Britain had to fight the war as it was not how visionaries dreamt it might be.

Germany operated on interior lines of communications and even in the event of a Turkish defeat would merely have rushed reinforcements to bolster her Austro–Hungarian allies.įinally Britain did not have sufficient munitions for her own armies. There was no backdoor to Germany no easy route to victory, no allies that propped her up. This, it was boasted, would remove one of the allies ‘propping up’ Germany, influence wavering Balkan states and open the sea route to Russian Black Sea ports for the export of munitions to feed Russian guns on the Eastern Front. The British were fully committed elsewhere but a group of politicians led by Winston Churchill, then at the Admiralty, sought to help Russia with an attack on the Gallipoli peninsula that aimed to gain control of the Dardanelles straits that separated Asia and Europe.

When the Ottoman Turks attacked Russians in the Caucasus mountains in December 1914, Russia went to her allies requesting help. The First World War stalled when the huge armies of Germany and France fought themselves to a standstill on the Western Front in 1914. 1 The Gallipoli campaign was poorly conceived

Heat of battle 3