Christopher M. Bell CHURCHILL AND THE DARDANELLES 464pp. Oxford University Press. £25 (US $34.95).
Illustration from The Dardanelles: Colour sketches from Gallipoli, 1916, by Norman Wilkinson ©Norman Wilkinson/The Stapleton Collection/Bridgeman Art Library Churchill’s albatross ERIC GROVE For many years, the failed Dardanelles campaign was an albatross around the neck of Winston Churchill. He was widely accused of being the major architect of an amateur, hare-brained strategic scheme, too enthusiastically pushed through against professional advice and always doomed to failure. Is this a fair assessment? Christopher Bell has already published a book on Churchill and Sea Power, but he was unhappy at the relatively cursory treatment he was forced to give to the Dardanelles. His new book examines Churchill’s role, as First Lord of the Admiralty, in the origin of the campaign, and his attempts to manage the adverse aftermath so that it did not permanently damage his political reputation. The approach to allocating responsibility is rigorous and forensic. Professor Bell argues that decision-making both at Admiralty and Cabinet levels was flawed, with too little systematic or thorough analysis of campaign decisions and their likelihood of success. Churchill did not originate the idea of an attack on the Dardanelles. He was much more interested in an attack on one of the German North Sea islands. It was Maurice Hankey, Secretary of the Cabinet’s War Council, who introduced the idea of action against Turkey at the end of 1914, gaining support from First Sea Lord Jacky Fisher. Churchill at this stage opposed the idea, as a diversion from the main North Sea theatre. But he gradually came round to the plan of a limited naval attack through the Dardanelles straits, as a first step to amphibious operations closer to home. Churchill was not the only enthusiast. He obtained professional support for the Dardanelles plan, using expendable pre-Dreadnought battleships. It was a suggestion of Henry Oliver, the Chief of the Admiralty War Staff, backed by Fisher, that the super battleship Queen Elizabeth be deployed in support. If the naval attack on the Dardanelles failed, it could be abandoned. This general plan and preparations for its execution were approved by the War Council on January 13. The First Sea Lord later developed an antipathy to the Dardanelles (for rather spurious reasons) but for some time did not make this clear to his political master. Not until January 25 did Fisher come clean with his opposition. At a meeting of the War Council he tried to walk out, but was persuaded to stay by the War Minister, Lord Kitchener. The plan had overwhelming support in the Council, and Churchill did not misrepresent the situation, then or later. He even – temporarily – brought Fisher round. It is hard, therefore, to blame the First Lord for personal, ill-advised advocacy although, as his enthusiasm grew, he told his colleagues at the War Council that he would take full responsibility for success or failure. This would be a hostage to fortune. As Churchill and his department planned the naval attack, Hankey – independently – originated the idea of a land campaign. Originally the preference was to invest any available troops in a landing at Salonica, while it was hoped that Greek troops would support the Allied fleet by landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula. But when it became clear that the Greeks would not enter the war, the Dardanelles semed the obvious place to deploy Allied troops to consolidate the fleet’s expected victory. As the naval attack ran into difficulties, however, the logic of troop deployment morphed into a role of supporting the fleet’s entry. The reverses during the great naval attack on March 18, limited though they were, affected the nerve of Rear Admiral John De Robeck, who had replaced a sick Vice-Admiral Sir Sackville Carden as commander of the Allied fleet. De Robeck told the local Army commander, General Sir Ian Hamilton, that he needed Hamilton’s troops to guard the squadron’s communications if he succeeded in forcing a passage into the Sea of Marmara. Churchill had to give in to his man on the spot. Now we come to perhaps the most remarkable event described in the book. The decision to make an amphibious attack on the Gallipoli Peninsula was taken, not by the War Council, but by a small informal “conclave” of the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, War Minister, Kitchener, First Lord and Hankey. Problems with gathering troops quickly led to further delay before the difficult landings on April 25. Sadly, there is no mention in the book of the missed opportunity that day on Y Beach, an unopposed landing that might have fulfilled all the Cabinet’s hopes. Generally the author is pessimistic about Allied chances of success, perhaps excessively so. The most significant part of the book is its fair analysis of Churchill’s part in initiating and conducting the campaign, and the First Lord emerges quite well. This account makes it understandable that Churchill tried so hard to justify himself in later years, a story that the author ably chronicles. The overall result is a major contribution to Churchill studies, British naval and political history and the historiography of the First World War. Christopher Bell’s knowledge of the sources cannot be bettered, and he has shown himself to be the ideal person to present this important, accessible reassessment. --- L'absence de virus dans ce courrier électronique a été vérifiée par le logiciel antivirus Avast. https://www.avast.com/antivirus -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ChurchillChat" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to churchillchat+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to churchillchat@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/churchillchat. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
