Dardanelles Disaster

Vat Dan Van Der Vat Van Der

Description

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 never before published information on Colonel Geehl's mine laying operation, which won the battle for the Germans, The Dardanelles Disaster is essential reading for everyone interested in great naval history, Churchill's early career, and World War I.

Informations

• Publié par: ABRAMS BOOKS
• Date de parution: 28 septembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781468303162
• Langue: English

Extrait

Also by Dan van der Vat
The Grand Scuttle: The Sinking of the German Fleet at Scapa Flow in 1919
The Last Corsair: The Story of the Emden
The Ship That Changed the World: The Escape of the Goeben to the Dardanelles in 1914
The Atlantic Campaign: The Great Struggle at Sea 1939–1945
The Pacific Campaign: The U.S. – Japanese Naval War 1941–1945
Freedom Was Never Like This: A Winter in East Germany
Stealth at Sea: The History of the Submarine
The Riddle of the Titanic ( with Robin Gardiner )
The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert Speer
Standard of Power: The Royal Navy in the 20th Century
Pearl Harbor: The Day of Infamy – An Illustrated History
D-Day: The Greatest Invasion – A People’s History
Copyright
This edition first published in the United States in 2009 by Overlook Duckworth Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc. New York & London
N EW Y ORK :
The Overlook Press
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New York, NY 10012
L ONDON :
Duckworth
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Copyright © 2009 by Dan van der Vat
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
ISBN 978-1-46830-316-2
Contents
Also by Dan van der Vat
Copyright
List of Illustrations
Preface: Blunder upon Blunder
Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Voyage of the Nusret
PART I - THE FATEFUL ALLIANCE
1. The Turkish Question
2. The German Answer
PART II - THE ALLIED RESPONSE
3. Blockade
4. Councils of War
5. ‘We have no troops’
PART III - FAILURE AND AFTER
6. The Battle of the Dardanelles
7. Crescendo
8. Heads Roll
9. The Gallipoli Campaign
10. The Inquest
11. What Became of Them
12. The New Turkey and Middle East
Epilogue: The Tale of Two Ships
A Note on Sources
Select Bibliography
Index
For James and Katie from their grandfather
List of Illustrations
General Lord Kitchener of Khartoum in 1900. akg-images
The Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill, MP, First Lord of the Admiralty, in 1915. akg-images
Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher of Kilverstone. Getty Images
Lieutenant Norman Holbrook, RN, and the crew of submarine B11 after sinking the battleship Messudieh inside the Dardanelles, December 1914. Imperial War Museum
Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, architect of the Imperial German Navy. Wiener Library
Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim, German Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, in 1914. akg-images
Rear-Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, commanding the Mediterranean Division of the Imperial German Navy, in 1914. Margot Souchon
General Otto Liman von Sanders in Turkish service, defender of Gallipoli, 1914-15. Imperial War Museum
The Allied fleet sailing for the Dardanelles. Imperial War Museum
SS River Clyde grounded at ‘V’ beach after playing ‘Trojan horse’ for the Cape Helles landing. Imperial War Museum
French soldiers from the Colonial Regiment inspect a smashed searchlight. Imperial War Museum
The Kaiser and Enver Pasha converse on the deck of the Goeben . Imperial War Museum
The commanders and chiefs of staff on HMS Triad : (L to R) Commodore Roger Keyes; Vice-Admiral John de Robeck; General Sir Ian Hamilton; Major-General W.P. Braithwaite. Imperial War Museum
The man who answered the ‘Turkish Question’, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. akg-images
The undoing of the Allied fleet. The Turkish minelayer Nusret – the modern copy at Çannakale. Author’s photograph
Atatürk’s verdict on the Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaigns. Author’s photograph
Preface
Blunder upon Blunder
The official biographer of Winston Churchill, central figure in the Dardanelles disaster of 1915, writes that ‘[Admiral ofthe Fleet Lord] Fisher’s return to the Admiralty coincided with Britain’s only serious naval defeat of the war’. Fisher hadbeen recalled from retirement to his old post as First Sea Lord on 30 October 1914: the reference is to the Battle of Coronelon 1 November, when Vice-Admiral Graf Spee’s German cruisers crushed a British squadron off Chile. Yet much of the same thirdvolume of Sir Martin Gilbert’s biography is necessarily devoted to Churchill’s leading role, as First Lord of the Admiralty,in the Royal Navy’s abortive effort to reopen the Dardanelles after Turkey had closed them in August 1914.
As the political head of the navy Churchill personally presided over this unique fiasco, which led to his dismissal and almostdestroyed his career. Since his style of administration could hardly have been more ‘hands on’, he did not merely presideover the disaster but intervened, if not interfered, in almost every operational and political aspect of it, large or small,often acting beyond his powers and presenting his Cabinet colleagues with faits accomplis . Yet his proposal to outflank the Central Powers – Germany, Austria-Hungary and their allies, including Turkey – by attackingthe latter as the weakest link in a front deadlocked from Belgium to the Balkans – is now widely accepted as the boldest strategicconcept of the First World War. However, as with so many other failed British military enterprises, it was undermined by appallingincompetence in execution. Churchill’s great error was to go ahead with the navy alone after Kitchener, the Secretary of Statefor War, insisted that there were no troops available for the combined operation which contemporary informed opinion (includingChurchill and Kitchener) had long since agreed was necessary to force the Dardanelles.
The Dardanelles disaster swelled the rising tide of complaints in Britain about ‘bungling in high places’. After the navy’sfailure was bloodily redoubled by the army’s at Gallipoli, heads eventually rolled, including Fisher’s and Churchill’s; and to survive as Prime Minister, Asquith was forced to replace his Liberal administration witha coalition Cabinet.
The Royal Navy’s abortive solo attempt to reopen the Dardanelles was prompted by another naval failure: the ineptly missedopportunity to deploy immensely superior forces to stop and destroy the Mediterranean Division of the German Imperial Navyin the first week of the First World War. Rear-Admiral Wilhelm Souchon was allowed to take his two ships, a battlecruiserand a light cruiser, over 1,000 miles from Sicily across the eastern basin of the Mediterranean to the Dardanelles. He eludedboth the bulk of the French fleet and the British Mediterranean Fleet, which by itself was much his superior in firepowerand numbers of ships, even though he could so easily have been trapped in the Strait of Messina between two groups of Britishships each endowed with firepower superior to his. This incident was the subject of one of my earlier books, The Ship That Changed the World (1985), to which this volume forms a sequel.
The consequences of Souchon’s escape to Turkish waters, enabling the Germans to activate their secret alliance with OttomanTurkey by provoking Tsarist Russia into a war against the Turks, were recognised by both British and German leaders as worthtwo extra years to the Germans and their allies in a war that lasted just over four. The Dardanelles strait was closed tothe Entente powers – Britain, France and Russia – and the latter was effectively cut off, unable to export grain to the othertwo, who likewise were prevented from delivering much-needed munitions in return. The British were prompted to try to reversethis, not only to reopen the link but also to turn the eastern flank of the Central Powers by passing through the Dardanellesstrait into the Sea of Marmara, knocking Turkey out of the war by threatening Constantinople, passing through the Bosporusinto the Black Sea, joining hands with the Russians and going up the Danube to attack Austria-Hungary from the rear.
The failure of the great seaborne bombardment of the Dardanelles forts in March 1915, a leisurely seven months later, in abid to reverse the Germans’ diplomatic and strategic coup, only served to compound its results exponentially. Compared withthe consequences of the Royal Navy’s double failure – Souchon’s escape and the rebuff at the Dardanelles – the defeat at Coronel,handsomely avenged within weeks at the Battle of the Falkland Islands, where Spee’s squadron was all but wiped out, was amarginal skirmish of minor strategic significance. The abortive attempt to reopen the Dardanelles by naval gunpower alone,judged by its consequences, may therefore stand as the Royal Navy’s most significant failure, certainly in the First World War, probably in the twentieth century and possibly in all the 500 years of its existence. Avictory for the Spanish Armada in 1588 or for Napoleon’s navy at Trafalgar in 1805 would have been rather worse, but neithercame to pass, becoming instead the Royal Navy’s most important victories. A British failure to overcome the U-boat blockadeimposed by the Germans in each world war would surely have surpassed the Dardanelles fiasco in gravity but was narrowly avertedin each case.
This gives the Dardanelles campaign – Turkey’s only military triumph in 1914–18 – pride of place in the brief list of Britain’sstrategic maritime failures. Chronologically, and also in terms of suffering and loss, the ensuing Allied failure to seizethe Gallipoli peninsula by military force in order to outflank the Dardanelles defences takes first place among the results.This was intended to help the fleet and its supply ships to get to Constantinople without being shelled from the shore. Thebloody slaughter in the Gallipoli campaign, a smaller-scale but sometimes even more intense extension of the stalemate onthe Western Front, understandably draws the general reader’s eye from t