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The Dardanelles Disaster: Winston Churchill's Greatest Failure

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The Royal Navy's attack on the Dardanelles, with the associated Gallipoli land campaign is well know as Churchill's worse idea in WWI. However, Mr. van der Vat makes it clear that Churchill had a great deal of help in bringing about this diaster.

The author does a workmanlike job of explaining why the British wanted to attack the Dardanelles, albeit with far too much emphasis on history, going all the way back to the immediate post-Trafalgar period. The conflicting ego trips among the senior political and military leaders are well presented, and explain why such an important military operation was conducted in such a poor manner. Everybody involved seemed to be making up the plan as they went along. It was very clear that the Royal Navy was in the grip of senior admirals who had not a clue as to operational and tactical realities after so many years of peace. The descriptions of the actual fighting are reasonably well done, but often confusing. Since I had only a cursory knowledge of this campaign, this book was useful to me, but I had to work very hard to get around some of Mr. van der Vat's obtuse prose.

The reader is "treated" to an extensive analysis of the post-war history of the region. While this may be somewhat intersting, it seems out of place in this book about a particular military operation.

The author seems allergic to charts, seldom including such in his books. This book, which covers a complex naval/ground operation occuring over months, has not one single chart or map. This is beyond the pale for any naval or military history. I also am uninterested in Mr. van der Vat's political opinions which consume the final chapter of the book.

Overall, this book has the feel of something cranked out to meet a contract, rather than to enlighten the reader. Too much of it is recycled from previous works and the physical quality of the book is below par.

This looks like a recycling of the author's previous books. While the background and postscript provide a very nice summary of the prelude and aftermath of the Dardanelles campaign (but not as masterly an exposition as "A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East" by David Fromkin), Van der Vat's actual story is quite brief.

The fatal flaw is the COMPLETE LACK OF ANY MAPS OR CHARTS. Is the reader supposed to have an atlas open in another hand whilst reading this book?

I know van der Vat from his earlier book "The Ship that Changed the World", first published in 1985.

In his new new book van der Vat is telling the story of the first phase of Gallipoli campaign, the Naval blunder at the Dardanelles Strait. It is a short book to tell such a story; only 226 pages including the index. The Naval battle is told between the pages 49 and 145; less than 100 pages. The rest of the book is on the background of this campaign, the escape of German battle cruiser Goeben to Istanbul through a powerful British flotilla and the following court-martial (parts from his earlier book above), the later lives of the players and the modern Turkey. The naval war is told very briefly without any new matter added to what is already known.

The quality of the book itself is another area worth mentioning. The paper quality is very low (yellow/brown) for such an expensive hardback and not pleasant to read.

I would like to offer a slightly different take. If you want a book covering the Gallipoli Campaign, I would recommend Alan Moorehead's book. It has just about everything and still stands up well. This book, however, makes no pretention of covering the entire campaign. If you are interested in the decision making process (or lack thereof) to engage in this campaign, if you want to know more about the Admiralty investigation and how that process evolved, and if you want to know about the communications (or lack thereof!) between and within military and civilian leadership, then this book is for you. There are also lessons here for those who knew how to initiate step one but did not anticipate what would happen had the operation worked or had it failed. For example, even if the ships had forced the straits, what then? Clearly, there wasn't even much of a plan beyond the naval engagements until those engagements failed.

In short, don't blame the book for not being about all that was Gallipoli. This is not a book about a military campaign as much as it is an analysis of why and how the British wound up as they did and what they did once the withdrawal of land forces had taken place. However, it is an excellent read covering grand strategy and where it can conflict with tactical demands and/or short term goals. For my part, the inexcusable weakness, once again, is the lack of charts and maps.

PS - We all know that Gallipoli isn't the first or the last time a nation has embarked on a military campaign without "thinking ahead" about the consequences or ramifications of a military attack.

Mr Van Der Vat has written a number of excellent naval histories, and this book includes much of the materials he has amassed in his earlier research. The book is a bit thinner than his earlier works. The build up to the assault covers the history of the area, conflicts, personal and organizational and military/naval issues. The build up is the best of the book, pulling together much of his earlier stories. Maps, many more, would have helped (at least as many as pictures). Also, once the assualt, first naval then combined, starts, the pace of the story accelerates and moves very quickly, perhaps too quickly.
The main premise, the attack lengthened the war two years has a number of examples sprinkled in, but other than citing some other sources, not really proved. His Ship that Changed the World makes a better case, and may be a better case than his thesis in this book.
He does write well, covers much of the organizational issues with the Admiralty, as well as many of the shortcomings of Churchill as a leader of an organization that has no certain natural checks on his behavior. In this, combined with his earlier work on Turkey's entry into the war, he makes a case, but it is hard to support the dismissal of Churchill various strategic diversionary ideas and support the importance of Turkey as decisive in the war. He may be too quick to dismiss those who saw Turkey as a waste of effort. What is all too clear, is this operation was a mess at all levels, and could be used as how not to plan a successful attack and campaign.
Points might have been made on what was learned. The US Marines took this campaign to study and develop successful landing tactics from lessons learned. Mines and gunfire were able to stop the British (and French)Navy. Planning and thinking through success and failure with alternative scenarios (even just having staffs), skills better developed by War Colleges around the world after the First World War.
I have always enjoyed his books, and this is good, but perhaps not his best.

The book is named the Dardanells Disaster. However the first third covers the SMS Goeben and the first few months of World War one in the Mediterranean. It is a slow read with several factual errors. You could call this book another book on the Goeben.

Somme, Tannenberg, Chemin des Dames... WWI is replete with tales of gross political and military incompetence. In this desolate plain of stupidity Gallipoli stands out, for it had a beginning and an ending with indefensible slaughter of soldiers in between. Being on the Gallipoli Peninsula has attracted most attention among war historians - less known is how the Allies got there in the first place. This book fills a gap, and does so well and clearly. It is a trove of cautionary tales about how not to go about planning strategic decisions, or the curse of path-dependent outcomes. Any politician should ponder the lessons.

Taken purely as naval history the subject matter is dull. Boats against forts: boom boom boom - bang bang bang. Mines go whooosh in unexpected places. That's about it. The fun of the material lies elsewhere - in the context of the event. The book's theme is that trying to force the Dardanelles was a good idea, implemented in an appallingly poor manner by the Royal Navy. Churchill's impetuousness, Kitchener's dithering, Fisher's silences - but foremost incompetent leadership in the water - let to naval failure. Having dug a hole, the British government decided in a fit of distraction to dig deeper by landing troops without preparation or plan.

Churchill dazzled all with a `milkmaid's tale': "if we land... if we conquer Istanbul... if Turkey is knocked out of the war... if we march north to relieve the Serbs..." The Dardanelles thrust was perceived as the equivalent of Wellington's Peninsular War - a prelude (though not a cause) to Napoleon's fall. The author buys into this tale - with little justification. So many questions: could the Allies have controlled Istanbul? Could the Straights have been kept open to commercial shipping? Could France and Britain have kept Russian ambitions on Tszaregrad at bay? Long chains of counterfactuals that make one's head spin... with little construct.

In assessing the `lessons learned' the author - a naval historian - hugs close to the Inquest that followed. This is regrettable. Diplomatic lessons, geostrategic lessons, managerial lessons... much more could have been said having the right to hindsight. To compensate the author indulges mightily in regional and geostrategic post hoc proper hoc descriptions, which leave one doubtful.

To fill out the story the author provides a useful albeit rather superficial sketch of the `Eastern Front' - the wars in Mesopotamia, Caucasus, and Palestine. One wishes to learn more. The select bibliography - mostly books from the post-WWI period - is inadequate. The omission of maps is downright damnable.

THE DARDANELLES DISASTER: THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF THE ROYAL NAVY'S MOST SPECTACULAR DEFEAT
DAN VAN DER VAT
THE OVERLOOK PRESS, 2009
HARDCOVER, $26.95, 240 PAGES, PHOTOGRAPHS


The Gallipoli peninsula of Turkey, about 40 miles long and 12 miles across at its widest point, has a spiny backbone rising to a peak of nearly 1,000 feet. Largely barren or scrub-clad, it is fiercely hot and stifling in summer and bitterly cold in winter, with a tortuous terrain of razor-backed ridges and deep ravines. Outside the few settlements-Gallipoli town itself and Eceabat (formerly Maidos)-the peninsula has a last-place-in-the-world atmosphere. The Straits of Dardanelles-known in ancient times as the Hellespont-run as a stron south-flowing current between the peninsula and Asiatic Turkey. From its mouth at Cape Helles to the Sea of Marmara, the narrow waterway is overlooked by the Gallipoli Heights and by lesser hills on the Asiatic shore. At one point, the Narrows, just 14 miles from the entrance, the width of the channel is less than 1,600 yards from shore to shore between Chanakkale (Chanak) and Kilid Bahr. Few places have so may natural advantages for defense. Yet it was this harsh finger of land and this blue beguiling waterway which the British and French proposed to master in order to snatch the glittering prize to the north, Istanbul (Constantinople). The campaign, in 1915, ended in defeat at a shocking cost in life. Turkey and Britain should never have been at war with each other, for they were traditional allies. Had they remained so in 1914 the idea of capturing the Gallipoli peninsula and forcing the Straits of the Dardanelles wouldn't have arisen. The two powers became enemies because Britain lost to Germany a deadly game of diplomatic chess played in Constantinople. Through their ambassadors, attaches, and heads of missions they had been engaged in this game since the 1870s. Turkey had built up such an appalling record of atrocities against minorities that even its most ardent supporters were disgusted. The British press labeled the Turk 'beastly', 'unspeakable', 'barbaric', and 'decadent'. Even though it paid British interests to maintain the status quo in Turkey, the British public lost all patience. Oddly enough, the Turks continued to regard Britain as their hereditary friend-just as the Russians were hereditary enemies. But gradually the Turks became aware that the British were no longer friendly; the signing of the Anglo-Russian Agreement in 1907 made this politically clear. Controversy still rages today about the Gallipoli campaign, inspired by Winston Churchill and designed to knock Turkey out of the First World War, thereby opening a supply route to arms-starved Russia. Was it one of the greatest blunders of the war misconceived from the start and mishandled by the tacticians? Or was it a strategic masterstroke, ruined by incompetence on the spot? Whichever view is accepted, the campaign was of decisive importance, its failure paving the way first to the collapse of the Imperial Russian Army and later to the Revolution of 1917 and the overthrow of the Czarist government. THE DARDANELLES DISASTER: THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF THE ROYAL NAVY'S MOST SPECTACULAR DEFEAT is much more than just another account of this important engagement. The British Navy's disastrous attempt to pass through the Dardanelles to Constantinople was a turning point in the history of World War I. Acclaimed naval military expert Dan van der Vat argues that the disaster at the Dardanelles prolonged the war by two years, led to the Russian Revolution, forced Britain to the brink of starvation, and contributed to the destabilization of the Middle East. With a narrative rich in human drama, the author highlights all the diplomatic clashes from Whitehall to the Hellespont, Berlin to Constantinople, and St. Petersburg to the Bosporus. The author carefully analyzes Churchill's response to the obstacles he faced and describes the fateful actions of the Turkish, German, and British governments. Assisted by photographs as well as never before published information on Colonel Geehl's mine laying operations, which won the battle for the Germans, THE DARDANELLES DISASTER: THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF THE ROYAL NAVY'S MOST SPECTACULAR DEFEAT provides a forthright treatment of a subject which, 95 years later after the event, continues to grip the imaginations of people throughout the world.


Lt. Colonel Robert A. Lynn, Florida Guard
Orlando, Florida