Defeat at Gallipoli

[John_Hartley]

Picked this up for a very reasonable six quid at the local secondhand bookshop (which makes the claim that they are the Hay-on-Wye of the north - they lie).

The title accurately tells you what approach the book takes to this ill-conceived, badly equipped and badly generaled campaign (you'll see I find myself in agreement with the authors). Perhaps understandably, much of the book is given over to the initial landings, the later ones at Suvla and then the evacuation. I would have liked to see more about the smaller, almost day-to-day attacks and I'd have liked a tad more from the Turkish perspective but you can't have everything, even in 400 pages.

Certainly the book is written in a very readable style which, in the modern way, intersperses historical account and analysis with eye-witness stories (taken from accounts held by IWM).

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

John

[Rob Connolly]

Whereabouts is this boastful bookshop? I would like to judge their claims first hand if poss., and you seem to hail from the Greater Manchester area (I live in northern Oldham).

And if by "Defeat" you mean - (cont. page 96)

[stu]

I read this book a long time ago, I must say that it is refreshing in that it deals mainly with the British involvement.

My only criticism is that I found the maps to be no where near as good as those in these authors other works.

Overall though I recommend this book to anyone interested in the British perspective, it is a good read.

Stuart

[John_Hartley]

Rob

Sharston Books.

From you, take the M60 and come off at the A34. Take an immediate right at the traffic lights onto Gatley Road. Follow this a little over a mile till another set of lights. Turn right onto Longley Lane (signposted Northenden). Sharston Books is in a small industrial unit just off Longley Lane, past a garage. Access is actually off Harling Road.

John

[George Armstrong Custer]

Peter Hart has more recently robustly set out his stall on the reality of Gallipoli and its historiography in the opening passages of Gallipoli: A Stone Unturned, one of the saner essays in A Part of History: Aspects of the British Experience of the First World War, edited by Michael Howard:

The study of Gallipoli has been in a straitjacket for too long. The literature of the campaign is plagued with books that are underpinned by the premise that the original concept of the Gallipoli campaign was a brilliant idea that was betrayed by a failure to divert sufficient military resources from the Westen Front, incompetent local commanders and sheer bad luck. The humiliating utter failure of the campaign is hence excused by constant references to "near run things", "the narrowest of margins" and "the terrible ifs". This is a perspective that was not accepted by contemporary military experts and has been since comprehensively undermined by the return to a more rational appraisal of the military operations of the Great War.

In reality the Gallipoli campaign was a diversion of valuable military resources from the main battle against the German Army on the Western Front. All of the British external strategic imperatives were under direct threat from the Germans: if they were successful in beating France then they would achieve the domination of Europe, they could take control of the Channel ports, and their High Seas Fleet was directly challenging the supremacy of the Royal Navy inplying that Britain would lose control of the seas. The German challenge needed to be confronted and France could not do it alone. The bulk of the British military effort had to be directed onto the Western Front. [........]

[Gallipoli] was a lunacy that never had the chance to succeed, an idiocy generated by muddled thinking. By attacking the Turks, the British merely allowed the Turks the opportunity o kill British soldiers in large numbers. Left to themselves, in the face of simple defensive measures to secure British interests in the Suez Canal and Mesopotamian oil supplies, there was nothing much the Turks could have done. But by diverting resources to Gallipoli the Allies not only exposed themselves to a greater possibility of a catastrophic defeat by the Germans but also allowed the Turks to soundly thrash them in front of the whole Muslim world. Brilliant!

I can find little to disagree with in that analysis, and therefore look forward to his forthcoming history of the Gallipoli campaign based upon these fundamental observations.

[John_Hartley]

I can find little to disagree with in that analysis,

And, perhaps, neither did Sgt Tom Worthington, 1/6th Manchesters, writing home shortly after the 4 June attack:

"It is a great pity when you come to regard things afterwards that men should be coerced or compelled to kill one another for the gratification for a few others in power."

J

[Rob Connolly]

Thank you, John. I'm on leave tomorrow, payday is not long past, the wife and daughter are at work & school - all good excuses to pay a visit.