I want you to imagine a military campaign so
disastrous that it literally brought down a government.
Right. We're talking about staggering strategic
blunders, unimaginable human suffering, and just
the geopolitical failure of epic proportions.
Truly epic. But at the exact same time, and this
is the crazy part, this very same military catastrophe
was so profoundly impactful that it forged the
national identities of three entirely separate
modern countries. Yeah, it's quite the paradox.
Welcome to today's deep dive. You were always
looking for that underlying story, that hidden
layer beneath the historical consensus. And today,
we have a harrowing, the vital one for you. We
really do. We are looking at a comprehensive
collection of historical records, war cabinet
minutes, and primary source diaries, all focused
on the Gallipoli campaign of World War I. Which
should place over 10 grueling months from 1915
to 1916. Exactly. And reviewing these sources,
you realize very quickly that the line between
military genius and fatal arrogance is Well,
it's razor thin. Oh, absolutely. And our mission
for this deep dive is to cut right through the
overwhelming military statistics. We really want
to uncover the very human stories, the strategic
rigidity, the sheer chaos and the enduring legacy
of this clash on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Yeah,
get past the numbers and see the people. OK,
let's unpack this, because to understand how
this all unfolded, we have to look at the geopolitical
chessboard in late 1914. Europe is completely
locked in the brutal, muddy stalemate of trench
warfare on the Western Front. Right. The war
maneuver is just dead. Precisely. And the Allied
powers were facing a severe logistical bottleneck.
I mean, overland trade routes were blocked, the
Baltic Sea was sealed by the German Navy, and
the Arctic ports were just frozen solid. So Russia
is completely cut off. Yes. Russia was bleeding
heavily in the East, demanding arms and supplies.
But the Allies simply couldn't get shipments
to them. The only viable warm water route into
the Black Sea was through the Dardanelles Straits.
Which were controlled by the Ottoman Empire.
So, you know, the strategy seems straightforward
enough on paper. Force a passage through the
straits, threaten the capital of Constantinople,
secure the supply line to Russia, and protect
the Suez Canal. Sounds simple. It does. But the
hubris involved in the execution is just staggering.
I was reading through the source text. And there's
a detail regarding allied intelligence that is
both amusing and completely appalling. Oh, the
maps. The maps. Military planners lacked proper
topographical maps of the peninsula. So what
did they do? They literally relied on Egyptian
travel guides. Yeah. And outdated tourist maps
to plan a sprawling multinational amphibious
invasion. It is a breathtaking example of imperial
overconfidence. The allied leadership viewed
the Ottoman Empire as a declining power that
would basically just shatter at the first show
of overwhelming force. Just break and run. Exactly.
And this is where Winston Churchill enters the
narrative. Yeah. As First Lord of the Admiralty,
Churchill aggressively championed a purely naval
attack on the Dardanelles. He essentially argued
that they could use a fleet of older, obsolete
British and French battleships. Vessels that
were no longer fit to face the modern German
dreadnoughts. Right, exactly. He thought they
could use these old ships to just blast their
way through the straits and shock the Ottomans
into surrender. It was a monumental gamble. And
it bypassed the concerns of other senior leaders,
like Admiral Fisher, who had serious reservations
about the whole thing. You really did. But on
March 18, 1915, they rolled the dice. An allied
fleet of 18 battleships flanked by cruisers and
destroyers steamed into the narrowest part of
the straits. The expectation was just a straightforward
bombardment to silence the coastal guns and sweep
the mines. But they sailed straight into a perfectly
laid trap. They really did. largely because they
completely underestimated their opponent's tactical
adaptability. First, they failed to account for
the mobility of the Ottoman artillery. Under
the guidance of German General Otto Lehmann von
Sanders, the Ottoman gunners were constantly
shifting their howitzers. So the allied ships
simply couldn't get a fixed firing solution.
Right. But the far more devastating miscalculation
involved a secret minefield. Just 10 days prior
to the assault, an Ottoman mine layer called
the Newsret recognized the turning patterns of
the allied ships. Wow. And they secretly laid
a new line of mines parallel to the Asian shore
rather than across the strait. And the results
were catastrophic. I mean, the French battleship
Bouvet struck one of those unseen mines, suffered
a massive magazine explosion and capsized in
just two minutes. Two minutes. It took almost
its entire crew down to the bottom. Only 75 men
survived out of a crew of over It's just horrific.
Shortly after, the British battleships, Irresistible
and Ocean, also struck mines and sank, while
several other major capital ships were severely
crippled. The allied naval commander had no choice
but to sound the general recall. The invincible
armada retreating in disgrace. Now, you might
assume that after such a spectacular failure,
the war cabinet would cut their losses. You'd
think so, but if we connect this to the bigger
picture, we see a textbook example of the sunk
cost fallacy. The naval assault failed, but the
political capital invested by Churchill and Lord
Kitchener was too high to abandon the campaign.
Right, they couldn't just walk away. Exactly.
They decided that if the ships couldn't pass,
they needed to capture the peninsula by land
to physically dismantle the forts guarding the
straits. They pivoted to a full -scale amphibious
invasion. But wait, if they made that decision
in late March, why did it take them a full five
weeks to actually launch the land invasion? Weren't
they just giving the Ottoman forces time to dig
in? They absolutely were. But logistically, their
hands were tied by their own administrative incompetence?
Oh, this part is wild. The troops they had hastily
gathered in Egypt were loaded onto transport
ships completely backward. Cannons were loaded
without their ammunition. Wagons were loaded
without their horses. So they literally had to
sail the entire fleet back to Alexandria, completely
unload the ships, and repack them for combat
deployment. Yes. That five -week delay was a
fatal gift to the Ottoman Fifth Army. Lyman von
Sanders used every single hour of that respite
to transform the peninsula into a fortress. They
dug miles of trenches, laid thick belts of barbed
wire across the beaches, constructed improvised
explosive devices out of old torpedo warheads,
and positioned their reserves on the commanding
heights. The element of surprise was entirely
squandered. Which brings us to the dawn of April
25th, 1915. The Allies assembled a highly diverse
force. You've got British regulars, French colonial
troops, Indian brigades, a regiment from Newfoundland,
and the newly formed Australian and New Zealand
Army Corps. The Anzacs. The Anzacus. But waiting
for them was a fiercely determined Ottoman defense,
heavily influenced by a brilliant young Ottoman
lieutenant colonel named Mustafa Kemal. Right,
who commanded the 19th Division and Reserve?
Against the advice of his superiors, Kamal had
correctly analyzed the topography and anticipated
exactly where the Allies were most likely to
strike. And when the landings began, it was absolute
chaos. Let's look at the ANZACs first. They were
scheduled to land on an open stretch of beach
before dawn, quickly push inland and sever the
Ottoman communication lines. But due to strong
undetected ocean currents. Or perhaps just severe
navigational errors in the pitch black. Exactly.
They landed roughly two kilometers too far north,
instead of a gently sloping beach they found
themselves staring up at sheer jagged ravines
and dense impenetrable scrub brush. The unforgiving
terrain just shattered their unit cohesion instantly.
Small, isolated groups of Australians were scrambling
up these vertical cliffs in the dark, relying
on those inaccurate maps, completely cut off
from their command structure. And because the
rugged landscape slowed the ANZAC advance to
a crawl, it bought Mustafa Kemal the critical
time he needed. He rushed his reinforcements
to the commanding heights of the Sari Behr Ridge,
specifically a peak called Chunuk Behr, and essentially
trapped the ANZACs within a tiny precarious perimeter
clinging to the cliffside. Meanwhile, at the
southern tip of the peninsula at Ketels, the
British landings were turning into an absolute
meat grinder. Truly horrific. At V Beach and
W Beach, the Ottomans had established textbook
defensive positions overlooking the water. In
a desperate move, the British actually took a
converted coal ship, the SS River Clyde, and
intentionally ran it aground right beneath an
Ottoman fortress. Hoping to use it as a modern
Trojan horse. Yes. But it was a disastrous miscalculation.
They'd cut Sally Port's essentially makeshift
doors directly into the ship's steel hull for
the troops to deploy from. But the moment those
doors opened, it became a deadly funnel. Yeah.
The Ottoman defenders poured concentrated machine
gun and rifle fire into the men as they emerged
onto the gangways. Of the first 200 British soldiers
to run down those ramps, records indicate only
21 made it to the sand alive. The casualties
among units like the Royal Dublin Fusiliers were
so catastrophic, they later had to amalgamate
the survivors into a single unit nicknamed the
Dubsters. But the sheer grip wasn't limited to
the beaches. The Ottoman defenders were absorbing
punishing losses to hold the high ground. There
is a moment documented in the historical record
that is incredibly chilling. Mustafa Kamal's
57th Infantry Regiment was facing a desperate
push by the Australians up the slopes. His men
were completely out of ammunition, reduced to
holding the line with nothing but fixed bayonets.
And Kamal issued one of the most grim and legendary
orders in modern military history. He told them,
I do not order you to fight. I order you to die.
Wow. In the time which passes until we die, other
troops and commanders can come forward and take
our places. And the profound tragedy is that
they follow that order to the letter. Virtually
every single man of the 57th Regiment was either
killed or wounded, but they held the ridgeline.
They halted the Allied momentum. So what was
pitched in London as a swift, glorious victory
to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war instantly
devolved into a stagnant, horrific battle of
attrition. It was the nightmare of the Western
Front, but compressed onto a tiny, isolated strip
of land. And the conditions in those trenches
were genuinely apocalyptic. You have to consider
the geography. Unlike the Western Front, the
Allies at Gallipoli had no rear area. None at
all. Because they never secured the heights,
every square inch of the Allied beachhead was
under constant Ottoman observation and artillery
fire. You couldn't even safely boil water or
bring up rations. And then the blistering hummer
heat arrived. The sources describe a reality
that is difficult to stomach. because no man's
land was so narrow in places, sometimes only
a few yards wide. Thousands of corpses lay unburied
under the Mediterranean sun. It's unimaginable.
It led to an absolute explosion in the fly population.
Diaries describe soldiers having to wave their
hands frantically over their mess tins just to
get a piece of heart attack to their mouths without
eating a handful of corpse flies. Which inevitably
triggered a severe dysentery epidemic that incapacitated
tens of thousands of men on both sides. And the
environment offered no relief. Right, because
after the summer... When the summer heat finally
broke, the winter brought violent gales, flooded
trenches, and severe blizzards. Thousands of
soldiers who survived the bullets in the dysentery
ended up suffering from severe frostbite or literally
drowned in the freezing mud of their own trenches.
It's a relentless catalog of suffering. But amidst
all this tactical failure on land, there was
one theater where the Allies actually executed
their strategic objectives. Here's where it gets
really interesting. Beneath the waves. Ah, yes.
While the surface fleet was humiliated in March,
Allied submarines managed to do the impossible.
They navigated the treacherous currents, slipped
beneath the heavily mined straits, and broke
out into the Sea of Marmara. The submarine warfare
campaign was highly effective, and its impact
was vastly disproportionate to the tiny number
of vessels involved. Ships like the Australian
submarine AU -2 and the British E -14 operated
deep behind enemy lines. Their specific mission
was to sever the logistical lifeline of the Ottoman
5th Army. Exactly. The official German naval
historian later conceded that if those sea lanes
had been permanently choked off, the Ottoman
army on the peninsula would have faced starvation
and total collapse. The audacity of these submarine
commanders is wild. Lieutenant Commander Stoker
of the AE -2 was given orders to, quote, generally
run amok. And he did exactly that. These tiny
claustrophobic metal tubes caused so much havoc
that they forced the Ottoman military to essentially
abandon the sea as a reliable transport route,
shifting to agonizingly slow overland supply
lines. It is a striking contrast to the surface
campaign. But returning to the men trapped in
the mud above, despite the unremitting brutality,
there were profound flashes of humanity that
challenge our understanding of war. Yeah, this
part of the sources really stood out. Following
a colossal Ottoman counterattack on May 19th,
where thousands of Ottoman soldiers were gunned
down in no man's land, the stench and the psychological
weight of the dead became unbearable for everyone.
So on May 24th, a formal armistice was organized
for the sole purpose of burying the dead. And
what unfolded is a deeply moving testament to
the strange psychology of the frontline soldier.
It really is. Men who had spent weeks trying
to slaughter each other. cautiously climbed out
of their trenches and mingled in the center of
no man's land. I'm looking at a diary entry in
our source material from Private Victor Laidlaw,
an Australian stretcher bearer. He describes
the surreal atmosphere noting that soldiers were
exchanging souvenirs and throwing gifts across
the divide. Just incredible. The Ottoman soldiers
offered dates and local sweets and the Allies
tossed back tins of bully beef and packs of cigarettes.
For a few fleeting hours, the empires and the
politics faded away. They just saw each other
as fellow human beings trapped in the exact same
hellscape. But inevitably, the sun set, the officers
blew their whistles, the men returned to their
holes, and the killing resumed. And by August,
the Allied commander, Sir Ian Hamilton, recognized
that the static war of attrition was bleeding
his army to death. He desperately needed to break
the deadlock. This triggers the August offensive.
Right. The Allies land fresh divisions at a new
location. Suvla Bay, just north of the ANSAAC
perimeter, and launch a series of desperate coordinated
assaults on the highest peaks. Places with names
that are now permanently etched into Australian
and New Zealand military history, like Lone Pine,
The Neck, and Chinook Bear. The operational plan
was highly complex, requiring precise nighttime
coordination across fractured terrain, and it
unraveled almost immediately. The tragedy at
the neck is particularly illustrative. Due to
a fatal failure to synchronize watches, the preliminary
naval bombardment lifted seven minutes early.
Ten minutes. The Ottoman defenders simply climbed
back into their trenches, manned their machine
guns, and waited. When the Australian light horsemen
finally charged across the narrow ridge, they
were annihilated in seconds. At Chinook Bear,
the New Zealanders fought a desperate, heroic
battle to briefly capture the summit, holding
it at severe cost, only to be swept off days
later by an overwhelming autumn encounter attack
led once again by Mustafa Kemal. The entire August
offensive yielded no strategic gain, only thousands
of fresh corpses. By late autumn, the situation
in London had reached a breaking point. The British
government finally dismissed Commander Hamilton.
With winter freezing the men in their trenches
and no hope of a breakthrough, military leadership
made the agonizing decision to evacuate the peninsula
entirely. Which leads us to a fascinating historical
irony. The single most brilliantly planned, flawlessly
executed, and technologically innovative operation
of the entire Allied campaign at Calipoli was
the act of running away. It truly was a masterpiece
of deception. The military planners originally
estimated that up to 30 ,000 men would be killed
or wounded trying to withdraw from those beaches
under the direct gaze of the Ottoman artillery.
To prevent a slaughter, the Allies engineered
a phantom army. They utilized ingenious ruses
to convince the Ottoman observers that the trench
lines were still fully garrisoned while the bulk
of the force secretly slipped onto boats under
the cover of darkness. The psychological conditioning
was brilliant. For weeks prior, the Allies would
mandate strict periods of absolute silence, training
the Ottoman soldiers not to investigate when
the trenches went quiet. And then there was the
famous drip rifle invented by an Australian soldier
named William Scurry. Oh, this is fascinating.
It was a remarkably simple yet effective mechanism.
They mounted rifles on the parapets, the sandbag
walls at the front of the trench, and tied a
string from the trigger to a lower pan. Suspended
above the pan was a water tin with a small hole
punched in it. As the water slowly dripped, the
weight in the pan would increase until it pulled
the string and fired the rifle. They rigged these
up all along the front lines with varying drip
rates. So to the Ottoman sentries listening in
the freezing dark, it sounded exactly like sporadic
routine sniper fire from fully manned trenches.
In reality, the trenches were totally abandoned.
The success of this deception was staggering.
Over December and January, the Allies evacuated
roughly 35 ,000 troops, alongside thousands of
horses and artillery pieces. On the final night
of the evacuation at Anzeti Cove, they didn't
lose a single man. Zero casualties. Zero. It
was an operational triumph, but it merely punctuated
a devastating strategic failure. The human cost
of the Gallipoli campaign is difficult to fully
comprehend. The statistics from the historical
archives are sobering. Yeah, they are. The 10
-month campaign resulted in roughly 500 ,000
total casualties across both sides. The Ottoman
Empire suffered an estimated 250 ,000 casualties,
with modern historians suggesting at least 87
,000 dead. The Allies suffered an equal number
of casualties, with over 56 ,000 dead. Half a
million men killed, wounded, or ravaged by disease
for a piece of land that ultimately remained
in Ottoman hands. And the political fallout back
in London was seismic. Winston Churchill bore
the brunt of the public blame. He was demoted
from the Admiralty, eventually resigning from
the government entirely, and actually deployed
to the Western Front to command an infantry battalion
in the trenches. The failures at Gallipoli heavily
contributed to the collapse of Prime Minister
H .H. Asquith's government, completely reshaping
British wartime leadership. But what's fascinating
here is how this catastrophic military defeat
acted as a crucible for national identity. For
Australia and New Zealand, Gallipoli was their
baptism of fire on the world stage. It sparked
a unique national consciousness. Oh yeah. A sense
of rugged endurance and brotherhood, completely
distinct from the British Empire. The anniversary
of those chaotic landings, April 25th, is now
Anzasi Day. It remains the most solemn and significant
day of national remembrance in both countries,
commemorated with dawn services that honor the
resilience of those who served. And the impact
was arguably even more profound for the Ottoman
side. Their successful defense coined the famous
national phrase, Senakali Jusilmis. Meaning Senakali
is impassable. Exactly. Furthermore, it catapulted
Mustafa Kemal to the status of an untouchable
national hero. The fame and fierce respect he
earned at Gallipoli allowed him to lead the Turkish
War of Independence just a few years later. He
became Atatürk, the visionary founder and first
president of the modern Republic of Turkey. Without
the crucible of Gallipoli, the modern map of
the Middle East and Europe looks fundamentally
different. So what does this all mean for you,
our listener? We've covered a vast amount of
history today. Gallipoli is more than just a
master class in the terrible dangers of hubris.
It demonstrates vividly that technological superiority,
like a fleet of mighty battleships, cannot automatically
overcome a well -adapted, tactically flexible
defense. Absolutely. It shows the fatal consequences
of strategic rigidity and the sunk cost fallacy.
Simultaneously, the diaries from those trenches
endure as an undeniable testament to human endurance
under the most agonizing conditions imaginable.
It leaves us with a highly complex legacy, and
I want to leave you with a final thought to mull
over. Our source text points out that in the
decades following World War I, military planners
from across the globe studied the Gallipoli campaign
obsessively. They didn't study it to mock it.
No, they used the painful bloody lessons learned
from the Allied failures at the Dardanelles to
meticulously crack the code of amphibious warfare.
In many ways, the unmitigated disaster at Gallipoli
literally wrote the modern military playbook
that the Allies later utilized to achieve victory
at the Normandy landings in World War II. That's
quite the perspective shift. It is. Think about
how often we are told to focus on and replicate
our successors. But considering that this monumental
Allied failure laid the hidden groundwork for
their greatest triumph decades later. What spectacular
failure in your own life or your own industry
might actually be the hidden blueprint for a
massive future success? That is a heavy but vital
question to leave our listeners with. Thank you
for walking through this profound historical
turning point with us. Keep questioning, keep
digging deeper, and we will see you next time.