Gallipoli

[emrezmen]

On 21/05/2019 at 15:58, phil andrade said:

Much reflection on the Gallipoli fighting has lured me into another interesting discussion in the CULTURE section of the forum, which deals with Peter Weir’s film Gallipoli, pitched to us in the 1980s.

 

I’ve just added a reply, asking for the Australian view about the prospects behind the strategy, comparing the views of Peter Hart with those of Erikson.

 

I realise now that I should have put that post here, too....perhaps it’s more appropriate in this thread than in one that deals with the film.

 

I wish I knew how to transfer it over !

 

While I’m on the topic, I would ask our Turkish friends : do they believe that the idea behind the Dardanelles was flawed and that it didn’t stand a chance ; or do they agree with Erikson ?

 

That it was bungled in execution is too obvious a fact to allow for much divergence in opinion .

 

Phil

 

Phil, sorry for late reply again.

 

It's a very very long story and discussed over and over again here I think, but I would say briefly that the idea was great but until put into practice (btw I'm just a reader, not an historian). It may not be my business to put forward an idea about it but the British, to have succeeded, should've seen the Dardanelles more than a sideshow which was obviously not quite possible. Especially the naval ops were doomed to failure. And what about the Anatolian side? or the afterwards? There were no plans about what to do after passing the Narrows or what to do in Istanbul, as far as I know.

 

It is known that the Ottoman decisionmakers at that time had a plan for afterwards. Enver believed that the Dardanelles could really be passed, and preparations had been made to move the capital to Eskişehir, a city near Central Anatolia. So even if the capital would fall, there would be a resistance but I'm not sure about how long the ball could be kept rolling. 

 

Even accommodation was arranged for the Sultan (Mehmed V) in Eskişehir in 8 March 1915, only ten days before the main naval assault. Below is a preview of a document about this from Turkish State Archives.

 

 

 

 

Edited 31 May , 2019 by emrezmen

[Guest]

Mate,

 

I did a small look at what may have happened after Constanople fell in 1915?

 

Like wise I found the war would have gone on, as the British would have captured the European side, not the Asia side (possibly)?

 

The main industries were (from what I understand) on the Asia side, and the farming side also.

 

Would that be enough to feed and arm the Ottoman forces, I am still unsure?

 

Would Bulgeria still have joined the German/Austrian side or not?

 

They and the naval side to send supplies via the Black Sea and the later arrival of German and Austrain force to take back the Dardenells from the West, while the Ottomans attacked from the East?

 

Would British Forces still be sent to Salonika and not the Dardenells?

 

So many questions

 

S.B

[phil andrade]

Steve and Emre,

 

Is Gallipoli the biggest “ might have” in military history ?  I think it might be !

 

Forgive me if I reiterate my suggestion that a boost in Russian morale resulting from the capture of Constantinople was bound to be of immeasurable importance : more so, perhaps, than the material acquisition resulting from food and munitions passing through the Straits. As for Greece and Bulgaria, they must have been inspired by similar religious convictions : Romania, too....a real Balkan confederation intervening quickly and resolutely on the side of the Allies in earlier 1915.  Quite something, by any reckoning.

Would there have been a need for the Entente expedition to the Salonica Front at all in those circumstances ?

Falkenhayn’s memoirs will come in useful here.

 

I have always been convinced that the Ottoman losses in the Gallipoli campaign were, by far, the heaviest suffered by them on any front in the Great War.  This is challenged by the Soviet demographer Urlanis, who compiled a study of loss of life in modern warfare, and stated that the Turks lost the majority of their Great War dead in the warfare agains the Russians. I’ll try and find the book and cite his estimates.  This has some bearing on the potential of Allied success in Gallipoli , in so far as it indicates the fighting effectiveness of the Tsarist armies and the wisdom of doing everything possible to support them : in this respect, wouldn’t success in the Dardanelles have been more useful to the Russian Bear than the expenditure of a couple of hundred thousand Franco British soldiers in the Artois offensive ?

 

Editing again : Boris Urlanis, Wars and Population , published in USSR 1971, page 56 :

 

Turkish troops, too, fought against the Russian armies.  It may be roughly estimated that two-thirds of the Turkish dead perished from Russian arms.

 

Phil

Edited 2 June , 2019 by phil andrade

[Guest]

Mate,

 

That's interesting as I believe many of the stated losses to the Russians maybe fixed to the high mark, when they are much lower?

 

I think some where I gave details on a Corps of the Third Army during 1914-15 where they are stated to have lost many men that winter.

 

My research found they lost around 1/3 of there forces or 14, 000 men with around 20,000  + left.

 

I think most claim around  97, 000 lost during that winter, where they possibly lost far less, but numbers are always hard to confirm.

 

The Russians stopped major operations in the Northern Areas in early 1915 for over a year, and only pushed the Southern Area when the rebel forces in Van sized the city, which allowed there southern forces to fight around the city and lakes in the region. That and the British landings made Mesopotania and southern Turkey a hot area. But little to stop attacks here because of Gallopoli, where a push by the Russians would have helped hold many Ottoman Div's from the Dardenells.

 

S.B

[phil andrade]

When you think of the enormity of the German and Austrian onslaught against the Russians in the Gorlice Tarnow battles of May 1915 - to cite one example -it’s hardly surprising that their fighting against the Turks hardly registers on the radar in the historiography of the Great War.

 

And yet....it was the Ottoman advance into the Caucasus in the winter of 1914-15 that resulted in the Russian appeal to the Entente to intervene, and had much to do with the Dardanelles strategy.

 

I wonder whether we’ve understated the magnitude of this Russo Turkish conflict in the Great War.

 

A lecture was delivered by the late historian Keith Jeffery on the theme of a very good book he wrote about the year 1916 ( 1916: a Global History ).  I was fortunate to attend, and one thing I remember him saying  - and this really surprised me - was that the Ottoman manpower losses against the Russians that year were in the hundreds of thousands. Perhaps memory doesn’t serve me : we think of the Brusilov  Summer and the smashing of the Austro Hungarian armies....but who thinks of the Turks in that connection ?

 

Phil

 

 

 

Edited 3 June , 2019 by phil andrade

[phil andrade]

The figures that I’ve seen pitched by Erikson and Urlanis imply that only about one fifth of all Ottoman soldiers who were killed or died from wounds in the Great War were casualties of the Gallipoli campaign.

 

I can’t get my head round this.

 

There were obviously heavy Turkish casualties in Mesopotamia and Egypt/ Palestine, in regular and irregular warfare.

 

The cost of the fighting against the Russians is the question.  Are we to believe that this accounted for two thirds of all ottoman battle deaths ?

 

I find it difficult to believe that Turkish soldiers fought in any other  theatre that exposed them to the same murderous and sustained  intensity - let alone the scale -of the Gallipoli battles.

 

Phil

Edited 4 June , 2019 by phil andrade

[peter blackwell]

thanks pete

[Guest]

Peter,

 

I found as comments by Turkish Soldiers who served at Anzac.

 

The first is Mustafa Koja a Pte in the 57th Regt

 

"The food was OK, at first. The Germans had provided this soup and we use to have great couldrons for each Sqn. We use to prepare this soup gather around it and eat it, and there was plenty of bread too. When we first went there we could get lots of things grapes dates, everyone had enough, but as time went on things disappeared."

 

The other soldier Memish Bayraktir a Pte in the 27th Regt

 

"They could only get food through to the trenches at night. We couldn't move anything in day time they saw everything that moved. And had search lights at night. There was a shortage of food for everyone and I got sick possibly from bad water and went to hosp for two months."

 

Clearly not ever soldier had the same expirence on Gallipoli.

 

Sorry I should have given the source

 

from the book by Harvey Broadbent "The Boys who came Home" recollections of Gallipoli." among the accounts by Aussies and British soldiers there are accounts by Turkish soldiers.

 

Cheers

S.B

Edited 7 June , 2019 by stevebecker

[seaJane]

You may be interested in A War in Words: the First World War in diaries and letters, edited by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis (Simon & Schuster UK, 2003), which includes extracts from the diary of 2nd Lt Mehmed Fasih of the 47th Regiment, published in Istanbul (2001) as Lone Pine (Bloody Ridge) Diary of Lt Mehmed Fasih, 5th Imperial Ottoman Army, Gallipoli 1915.

[peter blackwell]

cheers pete