In the latter months of 1914, with the trenches of World War One bringing the war in Europe to a standstill, the Allies needed an alternative way to defeat Germany and the Central Powers.
The Allies decided that capturing Constantinople and defeating the Ottoman Empire, one of the Central Powers, was Their best course of action to gain the upper hand in the war.
They assumed the Ottomans would not offer much resistance, since the empire was in decline and their military was not as technologically advanced as the European armies.
Anyone who wanted to reach Constantinople via the Mediterranean Sea would have to pass through the Dardanelles Strait, which is adjacent to the Gallipoli Peninsula, and this was where the Allies planned to begin their attack.
The Gallipoli Campaign began in the early months of 1915, with the Allies launching a naval attack against the Ottoman fortifications along the Gallipoli Peninsula, however, Ottoman artillery and naval mines were able to sink many of the ships before they could do any significant damage to the coastal defenses.
The Allies now knew that if they were to defeat the Ottomans it would have to be on land, and so in April 1915, the Gallipoli landings commenced.
In the early morning, thousands of Allied soldiers, which included many men from Australia and New Zealand, climbed into small wooden rowboats and were sent ashore at various points along the peninsula.
Ottoman resistance in many areas was fierce and many of the soldiers were killed before they reached the shore, despite this, by the end of the day, all of the beaches where the Allies landed had been captured.
The initial success did not last however, as Ottoman reinforcements arrived and secured the hills above the coast, halting any significant advance by the Allies.
Fighting would continue in the following months, with neither side being able to achieve a decisive victory, until December, with their soldiers not much closer to Constantinople than when they first landed ashore, the Allies made the decision to cease their attacks at Gallipoli and evacuate the peninsula.
In the end, close to 60,000 Allied soldiers and an estimated 60,000-90,000 Ottomans soldiers lost their lives in the Gallipoli Campaign.
3rd photo in the summary credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-S29571 / CC-BY-SA 3.0
13 окт 2022
