The Wider War: Gallipoli and Other Fronts
Trying to Break the Deadlock Somewhere Else
By the end of 1914 the Western Front was a stalemate from the Channel to Switzerland. The British Cabinet split into two groups. The ‘Westerners’, including Field Marshal Sir John French and senior generals, argued that Germany could only be defeated on the Western Front. The Easterners, led by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, argued that the deadlock could be broken by knocking out one of Germany’s allies somewhere else. Their main target was the Ottoman Empire, which had entered the war on the German side in November 1914.
The Gallipoli campaign opened with a naval attack on 19 February 1915 and the major land landings on 25 April 1915. British, French, Australian, New Zealand and Indian troops fought to seize the Dardanelles straits, knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war and open a sea route to Russia. The campaign was abandoned in January 1916 after roughly 250,000 Allied casualties.
The Strategic Logic
Capturing the Dardanelles would have allowed Allied ships to reach Constantinople. The aims were ambitious. First, the Ottoman government would be forced to surrender, freeing British troops fighting in Mesopotamia and Palestine. Second, a sea route would open through the Black Sea to Russia, which was desperate for shells and rifles. Third, the success might bring neutral Bulgaria, Greece and Romania into the war on the Allied side. Fourth, it would offer an alternative to head-on attacks in France. Churchill championed the operation; the War Council approved it in January 1915.
The first attempt was naval. On 18 March 1915 a fleet of British and French battleships tried to force the straits by gunfire alone. They were stopped by Turkish mines. Three battleships sank and three more were heavily damaged. The naval commander wanted to try again the next day, but the operation was suspended. Land troops would now have to clear the peninsula by foot.
The five-week gap between the failed naval attack and the land landings on 25 April gave the Ottomans time to prepare. German general Liman von Sanders organised the defence and his subordinate, Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk), led the troops who pinned the ANZACs to the beaches. The British and French landed at Cape Helles in the south. The Australians and New Zealanders — the ANZAC — landed about a mile north of their intended beach at what became known as Anzac Cove. Steep cliffs stopped any rapid advance. Within days the front had become a smaller version of the Western Front: trenches, machine guns, no man’s land.
Why Gallipoli Failed
Several factors combined. Allied intelligence about Ottoman strength was poor. The decision to use a naval attack first removed all surprise from the later land landing. The terrain was vertical and waterless and the August heat was crippling. Disease, especially dysentery and typhoid, took as many men out of the line as wounds. Ottoman troops, fighting on home soil and led by capable commanders, fought far harder than Allied planners had assumed. By the time British and Empire reinforcements landed at Suvla Bay in August 1915, the Ottomans held the high ground in strength. Evacuation began in December 1915 and was completed in January 1916 — the cleanest, least bloody phase of the campaign. Allied casualties reached around 250,000, including roughly 26,000 ANZACs (8,700 Australian and 2,700 New Zealand dead). Churchill lost his post as First Lord of the Admiralty in May 1915 and later went to fight on the Western Front.
Gallipoli failed for four main reasons: poor intelligence on Ottoman strength; loss of surprise after the failed naval attack on 18 March 1915; difficult terrain and disease; and skilled Ottoman defence under Mustafa Kemal and Liman von Sanders. Total Allied casualties reached around 250,000 by the January 1916 evacuation.
The Eastern Front
While the Western Front froze into trenches, the Eastern Front remained mobile. Russia had mobilised faster than Germany expected and invaded East Prussia in August 1914. German victories at Tannenberg (26–30 August 1914) and the Masurian Lakes (September 1914) destroyed two Russian armies; together they cost Russia around 250,000 casualties. The German commanders Hindenburg and Ludendorff became national heroes. Yet Russia recovered and, under General Brusilov, launched the most successful Eastern offensive of the war in summer 1916, capturing 400,000 Austrian prisoners and forcing Germany to send divisions east. The cost was huge — around a million Russian casualties — and the defeats and food shortages that followed undermined Tsar Nicholas II’s government and contributed to the February and October revolutions of 1917.
Italy joined the war on the Allied side in May 1915 after the Treaty of London promised territorial gains. The Italian army fought eleven battles along the River Isonzo against Austria-Hungary at terrible cost. The catastrophic Italian defeat at Caporetto in October–November 1917 saw Austrian and German troops, using new stormtrooper tactics, advance roughly 100 kilometres and capture around 275,000 Italian prisoners. British and French divisions had to be rushed south to stabilise the line.
Significance of the Wider War
The wider campaigns matter for two reasons. First, they show that the war was not only a Western Front war: between 1914 and 1918 fighting consumed the Eastern Front, the Italian Front, the Middle East, Africa, and the world’s oceans. Second, the failures and the costs forced lessons. Gallipoli ended the dream that the war could be ended through a clever side-attack and convinced British strategists that the main effort had to remain in France. The Eastern Front’s collapse in 1917 freed German divisions for the 1918 Spring Offensive in the west. Caporetto demonstrated that combined-arms infiltration tactics could break trench warfare — Germany would use the same approach against the British in March 1918.