Churchill viewed the war as a "glorious, delicious" adventure. This personal excitement and desire for a grand "wheeze" led him to champion the ill-conceived Gallipoli plan, overriding cautious advisors and ignoring clear risks, ultimately leading to a catastrophe.
The Gallipoli campaign, a catastrophic failure for the Allies, paradoxically became a cornerstone of national identity for Australia and New Zealand (the ANZAC legend) and for the emerging Republic of Turkey, where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk made his name.
First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill deliberately withheld negative assessments from his own naval experts who called the Gallipoli plan "impossible." His infatuation with the scheme led him to present a dishonestly optimistic case to the War Council.
British Prime Minister H.H. Asquith approved the disastrous Gallipoli plan while being completely distracted. During the crucial War Council meeting, he was reading and writing love letters to his daughter's much younger friend, Venetia Stanley, abdicating his responsibility.
After the initial naval attack at Gallipoli failed disastrously, the British War Council chose to escalate by sending ground troops. The decision was driven not by strategy, but by the need to justify the initial losses of ships and lives, a classic example of the sunk cost fallacy.
The entire British Gallipoli strategy was predicated on the racist assumption that Ottoman "Turk" soldiers were inferior and would quickly flee. This belief caused planners to ignore the enemy's battle-hardened status, defensive preparations, and strong motivation, with fatal consequences.
The image of ANZAC soldiers as rugged, free-spirited men from the Australian outback is a romanticized myth. In reality, a quarter were British-born emigrants, and many were city-dwellers who engaged in drunken, riotous behavior while training in Cairo before the Gallipoli campaign.
The Gallipoli campaign was conceived by Churchill as a brilliant "wheeze" to bypass the stalemate of trench warfare on the Western Front. The ultimate irony is that its failure led to the creation of a new front, where soldiers dug into trenches under even more hellish conditions.
As Australian troops pushed inland at Gallipoli, Ottoman forces began to retreat. Their commander, Mustafa Kemal, personally rallied them with the famous command, "I don't order you to attack. I order you to die." This single act of leadership reversed the retreat and drove the ANZACs back to the beach.
The ANZAC legend was massively amplified not by Australian reports, but by a British war correspondent. His praise for the "raw colonial troops" being "worthy to fight side by side" with British heroes was immensely powerful in Australia precisely because it came from a respected outsider.
Churchill's initial Gallipoli plan relied exclusively on naval bombardment to force Constantinople's surrender, a fundamental strategic error. As even his allies noted, ships cannot occupy cities or hold ground. This flawed premise guaranteed the initial operation's failure and forced a bloody land invasion.