The failure of the Gallipoli campaign was due to mistakes made during the planning of the attack and those that were made by the generals leading the attack. Had some of these mistakes not been made there could have been a very different outcome of the Gallipoli campaign. A big part of the failure was the poor planning and the ill thought out plan created by Winston Churchill. Churchill’s visions of ceasing the Dardanelles and capturing Constantinople seemed to be based on the assumption that the Turks would not fight with much determination and resilience. He very much underestimated the Turks. This would prove costly to how successful his plan was. This was a very bad way to plan the campaign because if he was wrong about how the Turks were going to fight, and he was, it would be costly to how successful the campaign was. The Turks did fight with determination and resilience meaning the plan had gone as Churchill hadn’t wished making life very hard for the English and French military. His plan was to send warships through the Dardanelles which seemed a satisfactory plan, but they were sunk and damaged by mines which in Churchill’s defence were unforceable but was a big setback for the campaign. What to do next was a very important part of planning. Churchill called for a military attack on Gallipoli but it wasn’t until 2months of extra planning for this attack that it went underway. In this big time space the Turks received information of this land attack and sent reinforcements and built strong defences at the Gallipoli beaches. There were now 6 divisions stationed here, 5 more than before the naval attack had started. The element of surprise was lost. This was very bad for Churchill because now the enemy had brought reinforcements it made it harder for the soldiers and Churchill’s easy route was now a very hard route. For this attack Winston Churchill sent 35,000 men to Cape Helles under Lieutenant General Hunter Weston and sent 17,000 Anzac troops, to a cove which became known as Anzac Cove, under General Sir William Birdwood. Sir Ian Hamilton was General in charge of this attack. He produced a plan that succeeded in getting the armies ashore. Controversially, he allowed his subordinate commanders considerable discretion in devising their own tactics. As a result both of the subordinate commanders chose to do land in different ways. At Anzac Cove General Birdwood chose to land his men under cover of darkness. This was very poor command from Birdwood as many soldiers were led to confusion and because of the lack of understanding of the terrain, soldiers had to wait until light to advance to their positions. An example of Bad organization is the fact that the soldiers didn’t know the terrain. Commanders should have done their research of the land and the soldiers should have had it in their heads of what to expect when coming to the landings. However, because of leaving it till light to advance the Turkish soldiers were already in position and ready to fight.
At Cape Helles General Hunter Weston went for a different approach. He chose to land after dawn, keeping more control over his men but allowing the Turks a greater chance to fire on his men. This was better organization and Command because the soldiers were able to get into position but it allowed room for early casualties and injury as they were open to enemy fire. What the soldiers did next was a crucial step for the grounds of winning or losing the battle. However the commanders hadn’t had any orders of what to do meaning the soldiers didn’t know what to do. Should they dig trenches, should they go straight in and attack. Sir Ian Hamilton 10 miles out to sea, very out of touch with the whole situation, unable to know what was going on and therefore couldn’t command. Whilst soldiers were waiting for their generals to be told what to do Turkish soldiers prepared themselves on the beaches, ready to battle, this lead to rash decisions to dig trenches, exactly what wasn’t meant to happen. This was a replica of what was happening on the western front. A stalemate. Fighting went on for several months with nothing gained but casualties.
In August 1915 Hamilton ordered the Anzacs to attack at Suvla Bay. He put the elderly and experienced General Stopford in charge. He wasted his chances of getting men onto high ground. They bombarded the Turks with bullets and shells, but failure of timing from the bombardment and the actual attack allowed the enemy to recover and regain position. The attack failed with Heavy casualties. The failure at Suvla bay shows yet again bad organization from a General. Failure to synchronize watches between general and soldiers was the difference between success. Had the organization of the attack been better and the watches synchronized there could have been a totally different outcome to this battle.
Throughout the campaign, as well as an ill thought out plan, poor command and bad organization, inadequate forces and supplies from Britain was a major failure that out of the 3 reasons above, affects the soldiers the most.
Part of the two months between the naval attack and land attack was spent with the ships and soldiers in Egypt. All of the ships stopped off at Egypt on the way to Gallipoli to get supplies but when they left the ships had had a full makeover. They were loaded so badly that they had to be totally reorganized in Egypt before an assault could be made. This was very time consuming.
During the summer month’s soldiers felt the effects of inadequate forces and supplies a lot more than normal. Water was a big problem for soldiers. They had to live off a third of a gallon a day and the water they had had to be brought from the river Nile in Egypt which was 700 miles away. These conditions were very bad for soldiers to live in and because of the dead bodies and the heat, dysentery broke out and many soldiers were evacuated sick. At times up to 1,000 soldiers a week were being evacuated. This could have been prevented if a water supply was established before the fighting had begun. Because of the high numbers of casualties leaving the battlefield, the number of soldiers also decreased. There wasn’t enough reinforcements left from Britain to cover the loss so the soldiers were fighting with less numbers than before. Again this should have been prevented by generals by keeping some soldiers back in Britain until they were really needed.
Ironically the most successful part of the heroic failure was the evacuation. In my own opinion I would say that an ill thought out plan is the main reason to blame for the failure of the campaign. Had it been a better thought out plan the other problems may not have occurred and the allies would have had success, maybe leading world war one victory.
