Professor David Peimer
Gallipoli (1915): Churchill’s Disaster?
Professor David Peimer | Gallipoli (1915) Churchill’s Disaster | 06.29.24
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- So we’re going to dive straight into this really fascinating topic for me, which is this whole period that we’re looking at at the moment around the First World War, early part of the century and the Middle East. And of course, the famous or infamous battle, whichever one believes in, of Gallipoli, and what happened to Churchill, and how it broke and in a way later helped make his remarkable career, this particular campaign or battle, and how he was vilified, dismissed, and really went into a pretty much obscurity in terms of the British Imperial War Office, Foreign Office, Cabinet, and so on. And in a way became almost a backbencher in Parliament, and some minor sort of cabinet positions.
But this is the moment when his whole career, at the age of 40, when his whole career basically collapses, and he cannot see a future, he cannot see what may or may not come, and despair sets in. Of course, 1915, but of course by 1940, May 1940, he is brought in and made British Prime Minister. So it’s this battle in particular that is so crucial in the career and the life of Winston Churchill, probably more than any other battle, maybe the Boer War, which helped him enormously in terms of publicity, travel, and getting out to many of the colonies, not only the Boer War, but others as well. But a huge effect on him, which we’ll look at today.
So, and I also want to look briefly at the Peter Weir, the Australian filmmaker, and his movie of this battle made in 1981, with a fair number of Australian actors and others. And the emergence in a way of what became known as Australian identity, or it helps to forge, ironically, war, helps forge an identity in the soul of a nation. American Civil War, we can think of, the French Revolution, the wars of Napoleon and many others, and of course, the wars of the British. Is this jumping around? Hi, Georgia.
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Oh, okay. If we can show the slide. Thank you. Okay, great. So, the other thing about it that I want to look at today, which is a theme that runs all the way through Churchill’s life, which is the theme of courage. And in the real meaning of the word, not the sentimental or naive cliche that that word is bandied around so much today, but the real meaning of courage. Heroism, obviously, it’s a war. It’s the First World War. And then what happens in the nightmare of the mud and the terror of the First World War, and how the notion of heroism changes. We know the poets, Wilfred Owen, all the others. Patriotism. Those three main ideas, patriotism, war, forging an identity of a nation in terms of Australia and New Zealand, and courage and heroism.
These are the key ideas which go way back to ancient times of human society anywhere in the world, but they get changed fundamentally in the First World War. And of course, not only in the fields of Flanders and the muddy, terrifying trenches, but the Battle of Gallipoli is a huge moment which changes so many things for the Second World War and the future to come. And of course, Churchill’s life itself. Himself. If we have a look here, this is a picture, obviously, Churchill older. I’m going to show one in a moment where he was 40 at the time in 1915. Obviously here, he’s already Prime Minister, 1940, the picture I’m showing. This is the map in the middle, we can see. And basically between Turkey and, if you like, the edge of Europe, and the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea. And the little yellow line in the middle of the green map of the Turkey part, those are the straits, or those are the Dardanelles, between the two, the Aegean and the Black Sea.
Which, and the whole point of it was to keep Turkey out of the war, destroy the Ottoman, of the Gallipoli campaign, was to keep Turkey out of the First World War, or the Ottoman Empire, as of course it was known at the time, because the Ottomans had joined the Germans. So the British and the French and the Russians, the Allies wanted to keep, obviously, the Turks or the Ottoman Empire out. So the aim was twofold. The aim was keep the Ottoman Empire with thousands of Turkish soldiers and Ottoman Empire soldiers, keep them out of the war, destroy and break up the Ottoman Empire, and create a sea path between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea to get supplies and tanks and weapons, not tanks, to get weapons to the Russian army. 1915, so it’s before the Russian Revolution, 1917, when the Russians, of course, pull out of the First World War. So it’s twofold aim, get the Turks out of the war, destroy the Ottoman Empire, keep them away from joining the Germans, and secondly, get massive military supplies to the Russian army, so the encirclement on two fronts of the German and the Austrians and the others can be complete.
That is the aim by the British and the French and the Russians up against the Germans primarily and the Austrians. Okay, so this shows that yellow little strip shows the part where the battle was held. Of course, the picture on the right uses some very old photos from 1915, but of the landings on the beach of Gallipoli or the Dardanelles, as it was called as well. Okay, so this here shows in more depth. This, of course, is a drawing or painting much later of that specific area between what is today Turkey or then the Ottoman Empire and the edge of Europe. And these are the straits of the Dardanelles here. And this was the area that needed to be taken by the ships and then the army coming in where the Battle of Gallipoli was to be held. It’s a painting, obviously, but it gives us an idea of how rocky and hilly and difficult this is, especially in 1915 for infantry troops to conquer. You can show the next slide, please. Okay, so this, of course, is a young Churchill at the age of 40. And he is at the time of the Battle of Gallipoli. He is the first Lord of the Admiralty.
So basically, he’s in charge of the British fleet, which is the biggest, most powerful fleet in the world. And it’s really the pride and centre of the British military forces is the British fleet. In 1915, he resigns from his role due to the unsuccessful result of the Battle of Gallipoli. And he gets demoted to an obscure cabinet post. So this is a picture of him at the age of 40 after Gallipoli, where he was filled with despair and sadness and a real feeling for the troops that had thousands who had been killed, of course, and his own position and his own career, which seemed completely at an end because of what happened with this battle. Okay, if we can show the next slide, please.
This is a sense of the battle as well. You can see how they came. This is very different to the kind of landing craft that were used in the Battle of Normandy in 1944, arriving on the Normandy beaches. These are basically little boats, and all the soldiers coming across in little boats. So easy to shoot with machine guns if you’re at the top of hills or semi mountains on the other side above the beaches. It’s so easy to destroy. These are basically little boats and all the soldiers are being brought across. It’s a disaster set up in the making. Less in the execution and less in the battle itself. What I want to talk is the nuanced detail. It’s not just Churchill’s fault. There’s a whole lot of leaders, military and naval and political, who are all making terrible mistakes with this battle that lead to the disaster. And this gives the obvious example. Here they come almost in rowing boats, but of course, little mechanised boats. It’s so easy. And the other side, you see the image of the actual Dardanelles or the actual Gallipoli.
These are very steep cliffs. Cliffs much steeper than the Normandy beaches in the 1944 landing on the coast of France. So you can imagine the Turkish soldiers up at the top with machine guns, with mortars, everything, cannons. You can imagine it’s waiting to turn into a total disaster. And horrific loss of life. Okay, if we can show the next slide, please. Yeah, this is a closeup of that same one. And these soldiers are just crammed in like sardines, totally different to the landing craft of 1944. They just crammed in like sardines. Remember, they’ve got heavy backpacks, probably 40 pound backpacks. They’ve got their rifles, they would have bayonets, and they just crammed in. So let’s try and imagine them landing on the beach, get out into the water, and then into the sand. I mean, they can hardly move. It’s so slow. And we can imagine what they’re just sitting ducks. It’s a nightmare.
In addition, completely underestimated was the number of mines that the Ottoman or the Turks had put into the sea, which blew up so many of the big ships and blew up these landing craft before they even reached the beaches. We can show the next slide, please. So this is one of the pictures which I think is, I’m going to show some which I think are very moving. This shows a couple of Australian soldiers in the trenches. They managed to get a couple of metres away from the sea’s edge, literally, on the beach at the cliffs. And the height, look how tiny these trenches are that they have to try and move along, and they’re being rained on the top by bombs and by artillery, and of course, machine guns all the time. With the look of shock, despair, horror inside these young guys’ faces, and they just crammed, they’re just literally sardines for the grinder, almost. Probably a lot very similar to what’s happening in the Ukraine war at the moment, in a way.
And these young kids, 18, 19, early mid-twenties, who’ve come with such hope and idealism, patriotism, courage, heroism, they’ve all been sold that as the reason, the story why they are there in the first place, and what they’re doing as soldiers of empire, and this is the actual, the cold, harsh reality. Okay, if we can show the next one, which is a film clip, and this is an historical clip, which I think describes the battle very well as we watch it now.
[Clip plays]
[Narrator] Gallipoli, silent now, where the sea ran red with the blood of men so courageous, we are left humbled when we read of their actions, where soldiers walked onto their deaths over the bodies of their fallen comrades, where, as so often during the Great War, countless brave lives were senselessly thrown away. Gallipoli, one campaign too many that began with slaughter and ended with defeat. From this end of the historical telescope, the Gallipoli campaign of the Great War appears to be another instance of brave men sent to die in waves for an ill-conceived theory. The war on the Western Front in France had choked itself to a standstill in the mud. The strategic and tactical ideas of the commanders had apparently suffered a similar fate. It was the first Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, who came up with a plan to attack the Gallipoli Peninsula.
The overall plan was to knock Turkey out of the war. Germany had drawn Turkey into the war as her ally, and this had caused problems for the Western allies, Britain, France, and Russia. Turkey had threatened the Suez Canal, had closed the Dardanelles, which cutting Russia off from her warm water ports, and also threatened our oil interests around Basra and Abadan. So the idea was that if we could send a force through the Dardanelles and threaten Constantinople, the Turkish capital, Turkey might capitulate. That in turn might open the way for an allied advance from the southeast. The war in France had degenerated into a trench deadlock. Nothing was happening there. But there was still a situation where the Westerners, such as Kitchener, saw the war in France as the, or saw France as the main theatre, France and Belgium, as the main theatre in which we win the war. The Easterners, such as Churchill, thought that an outflanking movement might help.
[Narrator] The plan to open up the Dardanelles, initially through naval bombardment alone, was lame from the outset. Doomed by reluctance to commit men and equipment in the quantities required, and gaining only grudging support from commanders like Kitchener, who refused to send promised troops once the campaign had begun. On the 19th of February, 1915, a naval bombardment of the forts along the Dardanelles signalled the start of the campaign. The intention was to silence the guns in these forts, then sail in closer and bombard gun emplacements further inland in preparation for the landing of demolition parties. Even at this early stage, the plan went wrong. The flat trajectory of the naval shelling failed to destroy either the bulk of the forts or their defenders. The Turks simply waited for the guns to cease firing and then came from undercover and fired back. To add to the difficulties, mines had been laid by the Turks in the waters around the peninsula. Churchill became increasingly irate at the lack of progress. He wrote, “This work has to be done, "whatever the loss of life and small craft, "and the sooner it is done, the better.”
Churchill was the first Lord of the Admiralty from 1911 until May 1915. He was an Easterner. He believed that an attack on the Dardanelles, or attack on Turkey through the Dardanelles, was a worthwhile venture. He was actually flying in the face of perceived wisdom because in 1906, there’d been a report with the general staff which concluded that an attack on Turkey via the Dardanelles was unlikely to succeed, even an amphibious attack using the army and the navy. Now, Churchill was so confident of success that he even allowed Kitchener to deprive him of the army element of the attack until it was too late, and he alone felt that a naval attack could succeed.
[Narrator] One decision that helped to put Gallipoli firmly amongst the tragic, romantic battles of history was made at Kitchener’s suggestion after he reneged on his decision to spare the 29th Brigade for duty in the east, a decision he later rescinded. Churchill objected, but the Australians and New Zealand troops gathering in Egypt for transportation to the Western Front were to be sent instead to Gallipoli in support of the navy should a landing be required. These combined forces, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, came to be known under the acronym ANZAC, which was also the name given to that part of the peninsula.
[Clip ends]
- Great, thanks. If we can hold it there, please. So that gives us, I think, a pretty good summary of the battle and Churchill’s role in it and how it was doomed basically from the beginning and the split between what was called the Easterners and the Westerners in terms of, and also importantly includes the crucial focus of the Suez Canal and also the oil supplies, which of course Britain and France and Russia needed and was being threatened by Turkey. So there were a number of reasons to try and keep Turkey out and break Turkey up. When I spoke about Gertrude Bell and Lawrence of Arabia, of course their job had been to stir up Arab nationalism to attack the Turkish from the other side. So pull the Turkish away towards Arabia on the one side and then the British and the French coming from this side towards what was Constantinople then.
So all of this goes together as a kind of meant to be an Eastern outflanking movement because of the stalemate disaster happening in the fields of France, in Flanders, in Belgium. So we have this debate and we have these two approaches, outflank or carry on fighting from the front. And of course to supply Russia and crucially to keep hundreds and hundreds of thousands, millions of Turkish soldiers out and break up the Ottoman Empire, partition it and then divvy it up for the conquerors, Britain, France and maybe Russia as well and Belgium. So it would have been a very, it’s got all of these political aspects. It’s ambitious, it feels over ambitious. It’s got incompetence from Kitchener says, first he said, I’ll give you the troops, but then he says, I won’t give you enough troops. So Churchill’s running around looking, he finds Australians and New Zealanders.
He gets some Australians, New Zealanders together cobbled almost with the British and others. You can start to feel it’s a plan, it gets going to unravel. It’s a disaster in the making. They don’t even realise how many mines the Turks have put in the sea. They don’t realise that the Turks are just going to, even coming in with the boats. Well, when the big ship stopped the booming guns, the Turks just cover up and then stop that. And then they just take out the guns again afterwards and start shooting. So it’s an underestimation of the enemy. It’s a sense of the enemy is so inferior, so useless, so incompetent, they’ll never get organised and so on. They were, and it ended up being one of the biggest disasters of this war, of any war for that matter. And certainly for Churchill himself.
And for me, it’s not only the sense of the historical, which is crucial, but the understandings of courage, heroism, patriotism, they all feed into the narrative what comes out of the First World War, in the Wilfred Owen poem, Is it good and fitting to die for one’s country? Based on the old Roman saying. We have to remember that the trenches in France had ended up being a 500 miles of trenches, virtually battle lines on the Western front. And Britain and France had already suffered nearly a million casualties in the first four months of 1914. The first four months of the war in 1914, nearly a million casualties, had already, that’s injured and killed, had already been suffered by Britain and France. An extraordinary, insane, slaughtered, and utterly, utterly horrific. Churchill then said, “Are there not other alternatives "than just sending our armies "to chew barbed wire in Flanders fields?”
Chew barbed wire in Flanders fields. It’s such an evocative image, Churchill, the great writer. But he was right in a way. And he comes up with these ideas all the time. He’s always trying to think of something else. Ambitious, overambitious, but one needs those kinds of minds as opposed to just the safe. It’s always a, well, life is not only a battle in war, between safe and ambitious. Churchill himself, he thought of himself as a military strategist. He wrote about himself. He said, “I have it in me to be a successful soldier. "I can visualise great movements of great armies.” He’s at the age of 40. This is the battle which tames and calms his thoughts from what was said in that previous BBC clip from this romantic, tragic episode of Battle of Gallipoli. He thought, “One bold stroke, it’ll win the war.” It’s so fascinating to me how leaders can make decisions and they think maybe or maybe not, but then if you don’t, what do you do?
It’s really, it’s a test of leadership, of ambition, risk, courage and safety, caution, planning, organisation, all of these things, which are the same in life. But here, of course, it’s about human life and death. So he wants to make the strike, which is over a thousand miles to the east, compared to happening in France. We’ve got to remember they’ve got all the ships and the transportation of 1915, obviously very different to today. That Dardanelles Strip that was shown is only 38 miles. And that straight severed Europe and Asia, Northwest Turkey, and then of course, the idea was to go on and seize Constantinople. So it’s just a 30 mile strip of beach and cliffs, semi hills or mountains. So to gain that and achieve the aims that they wanted, they thought that’s it, Churchill and the others thought, that’s it, that’s how they’ll help the allies win. They called the Ottoman Empire, Churchill’s phrase, it is, and I’m quoting, “The sick man of Europe.”
Underestimate the enemy is always such a disaster in life as much as in military campaigns. And this certainly was an underestimation. The old idea of the imperial versus, or the coloniser versus the colonised, or the conqueror versus the conquered, to underestimate, they are primitive, they’re naive, they’re a bit stupid, they’re not really organised, they’re not as civilised, not as clever as us, not as smart as us, we know we’re much better, we’re stronger as well, all of that. But it’s so often repeated throughout history, going back to ancient Rome and way before, the underestimation of the enemy is a disastrous approach to any battle. As the great Chinese philosopher of war, Sun Tzu said, “One knows before one arrives at the battlefield, if one will win or lose the battle.” It’s an extraordinary insight, going back about three and a half, 4,000 years ago, this ancient Chinese military thinker.
You know, before you get to the battlefield, if you’re going to win or lose, what he means is that you’ve done all the research, all the intelligent gathering, you found out all the conditions, the weather, the terrain, the weaponry, everything, before you even begin to send the soldiers there. Crucial, ignore that at one’s peril, I really think. So all of this happens, the British war cabinet backed the plan, but this had been under consideration, and it’s a debate whether it was, I know in this clip, they said it was Churchill’s idea, but it’s a big debate, ‘cause it had been thought of at least 10 years before the war, nine, 10 years, but it had been concluded that it probably wouldn’t succeed. So whose idea was it originally? Was it Churchill’s? Was it somebody else’s? I think it was a general idea from the military before, but it had been said it wouldn’t really work. But Churchill certainly becomes the champion of it, and he becomes the scapegoat as a result.
An important part is Kitchener, which you can’t underestimate. The two do not get on, and Kitchener says, “I’m not giving you the British troops, "I’ll give you some Australian, New Zealanders, "small amount of this and that, "and create a bit of a mixture.” It’s not that they are not going to fight, they’re going to risk, they’re going to give their lives for this, but they’re not organised by the leadership. It’s the leadership. And we have the great phrase of the First World War, that the soldiers were lions who were led by generals who were donkeys. Lions led by donkeys, great phrase. And the soldiers, they’re going out, they’re doing their best, they’re kids, 18, 19, early 20s. But the lack of organising, planning, hesitations, competence all around because of the conflict of egos amongst the military leaders Kitchener being one of them. Not enough ships, not enough soldiers going out and argument over who’s going to run which part.
They’re not even checking the weather properly and what’s going to happen with the seas. The British admiral at the time was a guy called Sackville Carden. He suffered a nervous collapse. He was replaced because of all this incompetence going on. And he was replaced by a guy, an admiral called John de Roebuck, de Roebuck. Anyway, half the fleet out of commission. They’d been mined already. They didn’t even check if there were mines in the sea. Churchill wants the commanders, “Go on, no matter what, go, go, go, go further.” Ambition is driving. De Roebuck waits for the ships. He waits for more army support. So there’s conflict. The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing amongst a couple of dozen of the leadership in a way. The fleet hesitates, advantage is lost. And as the Germans said, these four weeks when all this hesitation and miscommunication, put it mildly, was happening, it enabled the Germans and the Turks to set up serious defences and stop the attack of Gallipoli. Also, they make much tougher Turkish resistance.
They underestimate it again. The old binary of imperialism and colonisation, superior, inferior binary. They’re inferior. They never come up to our expertise as soldiers and so on. Well, they were just as strong. They were just as good as the British and the Australian New Zealanders and the French. It was as pointless as the Western front, as much of a slaughterhouse. In the first month alone, 30 days, the Allies, the Australians, New Zealanders primarily, and some British and others, lost 45,000 men in Gallipoli. The campaign lasted nine months. Each side lost about a quarter of a million, which is the Allies, heavily Australian, New Zealanders and others, and the Turks on the other side with the Germans. So it’s a quarter of a million men on both sides to die in this tiny bit of beach strip of a land for a completely unthought through, unplanned, idiotic and crazy battle. Because of the lack of coordination and planning from the very beginning.
I don’t want to go into more of the detail, but I certainly think one needs to see the nuance. Not that Churchill is to blame for everything. He’s part of it, yes. And he’s made the big scapegoats, which destroys his career until the end of the '30s, basically, and of course, the Second World War begins. So he said, “I’m the victim of political intrigue. I’m finished.” What does he do? Churchill in 1916 resigns from the cabinet, and he says, “I want to go to the Western Front.” And he goes to the Western Front, and he fights in the trenches with the ordinary soldiers. This is the character that I want to get at with courage, with Churchill. He always said, “Never surrender.” Always said, “Courage is the ability to fail and fail again, but to get up and fight again.” Courage and failure go hand in hand. Courage is the ability to get up from failure and fight again and again, because failure is always inevitable in life, in human life. Maybe, unless you’re Napoleon, well, until the end, or Alexander the Great, who don’t really fail until the very end of all their military careers.
But he said, “I’m finished.” And he resigns from the cabinet, and he goes and becomes an ordinary lieutenant colonel. He’s not a general, he’s demoted radically. And he fights on the front for quite a few months, and he has platoons of ordinary soldiers that go up over the trenches at night into no man’s land, attack the Germans, come back, and he is part of it. So at the age of 40, he doesn’t carry on sitting in London in some office somewhere. He goes to the actual front and physically fights. Crazy, mad, idiotic, and yet remarkably inspirational and courageous as a human being. It shows the character of Churchill. Never give up. In his phrase, of course, never surrender. Okay, I’m not going to link it to comments being made at various debates, political debates happening in America and England now as well, that phrase. Okay, so he goes as an ordinary infantry officer, then he returns in 1917, and he goes back to politics. And he’s made a minister of munitions for the army supplies and all the rest of it.
What has happened as a result is that his party and the leadership are kicked out of government. They have to make a coalition, which was then with the conservatives. The conservatives refused to have Churchill in, but finally they let him come back in. It’s all big political intrigue going on. So all of this, and it’s a radical change in his life and career because he really believes everything is over for his personal life and career. But the sense of courage inside on a personal level stays with the guy. And I think that’s really crucial. We just have to imagine for a moment that he’s dropped from the heights. So many are slaughtered in the battle because partly of his incompetence and his lack of political and leadership and organising, but he changes, realises mistakes and gets his act together for a far, far bigger and more dangerous attack of course of the second world war coming later in 1939, 1940. As he said in 1940, all my past life had been a preparation for this hour and for this trial.
In 1940, I felt I was walking with destiny finally. And of course he was in his mid sixties by then. So again, the courage to come back and to overcome the adversity of Gallipoli. It’s also why he was so scared of the Normandy landings and try to delay it with Roosevelt and Eisenhower so much. He was terrified it was going to be another Gallipoli. And Eisenhower and Roosevelt, especially Eisenhower used all his diplomatic skills to convince Churchill that they had absolutely planned everything down to the last T and it would be a success most likely. But he was terrified to the very last minute and he tried to block it, stop it. He was the one to push, go through Italy, go all the way up and rather go in safely even if it takes an extra year or two, the second world war based on this failed campaign.
What happened in Australia and New Zealand is that fascinatingly, it became known as the beginnings almost of a kind of national consciousness. And this is one of the great ironies of how war is central to a society’s history, collective memory, mythical sense of its own identity and self-belief. How crucial war is as a human nature experience sadly, tragically so and romantically, it’s a tragic romantic. It’s romantic because you get the romantic ideals of heroism, patriotism and for the glory of whatever the cause is, it might be nationalism or other things, whatever it is. But of course it’s a mad tragedy as well. But it’s in the question, it’s inevitable in society because of who we are as humans, as part of human nature and I believe it. And it became in Australia and New Zealand, it fought this battle, forges in a way what was became to be called a baptism of fire, of identity.
The sense of the rugged Australian, the notion of the larrikin, which is this kind of rogue, rough soldier who can rough masculinity, can handle anything. Tough, tough as hell. And this battle is what makes that. It also helps separate Australia and New Zealand from empire and from Britain. It begins the schism between the two. Of course, they’re always part of the Commonwealth, but it’s very different to being a colony under Britain rule and empire from London. So it starts an assertion of individual identity in a nation. This battle in particular of Australia and New Zealand. It forges that kind of sense of manhood, if you like. Partly mythical, it’s tragic romantic in this way. And isn’t it a terrifying irony of human nature and the human condition that we need a defeat, a horrific defeat, a slaughter of young kids, 18, 19, 20, 21, and then the recovery in order to forge an identity that has self-belief strength and self-belief in its own consciousness. It’s such an irony of history and it’s dramatic.
It’s drama, it’s pure drama in its own way, of course. And became known as Anzac Day, the 25th of April, which is celebrated or commemorated rather, commemorated in those countries as Anzac Day, forging a national consciousness of self-reliance and ultimately leading towards independence from empire. So I think this is such an important part of the Battle of Gallipoli. Hence, this battle is so central in the consciousness there and why Peter Weir in 1981 chooses this battle to make and how influential it becomes in the collective mythology of Australian and New Zealand consciousness. The reality is that it’s not only the Turkish guns that caused the defeat, it’s also the terrible disease that happened of diarrhoea, of typhus, and so many other diseases you can imagine because there’s sweltering heat on the beaches, no sanitation, virtually nothing, hard to any medical equipment. It’s a nightmare out of hell. Rats, everything, disease kills far more than bullets.
All of this, it basically, a fly population explodes in and amongst all these guys carrying all terrible diseases as we can imagine. From the Turkish point of view, it’s interesting. They regard as huge success. It affects massive public opinion and leads to a sense of their own independence and strength and a sense of Turkey. It breaks up the Ottoman Empire ultimately because ultimately they are defeated because you have the Arab armies on the one side, you have all the double dealing British and French that side, and they recover from it. And so it does break up the Ottoman so that the whole of the Middle East can be basically carved up primarily between France and Britain, as we all know. And this battle is so fundamental in that. And also in ensuring that the oil, as the guy mentions here, the oil gets through to the Western allies. Okay, if we can show the next slide, please. This is fascinating to me. This is a photo of British officers. A lot of the officers were British. Some were Australian and New Zealanders.
They’re having tea on the beach at Gallipoli. These are tea cups. They’re having tea and a meeting to discuss future plans. It’s one of the great images. You can see it as tragic. You can see it as horrific. You can see it as satirical, as ironic, as crazy, all the rest of it. They’re having tea on a table, tea cups, saucers, teaspoons, everything, teabag, all of it’s there. Never stop a British officer from having his tea, no matter where, okay? I can’t resist it, 'cause one’s got to see irony upon irony inside it as well. And there’s a certain, a certain thing sort of nonchalant superiority inside it, coming from imperial consciousness. Okay, if we can go to the next slide, please. Okay, this is from the film. Now, before we show it. So this is from a clip from the end of Peter Weir’s 1981 movie of Gallipoli. You see how steep those cliffs are that they’re trying to climb, which they can’t really. Yeah, they’ve got rifles and bayonets. And at the top again are cannons and machine guns and all the rest of it, artillery.
This is at the very end. Basically, the film is about two young guys who love running and they were in their teens and they run and they run. They win awards in their schools in Australia, New Zealand, they’re very, they’re going up. And at the end, this is the final scene of the film. And you see the one guy is sent to the British officer who says, okay, go and tell the, no, no, no, we’re not going to go over the top. We’re going to stop, go and tell the leader and he’s got to run. This is 1915, before 1960, before communication of our times that we know. So he runs with a message, he’s running and his friend is in the trench at the front. And they’re about to go over, blowing of the whistle and go over the top and try and climb up here and take on the Turks, which is of course, is just a slaughter in the making. And he’s got to run as fast as he can, get back to save his friend’s life and to save all the other soldiers in that area of the trenches. You don’t need to do it anymore. We stopping, we stopping. And you’ll see tragically what happens. Okay, if we could show the clip, please.
[Clip plays]
It does sound pointless to go on. On the other hand.
Excuse me, sir, British ashore at Suvla.
Are they meeting heavy opposition?
None, sir.
Apparently, they’ve called a halt and the officers are sitting on the beach drinking cups of tea.
Tell Major Barton the attack is… No, just tell him that I’m reconsidering the whole situation.
Sir.
They’re not going to make us go, are they?
No, there’s no point.
Those men should have gone, Barton. Marker flags have been seen.
Not by me, sir. I’ve asked for confirmation from General Gardner.
Your orders are to attack and you’ll do so immediately. The British at Suvla must be allowed to get ashore. Is that clear? You are to push on.
It’s cold-blooded murder.
I said, push on.
Aye, sir. Can’t ask the men to do what I wouldn’t do myself.
All right, men. We’re going. I want you all to remember who you are. You’re the 10th White Horse, men from Western Australia. Don’t forget it. Good luck.
You look good, sir.
You too.
May God look after me. Look after us.
See your legs? Springs. Steel springs. What are they going to do? They’re going to hurl me down the track. How fast can you run? Fast as a leopard. How fast are you going to run? As fast as a leopard. Then let’s see you do it.
Get away, get away. Get away. There’s a message. Gangway. No.
[Clip ends]
- If we can hold it there, please. Okay, I’m sorry. It’s a little bit jagged. I think this is from an old clip. So what happens, they are running, and of course he’s trying to run with the message, and he gets there just a few seconds too late. Those are bodies at the top of the sandbags, dead bodies, but they can’t retrieve them because then if they try, they’ll be shot themselves. So it’s such a powerful ending if we watch it, and you know that you’ve seen them as kids running and having fun and like teenage boys. And then finally, what happens? The film in a way is a classic coming of age movie, where we know the theme so well, coming of age from youth to adulthood, from boy to manhood. It’s the coming of age, growing up film in a way. It’s also, I think, and I don’t think it’s pushing it too much to say it’s a coming of age of these countries. And that’s part of this forging of identity, of national identity. And self-belief and self-esteem.
Because to go through, and that’s a terrible irony of war, it’s a tragic, romantic idea. But to go through suffering and war and such defeat, and then to nevertheless go on with it, to try can later forge such a sense of strong identity. No matter what, we’ll never give up. No matter what, we’ll never let it happen again. And these kinds of things out of trauma of something happening like this comes at, it’s a coming of age of a nation, a coming of age of identity in a nation, which it’s partly mythical, of course, it’s obviously fictional, but it’s based in this reality. And it does become part of the mythology of Australia and New Zealand, Anzac Day. It’s the most commemorated day, 25th of April, every year in Australia of any military battle ever in the history of those two countries.
So, and I think it’s crucial. And I think that it does lead to the ultimate schism with empire and notion of the control from London and from empire at the core, and the starting of that self-assertion, which happens with many, many other nations and countries over in history as a story of empire and imperialism. The coming of age, and it does. And this climax of it captures it for me. And the utter futility of war, it’s a totally anti-war film, and the futility, the madness of it. But then the irony of how late it’s taken up in this romantic, tragic way. It also shows the British leadership having tea, as the guy says, while ordering the slaughter. The Battle of the Somme, I don’t know if it’s true or not, legend or not, but the generals and 28,000 killed in the first day, the Battle of the Somme on the Western front. I mean, the myth of the legend is that the generals are having tea. At 11 o'clock, they have their tea, and they get the reports of how many are killed. 12 o'clock, they have another cup of tea, how many more are killed? And it goes on and on.
It may be mythical, but it may not have been factual at all, but it captures the feeling of the ordinary soldier on the actual battlefield and the attitude. Okay, if we can show the next slide, please. This is one of the most, this is a very moving picture. This is an Australian soldier. This is from the actual battle. This is not the movie anymore. This is an Australian soldier with an injured Turkish soldier, just captured near the top of one of those cliffs. And he’s actually offering him a bit of water. You know, an amazing moment captured by the war photographer of this. It’s so evocative and emotional. You know, I don’t think one can help, but have one’s humanity absolutely, you know, come pushing out. Okay, if we can show the next slide, please. Okay, this is from a song, a folk song by Eric Bogle, which was about the war. I’m going to just play a little bit of it. Can you play it, please?
♪ Music plays ♪
♪ Now when I was a young man ♪ ♪ I carried me pack ♪ ♪ And I lived a free life on the road ♪ ♪ From the Murray’s green basin ♪ ♪ To the dusty Outback ♪ ♪ Oh, I waltzed my Matilda all over ♪ ♪ But in 1915 ♪ ♪ My country said, son, it’s time you stop rambling ♪ ♪ There’s work to be done ♪ ♪ So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun ♪ ♪ And they marched me away to the war ♪ ♪ And the band played Waltzing Matilda ♪ ♪ As the ship pulled away from the quay ♪ ♪ And amidst all the cheers ♪ ♪ The flag waving in tears ♪ ♪ We sailed off for Gallipoli ♪ ♪ How well I remember that terrible day ♪ ♪ How our blood stained the sand and the water ♪ ♪ And of how in that hell that they called Zimbabwe ♪ ♪ We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter ♪ ♪ Johnny Turk, he was waiting, he primed himself well ♪ ♪ He shelled us with bullets and he rained us with shell ♪ ♪ And in five minutes flat he’d blown us all to hell ♪ ♪ Nearly blew us right back to Australia ♪ ♪ But the band ♪
- Hold it there, please. So this is one of the great classic folk songs seared into Australian consciousness about the futility and the hell of the war and the underestimation of everything that I said about the enemy about the Turkish. And I think for me what I wanted to show is how history and art go side by side almost. We get the facts, we get the story, the truth the terrifying reality through the history. And then how it goes hand in hand with an artistic expression through film, through song, through music through theatre, storytelling. How the mythology takes over and how myth helps to forge the identity based on something that really happened in a nation’s history. And how they work together and we need as humans perhaps almost to cope with the trauma and the horror of going through terrifying experiences.
We need something written, a story or music or theatre or poems, whatever that help evoke so much emotion from something really real that happened. How the mythical works with the historical through the medium of the arts. For me it’s so powerful with this film and with even just this song and there are many others about Gallipoli. 1915 is never forgotten in Australian national consciousness. And for Churchill it was such a central time of course as we spoke and took him decades to get over it in a way to really pick himself up and realise the next one that’s really coming, Second World War. Courage of a different kind not just courage to rush crazily in front of bullets totally unplanned, totally incompetent totally lacking with leadership at the top but with planning, organisation, all the rest that I mentioned.
All these aspects of humanity and human society come together ironically and terrifyingly in war situations. Others as well, but war. Okay, if we can show the next slide please? There’s a couple more I want to show there’s Australian troops using a periscope. So they would use periscopes to look up over the sandbags from the trench so they could see what the hell they were looking at and where to try and fire a sort of sniper approach from the First World War. Can you show the next one please? This is a number of Australian, New Zealand soldiers who are riddled with typhus and frostbite. Seriously sick. The reality of war horrifying, terrifying truth. Can you show the next slide please? So the Russians actually began the invention of the tank but their approaches were disastrous and never worked. Got stuck in the mud literally and then, not just Churchill, but the British came up with the first idea of the tank which of course we know but this is where it began.
This is one of the things that were made right at the beginning. Technology of the tank and technology of an air force really begins around the First World War. Can you go on to the next one please? Got one or two left. And this is trying to do some medical but literally under the sun with a tent the next one please on the beach at Gallipoli. This is one of the most moving pictures of all that I wanted to keep for the end This is an Australian soldier and there’s a dead corpse of his friend, another Australian soldier over there. One of the most moving pictures I’ve ever found in all pictures, actually, and also from Gallipoli. It sums it all up in a way. Two ordinary guys like the ones in the film, ordinary guys in a picture. The one dead as a corpse, 18, 19 years old with flies and typhus and bullets and other things. And there’s his very close friend. And this just captures it all, there’s boxes of ammunition behind. Okay, the next one please. This shows you part of a cliff, at the bottom of the actual beach, and you see a bit of a landing craft and just look how steep that is. It’s an insane idea from the start.
I mean, how on earth do you really think you’re going to get up this? It’s so steep and high, and they don’t have anything like the equipment of the Normandy in 1944, and it’s much higher and steeper. And the last one, please. The second last is them going up the cliff, okay? And then the last one after this. This is the last slide I want to show for today, and end it here. The evacuation is finally called eight to nine months after the battle began in 1915. And they’re coming off in rafts. They don’t even have ships or boats to bring the surviving soldiers off. They are coming off ragged, destroyed, broken mines and bodies on rafts back to the bigger ships. These things are so flimsy, they could collapse at any moment. That’s all that they’ll care. This is what the leadership does and how little they care in the end. And how they look and how they feel, and this is all they’re given for the survivors who managed to get out of eight, nine months of this hell of Gallipoli and get back to the ships to be evacuated.
Okay, all these ideas, which I’m going to hold on now and go to questions, thank you. Okay, onto the Q&A.
Q&A and Comments
Carol, “What a pity the example of Churchill’s resignation didn’t spread to in Israel.” Yeah, well, that’s a powerful debate, which is certainly I’m sure raging everywhere. Thanks for that, Carol. Romain says, and to America.
Q: “What did Churchill claim to have learned from this failure?” A: It’s a great question, Romain. He claimed to have learned never to underestimate the enemy, no matter who it was, certainly if the enemy was part of the superior, inferior binary that empire sets up, that the conquered are always going to be inferior. Never to underestimate, number one, and secondly, to organise, plan, organise, plan, organise, plan. And he pushed Eisenhower endlessly before the Normandy invasion in June, 1944. And he went through every detail of that plan with the most extreme obsessional sense of detail before the Normandy invasion. And he still didn’t want it. He still kept trying to stop it. What did he also learn? He learned that in the Second World War, don’t rush into Europe and try and just take on the Nazis in 1940, once the French had given up. So quickly after five, six weeks, the French gave up and Vichy and all the rest. Pull back, get as many of the troops off Dunkirk, off the beaches, forget about the equipment, just get the troops off back to the island and wait until you could build up an army, build up a weaponry and munitions and everything until finally take it on again.
He also learned, and he said in the Second World War, he never really feared an attack, an invasion from the sea because the British fleet were pretty, was with the most powerful fleet in the world by far, far greater than what the Germans had. So he knew that the English Channel was the drawbridge in a way and the fleet would always be there. He had also made sure that there were sufficient aircraft, Spitfires and others that were made, so they could at least take on the Luftwaffe and at least stalemate, if not beat them, which they did. His real fear was the Atlantic, the supplies coming from the new world, from America primarily, of course, Canada, elsewhere, supplies coming across the Atlantic to feed the British and to bring steel and ammunition, weapons, everything across and the U-boats, that was the real fear.
He learned to look at the whole picture, going back to Sun Tzu, he learned, before I go into the battlefield, I know if I’ve won or lost before I even arrived there. He learned the lesson of three and a half thousand years ago, the ancient Chinese military philosopher. He learned that. He also learned, I think, that he had to not only get all the facts and the knowledge before doing anything, but wait until you’re pretty sure that you’re going to pretty much win. And I think he also, I think, understood there’s a difference between courage and arrogance of ambition and courage with ambition. I am, this is from iPad OU, when the governmental turmoil in Turkey, yes, it also contributed to the outcome. It did partly, but they were pretty organised and the Germans were there to help them organise to take them on in Gallipoli and defeat them.
Philip, it’s been suggested Churchill was aware of heavy mining of the Dardanelles waterway and developed a plan of mine clearing by the French ships, which withdrew too early. And the Anzac troops were commanded by British officers imbued with static warfare of the Western front against the successful Anzac troops. Yeah, this is a great point that you’re making, Philip. And the detail is absolutely. So you have the different officers from the British compared to the Australian and how the soldiers are and how hierarchy and questioning and challenging hierarchy can operate. And when you can challenge and argue back, when like in the scene in the film, you can say, no, this is just cold-blooded murder. We’re not going to do it. And you’re not going to be shot as a deserter.
So I think you’re absolutely right. The difference in styles of training, hierarchies of culture in a society, not only in the military of one person makes a decision and that’s it. And thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands follow it as opposed to checking much more, getting a much bigger picture of the whole thing. And I think Churchill did learn this in a way for much later. And yes, it’s been suggested he did know of the mining and that the French ships were meant to, but they withdrew. And the conflict between the French and the British and the generals, the leadership and the soldiers, it just set up for disaster. As I said, the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is really doing.
Q: Paul, “Wasn’t another landing place considered?” A: There were others considered and they would have been probably far smarter, less of high cliffs.
Rita, “The teacups is where we very well have been in need to retain a sense of normalcy.” That’s a lovely point, Rita. Yeah, I mean, a sense of normalcy and a sense of irony with a bit of humour to have teacups on the beach. Yep, maybe. We all come with these all cultural nuance which are fascinating to understand. Carrie, “I used to show this film 'Gallipoli’ to my year 10 students when I taught history in Newcastle. Again, the whole class entered in a rugby scrum of grief in the middle of the room.” Yeah, it’s such a powerful film that Peter Weir, he made “Picnic at Hanging Rock.” He has such a sense of how to create, you can’t really get it from unfortunately this little clip ‘cause it’s something that was very jarring in the clip. But Peter Weir creates such emotional atmosphere and emotional mood. And in this case at the end, it’s a tragedy of romance, the tragedy of idealism, the tragedy of patriotism and tragedy of romanticising warfare.
Shirley, “I was on a ship going past Gallipoli on Anzac Day and we had a very moving service. Absolute slaughter, yes. Young men had unfortunately no chance to learn any head’s role besides Churchill.” No, Churchill was made the scapegoat rarely. I mean, there were one or two other generals and admirals and so on, but Churchill was the main scapegoat.
Q: “How could the generals and planners live their lives with a conscience in the remaining years? No wonder the aristocracy and their superiority had been under scrutiny, yes.” A: It was the start of a major change and I agree. I think Gallipoli became a massive change, not only in terms of the colonies relating to London as the centre and who’s really going to take orders from who in a military context and in a political context. And it also begins the change in the British army itself. And this unquestioning of hierarchy and two or three at the top compared to everybody else starts to get really challenged and start to really battle it in a way and encourage the challenge and the arguments.
Carol, here in Israel, there’s Anzac Day. They fought in Beersheba, captured the Negev on the way to the Allenby to win here, for Allenby to win in Palestine, yes. Okay, that’s great. Thank you, thank you, Carol. Gerald, “I heard that during the holiday, there was a ceasefire. Yes, and the Turks offered to help Anzac injured.” There was, it was on Christmas Day. And there was for a certain number of hours to stop killing each other and rescue each other’s wounded on the battlefield and helping each other. The Turks and the Anzac, absolutely.
Q: Randy, “How did Churchill use the experience to plan for Normandy?” A: Yeah, as I said, a hell of a lot more cautious, over planning, understanding every detail imaginable and putting it off as long as possible.
Ari, “We supplied arms to Turkey, what it would have been the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Germans. And did America,” no, America later came. I don’t know, 'cause America hadn’t come into the war at this point. So I don’t know if America has supplied arms to Turkey. It’s an interesting question, really good question. Yeah, I’d need to find out, thank you. Bobby, thank you. “I knew nothing about history and the drama and the politics.” Yeah, I think it does come together, history, the arts or drama and politics, you know, and how we see ways of making history come alive in such an emotional and artistic way, in a sense. No, I’m not a history teacher. I leave that to Trudy and William and others. You know, my field is the arts, but I love the sense of how the arts and history and myth-making go together, you know, through storytelling and emotion. It’s storytelling, ultimately, it’s all storytelling. Rita, thank you. Very much.
Q: Moira, “Is it possible that Churchill’s Boer War experience would have played a part?” A: Yes, his Boer War experience was when he was very young, of course, and romantic, even more romantic. And, you know, the sense of the individual, but what he learned from the Boers was basically 50,000 Boer soldiers on horseback took on a quarter of a million British soldiers armed to the teeth with guns, with artillery, with cannon, machine guns, everything, you know, for three years, nearly. 50,000 farmers on horseback against a quarter of a million. He learned the idea of guerrilla warfare and he learned the idea of the commandos, which, of course, became later in the Second World War, the SAS and SOE, special forces, if you like, that we know of today. And it comes from this idea of Churchill’s. Churchill’s idea was to set up the commandos. Which was then taken up by the Americans in the Second World War later and many other armies afterwards. They’ve always been special forces, the Romans, many others had it. But he, in a modern context, he conceptualised it coming out of the commandos of the Boer War. Because they saw themselves as commandos in guerrilla warfare against the British. Great point.
Q: George, “Why were the Allies so sure that soldiers could climb the cliffs of Normandy after the examples of the Dardanelles?” A: That’s a great point, George and Olga. I don’t know if they were, they weren’t absolutely sure, but the cliffs were not nearly as high. They had far better climbing material of not just rope, but all sorts of things, you know, and those clamps to hook onto pathways, you know, and that dynamite to use far more effectively to blast into the cliffs. And except for Omaha, the Omaha beach, the ships and the cannons were accurate to a fair degree, and the aeroplanes dropping the bombs were accurate on the German defences. It was Omaha beach that the planes overflew and dropped their bombs behind the German concrete defences. So the defences in Omaha were pretty intact. And also the guns blasting from the huge ships onto those concrete fortifications didn’t make much of an impact. And the third point is that, especially with Omaha, so many of the paratroopers tragically lost their lives.
And they came down in the gliders, they landed in swamps, they landed in all those bush fields, all the rest of it, cornfields, and so many died before they even, you know, got to the battlefield. And it was Omaha in particular, and I think primarily, because the aeroplanes overflew, because understandably, they were terrified of dropping bombs on the soldiers. So they overflew, but you just overfly by a few seconds, and the bombs dropped behind the German concrete fortifications. It’s one of the big reasons. So they had to try and make all of this, you know, come together. And they did, except for Omaha, which is why Omaha was where more than half the casualties happened on that one beach.
Yonah and Alfred, “The futility of war, not all war is futile.” You’re absolutely right, Yonah and Alfred, I agree. And I will say, I’m not a pacifist, because then it does, one can end up capitulating to evil, as you say, as you both say. And I think there are wars which are necessary, one has to fight. And there are times in life that one has to fight, and there’s certainly battles and wars that have to be. Otherwise, it is, you have a great phrase here. Otherwise, you capitulate to evil, I agree. Yonah, thank you.
Q: David, “Where are all the horses?” A: Ah, in the last photos, you’re right, it’s a great point. The horses have, by this stage, I think, been killed or died of disease. Those that managed to get to the beachfront, the beach.
Liliana, thank you. David, “The horses.” Okay, thanks again, all of you, great. And Joan, thanks very much. So thank you very much, everybody, and hope you have a great rest of the weekend. And Georgia, thanks again for your help.
Take care, everybody.