Gallipoli, the failed amphibious assault on the Turkish coast during World War I, was one of military history's great debacles. In Gallipoli (Oxford University Press), the Imperial War Museum's Peter Hart declares the operation “a lunacy that could never have succeeded, an idiocy generated by muddled thinking.” He follows his bold assessment by proclaiming, “the main business of the war was defeating Germany on the Western Front.” Can the Eastern Front with its millions of casualties, tying up much of Germany's might, be dismissed so easily as a sideshow?
Gallipoli is an angry book, which may surprise American readers unaware of the scar the battle has left on the imagination of at least three of the combatants, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. For them, Gallipoli sounds like Vietnam to American ears, a failed geopolitical gamble whose losses were tallied in human lives. The French have largely forgotten it, eclipsed as it was by the carnage of the Western Front, and one of the merits of Hart's account is remembering the important role France played in the campaign. For the Turks, it was a victory, perhaps their lone moment of pride in an otherwise disastrous war.
Hurling literary insults at the battle's instigators from the distance of a century, Hart gets off to a wobbly start. His chronicle of Turkey's decision to enter the war on Germany's side is superficial and his casual remark about “real or imagined Turkish atrocities” against minority groups places him dangerously close to the ranks of Holocaust deniers. He makes small errors that will annoy military history buffs: the names of Germany warships were preceded by SMS (“His Majesty's Ship” auf deutsch), not SS, the universal prefix for commercial steamships. He makes radical leaps of assumption early on: because London was thousands of miles from Gallipoli, it doesn't necessarily follow that supply lines were impossible. The British were in control of Suez and the ports of Egypt, and as he later shows, established a well-provisioned forward base on an island close to the Turkish coast. But perhaps most arguable is Hart's charge that Churchill and other proponents of the Gallipoli landing were wrong to even imagine that a victory would have value. Had the invasion succeeded, supply lines would have opened to Russia, Turkey's capital would fall, Germany would suffer the loss of an ally and Russia could have devoted its full resources to invading Germany from the east.
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That said, Hart does yeoman's work showing why Gallipoli was doomed from a tactical perspective. The terrain was rough and easily defended, the technology for amphibious warfare barely existed and most of the troops deployed in the campaign were unprepared for modern war. Raw courage could seldom prevail against machine guns encircled by barbed wire and covered by artillery. Many blunders by commanders on the ground were spurred by the impatience of politicians in London, and when it was time to pull out, casualties mounted as London dithered.
Gallipoli is also enriched by Hart's frequent reference to the memoirs of participants from all sides, some of them generals, others ordinary soldiers. The fighting is described with telling detail. British troops were given a tablespoon of rum to calm their nerves before an assault and fastened triangular tin badges to the back of their uniforms to avoid friendly fire.
For those who fought on the Allied side, it was all in vain, and yet, as Hart concludes, “the study of Gallipoli will continue for years to come as each generation seeks to resolve the conundrum of how something so stupid, so doomed from the outset, can remain so utterly fascinating.”
