It's impossible to know whether the Dardanelles was a good idea or not - it
didn't work, so there is no way really to evaluate it. Yes, it might have been
a game-changer, but it also might have just gotten bogged down as the Salonika
expedition did later. Speculation is fun - I do a lot of it myself - but label
it as such.
I think it's unfair to fault Kitchener for not supplying troops sooner. He
didn't have them; prewar Britain did not have a large conscript army as the
continental powers did. Nor did the Commonwealth countries. You don't just
produce armies out of nothing overnight. It takes time to recruit, train and
equip them. I think he did quite well having them by 1916. He probably did as
well as he could under the circumstances, knowing what he did at the time.
As far as blaming Churchill - well, life isn't fair. "They (the Hansa towns)
were to learn by bitter experience, what individuals too have to learn that
mankind cannot resist the temptation to kick the man or nation that is down."
(The Hansa Towns, Helen Zimmern). We don't have to like it that that is the
way the world is, but at least we shouldn't be surprised.
Jonathan Hayes
From: Chris Bell <cmb...@eastlink.ca>
To: churchillchat@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2017 11:57 AM
Subject: Re: [ChurchillChat] Churchill’s treatment at the hands of ‘Churchill
Scholars’
I'm not in a position to comment on how faithfully the BBC adhered to Martin
Gilbert's views when putting together this documentary, but I would echo Dave's
comment that "It’s rarely that simple." Three minutes is hardly enough time to
resolve such a complex topic as the Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaigns. And,
as I've argued in my new book, it is impossible to come up with a simple and
straightforward verdict as to who was to blame. Everyone made mistakes,
including Churchill. Unfortunately, he is also frequently blamed for things he
wasn't really responsible for. The comments by Silvester and Page in the
documentary do create a negative impression, but neither one witnessed
first-hand the decision-making process at the Admiralty or the War Council, and
I wouldn't place much weight on their testimony. I suspect it was the BBC's
decision to include them, not Sir Martin's.
Chris
On 2017-02-19 12:22 AM, Dave Turrell wrote:
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Maybe it’s my generation, but I am having a huge problem getting past the
mental image of Jimmy Page standing on the beaches at Gallipoli and ripping off
one of his trademark solos. In general, I tend to be cautious when it comes
to “Super-hero thwarted by dullards” historical narratives. It’s rarely that
simple. The Dardanelles campaign has been debated endlessly in the past
century, and I do not believe that the decisive blow has ever been struck by
either side. I did watch the series in question, several years ago, and
recall being impressed by it. I have never been other than impressed by the
late Sir Martin’s work. Dave From: churchillchat@googlegroups.com
[mailto:churchillchat@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Grimsdyke
Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2017 9:48 PM
To: ChurchillChat <churchillchat@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [ChurchillChat] Churchill’s treatment at the hands of ‘Churchill
Scholars’ In general, bone fide Churchill scholars have been fairly
consistent in the way they handle his record, and what comes down to us is the
image of a fiercely pugnacious, infinitely creative man of genius, with an
incandescently brilliant mind who made both mistakes and their decided
opposite, but whose motives throughout were gallant, noble, magnanimous ……and a
host of other adjectives, none of which have any truck with mean-spiritedness,
littleness, or spite or malevolence, or any of those characteristics that
belong to lesser men. However, I have been puzzled beyond words by the
treatment of certain parts of his record at the hands of some who had always
seemed to be among the most discerning of ‘Churchill Scholars’. A few years
ago the BBC put out a 4-episode programme on Churchill which was written and
presented by Martin Gilbert: it is available on YouTube at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVQg_ehSu6A From 21:39 to 24:39 on the first
episode, he deals with Winston Churchill's involvement with the Dardanelles
campaign. These 3 minutes seemed to me, as I’m sure they would seem to anybody
with a sound reading of the intricacies of that episode in World War I, a
travesty consisting of half-truths and deliberate omissions of crucial facts to
achieve a result that places the blame unfairly and almost slanderously on
Churchill. We all know, of course, that serious researchers from Alan
Moorhead to Basil Liddell Hart and numerous other biographers have found that
Churchill had little to do with the failures of the campaign, and in fact had
been made the scapegoat of a debacle that owed everything to the blunders and
mismanagement of others (Kitchener and Fisher particularly, and of course
Asquith at a political level) and little, if at all, to any actual mistakes on
Churchill's part. In fact the origin of the idea wasn't actually his: it was
Hankey's first, and then enthusiastically taken up by a host of others –
including Fisher, Gray, Asquith, and even Kitchener, and later Lloyd George
with some initial misgivings. Subsequently, Churchill was exonerated by the
Dardanelles Commission, although that Commission was, “struck by the atmosphere
of vagueness and want of precision which seems to have characterised the
proceedings of the War Council”. Thus, Alan Moorehead: “in 1925, when Roger
Keyes was in command of the Mediterranean fleet, he’s steamed through the
Dardanelles and, according to Aspinall, who was with him, he could hardly speak
for emotion. ‘My God’, he said at last, ‘it would have been even easier than I
thought; we simply couldn’t have failed…… And because we didn’t try, another
million lives were thrown away and the war went on for another 3 years.’
Thus, Clement Attlee: “in the whole of the First World War, there was only one
great strategic idea, and that was Winston’s”. Attlee had been a soldier at
Gallipoli. Thus, Alastair Cook (from Keynote Speech, Churchill Society
International Conference, New Hampshire, 27 August 1988): “Kitchener had seemed
an Eisenhower-Montgomery-Nimitz, all rolled into one. He wasn’t, but we thought
he was. We didn’t know then that his power was declining drastically, or that
he was more than anyone morally responsible for the failure of the Dardanelles:
he would not support the original expedition – would not produce the manpower
or the materiel. But as you may have noticed, the deaths of a famous leader,
especially by assassination, confers a halo. Kitchener was drowned and he got
the halo. Churchill got the blame.” However, all this (and countless other
testimonials to the mistakes and blunders made by other men, but not Churchill,
and the difficulties ‘on the ground’ caused by the fatal delays during that
campaign) is seemingly completely ignored by the writer and presenter, Martin
Gilbert. The icing on the cake is Gilbert’s inclusion of statements by AJ
Silvester (principal private secretary to Lloyd George....... as if he would be
impartial!) and Jimmy Page (British Army, Dardanelles 1915) and we hear them
speak words that have virtually no other purpose than to drive home the message
that it was Churchill’s vaulting ambition that made him not only careless of
lives, but completely bullheaded and arrogant, and that he bore unmistakably
the responsibility for the whole failure. As I say above, this is scarcely
believable from such a man as Sir Martin (Winston may well intone from the
grave, “et tu Brute?”) — which makes me ask myself if this is in fact the
result of some ‘creative editing’ by the BBC – who, with their traditional
hostility to Churchill (which seems to have begun with John Reith), may well
have omitted several minutes of counterbalancing argument and statement that
might have been included in the original footing by Sir Martin. I’d be grateful
if anybody on this forum can throw some light on this. --
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