This Day in World War 1 History: MARCH 18, 1915 : ALLIES OPEN ATTACK ON DARDANELLES

On this day in 1915, British and French forces launch an ill-fated naval attack on Turkish forces in the Dardanelles, the narrow, strategically vital strait in northwestern Turkey separating Europe from Asia.

As the only waterway between the Black Sea in the east and the Mediterranean Sea in the west, the Dardanelles was a much-contested area from the beginning of the First World War. The stakes for both sides were high: British control over the strait would mean a direct line to the Russian navy in the Black Sea, enabling the supply of munitions to Russian forces in the east and facilitating cooperation between the two allies. The Allies were also competing with the Central Powers for support in the Balkans, and the British hoped that a victory against Turkey would persuade one or all of the neutral states of Greece, Bulgaria and Romania to join the war on the Allied side. Finally, as British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey put it, the approach of such a powerful Allied fleet towards the heart of the Ottoman Empire might provoke a coup d’etat in Constantinople—leading Turkey to abandon the Central Powers and return to its earlier neutrality.

Support from the rest of the British war command came none too soon for Winston Churchill, the British first lord of the Admiralty, who had long been a proponent of an aggressive naval assault against Turkey at the Dardanelles. Though others—especially the French military command, led by their chief, Joseph Joffre—argued that the navy should not strike until ground troops could be spared from the Western Front, Churchill pushed to begin immediately. The attack, planned throughout the winter of 1915, opened on March 18, 1915, when six English and four French battleships headed towards the strait.

The Turks were not unaware, however, that an Allied naval attack on the strait was a strong possibility, and with German help, had greatly improved their defenses in the region. Though the Allies had bombarded and destroyed the Turkish forts near the entrance to the Dardanelles in the days leading up to the attack, the water was heavily mined, forcing the Allied navy to sweep the area before its fleet could set forth. The minesweepers did not manage to clear the area completely, however: three of the 10 Allied battleships—the British Irresistible and Ocean and the French Bouvet—were sunk, and two more were badly damaged.

With half the fleet out of commission, the remaining ships were pulled back. Though Churchill argued for the attack to be renewed the next day, claiming—erroneously, as it turned out—that the Turks were running low on munitions, the Allied war command opted to delay the naval attack at the Dardanelles and combine it with a ground invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula, which bordered the northern side of the strait.

The Allied landing on Gallipoli, which took place on April 25, 1919, met with a fierce Turkish defense inspired by Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal (the future president of Turkey, later known as Ataturk) and directed skillfully by the German commander Otto Liman von Sanders. For the remainder of the year, Allied forces, including large contingents from Australia and New Zealand, were effectively held at the beaches where they had landed, hampered by cautious and ineffective leadership from their British commander, Sir Ian Hamilton. Hamilton was replaced near the end of 1915 by Charles Monro; Monro recommended that the Allies abandon the operation, and the armies were fully evacuated by the end of January 1916. The failure of the campaign at the Dardanelles and at Gallipoli in 1915 resulted in heavy casualties—205,000 for the British empire and 47,000 for the French (there were also 250,000 Turkish casualties)—and was a serious blow to the reputation of the Allied war command, including that of Churchill, who resigned his position with the Admiralty after being demoted and headed to the Western Front to command a battalion.

Article Details:

March 18, 1915 : Allies open attack on Dardanelles

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  March 18, 1915 : Allies open attack on Dardanelles

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  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/allies-open-attack-on-dardanelles

• Access Date

  March 18, 2015

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  A+E Networks

This Day in World War 1 History: MARCH 17, 1917 : SHAKEUP IN FRENCH GOVERNMENT

In the midst of Allied plans for a major spring offensive on the Western Front, the French government suffers a series of crises in its leadership, including the forced resignation, on March 17, 1917, of Prime Minister Aristide Briand.

Horrified by the brutal events at Verdun and the Somme in 1916, the French Chamber of Deputies had already met in secret to condemn the leadership of France’s senior military leader, Joseph Joffre, and engineer his dismissal. Prime Minister Briand oversaw Joffre’s replacement by Robert Nivelle, who believed an aggressive offensive along the River Aisne in central France was the key to a much-needed breakthrough on the Western Front. Building upon the tactics he had earlier employed in successful counter-attacks at Verdun, Nivelle believed he would achieve this breakthrough within two days; then, as he claimed, the ground will be open to go where one wants, to the Belgian coast or to the capital, on the Meuse or on the Rhine.

The principal power over French military strategy, however, had moved with Joffre’s departure to a ministerial war committee who answered not to the commander in chief, Nivelle, but to the minister of war, Louis Lyautey, a former colonial administrator in Morocco appointed by Briand in December 1916, around the same time as Joffre’s dismissal. Lyautey loudly and publicly derided the Nivelle scheme, insisting (correctly as it turned out) that it would meet with failure. He was not the only member of Briand’s cabinet who opposed the offensive, but the prime minister continued to support Nivelle, desperately needing a major French victory to restore confidence in his leadership. On March 14, Lyautey resigned. This embarrassing public disagreement with his ministers brought Briand down as well, forcing his resignation on March 17.

French President Raymond Poincare’s next choice for prime minister, Alexandre Ribot, appointed Paul Painleve as his minister of war. Also hesitant to fully support Nivelle’s plan, Painleve and the rest of the Ribot government were finally pressured to do so by the need to counteract the German resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare (announced in February 1917) and by Nivelle’s threat that he would resign if the offensive did not proceed as planned. The so-called Nivelle Offensive, begun on April 16, 1917, was a disaster: the German positions along the Aisne, built up since the fall of 1914, proved to be too much for the Allies. Almost all the French tanks, introduced into battle for the first time, had been destroyed or had become bogged down by the end of the first day; within a week 96,000 soldiers had been wounded. The battle was called off on April 20, and Nivelle was replaced by the more cautious Philippe Petain five days later.

Article Details:

March 17, 1917 : Shakeup in French government

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  March 17, 1917 : Shakeup in French government

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  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/shakeup-in-french-government

• Access Date

  March 17, 2015

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  A+E Networks

This Day in World War 1 History: MARCH 16, 1916 : GERMAN ADMIRAL ALFRED VON TIRPITZ RESIGNS

On this day in 1916, Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the man largely responsible for the buildup of the German navy in the years before World War I and the aggressive naval strategy pursued by Germany during the first two years of the war, tenders his resignation to Kaiser Wilhelm II, who—somewhat to Tirpitz’s surprise—accepts it.

Tirpitz began his close working relationship with the kaiser in 1897, when he was appointed secretary of state of the Imperial Navy Department. A year later, Tirpitz introduced the First Fleet Act, which marked the beginning of a significant reorganization and buildup of the German navy. The Second Fleet Act in 1900 was far more ambitious, setting a deadline of 17 years to construct a fleet of two flagships, 36 battleships, eleven large cruisers and 34 smaller ones—a fleet that would challenge even that of the peerless British Royal Navy.

By 1905, German naval strength had exceeded that of both France and Russia and was on its way—though it had a long way to go—towards its goal of becoming a genuine rival for the Royal Navy. This fact worried Britain and its First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher, who in 1906 presided over the launch of the immense and innovative new battleship HMS Dreadnought, which would become the symbol of the German-British arms race in the years leading up to World War I.

In 1911, Tirpitz was promoted to the rank of grand admiral; three years later, with the outbreak of the war, he was made commander of the entire German navy. Despite its push during the preceding decade, Germany was only able to muster 18 battleships and battle cruisers at the start of World War I, compared with 29 similar British crafts. Understandably pessimistic about Germany’s chances against Britain at sea, Tirpitz recognized that the deadly German U-boat submarine was his navy’s most effective weapon—he thus advocated an aggressive policy of submarine warfare, announced by the kaiser in February 1915, whereby neutral as well as enemy ships were vulnerable to attack by German submarines if they entered the war zone of the North Sea between Germany and Britain.

After a number of such attacks, culminating with the May 7, 1915, sinking of the British passenger ship Lusitania—in which 1,201 people, including 128 Americans drowned—the German government moved to limit the policy of unrestricted submarine warfare to avoid antagonizing neutral countries, notably the United States. By the fall of 1915, Tirpitz and other naval leaders were so constrained that they suspended the policy altogether. (It would be reinstituted in February 1917, prompting the United States to break diplomatic relations with Germany and move towards entry into the war on the side of the Allies.)

In the midst of the international indignation surrounding the policy he had fathered, Tirpitz steadily found himself alienated from the rest of the German war command, including his former champion, the kaiser. On March 16, 1916, when Tirpitz offered his resignation, Wilhelm accepted, and the admiral stepped down from his post.

In the post-war period, Tirpitz co-founded the right-wing Fatherland Party, which attempted to capitalize on nostalgia for the strong Germany of 1914, and served as a deputy in the Reichstag government from 1924 to 1928. He never regained his former influence, however, and died in 1930.

Article Details:

March 16, 1916 : German Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz resigns

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  March 16, 1916 : German Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz resigns

• URL

  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/german-admiral-alfred-von-tirpitz-resigns

• Access Date

  March 16, 2015

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  A+E Networks