quickflick wrote:
Attacking the Dardanelles was a great idea. If it had worked, it would have ended the war much earlier and there is a very decent chance there would not have been a Russian Revolution (contentious, but I've studied it in some detail at undergrad level). At least not a Russian Revolution at that point in time.
Absolutely garbage. No chance of it working.
Stop swallowing the propaganda.
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2015/s4220857.htm?site=westernvicMARK COLVIN: It's become almost commonplace to talk about the incompetence of the allied generals and strategists at Gallipoli, and the futility of the operation itself.
Winston Churchill recognised the terrible losses he'd caused by resigning from government and going to fight in the trenches.
What's been less discussed is the futility of the strategic vision behind the Gallipoli adventure in 1915.
In Gallipoli, The End of The Myth, the historian Robin Prior says that needs to change.
https://www.awm.gov.au/education/talks/gallipoli-end-of-a-myth-launch/ His research shows that even a complete victory in the Dardanelles would have achieved exactly nothing in terms of the war's big picture.
Professor Prior spoke to me this afternoon.
ROBIN PRIOR: It's a disaster because even if the allies had been victorious at Gallipoli, nothing would have followed, the war would have gone on. The main army of the main enemy in that war was the German army and it happened to be on the western and eastern fronts.
MARK COLVIN: Let's just background it a bit, the idea was to push through the Dardanelles, get into the Black Sea and then move up the Danube and establish a second front against the Germans?
ROBIN PRIOR: That's right, the armies that landed at Gallipoli weren't themselves going to push trough to Constantinople, they were going to get to what was called The Narrows, knock out the Turkish force and sweep the minefields that had been preventing the fleet from getting through.
The fleet would then proceed to Constantinople, the Turks would surrender and then the British and French then would proceed to Constantinople, form a coalition of Balkan states and they would advance up the Danube attacking Austria, Hungary and Germany from the rear.
MARK COLVIN: So it's a soft underbelly strategy, it's an idea that you can distract the Germans from the western front and make them send lots of divisions down south and east?
ROBIN PRIOR: That's right, you will make them… weaken the western and eastern fronts and if you're not successful there, that means you'll be able to break through in the west.
MARK COLVIN: So what's wrong with that strategy?
ROBIN PRIOR: Almost everything. The coalition of Balkan states is the main problem, we're talking of Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Serbia, even Montenegro. The problem is with the state of their armies in 1915, they were little more than peasant levies. They had very few machine guns, very little artillery. The Romanians were pumping out just two shells per day from their one shell factory.
MARK COLVIN: Two shells a day?
ROBIN PRIOR: Two shells a day.
MARK COLVIN: And anybody who knows anything about the First World War, knows just how many shells were expended every hour.
ROBIN PRIOR: In the opening bombardment at the Somme for example nine months later, the British fired 1.7 million shells, which proved not to be nearly enough at the German defences. So two shells per day is not a lot.
Their artillery was joined by oxen, they had very few aircraft and the additional problem is that all these states hated each other much more than they hated the Austrians, Hungarians and the Germans.
MARK COLVIN: And you're saying that the political work hadn't been done to form a - what we would now call a coalition of the willing?
ROBIN PRIOR: This would have been a coalition of the very unwilling indeed and the diplomatic work had not been done. Bulgaria inclined towards the central powers, which in fact they joined later in 1915. Romania inclined towards the Entente.
MARK COLVIN: And for people who don't know the central powers were Germany and Austria, Hungary.
ROBIN PRIOR: Germany, Austria and Hungary. Romania inclined towards France and Britain and there had not been any spade work done to get these countries to form any kind of uniform policy.
MARK COLVIN: And Greece, Macedonia - the countries that made up the former Yugoslavia are notorious. That's where we get the world Balkanised from isn't it?
ROBIN PRIOR: It is, it is. I mean Greece is a good example. The king was pro-German, the prime minister pro-ally, so how that would have played out is very murky indeed.
MARK COLVIN: So essentially what you're saying is that even if on the very first day, the Turks had simply surrendered, it would have achieved nothing?
ROBIN PRIOR: It would have achieved nothing. Even supposing you could have got this coalition of rag-bag armies together, the communications up the Danube Valley consisted of a couple of narrow gauge railway lines. We're speaking of a million men here, they could have hardly been supplied with that sort of rudimentary infrastructure.
MARK COLVIN: And again for people who haven't really studied the First World War, railways are the absolute key to most of the successful operations in it.
ROBIN PRIOR: Yes. I mean why the western front for example was where it was, was that three or four million men on either side could be supplied by the sophisticated railway system of north-western Europe. That's why the western front was there.
Why the other fronts were not as well populated was that it was impossible to supply the troops.
MARK COLVIN: How should we be commemorating Anzac. Do you have any problems with what's happening on Anzac Day this year?
ROBIN PRIOR: Look not particularly. Some people are worried that it's militarizing our society, I don't see that. A lot of people are interested because they have relatives who fought there, grandparents, great-grandparents, great-uncles. It's part of that wider genealogical movement in that sort of sense.
MARK COLVIN: So when we stop for a minutes silence on Anzac Day, what will you be thinking of? What should we be thinking of?
ROBIN PRIOR: I'd be thinking that there were a lot of brave men who gave their lives at Gallipoli and elsewhere so that we could be free to choose, in fact whether we go to dawn services or not, live the sort of lives that we're living now.
MARK COLVIN: But they did so in what was, as a piece of warfare, a completely futile operation?
ROBIN PRIOR: Absolutely. You can have futile episodes in war without necessarily the war being futile itself.
MARK COLVIN: Robin Prior, Visiting Professorial Fellow at the School of History at the University of Adelaide. And you can hear a longer version of that interview on our website from this evening.
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