Chapter 24 – Winston

Numerous facts and quotes in this chapter are taken from the excellent article by Tom Curran: “Who was Responsible for the Dardanelles Fiasco?”, Australian Journal of Politics and History: vol 57, no. 1, 2011, pp 17-33. Many details and quotes in Tom Curran’s paper are cited from British National Archives and British newspapers, following is are extracts:

p. 18 – “At the beginning of 1915, Winston Churchill was in a desperate need of a spectacular naval victory, for which he alone could take credit, in order to restore his battered reputation with the British people and press alike. Most newspapers were calling for his sacking as First Lord of the Admiralty, holding him responsible for the litany of disasters whch had dogged the Royal Navy since the beginning of the war…The most recent disaster had been the sinking of Rear-Admiral Cradock’s cruiser squadron off the coast of South America on 1 November 1914, by the German cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau , with the loss of 1,600 British lives. Seventy-four year old Admiral Lord “Jacky” Fisher, recalled out of retirement and installed as First Sea Lord, exacted swift retribution upon the Germans by dispatching two battlecruisers, Invincible and Inflexible , to the South Atlantic, where they annihilated the German cruisers off the Falkland Islands, on 8 December, with the loss of 2,200 German sailors. This was the only resounding victory the Royal Navy would enjoy throughout the First World War, and it came courtesy of Lord Fisher, as Churchill dutifully acknowledged.

On 2 January 1915, the Foreign Office in London received an urgent appeal from Grand Duke Nicholas, head of the Russian army, asking if Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, head of the British Army, could mount a naval or military demonstration to draw Turkish forces away from the Caucasus, where his troops were under severe pressure. Kitchener discussed the matter with Churchill, stressing the fact that there were no spare British troops anywhere — all were desperately needed on the Western Front. Kitchener suggested a naval demonstration at the Dardanelles. The following day he sent a telegram to the Grand Duke, promising “a demonstration against the Turks”.”

Curran describes Churchill’s correspondence with senior naval officers, and their responses, included as quoted (p. 18-19). Following are further extract’s from Curran’s paper:

p. 19 – “Churchill was never given any official encouragement, or authority, from the War Councillors, to develop a plan for a naval attack against the Dardanelles Straits. This was entirely Churchill’s own idea.”

p. 21 – “Fisher told the Dardanelles Commission that he was never shown Churchill’s 6 January reply telegram to Carden, because if he had he “should have objected [and] asked him [Churchill] to word it in some other way.

p. 23 – “Kitchener went along with the naval attack because it was still essentially the demonstration promised to the Grand Duke. In fact it was Kitchener who insisted on the pre-condition, that “if satisfactory progress was not made [or unexpected difficulties encountered], the attack could be broken off”.”

p. 23 – “Churchill first presented his “by ships alone” plan to a War Council meeting held on 13 January. The major attraction of Churchill’s scheme to the Councillors, and to Kitchener in particular, lay in Churchill’s insistence that troops were neither needed nor wanted; that the Fleet would do the job (of destroying the enemy artillery) alone. With Admiral Jackson’s feasibility study of only eight days earlier (which stressed the need for large-scale troop support) still clear in his mind, it would seem that Churchill deliberately concealed this fact from his Cabinet colleagues in order to have his plan sanctioned. Indeed, Churchill would rely essentially upon Jackson’s memorandum to later demand large-scale military assistance from Kitchener.

p. 24 – “Although the naval attack would not be officially sanctioned until 28 January, Churchill issued a minute to the Admiralty Chief of Staff immediately after the 13 January War Council, with a detailed list of orders and instructions concerning the naval operation he wanted carried out without delay. Churchill informed the Chief of Staff that he was “to assume that the principle is settled, and all that is necessary is to estimate the force required”. And that: “This enterprise is regarded by the Government as of the highest urgency and importance.”

Two days later Churchill sent Carden a telegram headed “Secret and Personal from First Lord”, advising him, somewhat disingenuously, that: “Your scheme was laid by the First Sea Lord and myself before the Cabinet War Council yesterday and was approved in principle. We see no difficulty in providing the forces you require. We propose to entrust this operation to you […] the sooner we can begin the better.”

With reference to the form of this Admiralty telegram, this appears to have been a device employed by Churchill to circumvent Admiralty authority and substitute his own — to the frustration and fury of Lord Fisher. As naval historian Captain Geoffrey Penn points out: “Such messages should have been from ‘Admiralty’, denoting Board approval. But Churchill’s wording was authoritative and compelling; an admiral would regard it as an official directive, to be disobeyed at his peril.”43 Churchill would employ this subterfuge, to ensure his control over the naval operation, to devastating effect.”

In Gallipoli, The Fatal Shore , Harvey Broadbent states that the British War Council committed to the naval attack at the Dardanelles, with Constantinople as the objective, on 13 January [1914]. Broadbent states:

“As the Russians had been urgently requesting action against the Turks to ease the overwhelming pressure on two fronts, the necessity of keeping Russia in the war had influenced the War Council’s decision. The need for action against the Turks by mid-January had become a political as well as a military priority. Churchill’s belligerence towards the Ottomans was strongly tied to a thirst for oil, especially for his growing navy.” (p. 28).