Customer Reviews

Gallipoli (Perennial Classics)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Anything Moorehead wrote was golden, but this is arguably one of his best books. This has been reissued numerous times and it remains a classic. It is particularly good in its description of of the initial naval campaign and the general strategic overview. Although Gallipoli has rightly served as the emblematic battle where it is popularly thought that ANZACS were unduly sacrificed by the British in attempts at vainglory, Moorehead would be the first to acknowledge that there is no evidence that Australians were selected for slaughter over any other troops. The British (and most World War I strategist from all nations) were equal opportunity killers. In reality there were many more British troops committed, and killed, than ANZAC troops, and French losses were also considerable. Moreover the strategic aims were laudable. They were very nearly achieved. The bungling was not in the design, but in the fact that it was allowed to continue long after the jig was up, the British contained on the Penninsula, without a faint hope of forcing the straits with naval power. Moorehead, although an Australian, never bashes the British at all in this book. His exposition of Sir Ian Hamilton is also very incisive and offers a real glimpse into the mind of this man (a commander who felt for his troops, more than most in WWI) The fact that he was sacked, never to wield command in the field, is also testament to the fact that mistakes were made. Churchill's role is less clear. His initial idea was brilliant. He also did not want to commit land troops, thinking it too costly. He believed that the Royal Navy and her allies could force the straits and be shelling Constantinople within days.... And they very nearly did it. Unfortunately as Moorehead recounts, the political pressure of losing large, expensive battleships to mines was a price the British Cabinet would not allow Churchill to indulge and the pressure for a land based campaign therefore rose. It is really a pity because Churchill wanted one more chance to force the straits from the sea. There is every indication that he would have been successful and the costly land war averted. Plus ca change for Churchill.

PS: The cover photograph in this edition actually shows Canadian troops going over the top in a latter Somme Battle. Seems they could have easily found some original British or French pictures from Gallipoli itself??! I guess cover art was more important.

I first read this text at age 19 in 1960 and was most impressed with its narrative skill and ability to bring to life the historical characters involved. I have since reread it and remain satisfied with Mr Moorehead's ability to make the events vivid and touching. I was especially impressed with his re-enactment of the actual landing, the incredible amount of equipment the youngsters had to carry, the reason the ships remained so distant from shore (afraid of touching bottom)the sense of distance those in charge had from the events they were supposed to be controlling, and the tragic sadness of it all. I was also impressed with the amazing courage he described the Turks as having so that the reader is not given the impression that the allies were just "better chaps" than the "Turkish infidel". Now at the close of the fifties in racist Australia at the time of communist and Asian indeed foreign paranoia this was refreshing and somewhat liberal to a young mind. One of the best and most enjoyable reads on World War One.

Alan Moorehead's Gallipoli is prose at its finest. this is beautifully written, and the scenes of battle come to life, as well as the everyday life of the allied soldier. However this book is now over 50 years old and much new information has come to light, particularly on the Turkish side. Also, many of the battles fought themselves, such as the battles at Krithia, Kum Kale, The Farm, The Nek, etc... on and on, are either completely ignored or scaled down and condensed so that you truly learn nothing about them. For a beginner who wishes to study Gallipoli this book is fine. For its superb writing style and life like narrative this book is superb. However for those wishing to learn the whole story of the Gallipoli battle read Les Carlyon's Gallipoli or Robert Rhodes James Gallipoli. Both of these books are excellent and well written, and both cover far more of the campaign as a whole then does Moorehead's book.

The book is a well-written, historically accurate portrayal of the campaign. Unfortunately, it tends to stick to narrating the campaign instead of discussing the strategy and decisions behind the moves at Gallipoli. Despite that, the book is authoratative, and a relatively brief but good description of what happened. Somebody from Provo, Utah said that the book didn't talk about the Turks, but that isn't true. Of the many books written on the campaign, it is the one book that talks MOST of the Turks, with about every other chapter dedicated to the Turkish side of the campaign. Many other books don't write about the Turkish side at all, and much of my research about the opposing forces came from this book.

I picked this book up after reading The Guns of August by Tuchman; but the real impetus to investigate the battle of Gallipoli goes back to my visit to Istanbul last summer. I will explain why shortly.

Alan Morehead published this novel in 1956, over halfway between the event and this review. His view on this WWI battle had adequate distance to compare it to the European battles for the three decades after, but retains a trace of British late-imperial irony. All the rationales for the ambiphibious assualt in Turkey are explained, and even the chapters which describe the inconclusive fighting are not widely foreshadowed- I was particularly spellbound by the suspense of the final days as the British and ANZAC forces retreated by sea. I also caught a fascinating glimpse at WWI submarine warfare, the early demise of Winston Churchill, and an eerie warning of Mustafa Kemal's rise to power. Morehead makes the right connections to people/events beyond the Dardanelles without losing focus on the landings. He tends to weight the British side of things, but the reader's interest also lies with the offense. No doubt his access to Turkish military records was limited.

As for Istanbul, I met not a few Kiwis and Aussies there who were making a pilgrimage of sorts to the battleground, half a world away from home. While I was trapsing through the city, they took the excursion into the countryside to see... the location of one of the greatest battles their nation ever fought. I wanted to see what moved them to make the trek, and this book explains it. I wouldn't call it a poignant evocation of a tragic front, events can speak for themselves. Yet this book enhanced my appreciation of a battle that I didn't know much about. I recommend Gallipoli to those who are curious about this oddest of struggles, but I especially recommend it to you who haven't even heard of the place. It deserves our attention.

I like to refer to this work as the 'western bible to Gallipoli'. The way to read Moorehead's Gallipoli is to take in the factors surrounding the era of its' publication. A fellow from Provo, Utah, says it mentions nothing of the Turkish side. While there is some truth to that, it is also true that not many western books on Gallipoli mention the Turk side at all (save Mustafa Kemal). Most authors on the subject are British or Australian and therefore, tend to be biased (for example, Bean and Mackenzie). In spite of these facts, Moorehead still does a good job of explaining the unfolding chaos: Hamilton's dilemma with Kirchner; Churchill's miscalculations; and to an extent, Kemal's bravery. He is also good at not spending too much time on ANZACs, who were only 1/7th of the operation (excluding Suvla Bay). If you want full coverage, go to Turkey. But Moorehead is the best popular work of Gallipoli you will find in the States. It helped me get an 'A' on a term paper I wrote on the campaign!

In every war between two coalitions of nations the military people are faced with a decision. Do they marshal all of their resources against the most powerful of the enemy coalition, knowing that if they can defeat that nation, the others will quickly fall as well? Or do they adopt a holding strategy against the strongest and attack the weakest, hoping to knock it out, dealing a psychological blow to the enemy coalition and perhaps turn the defeated nation against their former ally?
Winston Churchill was an adamant believer in attacking the weakest member of the coalition. In the Second World War he constantly repeated his strategy of attacking the "soft underbelly" of the Axis, lobbying for an attack against Italy and in the Balkans. However, while that attack did knock Italy out of the war and turn it against Germany, the Allied movements up the Italian peninsula were a brutal slog and in many ways harder going than in Western Europe.
Churchill's belief was not new to him; he had advocated the same strategy in World War I where he pressed the idea of an Entente attack against Turkey to open the straits of the Bosporus and Dardanelles. That battle is known to history as Gallipoli and it was controversial from the beginning. However, in this case Churchill was most probably right. Had the Entente attack been pressed strongly from the beginning, or if the Entente forces had been lucky enough to have the Turk officer Kemal elsewhere at a critical time, the Entente forces would have been victorious. Such a victory would have opened the straits to Russian shipping, propped up the Russians, kept Bulgaria out of the war on the side of the Central Powers and perhaps even brought it in against Turkey and brought Greece firmly in on the side of the Entente.
Unfortunately, the attack was a terrible failure, after fighting aimlessly but with great ferocity for nearly two years, the Entente forces were removed from Gallipoli. This book chronicles all the "what might have been" scenarios that could have happened as a consequence of the Gallipoli campaign. Of all the "sideshow" battles that took place, it is probably the only one that could have made a real difference in the outcome of the war.
In reading this book, you cannot help but feel for the plight of the common soldier in this campaign. After the battle degenerated into a stalemate, the soldiers could do nothing more than try to survive to the next day. The deprivations and constant shelling meant that they had little in the way of resources and could be wounded or killed at any moment. Furthermore, it was another case of the leadership putting the soldiers into a position where they could not possibly win yet not having the courage to acknowledge it and then doing something quickly. While the soldiers were eventually evacuated, it took many political deaths and machinations before it happened.

This book has received so many glowing reviews over its 50 or so years that another one hardly seems necessary. But although I knew the book would be a good one and I thought I knew a few things about the campaign itself, I still found it eye-opening. Of course Moorehead does a masterful job of conveying the ebb and flow of the military confrontation. But he also brings out the potential strategic consequences of various outcomes without resorting to artless what-if scenarios. This is one of the few military histories I would recommend to anyone without hesitation.

This book is very comprehensive and gives a well-rounded approach to the subject bearing in mind that it was written in the 1950s. The comments about it lacking the Turkish perspective are simply not true. It does give Turkish casualty figures (eg p183)as well as citing a lot of Turkish and German texts/autobiographies -- including the Turkish texts which revealed that they nearly lost the naval war of March 18 -- something unkown to the allies until the 1920's. It may gloss over the value of a human life (eg 68,000 dead are cosigned to a footnote !) but it does give you a real feel for the action, however sensless it appears today. I've seen much more biased work. This should be a set text for any Australian, NZ, or history student.

Although this book does an excelent job of telling the allied side of the battle, the reader is often left wondering what the Turks were doing the whole time. If Moorhead had given equal time to the Turkish army/soldiers/generals then this would be unquestionably one of the finest narratives of WWI. As it is the reader is often left to wonder were all the allied casulties are coming from because there is hardly a Turk in sight.