A key problem was that the Naval War Staff was “too new and inexperienced to be of much use. Its fumbling hand can be traced in most of the navy’s early disasters and mishaps.”33 To concentrate power around him, Churchill formed the Admiralty War Group, which met at least once a day and comprised the First Sea Lord, the chief of the War Staff and the secretary of the Admiralty. In Best’s opinion, the “system was as efficient an instrument for directing worldwide naval operations as could have been devised in the circumstances.” But “when things went wrong, Churchill was in an exposed position and attracted bad publicity.”34 When things went well (meaning nothing much was happening), the public found little to capture its attention. Churchill was involved to an extraordinary degree in the whole management of the war. His actions were closely scrutinized by the train of critics whom he had collected over the years. The Tories and the Tory press hated him and were ready to blame him exclusively for almost anything. Their cause was aided by judicious leaks from Churchill’s opponents in the Admiralty. But although short-term setbacks outnumbered successes, what mattered was that the instrument Churchill had done so much to fashion proved, in the long run, invincible.
Churchill’s abilities, and his ability to dominate those around him, could have a negative impact. He was simply too persuasive a debater when decisions were being made, and this could allow things to go forward that sterner or better marshaled resistance might have prevented or moderated. As Stephen Roskill puts it, the admirals were at a disadvantage because “they lacked capacity in dealing with so loquacious and argumentative a person as Churchill—namely they lacked the ability to state a case concisely and clearly and then to sustain it against hostile dialectic—an art in which Churchill excelled.”35 This was a problem. Churchill said that “experts should be on tap but not on top.” He didn’t like being told by experts but wanted to be persuaded by them. But there were few people around him who were robust enough to stand before him and get their point across sufficiently, and few political colleagues with sufficient expertise to contribute significantly to policy formulation alongside him.
A theme of Churchill’s role in the war was his frequent engagement—or interference—in matters of land warfare, reflecting the fact that he was, after all, a trained soldier and had great confidence in both his strategic acumen and skills in “war direction.” Clementine told him off for not confining his activities to the war at sea. Referring to a forthcoming trip to see General Sir John French in France in September 1914, she wrote: “I wish you didn’t crave to go . . . you are the only young and vital person in the Cabinet. It is really wicked of you not to be swelling with pride at being 1st Lord of the Admiralty during the greatest War since the beginning of the World.” His regular visits to see General French really got under Kitchener’s collar. Churchill made unusual decisions based on his belief in his own ability to shape the war and his insatiable desire to be involved and to innovate, even when the scaffolding necessary to support such innovation did not yet exist. He developed what amounted to a private army when he converted the Naval Reserve into the Royal Naval Division, and with this inexperienced force of about fifteen thousand men sought to play a role on land. One of his first opportunities came when Lord Kitchener, fearing Zeppelin raids, asked Churchill to take over the air defense of Britain. He did so gladly and to accomplish the task deployed Royal Naval Air Service squadrons to France, their bases defended by Rolls-Royce armored cars and marines.
A frequent visitor to France and the front line throughout the war, in October 1914 he took over the defenses of the Belgian city of Antwerp with men of the Royal Naval Division. In September the Belgians had appealed for thirty thousand troops, and Kitchener saw a direct danger to Britain if Antwerp were lost. The city was an important coastal point for the Allies to try to hold as they raced the Germans to the sea. Incredibly, for several days Churchill was in sole command of the city, dominating the Belgian king and his ministers as well as senior soldiers and sailors, supervising the disposition of his marines and darting about without fear of shot or shell.
Writing in March 1918, the king of the Belgians said that Churchill’s intervention “rendered great service to us” and that “those who deprecate it simply do not understand the history of the war in those early days. Only one man of all your people had the prevision of what the loss of Antwerp would entail, and that man was Mr. Churchill.”36
Though this action achieved some military advantage, and Churchill was only away for four days, his critics claimed that it confirmed his unsuitability for high office. They described the defense of Antwerp as a pointless adventure when the First Lord should have been concentrating on the affairs of the navy. Some, however, claimed that the five days for which the port was held were of great value to the Allies. It was a move approved by Kitchener and Grey, the ministers for war and foreign affairs, respectively. During the crisis of the moment, in early October 1914, when units needed to be rapidly mustered, the Royal Naval Division was the only unit available, and Churchill’s offer to go to Belgium was readily accepted by his colleagues.
Churchill was saddened by the misrepresentation of his efforts at Antwerp. But some defended him. The Observer noted that Churchill had been called an amateur. “That happens to be just what he is not. He has seen war; he has written about war; he has studied war.”37 He was more familiar with modern warfare than all his civilian peers, had attended British and European maneuvers annually for years, and was a member of the Committee of Imperial Defence.
The episode showcased his manifest thirst for action, and his occasional lapses of political judgment. He went so far as to telegraph the prime minister to say that he would willingly give up the Admiralty if he could be given high command in the field, and Kitchener was prepared to make him a lieutenant general. Read out to the Cabinet, however, Churchill’s suggestion was greeted with what Asquith described as “Homeric laughter.”38 To an extent, this was deserved, the offer demonstrating Churchill’s genuine inability to see what it was in him and his behavior that so maddened, amused, and enraged other people. But it also demonstrated his unique qualities. No other politician was as confident as Churchill in his ability to shape the fighting; no other politician was so ready to ignore the opinions of generals and admirals and trust in his own military and strategic abilities.
Nevertheless, the brief campaign served to strengthen the arm of those seeking to portray Churchill as a rash adventurer and attached Churchill’s name to military defeat, a connection that was to solidify disturbingly during 1915. Though it might have held up the German advance for precious days—a not inconsiderable benefit—the episode highlighted the Naval Division’s lack of training and equipment and ensured that many of them exited the war as casualties or prisoners. It is doubtful whether it was correct, given Churchill’s political position, for him to be there and not in London, and offering to give up control of Britain’s greatest weapon showed a lack of judgment. Senior naval commanders viewed the escapade with contempt. Asquith and Lloyd George joined the criticism of their wayward colleague, because for them the episode underlined Churchill’s impulsiveness and belligerence and weakened their trust in him.
One of the major problems that beset Churchill’s Admiralty tenure was the unsatisfactory relationship between senior military figures and their civilian bosses. For too long the tail had wagged the dog, and this continued into the war, notably in the persons of Herbert Horatio Kitchener and Jackie Fisher. Churchill had already disposed of Wilson and Bridgeman as First Sea Lords. In October 1914, Prince Louis of Battenberg was forced to resign from the position because of mounting anti-German public pressure. To replace him Churchill recalled Admiral Jackie Fisher, who had been First Sea Lord between 1904 and 1910, during which time he earned fame as a major sponsor of naval development and reform, most famously associated with the launch of the revolutionary Dreadnought-class battleships. Churchill held him in unusual reverence and was to continue to do so even after Fisher had nea
rly ruined him. Thus Churchill acquired, as a close colleague and immediate subordinate, a man of equally domineering personality with pronounced and firmly held views on naval matters and the extra ballast of years of experience and public renown. To make matters more difficult, Fisher rather liked the Kitchener model of political-military fusion and envied his almost supreme authority in all matters relating to the army. Kitchener was in political control of the army as secretary of state for war, a position from which he could dominate his civilian Cabinet colleagues. This was just the type of monster Churchill was intent upon slaying as he strove to subject the military to proper civilian control.
Churchill and Fisher worked well together in many ways, though Fisher found it extremely difficult to accept the extent of his political master’s involvement in naval affairs. First Lords were supposed to provide cover and representation at the political level, and let the experts get on with the actual business of deploying fleets and devising strategy. But, as we have seen, Churchill considered himself the best military expert he knew and believed the stakes to be far too great for the higher direction of war to be left in the hands of antediluvian senior officers. It has been argued that during this period, Fisher was at least partly deranged, and his stream-of-consciousness letters, effusive and heavily capitalized (“hortatory, passionate and adjectival,” in Roskill’s words39), certainly lend support to those who make this case. His letters reveal peacock vanity, a need to feel right about everything and to brag about his ability to clip the wings of opponents and exercise a controlling influence over colleagues and peers. His attitude to Churchill veered from an intensity approaching love to jealousy and resentment at his interference. Fisher also bemoaned the fact that Churchill was “always convincing me.” For his part, Churchill was irresistibly attracted to Fisher, an attraction that was to do him great harm and rekindle concerns about his judgment. The Churchill-Fisher relationship, putting two domineering and stubborn characters head-to-head, was bound to result in fireworks if there were serious disagreements or the war went badly. An attempt to aid Russia and break the stalemate of the Western Front was to do just that.
The Dardanelles and Gallipoli
Clement Attlee believed there was “only one brilliant strategic idea” during the First World War, “and that was Winston’s; the Dardanelles.” In Churchill’s words, it was born of the search for an alternative “to chewing barbed wire” on the Western Front. The Dardanelles campaign appealed to Churchill because it offered the prospect of a strategic masterstroke overcoming the Western Front stasis. As he sardonically predicted, “neither side will have the strength to penetrate the other’s lines in the Western theatre . . . although no doubt hundreds of thousands of men will be spent to satisfy the military mind on the point.”40
Despite this, history has cast Churchill as the primary culprit for a military blunder that cost thousands of lives, a great flanking initiative that, tragically, ended in replicating the stalemate of Flanders rather than bringing rapid victories. Churchill’s tenure at the Admiralty would have been longer, and far less tarnished retrospectively, had it not been for the Russian government’s appeal for support against the Central Powers. This led Lord Kitchener, secretary of state for war and national soldier-hero, to advocate a demonstration by the Royal Navy around the Dardanelles, the narrow, strategically placed strait separating the eastern Mediterranean from the Black Sea. Known to the ancient world as the Hellespont, this stretch of water (forty miles long and between one and four miles wide) separated Asian Turkey and the nearest part of European Turkey, the Gallipoli peninsula.
It was inevitable that Churchill would be interested in such a proposal. It had about it all the elements of “doing something”—and something dramatic and potentially very important—that appealed to both his vision and his restlessness. It also promised significant martial spoils; as Churchill said, “Beyond those few miles of ridge and scrub . . . lie the downfall of a hostile empire, the destruction of an enemy’s fleet and army, the fall of a world-famous capital, and probably the accession of powerful Allies.”41 But despite the glimpse of glittering prizes that the prospect of a campaign in this region offered, Churchill was no fool, and he replied that a naval operation was less desirable than one involving both the navy and the army, so that territory could be occupied—maybe even including Constantinople—rather than simply having defenses destroyed by naval gunfire. But Kitchener was adamant that no troops were available and again asked that a purely naval operation be considered, and this army-navy dissonance was to be the crux of the disaster that unfolded.
Churchill argued his naval case before the War Council on January 13, 1915, “with great eloquence and forensic skill.”42 The outcome was the order from Asquith to the Admiralty to prepare for a naval expedition to bombard and take the Gallipoli peninsula, with Constantinople as its objective. After this, Fisher began to waver—not about operations in the Dardanelles per se, but because of his concern lest too many ships be taken from the North Sea. On January 28, he put his objections to the prime minister. Asquith decided to carry on regardless. Later that day, Churchill and Fisher conferred, and the Admiral gave his consent for things to proceed (as Fisher later told the Dardanelles Commission): “I went in the whole hog, totus porcus.”43
Thus an ill-made plan was put into operation, once Churchill had checked with the commander of British naval forces in the eastern Mediterranean, Admiral Carden, who believed that it might be possible to force a passage through the Dardanelles using a sufficiently large number of ships. It was hardly an enthusiastic green light, but Churchill had the considered opinion of the local officer commanding. The Admiralty War Group considered Carden’s list of requirements and thought they could be met and even exceeded. Churchill now became a keen advocate of the proposal, and though he was later forced to carry far too much of the blame for the ensuing military disaster, it is here that his culpability was most evident. From this moment onward, Churchill’s imagination became fixed upon a strategic masterstroke that might knock the Ottomans out of the war and keep wavering nations out of the clutches of the Central Powers, all delivered by battleships sailing through the Dardanelles—shooting up Turkish defenses, and eliciting a revolutionary response in the Ottoman capital itself. Such a prospect was worth considerable sacrifice, but Churchill’s enthusiasm overrode more cautious considerations. “I shall be the greatest man in Europe,” he said, if the Dardanelles were forced. His enthusiasm steamrollered others into assent.
But no matter how powerful and persuasive an advocate Churchill was, war strategy and government policy were not concentrated in his hands alone; it was a collective Cabinet decision, and Cabinet colleagues (and indeed the head of the navy) could have resigned in protest. It was the War Council that agreed to the minute from the prime minister directing the Admiralty “to prepare for a naval expedition in February 1915 to bombard and take the Gallipoli Peninsula with Constantinople as its objective.” It should have been obvious, in Stephen Roskill’s opinion, that the navy alone could do neither of these things. The naval advisers had been less keen than Churchill but at this stage were safe in the knowledge that the operation could be broken off. The prime minister and other political members of the War Council, understandably, were “dazzled by the possibilities of success” offered by this innovative operation away from the Western Front.
While Churchill might be seen as the driving force behind the attempt and failure to force the Dardanelles by warships, he was not nearly so closely associated with the dispiriting Gallipoli stalemate that followed and that cost the lives of 46,000 Allied troops. But, in the public mind, he was. In fact, from March 1915, Churchill was sidelined by the War Council, as the army took over. While Churchill was a part of the disaster, its causes lay in the inadequacies of the system of civil-military decision making, the poverty of strategic thinking, and a general acceptance of very high casualty rates. Churchill was the “chief instigator of the [naval] campaign and . . . it was his p
ressure that prevented the naval attack from being broken off,” though in Roskill’s words, “the contemporary obloquy heaped on his head now seems to have been very harsh and excessive.”44
On March 18, 1915, Admiral de Robeck, Carden’s replacement, began the naval attack. It was less successful than had been anticipated, the navy facing particularly unpleasant obstacles in the form of not only Turkish gun batteries but also minefields. After losing three battleships, the admiral halted and refused to renew the attack. Thus the Churchill phase of the operation ended. The War Council (a committee of the full Cabinet, supported by experts, to which the Cabinet had effectively delegated responsibility for the war effort) now decided to mount a combined army and navy operation, an expeditionary force under Churchill’s old friend General Sir Ian Hamilton arriving on the Gallipoli peninsula on April 25, 1915. It didn’t take long for it to become obvious that the army was pinned down on small and inadequately defended coastal bridgeheads. Churchill meanwhile supported the campaign by dispatching more naval resources. But he was always frustrated by Kitchener’s refusal to send more soldiers, and the two wrangled over the dispatch of the British 29th Division. Kitchener was determined to minimize the need for land operations and had a low opinion of Turkish morale. Churchill protested in vain to the War Council: Kitchener “dominated absolutely at this time,” as he put it.45
The bombshell for Churchill arrived on May 15, when Fisher resigned as First Sea Lord. This was just what Churchill’s enemies needed. The knives were out, and the evolving stalemate in the Dardanelles—not yet a “failure” or a “fiasco” but still ongoing—had sharpened them. Churchill was too closely associated with the campaign to avoid being regarded as its dominant figure, even though the entire Cabinet and the defense chiefs, led by the prime minister, shared collective responsibility. But the connection was easy to forge in the minds of the narrow political elite that ruled Britain and, through the press, in the minds of the general public. The young and bumptious military adventurer had ridden roughshod over the country’s senior military men, and the results were there for all to see. This came on the back of a well-developed anti-Churchill narrative—a crime sheet that already bore the names of Tonypandy, Sidney Street, Ulster, and Antwerp. As Sir Henry Wilson put it to Bonar Law, “A man who can plot the Ulster Pogrom, plan Antwerp and carry out the Dardanelles fiasco is worth watching.”46 Churchill had no personal following in the Liberal Party and was the cause of jealousy among Cabinet colleagues, who felt excluded from the Asquith-Churchill-Kitchener triumvirate that appeared to be making all the big decisions about the war. Churchill always maintained that more resolute action—more troops, especially—would have turned disastrous stalemate into glorious victory. “We were separated by very little from complete success,” he told the Dardanelles Commission. Fisher, he believed, used uncertainty at the Dardanelles to make a bid for supreme naval power. “Considering that he had agreed to every step taken and had issued every order, it seems to me his conduct was rather treacherous,” he wrote.47
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