What was his obsession with the Dardanelles?

What was his obsession with the Dardanelles?

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The royal navy had a huge amount of obsolete battleships at the start if ww1 thanks to the dreadnaught being built in 1906 and instantly making everything else obsolete.

Churchill's original plan, or so he claims, was to use these expendable assets to force the straits without landing any significant infantry force. Any ship lost wouldn't matter(they were obsolete and destined to the scrap yard anyway), the Ottoman's would be effectively out of the war and he would have opened Russian ports on the Black Sea to sorely needed allied aid.

The Dardenelles separate the Black Sea from the Aegean Sea. When Ottomans entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, they closed this straight, meaning that Russia could no trade with the outside world. The Black Sea has always been very important for Russia; economically and militarily. By sealing up the Black Sea and preventing trade, the Ottomans essentially put a slowly-tightening noose around Russia's neck. The fact that Russia couldn't trade anymore caused many internal problems for Russia, exacerbating issues like social unrest among the lower classes and general antipathy towards the Tsarist regime.

Okay, so now that we've talked about Russia for a while, let's talk about Britain. At this point in time, Britain was at war against Germany, and although the result seems inevitable in retrospect, at the time it appeared like the Germans had a pretty solid chance of winning, even with Britain, France, and Russia allied against the Central Powers. The western front had devolved into a bitter stalemate, and Britain was very seriously concerned that if Russia collapsed, the Germans would be unstoppable. And so, Churchill advocated for a military invasion of the Ottoman empire in order to capture Constantinople, open up the Dardenelles, and remove the noose from Russia's neck.

Overall, the Gallipoli campaign was a great idea that was foiled by poor execution. It should have been a triumph. When the British forces landed, they had a 5:1 numerical advantage over the Ottoman forces tasked with defending the coast. But they waited far too long to advance inland, and consequently their squandered their chance for an easy victory. The Ottomans were given adequate time to bring in reinforcements, and the invasion quickly became yet another bitter stalemate. Had Gallipoli been more successful, it would have prevented Russia's collapse and significantly shortened the war.

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BUMP

Interesting post, but would success at Gallipoli really have saved Russia from collapse? It seems too far gone even by 1915 to stop its inevitable collapse. Also why would the Greeks at this point not side with Constantine and join the war when they have the opportunity to seriously hurt the Ottomans?

>would success at Gallipoli really have saved Russia from collapse?

To put it bluntly, yes. The Tsarist regime increasingly looked like an anachronism, an absolutist monarchy slogging along in the post-Enlightenment world, but by all appearances, they could have kept slogging if not for the food crisis. Nothing makes people mad like not having food. If Russia had been able to keep importing food through the Dardanelles during the war, then Russia might have made it through the war with the Tsarist regime intact. I don't know what the Greeks were up to. Maybe they were just worried that the Central Powers were going to win, and they didn't want to join the losing side of a war. In retrospect, the outcome of WW1 seems obvious, but there were moments when German victory seemed not just possible, but probable.

Not him, and while I certainly see the value in keeping the Dardanelles open, the idea that you could send in a bunch of pre-dreads, shell Istanbul, and the Ottoman empire would fold without the need for actual occupation or ground offensives seems very fanciful.

Goddamn he aged like shit

>the idea that you could send in a bunch of pre-dreads, shell Istanbul, and the Ottoman empire would fold without the need for actual occupation or ground offensives seems very fanciful.

Earlier in the war, Churchill had sent a lone battleship to attack an Ottoman fortress near the coast. The battleship pulled up next the fortress, started firing, and didn't stop until that fortress was reduced to pebbles. This was accomplished with basically zero resistance. Having completed its mission, the lone battleship sailed off into the sunset without a scratch. That got Churchill thinking, why not do it again? If one battleship can destroy a fort without any real effort, then a group of battleships should have no problem.

Except of course, Istanbul is hardly undefended, the Dardanelles are heavily mined, and they have quite a few coastal guns, which can and will shoot back at your battleships.

>he actually attempted it twice
The absolute madman
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodecanese_campaign

It was some weird sexual thing. He kept calling it the soft underbelly like he wanted to fondle it and fuck it.

That's the power of retrospect. He had a logical enough reason for believing that the attack would be a success, and the pre-dreadnoughts weren't being used for anything else.

I hardly think "They might not give up at the first sign of trouble in their biggest and richest city" is something only evident in hindsight.

It's reasonable to think that if 1 battleship can destroy a fort with basically no resistance, then a group of battleships should be able to succeed.

Yeah bud but you're assuming the amount they care only increases linearly

Considering that the plan just to get INTO the Dardanelles involved phased "assaults" with both minesweepers and battleships, trying to use the big ships to clear guns so that the minesweepers could advance and it would be safe to inch the ships up further, so they could clear more coastal guns and let the minesweepers have a turn, I'm pretty sure the Admiralty wasn't thinking this would be as simple as sailing a few boats up the strait and beginning shelling.

I think that what happened is that the Germans brought in some of those huge 420mm howitzers that they'd used to destroy Belgian fortifications and trained the Ottomans on how to use them as coastal defense guns. These new weapons gave the Ottomans the ability to fight back against the battleships.

In theory it's a great concept, but it didn't pan out.

Britain wasn't starving the Indians and killing hundreds of millions by taking their food for nothing user. The plan was to use the harvest to feed Russia.

Gallipoli succeeds = no Soviet Union & no blowing the lid on Sykes-Picot, mass cynicism.

He didn't send in pre-dreads, he also sent in plenty of dreads. The campaign was massive. Probably the greatest British defeat of the war. It also ended his career. Nobody took him seriously afterwards. he was considered to be basically incompetent and a drunkard (his alcoholism worsened as a result).

A Turk cucked him while he was on a Mediterranean Yacht tour, true story.

Churchill was one of those retards who actually believed in British-European propaganda. He thought Turks were subhumans who couldn't fight, and that's also why he let Brits use poison gas against them even though by that time the Central Powers and Allies had agreed not to use poison gas.

I meant the whole "break through it and you now have a southern route to reinforce the eastern front with so now you can really hammer Germany from both fronts". It's a solid strategy.

Not him, but Austria-Hungary and Germany both surrendered without having any of their land occupied, simply because how bad their position was. A-H was trying to sue for peace as early as 1915 IIRC.

He was 76. You are going to look fucking hideous by then as well.

>Churchill was one of those retards who actually believed in British-European propaganda. He thought Turks were subhumans who couldn't fight, and that's also why he let Brits use poison gas against them even though by that time the Central Powers and Allies had agreed not to use poison gas.
It's not because it was based on totally erroneous premises.

"Let's break through Holstein and invade through to Berlin and finish the war" is a solid strategy, it's also impossible to accomplish if you understand the facts.

Meant to quote you instead
>I meant the whole "break through it and you now have a southern route to reinforce the eastern front with so now you can really hammer Germany from both fronts". It's a solid strategy.

He wanted a glorious victory to add to his achievements.

The crippling alcoholism will do that to you. Churchill could not stand without being throughly drunk. He was a joke.

Churchill, as a aristocrat and a Lord ate like shit, drank & smoked and once the arthritis made him too incapable of hunting regularly he decayed fast.

He indulged in the death of filthy colonials like Aussies and kiwis

Greece was divided by a pro-German Monarchy (their line of descent is German) and a pro-Annexation populist PM. The pro-German King wanted to remain neutral.

Like a lot of nations, they also had a 'Greater' Idea all Greeks under one Greek Nation. The Greek PM at the time wanted to invade Turkey on the Allies side to take all territory in where Greeks lived including Constantinople. Even today, some Greek Nationalists dream about that day.

They won, at least for a while. But then the Turkish Revolutionaries fought back and kicked the Greek Army out resulting in a huge ethnic cleansing campaign where Greeks were forced out of Turkey and Turks out of Greece.