In 1915, trench warfare had begun and the Western Front was at a standstill.
Germany had blocked Russia from sending troops as reinforcements.
The Allies believed something needed to be done to get Russian soldiers to the front lines.
Gallipoli was a major failure for the Allies.
In this essay I discuss why a landing at Gallipoli was carried out, what the Allies were hoping to get out of it, what went wrong with the landing, along with the battle that followed and what could have been done to improve the Allies' chance at winning.
I will also discuss how the British government reacted to the Gallipoli campaign, and what legacy it has left the world.
In 1915, the Allies were planning an offensive on the Dardanelles.
Obsolete battleships were to be used to destroy the Ottoman forces (which came from the country known in modern times as Turkey) along the Dardanelles strait (these ships were not believed to be able to fight the German vessels and win).
This would clear the strait so that Allied ships had a clear path that they could follow to Constantinople, which would then be taken over.
The Allies launched their main attack on the strait on March 18, 1915.
During the battle, the minesweeper ships had been heavily damaged, but they were still ordered to clear the strait of mines so that battleships could use the channel later.
The civilians that piloted the ships were scared by the constant Ottoman fire they were under so they backed off, and the mission failed.
The battle ended with many losses for the Allies. The naval campaign that the Allies had dreamed up had not worked, so another plan was devised.
The landing at Gallipoli was decided on only after the main naval assault failed.
The main goal of the landing was to capture the Ottoman batteries and forts that were attacking the boats when the Allies had launched the main naval attack.
This would make it safer for the minesweepers to clear the mines from the Dardanelles and have an easier access to Constantinople.
The Allies were hoping that if the Ottoman Empire was captured, countries such as Greece and Bulgaria (which had been part of the empire) would join the war on the Allies' side.
The Allies also hoped that if the Ottoman forces were captured, it would be easier for Russia to get to the Western Front.
There were many terrible mistakes made when the landing at Gallipoli was carried out and these led to the failure of the campaign.
First, on April 25, 1915, Allied Forces, mostly from the ANZAC division, landed on a beach 1.6km north of the Gallipoli landing site that the Allies had planned.
(The landing site is now known as Anzac Cove).
They landed under heavy fire from the Ottomans. Secondly, the maps that the Allies had of Gallipoli were inaccurate because the land had not been surveyed well by the Allies' intelligence groups.
Also the Allies didn't expect the Ottomans to be prepared for their attacks; they thought that they had surprised them.
Another reason for the failure of the campaign is thought to have been due to the Allied Forces not attacking regularly enough, because the Government delayed the offensives and did not follow the main plan of attack at the beginning of the campaign, so they lost momentum and the Ottomans held them back.
The Allies also had known how challenging the terrain was from the naval assault a month earlier.
Winston Churchill, the First Lord of Admiralty in World War 1, was the one who took the blame for the failure of the campaign, as he dreamed it up.
Whenever he gave a speech in the time after the war, he would almost always be interrupted by people bringing up the uselessness of the campaign.
In 1922, he decided to write a book to defend the decisions he made, which contains many excuses that he believed justified his campaign.
Churchill was not the only one to be affected by the failure of the campaign.
The whole British Government was.
The Conservative and Liberal parties formed a coalition government in 1915 that lasted till 1916.
The Dardanelles commission was set up to investigate the Gallipoli Campaign because the coalition wanted to respond to the atrocity that the public believed the campaign had become.
The campaign at Gallipoli is commemorated every year in New Zealand and Australia on April 25, the anniversary of the landing.
Ceremonies are also held in many other countries all around the world.
In Turkey, March 18 is commemorated because of the Ottomans' victory over the Allied attack on the Dardanelles.
The Turkish 57th Regiment is no longer a regiment in the Turkish army, to respect the 57th Regiment that fought at Gallipoli.
All the soldiers in the Regiment either died or were wounded.
There was almost the same number of deaths on either side, which proves that Ottomans could only just keep back the Allies, even though the Allies made so many mistakes.
It is still not known what exactly led to the failure of the campaign, but there are a few convincing theories.
The Gallipoli landing was an overall failure.
Inaccurate maps, poor decision making, delaying offensives, loss of momentum and landing on the wrong beach near the start of the campaign all led to its failure.
The Allies should have known that the terrain was not ideal for an offensive, and should have focused their troops somewhere else.
If the naval assault and the landing had occurred at the same time, the Allies might have had a better chance at winning, but the landing just turned out to be a waste of soldier's lives.
The fact that the Allies sent anyone to attack Gallipoli was appalling, and probably the worst Allied decision of the First World War.
Hopefully, we can learn from our mistakes and never let something like this campaign happen again.
• By Rhys Davie, Year 10, Tokomairiro High School
