Acclaimed naval military expert Dan van der Vat argues that the disaster at the Dardanelles prolonged the war by two years, led to the Russian Revolution, forced Britain to the brink of starvation, and contributed to the destabilization of the Middle East. With never before published information on Colonel Geehl's mine laying operation, which won the battle for the Germans, The Dardanelles Disaster is essential reading for everyone interested in great naval history, Churchill's early career, and World War I.

Presenting more than 150 never-before-published photographs of the campaign, many taken by the soldiers themselves, together with unpublished written material from British, Anzac, French and Turkish, including eyewitness accounts of the landings, this is an unrivalled account of what really happened at Gallipoli. Van Emden's gripping narrative and lucid analysis of Churchill's infamous operation, complements Chambers's evocative images, showing how the rapid spread of diseases like dissentry, the lack of clean water and food, the tremendous losses on both sides affected morale, until finally in January 1916, in what were the best-laid plans of the entire disastrous campaign, the Allies successfully fooled the Turkish forces and evacuated their troops from the peninsula with no additional casualties. Leading First World War historian Richard van Emden and Gallipoli expert Stephen Chambers have produced an entirely fresh, personal and illuminating study of one of the Great War's most catastrophic events.

The failure of the Allied fleet to force a passage through the Straits of the Dardanelles in 1915 drove Winston Churchill from office (First Lord of the Admiralty) in disgrace and nearly destroyed his political career. For over a century, Churchill has been both praised and condemned for his role in launching this highly controversial campaign. For some, the Dardanelles offensive was a brilliant concept that might have dramatically shortened the First World War. To many others, however, Churchill was a reckless amateur who drove his unwilling and misinformed colleagues into a venture that was doomed to fail. This book, based on exhaustive archival research, provides a detailed and authoritative account of the Gallipoli campaign's origins and execution, stripping away the layers of myth that have long surrounded these dramatic events, and showing that no simple verdict is either possible or fair. Naval historian Christopher M. Bell untangles Churchill's complicated relationship with the dynamic First Sea Lord, Admiral Jacky Fisher, and reveals for the first time the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to Churchill's removal from office, including Fisher's covert campaign to undermine support for the Dardanelles operation, and the leaks by figures in high places that fuelled a bitter press campaign to drive Churchill from power. Equal attention is also given to the perhaps even more important story of Churchill and the Dardanelles after 1915. As Bell shows, Churchill spent a good deal of time and effort in the following two decades trying to refute his critics and convince the wider public that the campaign had in fact nearly succeeded. These efforts were so successful that the legacy of the Dardanelles did not stand in the way of Churchill becoming Prime Minister in May 1940--Provided by publisher.

This book, based on comprehensive archival research in official and private papers, offers a new history of the infamous British disaster at Gallipoli in 1915. Contrary to all previous accounts, it shows that the campaign originated not in the search for an alternative to the Western Front, but in the need to lower the price of bread in Britain.

An eye-opening interpretation of the infamous Gallipoli campaign that sets it in the context of global trade. In early 1915, the British government ordered the Royal Navy to force a passage of the Dardanelles Straits-the most heavily defended waterway in the world. After the Navy failed to breach Turkish defenses, British and allied ground forces stormed the Gallipoli peninsula but were unable to move off the beaches. Over the course of the year, the Allied landed hundreds of thousands of reinforcements but all to no avail. The Gallipoli campaign has gone down as one of the great disasters in the history of warfare. Previous works have focused on the battles and sought to explain the reasons for the British failure, typically focusing on First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. In this bold new account, Nicholas Lambert offers the first fully researched explanation of why Prime Minister Henry Asquith and all of his senior advisers--the War Lords--ordered the attacks in the first place, in defiance of most professional military opinion. Peeling back the manipulation of the historical record by those involved with the campaign's inception, Lambert shows that the original goals were political-economic rather than military: not to relieve pressure on the Western Front but to respond to the fall-out from the massive disruption of the international grain trade caused by the war. By the beginning of 1915, the price of wheat was rising so fast that Britain, the greatest importer of wheat in the world, feared bread riots. Meanwhile Russia, the greatest exporter of wheat in the world and Britain's ally in the east, faced financial collapse. Lambert demonstrates that the War Lords authorized the attacks at the Dardanelles to open the straits to the flow of Russian wheat, seeking to lower the price of grain on the global market and simultaneously to eliminate the need for huge British loans to support Russia's war effort. Carefully reconstructing the perspectives of the individual War Lords, this book offers an eye-opening case study of strategic policy making under pressure in a globalized world economy.

"First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Profile Books"--T.p. verso.