Gallipoli

The typical narrative is that the big bad british empire sent in the brave Australian soldier to die in a pointless campaign.
I want to know what actually happened during the Gallipoli campaign, anyone have some reliable resources or things I can read?
once thats sorted, general Australian war history thread.

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imdb.com/title/tt3577058/
youtube.com/watch?v=8gUSq7pxux4
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Gallipoli by peter fitzsimmons

I think that's typically a myth that was perpetuated by films like Gallipoli which paint all the Australian officers as faultless. I mean, when the Australians first landed, they were ordered to move in land and only faced about 100 Turks. The Australian command chickened out and ordered the ANZACs to dig in, allowing the Turks to move in adequate reinforcements.

>pop history

I hope he chokes on that damned bandanna.

> Britain uses colonials as cannonfodder
> Order attack on fortified position
> Many die
> Attaturk & co are tearing the British Empire a new asshole
> Word somehow gets back to Australia
> Outrage ensures
> Britain still needs cannonfodder
> Tell ANZACs about how brave they were
Then
> Australia needs a foundation myth because there is no good event in history to elevate
> #lestwe4get #muhm8ship

Basically the campaign was typical British "Lose every battle but the final one." And afterwards was exploited to create a sense of national unity.

Marilyn Lake and Mark McKenna write on Gallipoli IIRC

But yeah, it's pretty fucking stupid

It was either Gallipoli or France. Gallipoli needed troops. France wouldn't have been much better.

Witnessing Turkey's humiliating and catastrophic defeat a couple of years earlier in the First Balkan War at the hands of a set of third rate Balkan powers it wasn't exactly unreasonable to suppose they would be beaten at Gallipoli, and that would have inevitably forced them from the war as Constantinople came under direct naval attack.

The battle could have been won with a properly planned surprise attack, but the Army and Navy refused to co-ordinate, so the Navy attacked early, which gave the game away. It then had to wait for weeks before any troops arrived to back them up with a land operation, by which time the Turks had reinforced and had time to call up emergency supplies from Germany.

>Britain uses colonials as cannonfodder
dank meme

the main problem was that nobody had seriously tried an amphibious attack on that scale with modern weaponry. The doctrine to do so simply didn't exist. While many failings in the campaign could and should have been rectified there wasn't really any way to get around the fact that nobody was really sure how to do seaborne assaults on such a scale.

I've read something like this before but can't remember where, got source?

>The Turkish Official history records that a platoon of approximately 80 to 90 men was at ANZAC Cove, another platoon was located at places the ANZACs nicknamed Fisherman’s Hut and No. 1 Outpost, and a third platoon was in reserve on Second Ridge further inland. Further south, a series of small posts covered Brighton Beach and the remainder of that company was located around Gaba Tepe. This strong point contained two Nordenfelt guns. These were old multi-barrelled weapons operated by a horizontal lever that fed rounds into the barrel chambers and fired them each time the operator moved the lever backwards and forwards. They were produced in various calibres and different numbers of barrels; the rates of fire varied considerably but were generally lower than that of a Maxim machine-gun, which automatically fed and fired rounds as long as the trigger was held.

>...the Turks did not expect the British to land at ANZAC Cove, which came as a complete surprise to them, so why would they have deployed scarce and valuable machine-guns covering a location where they didn’t expect the enemy to land?

>The first Turkish reinforcements to reach the battlefield were Sefik Aker’s reserve battalions and machine-gun company. These came into action against the advanced Australian parties on Third Ridge, not at the landing; and the action took place at around 8.30 am, some four hours after the initial landing.

Basically the Australian account of Gallipoli was largely documented by people who weren't even there for the events and listened to highly exaggerated tales told by the Anzacs.

Basically, for all intents and purposes, the area was undefended.

So essentially all the ANZAC Day bullshit about how they were some sort of God-tier troops is just propaganda to make themselves feel better about getting btfo?

yep

>“The spot they put ashore was actually a better place because it was less heavily defended,” Stanley says. “Everyone at the time, including all of the officers, agreed it was a reasonable place to land. So you can’t attribute the failure of the operation to that.”

>If blame must be apportioned, he says, it might be better to focus on what happened once the troops made it to shore on 25 April 1915. The Australian commanders simply didn’t follow their orders, he says.

>“They didn’t push on to the objective, to get to the other side of the peninsula.Instead they told their troops to dig in and that was where the line stopped. The Turks certainly played their part, but so did the Australian commanders. That’s not something most Australians would understand or believe or accept, but it’s true.”

>''In reality, most were urban and probably factory workers who didn't know one end of a rifle from the other. In terms of fighting skill, the Turks we fought at Gallipoli were much better soldiers and it wasn't until 1917 that the Australians became an effective fighting force.''

With that said, ANZACs did become godly fighters in WW1... at the Battle of Hamel. Tactics pioneered in this battle BY AUSTRALIANS was basically the coup de grace to the Germans in WW1, it was a quick downhill for the Krauts from that battle onwards.

John Monash is probably the best general of WW1.

>Britain uses colonials as cannonfodder

to be fair, they used their own troops as cannonfodder as well

From what I've read about Ian Hamilton from the Second Boer War, he was a pisspoor soldier who was raised through the ranks because he was politically adroit and a pet favorite of Kitchener.

The basic lesson is Churchill fucked up royally

Stokesbury's A Short History of WWI is good

Not OP but is this a good film? My history professor recommended it

I have no idea why we ignore actual successes we had such as at hamel, beersheba, tobruk, kokoda, kapyong, maryang san or long tan

Your points on hamel we still learn at kapooka today as part of military history

so charles bean, who was there, and wrote the official history of Australia in the war?
A particularly good story is that of our taking and holding of lone pine, and the 4 days around that operation. I read the book not too recently and there is a line that stuck out to me and it was of one bloke, describing another who he'd fought with and seen die. He was talking i think about Lt. Phillip Schuler, the line was beautiful because 20 days previously he was Lance Corporal. The went something to the tune of "On that first day he achieved Lieutenant, the next, eternity"
All nations have something they form around, and for the large part ours were the trials of Gallipoli, its hard to not read the account of "The Battle for Lone Pine" and not be moved by it, its inspiring stuff.

Well, he did pay for it somewhat heavily

the story is a little cliche (like 95% of war movies good or bad). but when saw it when i was 12 or 13 and cried like a baby at the end.

great build up to the finale, good characters with solid interesting arcs, young mel, enfield porn, innadesert, cynical theme but not brooding, same director as master and commander. One of my favorite war movies.

my dad is a history teacher and it is his go to "here is the dirty truth about war, kids" movie.

Been a long time since I watched it, but it's good. Only like the last 60% is set outside of Australia, and of that only like half is set at Gallipoli, if I recall correctly.

I'd much sooner recommend Gallipoli the mini-series that came out last year. Check it out, I thought it was bretty gud. Link here:

imdb.com/title/tt3577058/

i really like how it makes life in the army look like a damn good time [spoiler] until you have to make a doomed frontal attack because of a miscommunication [/spoiler]

churchill being an incompetent fuckwit that's what happened

>expecting spoiler tags to work on a board for discussing the past
Now you fucked up

>so charles bean, who was there, and wrote the official history of Australia in the war?

He was not there for the start of the battle. He arrived several hours after they had already dug in and were facing Aker's forces.

...

How good is this?

Why was Attaturk so based?

[spoiler]ceasar dies[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Hitler commits suicide[/spoiler]

Attaturk is a once-in-an-era type of person.

Attaboy

>ctrl+f new zealand
>no results
everybody once again forgetting that the NZ in ANZAC stands for something.

>general Australian war history thread.

If you haven't seen this 'Battle of Long Tan' documentary, do yourself a favor and watch it. Probably one of the best single engagement docs I've seen. The production value especially with the radio chatter is great. The interviews are great. It's just an all around great one.

youtube.com/watch?v=8gUSq7pxux4

aren't they an australian state?

Nah, there's the north island, south island and west island (Australia) of new Zealand.

Quite, but it's not about MUH BRAVE TROOPS in any way. It's also from around 30 to 40% about the Turkish side of the Gallipoli and post-Gallipoli experience.
At some point there's like a 10-minute action-adventure sequence where they get chased by Greek raiders, which doesn't exactly fit to the tone of the rest of the movie, aside from that it's pretty good.

Alittle bit, but the colonial troops outperformed in insane conditions. Fuck I mean look at the Canadians first engagement on the western front

Worth a watch lads?

He literally halted a panicked retreat by telling his men that he wasn't ordering them to fight but ordering them to die so that he could buy enough time to bring in reinforcements and halt the enemy advance.

The fact that his soldiers turned around and gave their lives for him - under no illusions about their chances of survival - gives you an idea of the kind of leadership qualities this man had.

I'm listening to Dan Carlin right now and he said
that Churchill wanted to use although deprecated
in terms of fighting krauts, painfully superior against
Turks battleships to break through the Dardanelles
as to cut off Arabs from Europe and give Russians
a logistical advantage in the Black Sea.

The problem was, admirals commanding the "scrap"
battleships had a tie to them, and they didn't want
to sacrifice them to wreck the Turks. So Turks
waited for them. Eventually someone thought it a
good idea to disembark footsoldiers on fortified
beaches and many people died.

>The problem was, admirals commanding the "scrap"
>battleships had a tie to them, and they didn't want
>to sacrifice them to wreck the Turks

The plan was flawed in conception not just execution, Carlin has a serious hard on for Churchill.

see

You really think Turkey could sustain such a navy
storming in and landlocking them?

>First war for them as their own nation
>Shitshow of an operation goes to hell
>Unprepared Turks are given the chance to fortify
>Brits just decide to dump their troops
>Orders given to advance regardless of condition or enemy resistance
>Eventually enough people unfuck themselves to communicate with each other
>Troops spend the time between then and retreat being massacred
>Can't let a massive defeat harm morale
>"Well, they sure did die good" is the best they have
>Put enough spin on and run with it
>It works
>Australians largely not demoralized
>They just become galvanized against the Brits and Turks
>Proceed to eagerly jump into every major conflict since
>Build a reputation for just not giving a fuck about conditions of war
>Eventually produce god-tier special forces

Seems like it kind of gave them bloodlust. They're a tiny population of very localized and spread out people. As it's been explained to me, even the major cities were like small towns, so losing anyone was a big blow to the community. You'd expect a resounding defeat like that to hurt their willingness to join wars, but WW2 rolled around and they jumped at the chance to get in a fight. Even after the friendly-fire disaster that was Vietnam, they still jumped into every conflict they could. Should we trust these people?

>le the turks are unprepared meme

Theres a Gallipoli exhibit in the Te Papa museum in Wellington thats really good. Not super accurate and detailed but still good. Apparently the casualty rate for New Zealanders at Gallipoli was 90%. The Kiwis had it way worse than the majority of the other groups there on the allies side.

Been reading Alan Moorehead's book on Gallipolli and he seems to think Churchill got have gotten away with a purely naval assault on the Dardanelles, as was the original plan.

Is this bullshit? It sounds like bullshit.

Battle of the rubber plantation

Try monash's biog, fitzsimmons does a bit of channeling.
Monash was a jew but he was our jew

Turks really didn't deserve Attaturk.

How can one man be so based? He managed to be a fantastic commander, the perfect politician and made friends of his enemies. The man fixed the nation and put it on the path to development and civilised society. Now look how far they have strayed. Its really sad to see the efforts of one great man tarnished so badly.

Truly the greatest leader of the 20th Century.

here are the numbers
Australia: 18.500 wounded and missing - 7,594 killed.
New Zealand : 5,150 wounded and missing - 2,431 killed.
British Empire (excl. Anzac) : 198,000 wounded and missing - 22,000 killed.
France : 23,000 wounded and missing - 27,000 killed.
Ottoman Empire (Turkey) : 109,042 wounded and missing - 57,084 killed.
Furthermore 1.700 Indians died in Gallipoli, plus an unknown number of Germans, Newfoundlanders and Seneg

It's a pretty good drama but don't expect to see Blackhawk Down: WWI edition. There's like 20 minutes total of action. It's the story of a man trying to deal with the losses that the Great War had taken from him. But there was a cool scene where one of the brothers was gutting krauts with a kukri.

>I want to know what actually happened during the Gallipoli campaign
The big bad Churchill sent in the brave Australian soldier to die in a pointless campaign.

According to Churchill, his Gallipoli campaign had only meant to utilize a small group of Royal marines to sabotage and destroy guns while the old model ships were meant to go on a suicide run to break the Turkish grip on the straits.

His reasoning was that those ships were already going to the scrapyard anyway. They had literally zero chance against the German high seas fleet, so they were disposable and should have been disposed in fiery glory to bring some gains for the British empire. But after the admirals, who had been trained on those ships as young officers saw them getting blown up left and right, they pulled back and demanded land troops. He blamed the Admirals for having an emotional attachment to the ships. The plan became something that Churchill never foresaw. The whole point was a shock campaign, surprising the turks and securing the straits for their strategic value but it became proto d-day.

The German commander who was in charge of helping the turks get their shit together supposedly said if he had 7 days he could have stiffened the defense enough to resist the British attack. The British gave him a month while they brought in land troops IE the ANZACs.

To be fair to Churchill, his original plan sounded fine on paper. The ships that were sent were pic related. They were dinosaurs compared to the new Queen Elizabeth class ships and would have been literally raped by anything made past 1910.

As far as I know there were 2 attempts, the first one was about forcing the straits with battleships for a direct assault on Constantinople (the stupid one that ended with many ships sank or heavily damaged) and then the second attempt where they realized they needed a paralel land force advancing along the dardanelles littoral. This one pertains to the aussies, which fucked up right after landing by delaying the necessary advance forward when there wasn't any significant turkish force prepared to stop. When the aussies finally move their ass inland, Ataturk had already had the time to assemble a counter attack force and the aussies dug trenches and rot their asses there for the rest of the campaign.

tl;dr the aussies fucked up.

Never studied it
it's a big deal to my home town history though apparently

The also weren't counting on Ataturk.

It's like the historical equivalent of running into a Toussaint L’Ouverture or Empror Auerlian. Some military minds just make it to the right place at the right time.

"Men, I am not ordering you to attack. I am ordering you to die. In the time that it takes us to die, other forces and commanders can come and take our places."

This - the genius of Ataturk - seems like the sort of thing that's liable to be nationalist propaganda, to be perfectly honest.

It's a fair point. You can say that about most great military leaders.

Was Auerlian really great, or did he just get the Eastern and Gaulic Empires at weak points? Etc. etc.

Ataturk had a string of successes though, and appeared to have great political instincts. He wasn't a one hit wonder. So maybe he had nothing to do with the WWI victories, and they just helped him later, but I kind of doubt it.

He had a combination traits in common with other great heros.

Also, how fucking sad is it that the Ottomans clawed their way out of the grave to create Turkey, and have been reduced to what they are now?

They had a chance to surpass Russia as an economy. Now it looks like dictatorship, which will breed endless waves of Jihadi durka durka butt hurta.

Sad.

in WW1 the one who truly runs the empire was Enver " What genocide :^)" Pasha , attaturk was just one of it many officers. he did rise in ranks later with his victories

Well, with hindsight we can say that it probably would have been easier. The naval assault was an effort to avoid moving a shitload of troops across the world, and a land invasion was seen as the 'would definitely work but it would be expensive' option.The brits' minesweeping crews were utter shit and poorly trained, so they missed some mines. Additionally, at one point the turks snuck a mine into an area they had already swept which hit a ship. Basically, the navy was seriously sick of losing ships to things they couldn't see. They probably could have pushed through, but the brits didn't want to risk any more ships. At least, that's how I understand it.

It was made in part by the Turkish government and got a lot of criticism for portraying Greeks as evil demons while making no mention that the Ottomans were carrying out systematic genocide of Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians.

Fun fact: He never said his.

>Its really sad to see the efforts of one great man tarnished so badly.

Think how us Anti-Takie Commies feel.

I bet. Russoboos had an Augustus in Lenin. In Stalin they had a Nero or Caligula. No one could save that shit.

Fuck, in 1812 Russia was the Savior of Europe. Now it's so backwards Brazil has a larger economy and most Latin nation's are getting wealthier than the Russians.

Why did you degenerate?

>savior

t. Bernard

Attaturk was a subhuman roach with no redeeming qualities whatsoever and that monument is disgusting

t.Kosta Papadopoulos

>triggered

pay denbts

>tfw Turk
>tfw Attaturk's legacy is pissed on by AK party and Erdogan

why Veeky Forums
why does shit have to happen
why are so many people voting for this islamist fuck ;_;

Because you gave up your steppe heritage for Islam.

The steppes suck breh
You would leave it too if you were in our shoes lulz

It's funny because people were complaining about things like "wow they're even dressed evilly, all in black and shit". Except of those those Greek raiders depicted in the movie actually existed and looked and acted like that. Also what happened with the Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians happened before the time the movie took place in.
Not surprisingly, pretty much all of the criticism in this regard was raised by people whose lives revolve around a victim complex, which apparently also gives them the right to disregard the victimization of others.

Fearless Leader's greatest support comes from the poorest layers of society. Should you ever calculate the number of people living below the poverty and famine lines, analyze this by regions and then compare with the number of votes, it pretty much adds up.
It would actually be simple to get them to change sides, but it requires work and effort, and unfortunately the only party that actually works for the sake of their ambition is AKP. The others act only if they can accomplish something with the barest minimum of effort while cashing their fat politicians' checks.
Leaving that layer of society aside, there's a non-negligible amount of fundamentalist Turko-Islam and Ottoman fans as well as fascists who adore Fearless Leader's """""strong man""""" antics, and also "liberal" keks who actually believe the economy is soaring and viable. But if the votes of the poor could be turned away from the AKP, these groups would just add up to a small percentage nowhere enough to put the AKP in power.