ships it was decided to end the Naval Effort and to land troops on the Western Side of the Peninsula and at the Bottom of it.
When the Turks had realized that the Allies might try and force the Straits - they had increased their forces. Though less well defended at the beginning - by the time the Allied Troops were landed the defenses of the Peninsula were much better.
Here - much as elsewhere during WWI - you ended with static warfare and after a time of it - the Allies decided to call the whole thing off.
We won't know if the Allied Naval Powers could have forced the Strait - but we do know - that the major obstacle to them doing that - was an inability to sweep the mines guarding it because of the mine sweepers civilian crews. Once there were Naval Crews on this ships - that would have changed - but they never tried it again so we don't know what might have happened.
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Those men would be fuming to be presented as victims. Their poets were not Owen and Sassoon but Rupert Brooke.
These guys are great. They have the power of hindsight and use it to criticise those without. We need more people like this.
20/20 hindsight.
20/20 hindsight.....and useless
It's very easy for us to sit at our ease and use words like 'reprehensible' but that was not how they felt at the time. The alternative, as they knew well but we seem to have forgotten, was to be on the western front. These men were not victims. We owe them better than reflexive judgements. After all we are the beneficiaries of all their experiences, their blunders and their victories. (This is not to criticise Mr Prior whose work is excellent and whom I admire).
If the landings had been successful, what then? I can only envisage a costly stalemate.
The search for truth ah ah...
Prof. Mackie, "Let me start with a woke comment...." PATHETIC
I'm thinking that Australians need to take a break from talking about Gallipoli and let German, British and Turkish historians have a go. The "The British are idiots, the British are idiots, the British are idiots" is getting old. Very old. One thing I need to point out is that 99.999% of veterans of the Great war did NOT think of themselves as victims.
If only John F. Kennedy, John McNamara and George W. Bush could have heard this lecture about military foolishness.
@Leonardo's Truth "Bear any burden" -- JFK-the-Martyr, Prince of Peace is a fantasy, as it's nice to believe 'if only'. Look at the Bay of Pigs, unprecedented support for and aggressive use of special ops overseas -- like the USS Maddox's mission, which precipitated the Tonkin Incident -- his inaugural speech which was read as declaring war pretty well everywhere, and, oh... that Missile Crisis? A Russian sub captain saved us (at great personal cost upon his return), not the Great (and handsome) Men of History.