November 30, 2015 • 28 mins
One of the most infamous aspects of World War I was its long, brutal stalemate along the enormous system of trenches known as the Western Front. The powers involved all expected the war to be over quickly, but it reached an impasse almost immediately.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from works
dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I am
Crazy d Wilson and I'm Holly Frying and today's podcast
is inspired by Miss Fisher's Murder Mystery. I love that
(00:24):
show and I love those books, and a couple of
the recurring characters Bert and Says met while fighting at
Gallipoli in World War One. And the books are set
in Australia, and a couple of them that I've read
so far have Australian soldiers experiences at Gallipoli as a
recurring theme. So here are some things that I knew
(00:45):
about Gallipoli before researching this episode. The first was it
was a battle, a campaign, really, there were several battles
within it. Uh. I also knew it was in World
War One, And then based on things that I gleaned
from context while reading and watching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Uh,
it seems to have been a pretty hard time for
(01:06):
a lot of the people involved in it. And if
you grew up in Australia, New Zealander, Turkey, you probably
know a whole lot more about it than what I did. Right,
So Glippoli has actually become a part of the national
identity of all of those three places. We've also gotten
a bunch of listener requests to talk about the Glipi
the Glippoli campaign, including Shawna, Amelia, Julie, Evelyn, Brandon, Louise
(01:29):
and Katrina. Probably other people too. Some of that stem
from the fact that this year was the anniversary of
the Glibpoali campaign. Fortunately, the folks at Oxford University Press
graciously sent us a review copy of a new book
on Gallippoli a few months ago by historian Jenny McLoud.
Really good book. I'm just gonna go ahead and say
(01:51):
that now and I'm gonna say it again later. But
that made it easier for us to get started on
this one. And one of the most memorable and infamous
aspects of World War One was its long, brutal steelmate
against the enormous system of trenches known as the Western Front.
Although the powers involved all expected the war to be
over quickly from the outset, it reached an impass almost immediately.
(02:14):
Tensions had been building for decades as various European powers
expanded their empires, and the tipping point came as a
lot of folks probably know with the assassination of Austrian
Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife by Serbian nationalists on June.
Within a month, Austria Hungary had demanded that Serbia takes
(02:35):
steps to prevent terrorism, and Serbia went to its his
ally Russia for help. Austria Hungary's allied Germany declared war
on Russia, France and Belgium, and by August four Britain
had declared war on Germany as well. More declarations of
war followed really soon. This is in August. By September
(02:57):
fift the first trenches are being dug. The Glipoli Campaign,
which started in early nineteen fifteen, was an attempt on
the part of the Allies, that meaning Great Britain, France,
and Russia, to break their stalemate with the Central Powers,
which were Germany, the Ottoman Empire, and Austria, Hungary. Bulgaria
at this point had not yet entered the war. There
(03:18):
were two main goals driving the Glipoli Campaign. The first
was to weaken Germany by going after the Ottoman Empire,
which had entered the war in November of nineteen fourteen.
Allied leaders also hoped that active warfare going on near
their borders would prompt other Mediterranean nations to enter the
war on their side. The other was to try to
(03:38):
open a sea route between Russia and its allies in Europe.
The Glipoli Peninsula is bordered by the Aegean Sea to
the north and the west and the Dardenell Straight to
the south and the east. If the Allies could get
access to the Dardnell Straight, you could have a water
route to the Sea of Marmara and that would lead
them to the Ottoman Empire capital Constantinople, which is now Istanbul.
(04:02):
If the Allies then took Constantinople, this would number one
be a decisive victory over the Ottoman Empire and number
two allow them to go from the Agency into the
Black Sea and therefore Russia via the Bosphorus Straight. This
is something the British military had actually been discussing for
a while, even before the Ottoman Empire formally entered the war.
(04:25):
A water route that was navigable year round and could
connect Russia to its European allies would, after all, be
an extremely handy thing to have, and this was the
only one. Winston Churchill was the first Lord of the
Admiralty and was one of the plans earlier proponents. However,
the rest of the Admiralty thought it much too risky
until the war actually started to drag on, much like
(04:47):
everyone had thought the whole war would be over by
Christmas back when it had started in June of nineteen fourteen.
The British belief the Gallipoli campaign would be swift and decisive,
and the words of Churchill quote a good army of
fifty thousand men and seapower, that is the end of
the Turkish menace. However, the fact that the Allies could
(05:07):
use a water route to Russia was just as obvious
to the Ottoman Empire as it was to the Allied
powers themselves. So in the months between the start of
the war and the Allies actual attempt to take the
Dardanelles straight, the Ottoman Empire was building fortifications on both
sides of the street and laying mines in the street itself.
This meant that by the time British and French ships
(05:28):
moved into bombard the Dardanelles for the first time on February,
the Ottoman Empire was more than ready. The British navy
knew that its guns were better at fighting other ships
than at fighting targets on land, and this actually held
true during the first bombardment of the Dardanelles. While the
Allies naval force did successfully prompt the Ottoman Empire to
(05:52):
abandon some forts and outposts that were very close to
the shore, it did not have a lot of other success.
The Allies tried to bring in i'm sweepers to clear
the minds out of the strait, but they fell uh.
The force fell under heavy fire from the remaining Ottoman
forces and had to fall back. A second naval advanced
into the Dardnells was attempted on March eighteenth of nineteen
(06:13):
fift Once again, the British battleships came under heavy fire.
They also ran into undetected mines. Three Allied ships sank
and three others were heavily damaged, so this was a
second unsuccessful attempt. At this point, the strategy shifted to
invading the Gallipoli Peninsula by land instead of the dardenell
(06:35):
Straight by sea, and there were troops reasonably nearby. The
Australian Imperial Force and the New Zealand Expeditionary Force had
been diverted to Egypt and we're actually training there. These
two forces eventually became the Australian and New Zealand Army
Corps or ANZAC. The ANZAC troops combined with troops from
Great Britain and Ireland, France, India and Newfoundland to become
(06:57):
the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, led by Lieutenant General Sir Ian
Hamilton's We will talk about the Mediterranean Expeditionary Forces attempt
to take Gallipoli after we have a brief word from
one of our fantastic sponsors. So getting back to the story.
On April nineteen fifteen, the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force launched an
(07:18):
amphibious assault of the Gallipoli Peninsula, which required about two
hundred ships to maneuver into position. It was a difficult
and devastating mission. Throughout the Ottoman forces had the high
ground and the cliffs above the beach were dotted with
sniper's nests. The Ottoman Empire also had a good intelligence
network and had correctly predicted where the Allied forces we're
(07:39):
going to try to make landfall, and it had fortifications
at those points, including men and barbed wire already in place.
The Allies had two landing points in that April assault.
One was the southern tip of the peninsula, at Cape Helly's.
This one was the more strategically important point, and so
(07:59):
the most experienced units were sent there. About seventeen thousand
Allied troops landed at the Cape in that first assault.
The other, which is nicknamed Anzac Cove, was on the
Aegean Sea side of the peninsula, and it was where
another twenty thousand men, predominantly Anzac troops, made landfall on
the twenty five. The force that landed there attempted to
(08:20):
do so under cover of darkness, and consequently they wound
up a couple of kilometers off course due to a
navigational error. Because they came in at a particularly treacherous
and indefensible spot, the force that landed there had real
difficulty reconnecting with one another and getting to where they
were actually supposed to be. The Allied force making this
(08:42):
initial assault on Gallipoli was a much much bigger force
than the Ottoman troops defending it. The Allies outnumbered the
Ottomans almost two to one in that first piece of
the campaign. But even though the Allies had much bigger
numbers the Ottomans had, as we noted before the high
ground found. Plus they were defending their home territory, which
(09:02):
a lot of them were already deeply familiar with. The
people who were landing from the sea, on the other hand,
had almost no knowledge of the rocky, jagged, crypt cliff lined,
ravine filled peninsula. This meant that during the initial assault
the Allied force encountered enormous casualties, and the assault did
(09:22):
not make the quick, decisive hole in the stalemate that
the British had hoped for. Instead, it simply turned into
a second stalemate, once again driven by trench warfare. With
much difficulty, the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force established two beachheads at
their two landing points that they had made in that
initial assault. But on top of this territory being difficult
(09:45):
to take, it was extremely hard to hang onto. The
terrain was so rough that they really couldn't get in
and out with vehicles. Stretcher bearer John Simpson Kirkpatrick of
the Australian Army Medical Corps, better known just this John Simpson,
became famous for carrying injured men from the front down
to anzac Cove on a donkey that had been brought
(10:06):
into carry water, and he did this basically from the
time of the first landing on April until he was
killed in action on May nine. Unfortunately, in spite of
heroic efforts like Simpson's, evacuating injured men from the Gallipoli
front was often not enough. Because the expeditionary force had
come in from the sea to try to take a
narrow peninsula, they had a shortage of land and nowhere
(10:29):
to really build a field hospital, so injured troops had
to be taken by boat to hospital ships that were
waiting off shore, and men waiting at the beach for
these boats often came under fire. Once aboard these hospital ships,
sometimes things were not much better without a source of
fresh water. Water had to be strictly rationed, and there
just was not enough to keep sick and injured people
(10:52):
both clean and hydrated. This meant the illness was an
enormous problem, both on the front lines and on the
hospital ships themselves, with dysentery striking both the wounded and
the doctors and nurses taking care of them. Overall, illness
ended up causing far more casualties among the Mediterranean Expeditionary
force than combat did. Aside from the lack of fresh water,
(11:14):
there also wasn't enough available space to dig good latrines.
People were living in close proximity to their waste and
to the bodies of people who had died in no
man's land and could not be retrieved, so there was
absolutely no good way to keep flies who landed on bodies,
waste and food alike from spreading disease, and as a result,
(11:36):
it's not a great leap of logic to figure this out,
but typhoid was rampant. So the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force was
basically trapped in their trenches, eating mostly corned beef, which
they knew as bully beef, and ration biscuits. There's actually
a sweet biscuit that's known as anzac biscuits, reportedly because
they were a common treat and care packages from home.
(11:57):
These ration biscuits that they were subs sting on were
not that they were basically hardtack that had to be
soaked to be edible at all. Rats were everywhere. The
troops had nowhere to relax or rest other than literally
in the trenches in the summer heat and hot weather.
Illnesses flourished only to be replaced by cold rain, hypothermia, frostbite,
(12:20):
and cold weather illnesses in the winter. It was to
be short miserable. By comparison, the Ottoman troops, who were
defending their own territory using a system of trenches they'd
had plenty of time to dig before the Allies even arrived,
were frequently supplied with fresh fruits and vegetables from local farms.
They even had brick ovens for cooking in their trenches.
(12:44):
Their rations of food and water were generous. The Ottoman
field hospitals were well appointed, and illnesses were not nearly
the problem for them as they were for the Mediterranean
Expeditionary Force. Throughout the Allied occupation of Gallipoli, there were
repeated tempts by the Allies to take the high ground
and by the Ottoman force to drive the Allies out.
(13:05):
One of the most horrific came on May nineteenth nine,
when an enormous Ottoman force made a direct assault on
Anzac Cove, which, though fierce, did not break through the
Anzac line. There were, however, six hundred and twenty eight
Anzac casualties on the Ottoman side. There were about ten
thousand casualties with three thousand, five hundred dead the worst.
(13:30):
I mean, that's awful. But to make things worse, many
of the dead were left in no man's land between
the two to the two trenches. And it was May,
and it was hot, and these bodies were left there
until May when the two forces arranged a temporary ceasefire
to bury them. After this point, attitudes among many Anzac
(13:53):
shifted when it came to their Ottoman adversaries. Previously, the
prevailing perception was that the Ottomans were brutal and average
think of those propaganda posters that really dehumanize the enemy.
But particularly after the experience of both armies simultaneously burying
the bodies of their falling compatriots, who had all been
lying dead in no man's land for almost a week,
(14:14):
they instead began to feel some sympathy. The Allies brought
in another wave of troops on August six, hoping that
greater numbers would help them finally rest Gallipoli from Ottoman control.
I want to make it clear that both sides had
been bringing in reinforcements at various points during this whole campaign.
The number of troops that was sent for this August
(14:35):
six assault though, was far smaller than what had actually
been requested, and the effort was once again ultimately unsuccessful.
The planned fast, efficient takeover had actually dragged on through
eight months of trench warfare, with both sides building dizzy
and dizzying complex systems of trenches and tunnels which they
used to try to sabotage one another from below. Lieutenant
(14:58):
General Sir Charles Monroe eventually replaced Hamilton's as the commander
in chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, and he immediately
recommended an evacuation. The Allies decided this was the best
course of action on November. A series of nighttime evacuations
started on December, with most of the Allied troops departing
on the course of four or five nights. The last
(15:21):
of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force left Gallipoli on January eighth
and ninth, nineteen six. The evacuation was covered by self
firing rifles, which used water trickling into a can to
create enough weight to move a lever which would fire
the gun. These served mostly as a distraction for the
Ottoman force, making it seem as though those trenches were
(15:41):
still occupied. The evacuation was made with a minimum of casualties.
It was the most logistically effective move of the entire campaign.
We will talk about the aftermath of the Gallipoli Campaign
and how it's remembered today after another brief word from
our sponsor, and now we will get back to our story.
(16:02):
Outside of the context of the rest of World War One,
the casualty toll of the Glipali campaign seemed staggering. More
than four hundred and eighty thousand Allied troops took part
in the Gallipoli Campaign and there were more than two
hundred and fifty thousand casualties, including forty six thousand deaths.
Just from Australia, there were twenty eight thousand, one hundred
(16:25):
fifty casualties and eight thousand, seven hundred deaths. Nearly a
sixth of the Australians who lost their lives in World
War One did so at the Gallipoli Campaign. Two thousand,
seven hundred seventy nine New Zealanders died at Gallipoli, which
was about a fifth of the New Zealanders who landed there.
Total numbers were similar on the Ottoman side, with two
(16:47):
hundred and fifty thousand casualties and was somewhere between sixty
five thousand and eighty five thousand killed. In other words,
all told, there were almost half a million casualties of
just the Gliboali campaign. These numbers due pale in comparison
to casualty figures from other parts of World War One,
and certainly for World War One as a whole, in
(17:09):
which there were seventeen million civilian and military deaths, But
considering the length of the campaign and the fact that
it ultimately made almost no difference in how the war
played out, makes it seem particularly tragic. In part because
of the failure of the Glipoali campaign, Winston Churchill was
forced to resign his post as the First Lord of
(17:31):
the Admiral Team, He lost his seat in the House
of Commons, and did not even begin to politically recover
until the Ottoman Empire, whose strength had been waning since
before the war, collapsed in nineteen eighteen, and November of
that year the Allies finally got control of the no
longer defended Dardenell Straight. Today, the Glibbali Campaign is an
(17:54):
enormously important part of the national consciousness and identity of
three nations Australia, news Eland and Turkey, where the campaign
is known as Chanako Lay. Australia and New Zealand were
both relatively new as established nations within the British Empire
during World War One. The Commonwealth of Australia was established
(18:14):
on January one, nineteen o one, although of course it
had been a British colony much longer than that. New
Zealand had become a nation with the signing of the
Treaty of White Toungy on February six, eighteen forty. Particularly
for the Australian military, this was the first time so
many men had fought on so large a scale, specifically
as Australians. Heavily romanticized accounts of the valor and bravery
(18:39):
of the ANZAC soldiers came out almost immediately after the
campaign had ended, including pieces by Charles Bean, the official
correspondent from Australia, whose account drew from the epic poem
Song of Roland. The first Anzac Day was celebrated in
Australia on October thirteenth, nineteen fifteen. This first one was
basically a memorial and a fundraiser for the surviving veterans. However,
(19:02):
it almost immediately moved to April, so the anniversary of
the day of that first assault, and it gradually morphed
into a memorial observance taking place annually and honoring all
veterans of all wars, including both Maori and Pakeha or
European descended contributions from New Zealand. Commemorations include memorials that
take place at dawn, parades and ceremonies. Anzac Day's popularity
(19:27):
waned for a while after World War Two as anti
war and anti colonial sentiments started to rise in both
Australia and New Zealand, but it experienced a resurgence in
the ninety nineties. Going along with this has been the
idea of the Anzac myth. This is the idea that
Anzac soldiers were united by a unique brand of courage,
friendship under fire, discipline, loyalty, and leadership, among other admirable qualities.
(19:52):
And there has of course been some criticism of both
Anzac Day and the Anzac myth, for example, whether they
glorify war and whether they ignore the contributions of women
who did things like working as nurses, worked im munitions
factories and things like that during the war. In the
earliest years, of the memorials, mothers who had lost their
children in the campaign really had a place of honor,
(20:14):
but that gradually faded and the focus turned mostly towards
the men. There are also some critics and theorists who
contend that Anzac Day has become such an important national
holiday in Australia and New Zealand because it does not
have some of the cultural baggage tied to White Tangi
Day and Australia Day, which can't really be discussed truthfully
without getting into New Zealand and Australia's historical treatment of
(20:37):
Indigenous peoples. But just know that there's controversy around all that. Yeah,
it's definitely a deeply important holiday in both of those places,
and that's one of the reasons I think we got
so many requests to talk about the campaign. But as
is the case for us in the United States and
some of our national holidays, not without criticism from some folks,
the Gallipoli campaign, or as we said earlier, to not glay,
(21:00):
it's also nationally important in Turkey. Mustapha Kamal was the
commander of the nineteenth Division of the Ottoman Army during
the campaign and he was one of the strategic minds
behind the successful Ottoman defense of the peninsula. There have
actually been people who said that if he had been
in command of the Allied troops, the Allies would have
taken the peninsula successfully. After the war, he became involved
(21:22):
in the movement for Turkish independence, and when Turkey became
a secular republic in nineteen twenty three, he was its
first president. He was given the surname add A Turk,
meaning Father of the Turks, in nineteen thirty five. So
the importance of the Gliboli campaign is important to the
Turkish national identity, in part because of added Turk's involvement
(21:42):
in both the campaign and the founding of that nation.
Like the Anzac myth in Australia and New Zealand, the
campaign is connected to cultural identity in Turkey, tied to
ideas like bravery and defense of the homeland. However, Anzac
Day and Turkey has also had to a lot of
people's minds a more specifically nefarious quality than in other nations.
(22:03):
Turkey has been widely criticized for its refusal to acknowledge
a mass deportation and massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire,
which many other nations have agreed was a genocide. A
lot of people have asked us to do a podcast
on the Armenian genocide, and I want to be clear,
it is on the list. It will probably be a
while before we can get to it, though. Focusing on
(22:26):
the Gallipoli Campaign, which only started a day after these
mass deportations and massacres started, sort of take some of
the attention away from an anniversary that Turkey doesn't really
want to talk about. As we said at the top
of the show, the anniversary of the campaign was this
year and memorials took place at Anzac Cove in what
(22:46):
is now Turkey, with most of the demand for tickets
coming for Australia and New Zealand. And I am not
kidding at all. If you are interested in this subject,
especially in terms of like how the campaign became so
culturally important to three different nations, do pick up Jenny
McCloud's book Gallipoli. It's definitely worth reading. It is a
(23:08):
very slender book. When I got it, I was actually like,
really I expected it to be twice as long as
it is, but it is really really packed with a
lot of information and it does a great job of
talking about both talking about the multiple different influences in
the campaign and how the different sides viewed it, and
(23:29):
also in acknowledging the fact that a lot of military
history is definitely written from one side, and it talks
about all the steps that were taken to try to
make this not just be a one sided look at
the campaign. So that one more time is Glippoli by
Jenny McLeod Tracy. Do you also have a little bit
(23:50):
of listener mail for us to enjoy that I do?
This is from Jeff and Jeff says, Hello, ladies. I
just finished listening to the Harlem Health Fighters podcast. While
did not particularly like it, only because I rarely like
things showing man's in humanity to Phillowman, I didn't find
it interesting, very worthwhile, and African American serviceman in the
(24:10):
First World War is something I definitely missed in history class.
Thanks for the enlightenment. I'm going to take a pause
here and say I kind of feel similarly about a
lot of our topics that are about men's humanity to man.
I do not necessarily love working on those ones, but
I think they are important. So to get back to
(24:31):
the listener mail, you mentioned again how many Americans think
segregation was only in the South. I'm a fourth generation
Nevadan born in Reno and raised in Las Vegas, but
left the Silver State fifteen years ago. Since most people
outside the state only seem to know about the Neon
Desert and brothels, and little else about Nevada, I often
seem to end up in conversations about the state because
(24:54):
so many current Nevadans grew up elsewhere. Even back home,
there is a lack of knowledge about the state's his three.
I thought i'd share something I've always found interesting about
the segregation in Las Vegas. Nevada's casinos were whites only
until the early sixties. Few workers and no patrons were
quote colored. Even entertainers had to use the back door
(25:15):
and weren't allowed into restaurants and casinos. Besides the rising
civil rights movement, the biggest change to this where the
members of Hollywood's rat Pack, big names and show business
would go to the Moulin Rouge Las Vegas Black Casino
to hang out. Since Sammy Davis Jr. Was not allowed
on the strip, off the stage, the casino owners mobsters
(25:35):
for the most part back then hated that their high
priced headliners weren't hanging out with the script patrons, bringing
in more money and customers to the resorts. Frank Sinatra
himself finally demanded Davis be allowed on the strip. The
bosses caved, as most do when it comes to money,
and the casinos were desegregated. The University of Nevada Las
(25:56):
Vegas still has a Confederate Soldier as the mascot and
are still the Rebel. I always thought that odd. Anyway,
I hope you found the Sotts had been interesting. If
you already knew it, I bet you didn't learn it
in history class. That is true. I learned it from
this email. Jeff says, keep it the great work and
another thought provoking podcast. Jeff, thank you so much. Jeff.
(26:16):
Uh Well, like I think it was more. In our
our podcast about Lindy Hop, we talked about uh, black
entertainers not being able to be in the venue in
some of the places, like the Cotton Club was a
club where the patrons were white, but the entertainers are black.
I did not realize that that existed out in Nevada. Also,
(26:39):
I had heard the Frank Sinatra story before because maybe
like Frank Sinatra a little bit. But uh yeah, it's
one of those things that is interesting to think about
in it it kind of reframes that whole era in
a new way for me whenever I think about it. Yeah,
if you would like to write to us, we're a
history podcast but how Stuff Works dot com. We're also
on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash mss in history
(27:02):
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you want to come to our parent company's website, which
is how Stuff Works dot com and put the word
Gallipoli in the search bar, you'll find us all kinds
of various things about World War One and Glipoli and
(27:22):
how things are now, and also a bit specifically about
Australian traditions, uh to talk about inzact day. You'd like
to come to our website, which is ms in history
dot com. We have an archive of every single episode
we've ever done, show notes for this episode and the
episodes that Holly and I have worked on together, other
cool stuff that we put up there periodically, so You
(27:44):
can do all that and a whole lot more at
how stuff works dot com or miss in history dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics
because it how stuff works dot com, inn in d
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from works
dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I am
Crazy d Wilson and I'm Holly Frying and today's podcast
is inspired by Miss Fisher's Murder Mystery. I love that
(00:24):
show and I love those books, and a couple of
the recurring characters Bert and Says met while fighting at
Gallipoli in World War One. And the books are set
in Australia, and a couple of them that I've read
so far have Australian soldiers experiences at Gallipoli as a
recurring theme. So here are some things that I knew
(00:45):
about Gallipoli before researching this episode. The first was it
was a battle, a campaign, really, there were several battles
within it. Uh. I also knew it was in World
War One, And then based on things that I gleaned
from context while reading and watching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Uh,
it seems to have been a pretty hard time for
(01:06):
a lot of the people involved in it. And if
you grew up in Australia, New Zealander, Turkey, you probably
know a whole lot more about it than what I did. Right,
So Glippoli has actually become a part of the national
identity of all of those three places. We've also gotten
a bunch of listener requests to talk about the Glipi
the Glippoli campaign, including Shawna, Amelia, Julie, Evelyn, Brandon, Louise
(01:29):
and Katrina. Probably other people too. Some of that stem
from the fact that this year was the anniversary of
the Glibpoali campaign. Fortunately, the folks at Oxford University Press
graciously sent us a review copy of a new book
on Gallippoli a few months ago by historian Jenny McLoud.
Really good book. I'm just gonna go ahead and say
(01:51):
that now and I'm gonna say it again later. But
that made it easier for us to get started on
this one. And one of the most memorable and infamous
aspects of World War One was its long, brutal steelmate
against the enormous system of trenches known as the Western Front.
Although the powers involved all expected the war to be
over quickly from the outset, it reached an impass almost immediately.
(02:14):
Tensions had been building for decades as various European powers
expanded their empires, and the tipping point came as a
lot of folks probably know with the assassination of Austrian
Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife by Serbian nationalists on June.
Within a month, Austria Hungary had demanded that Serbia takes
(02:35):
steps to prevent terrorism, and Serbia went to its his
ally Russia for help. Austria Hungary's allied Germany declared war
on Russia, France and Belgium, and by August four Britain
had declared war on Germany as well. More declarations of
war followed really soon. This is in August. By September
(02:57):
fift the first trenches are being dug. The Glipoli Campaign,
which started in early nineteen fifteen, was an attempt on
the part of the Allies, that meaning Great Britain, France,
and Russia, to break their stalemate with the Central Powers,
which were Germany, the Ottoman Empire, and Austria, Hungary. Bulgaria
at this point had not yet entered the war. There
(03:18):
were two main goals driving the Glipoli Campaign. The first
was to weaken Germany by going after the Ottoman Empire,
which had entered the war in November of nineteen fourteen.
Allied leaders also hoped that active warfare going on near
their borders would prompt other Mediterranean nations to enter the
war on their side. The other was to try to
(03:38):
open a sea route between Russia and its allies in Europe.
The Glipoli Peninsula is bordered by the Aegean Sea to
the north and the west and the Dardenell Straight to
the south and the east. If the Allies could get
access to the Dardnell Straight, you could have a water
route to the Sea of Marmara and that would lead
them to the Ottoman Empire capital Constantinople, which is now Istanbul.
(04:02):
If the Allies then took Constantinople, this would number one
be a decisive victory over the Ottoman Empire and number
two allow them to go from the Agency into the
Black Sea and therefore Russia via the Bosphorus Straight. This
is something the British military had actually been discussing for
a while, even before the Ottoman Empire formally entered the war.
(04:25):
A water route that was navigable year round and could
connect Russia to its European allies would, after all, be
an extremely handy thing to have, and this was the
only one. Winston Churchill was the first Lord of the
Admiralty and was one of the plans earlier proponents. However,
the rest of the Admiralty thought it much too risky
until the war actually started to drag on, much like
(04:47):
everyone had thought the whole war would be over by
Christmas back when it had started in June of nineteen fourteen.
The British belief the Gallipoli campaign would be swift and decisive,
and the words of Churchill quote a good army of
fifty thousand men and seapower, that is the end of
the Turkish menace. However, the fact that the Allies could
(05:07):
use a water route to Russia was just as obvious
to the Ottoman Empire as it was to the Allied
powers themselves. So in the months between the start of
the war and the Allies actual attempt to take the
Dardanelles straight, the Ottoman Empire was building fortifications on both
sides of the street and laying mines in the street itself.
This meant that by the time British and French ships
(05:28):
moved into bombard the Dardanelles for the first time on February,
the Ottoman Empire was more than ready. The British navy
knew that its guns were better at fighting other ships
than at fighting targets on land, and this actually held
true during the first bombardment of the Dardanelles. While the
Allies naval force did successfully prompt the Ottoman Empire to
(05:52):
abandon some forts and outposts that were very close to
the shore, it did not have a lot of other success.
The Allies tried to bring in i'm sweepers to clear
the minds out of the strait, but they fell uh.
The force fell under heavy fire from the remaining Ottoman
forces and had to fall back. A second naval advanced
into the Dardnells was attempted on March eighteenth of nineteen
(06:13):
fift Once again, the British battleships came under heavy fire.
They also ran into undetected mines. Three Allied ships sank
and three others were heavily damaged, so this was a
second unsuccessful attempt. At this point, the strategy shifted to
invading the Gallipoli Peninsula by land instead of the dardenell
(06:35):
Straight by sea, and there were troops reasonably nearby. The
Australian Imperial Force and the New Zealand Expeditionary Force had
been diverted to Egypt and we're actually training there. These
two forces eventually became the Australian and New Zealand Army
Corps or ANZAC. The ANZAC troops combined with troops from
Great Britain and Ireland, France, India and Newfoundland to become
(06:57):
the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, led by Lieutenant General Sir Ian
Hamilton's We will talk about the Mediterranean Expeditionary Forces attempt
to take Gallipoli after we have a brief word from
one of our fantastic sponsors. So getting back to the story.
On April nineteen fifteen, the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force launched an
(07:18):
amphibious assault of the Gallipoli Peninsula, which required about two
hundred ships to maneuver into position. It was a difficult
and devastating mission. Throughout the Ottoman forces had the high
ground and the cliffs above the beach were dotted with
sniper's nests. The Ottoman Empire also had a good intelligence
network and had correctly predicted where the Allied forces we're
(07:39):
going to try to make landfall, and it had fortifications
at those points, including men and barbed wire already in place.
The Allies had two landing points in that April assault.
One was the southern tip of the peninsula, at Cape Helly's.
This one was the more strategically important point, and so
(07:59):
the most experienced units were sent there. About seventeen thousand
Allied troops landed at the Cape in that first assault.
The other, which is nicknamed Anzac Cove, was on the
Aegean Sea side of the peninsula, and it was where
another twenty thousand men, predominantly Anzac troops, made landfall on
the twenty five. The force that landed there attempted to
(08:20):
do so under cover of darkness, and consequently they wound
up a couple of kilometers off course due to a
navigational error. Because they came in at a particularly treacherous
and indefensible spot, the force that landed there had real
difficulty reconnecting with one another and getting to where they
were actually supposed to be. The Allied force making this
(08:42):
initial assault on Gallipoli was a much much bigger force
than the Ottoman troops defending it. The Allies outnumbered the
Ottomans almost two to one in that first piece of
the campaign. But even though the Allies had much bigger
numbers the Ottomans had, as we noted before the high
ground found. Plus they were defending their home territory, which
(09:02):
a lot of them were already deeply familiar with. The
people who were landing from the sea, on the other hand,
had almost no knowledge of the rocky, jagged, crypt cliff lined,
ravine filled peninsula. This meant that during the initial assault
the Allied force encountered enormous casualties, and the assault did
(09:22):
not make the quick, decisive hole in the stalemate that
the British had hoped for. Instead, it simply turned into
a second stalemate, once again driven by trench warfare. With
much difficulty, the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force established two beachheads at
their two landing points that they had made in that
initial assault. But on top of this territory being difficult
(09:45):
to take, it was extremely hard to hang onto. The
terrain was so rough that they really couldn't get in
and out with vehicles. Stretcher bearer John Simpson Kirkpatrick of
the Australian Army Medical Corps, better known just this John Simpson,
became famous for carrying injured men from the front down
to anzac Cove on a donkey that had been brought
(10:06):
into carry water, and he did this basically from the
time of the first landing on April until he was
killed in action on May nine. Unfortunately, in spite of
heroic efforts like Simpson's, evacuating injured men from the Gallipoli
front was often not enough. Because the expeditionary force had
come in from the sea to try to take a
narrow peninsula, they had a shortage of land and nowhere
(10:29):
to really build a field hospital, so injured troops had
to be taken by boat to hospital ships that were
waiting off shore, and men waiting at the beach for
these boats often came under fire. Once aboard these hospital ships,
sometimes things were not much better without a source of
fresh water. Water had to be strictly rationed, and there
just was not enough to keep sick and injured people
(10:52):
both clean and hydrated. This meant the illness was an
enormous problem, both on the front lines and on the
hospital ships themselves, with dysentery striking both the wounded and
the doctors and nurses taking care of them. Overall, illness
ended up causing far more casualties among the Mediterranean Expeditionary
force than combat did. Aside from the lack of fresh water,
(11:14):
there also wasn't enough available space to dig good latrines.
People were living in close proximity to their waste and
to the bodies of people who had died in no
man's land and could not be retrieved, so there was
absolutely no good way to keep flies who landed on bodies,
waste and food alike from spreading disease, and as a result,
(11:36):
it's not a great leap of logic to figure this out,
but typhoid was rampant. So the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force was
basically trapped in their trenches, eating mostly corned beef, which
they knew as bully beef, and ration biscuits. There's actually
a sweet biscuit that's known as anzac biscuits, reportedly because
they were a common treat and care packages from home.
(11:57):
These ration biscuits that they were subs sting on were
not that they were basically hardtack that had to be
soaked to be edible at all. Rats were everywhere. The
troops had nowhere to relax or rest other than literally
in the trenches in the summer heat and hot weather.
Illnesses flourished only to be replaced by cold rain, hypothermia, frostbite,
(12:20):
and cold weather illnesses in the winter. It was to
be short miserable. By comparison, the Ottoman troops, who were
defending their own territory using a system of trenches they'd
had plenty of time to dig before the Allies even arrived,
were frequently supplied with fresh fruits and vegetables from local farms.
They even had brick ovens for cooking in their trenches.
(12:44):
Their rations of food and water were generous. The Ottoman
field hospitals were well appointed, and illnesses were not nearly
the problem for them as they were for the Mediterranean
Expeditionary Force. Throughout the Allied occupation of Gallipoli, there were
repeated tempts by the Allies to take the high ground
and by the Ottoman force to drive the Allies out.
(13:05):
One of the most horrific came on May nineteenth nine,
when an enormous Ottoman force made a direct assault on
Anzac Cove, which, though fierce, did not break through the
Anzac line. There were, however, six hundred and twenty eight
Anzac casualties on the Ottoman side. There were about ten
thousand casualties with three thousand, five hundred dead the worst.
(13:30):
I mean, that's awful. But to make things worse, many
of the dead were left in no man's land between
the two to the two trenches. And it was May,
and it was hot, and these bodies were left there
until May when the two forces arranged a temporary ceasefire
to bury them. After this point, attitudes among many Anzac
(13:53):
shifted when it came to their Ottoman adversaries. Previously, the
prevailing perception was that the Ottomans were brutal and average
think of those propaganda posters that really dehumanize the enemy.
But particularly after the experience of both armies simultaneously burying
the bodies of their falling compatriots, who had all been
lying dead in no man's land for almost a week,
(14:14):
they instead began to feel some sympathy. The Allies brought
in another wave of troops on August six, hoping that
greater numbers would help them finally rest Gallipoli from Ottoman control.
I want to make it clear that both sides had
been bringing in reinforcements at various points during this whole campaign.
The number of troops that was sent for this August
(14:35):
six assault though, was far smaller than what had actually
been requested, and the effort was once again ultimately unsuccessful.
The planned fast, efficient takeover had actually dragged on through
eight months of trench warfare, with both sides building dizzy
and dizzying complex systems of trenches and tunnels which they
used to try to sabotage one another from below. Lieutenant
(14:58):
General Sir Charles Monroe eventually replaced Hamilton's as the commander
in chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, and he immediately
recommended an evacuation. The Allies decided this was the best
course of action on November. A series of nighttime evacuations
started on December, with most of the Allied troops departing
on the course of four or five nights. The last
(15:21):
of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force left Gallipoli on January eighth
and ninth, nineteen six. The evacuation was covered by self
firing rifles, which used water trickling into a can to
create enough weight to move a lever which would fire
the gun. These served mostly as a distraction for the
Ottoman force, making it seem as though those trenches were
(15:41):
still occupied. The evacuation was made with a minimum of casualties.
It was the most logistically effective move of the entire campaign.
We will talk about the aftermath of the Gallipoli Campaign
and how it's remembered today after another brief word from
our sponsor, and now we will get back to our story.
(16:02):
Outside of the context of the rest of World War One,
the casualty toll of the Glipali campaign seemed staggering. More
than four hundred and eighty thousand Allied troops took part
in the Gallipoli Campaign and there were more than two
hundred and fifty thousand casualties, including forty six thousand deaths.
Just from Australia, there were twenty eight thousand, one hundred
(16:25):
fifty casualties and eight thousand, seven hundred deaths. Nearly a
sixth of the Australians who lost their lives in World
War One did so at the Gallipoli Campaign. Two thousand,
seven hundred seventy nine New Zealanders died at Gallipoli, which
was about a fifth of the New Zealanders who landed there.
Total numbers were similar on the Ottoman side, with two
(16:47):
hundred and fifty thousand casualties and was somewhere between sixty
five thousand and eighty five thousand killed. In other words,
all told, there were almost half a million casualties of
just the Gliboali campaign. These numbers due pale in comparison
to casualty figures from other parts of World War One,
and certainly for World War One as a whole, in
(17:09):
which there were seventeen million civilian and military deaths, But
considering the length of the campaign and the fact that
it ultimately made almost no difference in how the war
played out, makes it seem particularly tragic. In part because
of the failure of the Glipoali campaign, Winston Churchill was
forced to resign his post as the First Lord of
(17:31):
the Admiral Team, He lost his seat in the House
of Commons, and did not even begin to politically recover
until the Ottoman Empire, whose strength had been waning since
before the war, collapsed in nineteen eighteen, and November of
that year the Allies finally got control of the no
longer defended Dardenell Straight. Today, the Glibbali Campaign is an
(17:54):
enormously important part of the national consciousness and identity of
three nations Australia, news Eland and Turkey, where the campaign
is known as Chanako Lay. Australia and New Zealand were
both relatively new as established nations within the British Empire
during World War One. The Commonwealth of Australia was established
(18:14):
on January one, nineteen o one, although of course it
had been a British colony much longer than that. New
Zealand had become a nation with the signing of the
Treaty of White Toungy on February six, eighteen forty. Particularly
for the Australian military, this was the first time so
many men had fought on so large a scale, specifically
as Australians. Heavily romanticized accounts of the valor and bravery
(18:39):
of the ANZAC soldiers came out almost immediately after the
campaign had ended, including pieces by Charles Bean, the official
correspondent from Australia, whose account drew from the epic poem
Song of Roland. The first Anzac Day was celebrated in
Australia on October thirteenth, nineteen fifteen. This first one was
basically a memorial and a fundraiser for the surviving veterans. However,
(19:02):
it almost immediately moved to April, so the anniversary of
the day of that first assault, and it gradually morphed
into a memorial observance taking place annually and honoring all
veterans of all wars, including both Maori and Pakeha or
European descended contributions from New Zealand. Commemorations include memorials that
take place at dawn, parades and ceremonies. Anzac Day's popularity
(19:27):
waned for a while after World War Two as anti
war and anti colonial sentiments started to rise in both
Australia and New Zealand, but it experienced a resurgence in
the ninety nineties. Going along with this has been the
idea of the Anzac myth. This is the idea that
Anzac soldiers were united by a unique brand of courage,
friendship under fire, discipline, loyalty, and leadership, among other admirable qualities.
(19:52):
And there has of course been some criticism of both
Anzac Day and the Anzac myth, for example, whether they
glorify war and whether they ignore the contributions of women
who did things like working as nurses, worked im munitions
factories and things like that during the war. In the
earliest years, of the memorials, mothers who had lost their
children in the campaign really had a place of honor,
(20:14):
but that gradually faded and the focus turned mostly towards
the men. There are also some critics and theorists who
contend that Anzac Day has become such an important national
holiday in Australia and New Zealand because it does not
have some of the cultural baggage tied to White Tangi
Day and Australia Day, which can't really be discussed truthfully
without getting into New Zealand and Australia's historical treatment of
(20:37):
Indigenous peoples. But just know that there's controversy around all that. Yeah,
it's definitely a deeply important holiday in both of those places,
and that's one of the reasons I think we got
so many requests to talk about the campaign. But as
is the case for us in the United States and
some of our national holidays, not without criticism from some folks,
the Gallipoli campaign, or as we said earlier, to not glay,
(21:00):
it's also nationally important in Turkey. Mustapha Kamal was the
commander of the nineteenth Division of the Ottoman Army during
the campaign and he was one of the strategic minds
behind the successful Ottoman defense of the peninsula. There have
actually been people who said that if he had been
in command of the Allied troops, the Allies would have
taken the peninsula successfully. After the war, he became involved
(21:22):
in the movement for Turkish independence, and when Turkey became
a secular republic in nineteen twenty three, he was its
first president. He was given the surname add A Turk,
meaning Father of the Turks, in nineteen thirty five. So
the importance of the Gliboli campaign is important to the
Turkish national identity, in part because of added Turk's involvement
(21:42):
in both the campaign and the founding of that nation.
Like the Anzac myth in Australia and New Zealand, the
campaign is connected to cultural identity in Turkey, tied to
ideas like bravery and defense of the homeland. However, Anzac
Day and Turkey has also had to a lot of
people's minds a more specifically nefarious quality than in other nations.
(22:03):
Turkey has been widely criticized for its refusal to acknowledge
a mass deportation and massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire,
which many other nations have agreed was a genocide. A
lot of people have asked us to do a podcast
on the Armenian genocide, and I want to be clear,
it is on the list. It will probably be a
while before we can get to it, though. Focusing on
(22:26):
the Gallipoli Campaign, which only started a day after these
mass deportations and massacres started, sort of take some of
the attention away from an anniversary that Turkey doesn't really
want to talk about. As we said at the top
of the show, the anniversary of the campaign was this
year and memorials took place at Anzac Cove in what
(22:46):
is now Turkey, with most of the demand for tickets
coming for Australia and New Zealand. And I am not
kidding at all. If you are interested in this subject,
especially in terms of like how the campaign became so
culturally important to three different nations, do pick up Jenny
McCloud's book Gallipoli. It's definitely worth reading. It is a
(23:08):
very slender book. When I got it, I was actually like,
really I expected it to be twice as long as
it is, but it is really really packed with a
lot of information and it does a great job of
talking about both talking about the multiple different influences in
the campaign and how the different sides viewed it, and
(23:29):
also in acknowledging the fact that a lot of military
history is definitely written from one side, and it talks
about all the steps that were taken to try to
make this not just be a one sided look at
the campaign. So that one more time is Glippoli by
Jenny McLeod Tracy. Do you also have a little bit
(23:50):
of listener mail for us to enjoy that I do?
This is from Jeff and Jeff says, Hello, ladies. I
just finished listening to the Harlem Health Fighters podcast. While
did not particularly like it, only because I rarely like
things showing man's in humanity to Phillowman, I didn't find
it interesting, very worthwhile, and African American serviceman in the
(24:10):
First World War is something I definitely missed in history class.
Thanks for the enlightenment. I'm going to take a pause
here and say I kind of feel similarly about a
lot of our topics that are about men's humanity to man.
I do not necessarily love working on those ones, but
I think they are important. So to get back to
(24:31):
the listener mail, you mentioned again how many Americans think
segregation was only in the South. I'm a fourth generation
Nevadan born in Reno and raised in Las Vegas, but
left the Silver State fifteen years ago. Since most people
outside the state only seem to know about the Neon
Desert and brothels, and little else about Nevada, I often
seem to end up in conversations about the state because
(24:54):
so many current Nevadans grew up elsewhere. Even back home,
there is a lack of knowledge about the state's his three.
I thought i'd share something I've always found interesting about
the segregation in Las Vegas. Nevada's casinos were whites only
until the early sixties. Few workers and no patrons were
quote colored. Even entertainers had to use the back door
(25:15):
and weren't allowed into restaurants and casinos. Besides the rising
civil rights movement, the biggest change to this where the
members of Hollywood's rat Pack, big names and show business
would go to the Moulin Rouge Las Vegas Black Casino
to hang out. Since Sammy Davis Jr. Was not allowed
on the strip, off the stage, the casino owners mobsters
(25:35):
for the most part back then hated that their high
priced headliners weren't hanging out with the script patrons, bringing
in more money and customers to the resorts. Frank Sinatra
himself finally demanded Davis be allowed on the strip. The
bosses caved, as most do when it comes to money,
and the casinos were desegregated. The University of Nevada Las
(25:56):
Vegas still has a Confederate Soldier as the mascot and
are still the Rebel. I always thought that odd. Anyway,
I hope you found the Sotts had been interesting. If
you already knew it, I bet you didn't learn it
in history class. That is true. I learned it from
this email. Jeff says, keep it the great work and
another thought provoking podcast. Jeff, thank you so much. Jeff.
(26:16):
Uh Well, like I think it was more. In our
our podcast about Lindy Hop, we talked about uh, black
entertainers not being able to be in the venue in
some of the places, like the Cotton Club was a
club where the patrons were white, but the entertainers are black.
I did not realize that that existed out in Nevada. Also,
(26:39):
I had heard the Frank Sinatra story before because maybe
like Frank Sinatra a little bit. But uh yeah, it's
one of those things that is interesting to think about
in it it kind of reframes that whole era in
a new way for me whenever I think about it. Yeah,
if you would like to write to us, we're a
history podcast but how Stuff Works dot com. We're also
on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash mss in history
(27:02):
and on Twitter at miss in history. Are tumbler is
missed in History dot tumbler dot com. Are also on
Pinterest at pinterest dot com slash miss in history. If
you want to come to our parent company's website, which
is how Stuff Works dot com and put the word
Gallipoli in the search bar, you'll find us all kinds
of various things about World War One and Glipoli and
(27:22):
how things are now, and also a bit specifically about
Australian traditions, uh to talk about inzact day. You'd like
to come to our website, which is ms in history
dot com. We have an archive of every single episode
we've ever done, show notes for this episode and the
episodes that Holly and I have worked on together, other
cool stuff that we put up there periodically, so You
(27:44):
can do all that and a whole lot more at
how stuff works dot com or miss in history dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics
because it how stuff works dot com, inn in d
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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