108 years ago, British forces, primarily from Australia and New Zealand, landed in the Dardanelles under one of Winston Churchill's harebrained schemes to knock "the sick man of Europe" out of the war.
It was a debacle.
This is the episode about Gallipoli from the BBC's 1964 documentary series on the Great War.
The Gallipoli Campaign resulted, in part, in the removal of Churchill as First Sea Lord. It also was one of the reasons why, in the next war, nobody took his strategic ideas seriously, especially his insane idea to invade Eurpoe through the Balkans.
When They Want A Raw Deal
36 minutes ago
3 comments:
The failure to instead drive from Greece, into Bulgaria and then Turkey, never made sense to me...a coastal attack axis, backed by the older British and Frence battleships could have worked, especially if combined with other moves from Arabia. It would also have fixed the supply issues that doomed the attack.
Wasn't Churchill the one that pushed for the invasion of Italy, "The Axis' soft underbelly" ?
I can't imagine what he thought the Allies were going to do once they had Italy.
Invade Germany over the Alps? Invade France up that narrow strip of land along the Med?
I believe that had more to do with starting combat operations on the European continent in order to satisfy Stalin, who was carping about the Red Army doing all of the dying in combat with the Wehrmacht.
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