The proposition is that it was the intention of the British and French Governments of 1915 to ensure that the Dardanelles and the Gallipoli Campaign would not succeed and that it was conceived and conducted as a ruse to keep the Russians in the war and thus the continuation of the Eastern Front.
Despite the discomfort the near-abuse brings when I float this idea, I have been unable to put my particular suspicions to rest for there has been something compelling in some elements of the circumstantial evidence that leads me on to further document digging. But difficulties lie in the fact that not all Gallipoli documents seem to be present in Britain's National Archives. There are gaps in document collections of certain events and at crucial times of the campaign.
However, a number of years ago I came across information that revealed a treaty, secret at the time, was agreed in February-March 1915 between the British government and the Tzarist government in Russia. By the treaty the British and French Governments promised that on the conclusion of a successful campaign against the Turkish Ottoman Empire and its defeat that there would be annexation to Russia "of the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles; Southern Thrace up to the line of Enos-Midia; the coast of Asia Minor between the Bosphorus, the River Sakaria and a point along Ismit Bay; subject to latter determination the islands of Imbros and Tenedos..."
The British motivation in agreeing to this was to keep their increasingly reluctant ally, Russia, in the war. By ensuring this in keeping the Eastern Front in operation, thousands of German troops would be kept away from the Western Front.
Russia had been soundly defeated towards the end of 1914 at the Battle of Tannenburg and was considering seeking an armistice with Germany. Moreover it had suffered a bloody nose inflicted by the Ottoman army in the snows of the Caucasus at the Battle of Sarikamis, even though the Ottoman army was eventually decimated by the blizzards. In January 1915 Russia was insisting on Allied help against the Turks.
The British and French found Russia's demise a grave prospect and sought to find ways to keep her in the war. Of all reasons given for the Dardanelles Campaign the threat of a second German army from the east arriving on the Western Front, the epicentre of the conflict, would be the most serious blow to the Allies.
But Churchill's idea to attack the Ottoman Empire via the Dardanelles was not supported by everyone in the War Cabinet and the military. 'Western Fronters' believed all resources should go to offensives in France and the Baltic but the Russian request for more effort against the Ottomans and the subsequent treaty, insisted on by the Russians, gave the Dardanelles supporters their trump card.
The result was the doomed Dardanelles Campaign - the attempt by British and French navies to force the Straits and assault Istanbul and the following military adventure of the Gallipoli Campaign. The point of interest of these events then is that, on a successful outcome, the ceding of Istanbul et al to Russia, as described would take place. The carrot without the stick.
The existence of the treaty is striking for it overturned nearly 200 years of British foreign policy, which had opposed a Russian presence in the Mediterranean and any advance of Russian hegemony into the Ottoman Empire's possessions. As recently as the 1850s, the Crimean War was fought against the Russians over this very issue.
Britain was increasingly concerned that Russia was proving a threat to its imperial routes and possessions in the Indian Ocean and eastwards, especially after the completion of the Suez Canal. To allow Russia the outcomes of the 1915 secret treaty, including a Russian fleet in the Mediterranean (an anathema to the French), made no long term strategic sense.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/30630.htmlOne interpretation of this is to conclude that the Anzacs, along with their British, French and Indian brothers-in-arms were deceived into fighting, dying and getting maimed at Gallipoli, not for Britain and France, but for the despotic Russian Tzarist regime.
Another interpretation is to see the deception as actually succeeding in keeping Russia in the war and in this way serving British and French interests on the Western Front, but at a cost of over 10,000 Anzac lives.
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