Gallipoli 3: David and Goliath

On 31 July, the day after Russia demanded seizure of the two Turkish dreadnoughts, the British Cabinet, with its attention drawn to the crisis in Serbia, accepted that they should be retained by the Royal Navy. Churchill later said he requisitioned the ships on 28 July. His memory, though suspect, always ensured that he took all the credit.

British sailors boarded Sultan Osman 1 that same day and the Ottoman ambassador was informed that the warship was being detained for the time being. [1] Buoyed by the seizure of the Turkish dreadnoughts, and confirmation by telegram from France that the government there was in ‘hearty high spirits’ and ‘firmly decided on war,’ [2] Russia continued full speed with the general mobilisation of her armies on Germany’s eastern border. At 4 pm on 1 August, the French also ordered general mobilisation. There was no turning back. It meant war. [3] Over the previous two days the Kaiser had repeatedly pleaded in vain with the Czar to withdraw his armies as Germany would be left with no option but to retaliate. Faced with invasion from both east and west, the Kaiser was the last to order general mobilisation. As the Secret Elite had planned, Germany was provoked into a retaliatory war. In St Petersburg at 6 pm on 1 August the German ambassador Count Pourtales handed over Germany’s declaration of war on Russia and broke down in tears. [4] Unlike the French, he was most definitely not in ‘hearty high spirits’ at the prospect.

In Constantinople that same day, 1 August, Enver Pasha, Minister of War, informed the other Young Turks to their bitter disappointment that their two warships had been seized by the British. [5] Within 24 hours a ‘secret’ alliance was signed between Turkey and Germany. Directed against Russia, it did not commit Turkey to war. [6] Despite the bitter disappointment and provocation, there was no wish for war. The Grand Vizier and majority of the Young Turks did not want to join in the fighting at all, and hoped that Turkey would not be dragged into the conflict. Article 4 of the treaty stated: ‘Germany obligates itself, by force of arms if need be, to defend Ottoman territory in case it should be threatened.’ The Ottoman Empire in turn undertook to observe strict neutrality in the European conflict. [7] Germany committed itself to defend Turkey from a Russian attack, though Turkey still remained nominally neutral. Her involvement in the war was not yet a done deal.

It is no exaggeration to state that Enver was the driving force behind the Turkish alliance with Germany. He signed the secret pact without the knowledge, permission or approval of the majority of his own cabinet. Sir Louis Mallet, British Ambassador at Constantinople, stated that the pro-German Enver was ‘dominated by a quasi-Napoleonic ideal’, while ‘the Sultan, the Heir Apparent, the Grand Vizier, Djavid Bey, a majority of the Ministry, and a considerable section of the CUP were opposed to so desperate an adventure as war with the Allies.’ [8] Enver was headstrong and bold. He ordered the general mobilisation of the Turkish army and the immediate closure and mining of the southern end of the Dardanelles, though a small passage in both the Bosphorous and Dardanelles was kept open to admit friendly vessels. [9] Reeling from Britain’s seizure of her two warships, and acutely aware of the threat that Russia’s Black Sea fleet posed to the defenceless Constantinople, an alternative proposal was put forward. According to the dispatch sent to Berlin on 2 August 1914 by the German Ambassador at Constantinople, Baron von Wangenheim, Enver Pasha formally asked Germany to send her two Mediterranean warships to Constantinople. [10] Germany agreed. [11] It was a like for like replacement; for Sultan Osman and Reshadieh, read Goeben and Breslau.

The battle-cruiser Goeben and its close escort, the light cruiser Breslau, had been in the Mediterranean since 1912, and, from October 1913, sailed under the command of the energetic and imaginative Rear-Admiral Wilhelm Souchon. Goodwill visits were regularly made to cities and ports throughout the Mediterranean and Aegean, including Constantinople. The Royal Navy kept them under close watch and continually updated the Admiralty in London as to their whereabouts.

Goeben, a powerful and impressive warship, had been commissioned in 1912. She was slightly smaller than a battleship with a displacement of 22,640 tons, and ten 11-inch guns. The Breslau was much smaller at 4,570 tons, and armed with 4.1-inch guns. Goeben had a nominal full speed of 26-27 knots, but was plagued with problems. Faults in her coal-fired boilers caused a loss of power and she spent July in  dock at Pola, the Austrian naval base at the head of the Adriatic. The boiler re-fit was incomplete when war broke out and, though unable to achieve a sustained speed more than 18 knots, she took to sea. [12] This should be borne in mind when considering why the Royal Navy failed to catch the Goeben on the open sea.

On the declaration of war Goeben and Breslau, were ordered to the coast of Algeria to disrupt the embarkation of the French X1X Corps bound for Marseilles and onward to deployment on the Western Front. [13] It would be no easy task. A combined British and French fleet of seventy-three warships was ranged against the only two enemy craft in the Mediterranean, for the Austrian fleet remained in port. France had sixteen battleships, (one of which was a modern dreadnought) six armoured cruisers and twenty four destroyers. The British fleet, based on Malta, comprised three battle cruisers, four armoured cruisers, four light cruisers, and sixteen destroyers. [ 14 ] The three battle cruisers displaced 18,000 tons, were capable of around 23 knots, and carried an armament of eight 12-inch guns. It was David against Goliath. Two warships, one wounded, against a veritable armada.

The British fleet was divided into two squadrons. The first, under Admiral Sir Berkeley Milne, comprised the three powerful battle cruisers. The second, with eight smaller cruisers and sixteen destroyers, was commanded by Rear-Admiral Sir Ernest Troubridge. Admiral Milne, Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean fleet ‘was an officer of inferior calibre, utterly lacking in vigour and imagination,’ and his appointment had been largely due to ‘Court influence.’ [15] Previously posted as Flag Officer, Royal Yachts, Milne was a close friend of the royal family and former groom in waiting to King Edward VII. When Churchill appointed him to the post, Admiral John Fisher, First-Sea-Lord, was outraged. He labelled Milne ‘an utterly useless’ commander, a ‘backstairs cad’ and a ‘serpent of the lowest type.’ [16] Was this the template for everyone in command at Gallipoli?

At midnight on 2 August Goeben and Breslau separately made their way west from Messina on the north east tip of Sicily for a rendezvous point south of Sardinia. Around 3.30 am on 4 August, as he neared the Algerian coast, Admiral Souchon received the following order from Berlin; ‘Alliance concluded with Turkey. Goeben and Breslau proceed at once to Constantinople.’ Having come so far, Souchon decided to bombard the French embarkation ports of Philippeville (now Skidda) and Bone (now Annaba), before heading east to Constantinople. Goeben and Breslau ‘crossed the path of the bulk of the French fleet, and were detected, not once but at least twice, during their run to and from North Africa. French Admiral Lapeyrere was reputedly ordered to set sail and stop them, but remained in port. [17] It was left to the Royal Navy to take action. What was going on?

The French Navy had by agreement in 1912 with Winston Churchill, assumed a major role in the Mediterranean, leaving the Royal Navy free to concentrate on the North Atlantic, the Channel and the North Sea. The target for the two German warships lay between the North African coast and Marseilles. The entire French navy was at liberty to seek out and destroy Goeben and Breslau yet, despite sighting the enemy, made no attempt to chase and destroy them. Why? Why was it so important that the task was left to the Royal Navy rather than the French? What was the real agenda?

[1] David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, p. 57.
[2] Sidney B, Fay, Origins of the World War, vol 11, p. 531.
[3] Harry Elmer Barnes, The Genesis of the World War, p. 534. Kennan, Fateful Alliance, p. 161. Marc Trachtenberg, The Meaning of Mobilization in 1914, International Security, vol 15, issue 3.
[4] Fay, Origins of the World War, vol 11, p. 532.
[5] Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, p. 61.
[6] Alan Moorhead, Gallipoli, pp. 25-26.
[7] Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, p. 59.
[8] J S Ewart, The Roots and Cause of the Wars (1914-1918), p. 207.
[9] Sean McMeekin, The Russian Origins of the First World War, p. 103.
[10] Ibid., p. 106.
[11] Moorehead, Gallipoli, p. 26.
[12] Arthur J Mader, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, vol II, pp., 20-21.
[13] Peter Hart, Gallipoli, p. 9.
[14] C.R.M.F. Crutwell, A History of the Great War, 1914-1918.
[15] Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, p. 21.
[16] Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August, pp. 141-47.
[17] Dan Van der Vat, The Dardanelles Disaster, p. 32.

Gallipoli 2: Promises, Promises

For a true appreciation of what Gallipoli was about we must take a brief step back in time. In the early years of the twentieth century the Secret Elite in London saw Germany as a rapidly growing economic, industrial and imperial threat to the British Empire, and began planning a European war to destroy her. However, Britain could never destroy Germany on her own in a continental war and had to create alliances with France and Russia. [1]

The Entente Cordiale between England and France, signed on 8 April 1904, marked the end of an era of conflict between the two that had lasted nearly a thousand years. But it was much more important than that. The Entente included secret clauses hidden from the British Cabinet and parliament that grew into a commitment to support each other in a war against Germany, [2] a war in which France would regain her ‘lost provinces’ of Alsace-Lorraine. Russia, already tied to France by an alliance, was Britain’s next target. Both were at loggerheads over Persia and Afghanistan, and for centuries Britain had opposed Russian expansion towards Constantinople.

In 1908, however, the Russians were duped and drawn in with an astonishing, but empty, promise. Britain would no longer object to Russia seising Constantinople, capital city of the Ottoman Empire and the ‘Holy Grail’ of Russian foreign policy. [3] The French had also given clear assurances in 1908 that they would support Russian policy in the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. [4] From the time of Catherine the Great, Russia’s obsession with a warm water port on the Black Sea with unrestricted year-round access to the Mediterranean, was predicated on seizing Constantinople. We are asked to believe that Russia went to war in support of Serbia, but the evidence shows no genuine Russian concern for the Serbs. That was an excuse. In truth, they harboured a ‘widespread obsession, bordering on panic’ about Constantinople and the Straits. [5]

While Constantinople was seen as the glittering prize, other choice pickings would be on offer after the Ottoman Empire was purposefully driven into an alliance with Germany and destroyed. The Russians believed that the sacrifice of millions of men in a war against Germany and Turkey would be rewarded with Constantinople and a share of the spoils in oil rich Persia and Iraq. They were sadly deluded. Britain ‘had no mind to share anything’. [6] While it was a promise the Secret Elite never intended to keep, every aspect of their plan for war depended on Russia remaining convinced that Constantinople would be hers. Had they realised the promise was a deception, Russia would most likely have signed a peace treaty with Germany. As Kaiser Wilhelm correctly advised his cousin Czar Nicholas, Britain was simply using Russia as a ‘cats-paw.’ (tool) [7] And he was right.

Britain and France had long been deeply involved with the Ottoman Empire and bled it dry. Indebted to them for massive loans, Sultan Abdul Hamid 11 had granted extraordinary concessions and permitted them to gain a stranglehold on the financial and economic life of the nation by the grossest form of corruption. In 1908 an uprising of young Turkish army officers rocked the Empire. The dramatic and virtually bloodless success of the so-called Young Turks ended the 33 year autocracy of Abdul Hamid, and introduced constitutional rule. A number of the Young Turks had been educated in Western European universities and were staunch admirers of French and English institutions.

Over the next five years their political fortunes fluctuated, but on 26 January 1913 the Young Turks assumed complete control of the Ottoman Empire through a brutal coup d’etat. A triumvirate of Pashas (a high rank similar to a British peerage or knighthood), named Enver, Taalat and Djemal, pledged reforms but did not hesitate to employ the odious tactics of the old regime. [8] Their liberal dream withered into dictatorship. Financially, the new government remained bankrupt; morally it reverted to Abdul Hamid’s old system of coercion and corruption. [9]

Foreign specialists were appointed to modernise their outdated and incompetent army, navy and police forces. British Admiral Sir Arthur Limpus arrived in Constantinople in 1912 to take charge of the Ottoman Navy. He persuaded the Turks to refurbish and upgrade their decaying port and naval facilities and the contracts were promptly awarded to British armaments giants, Armstrong-Whitworth, and Vickers. When Britain and France declined to enrol Turkish officers in their military academies, the Young Turks turned to Berlin. [10]

In 1913 the German General, Liman von Sanders, was invited to to reorganise the Turkish army which had been soundly defeated the previous year by the Balkan League forces. Since the French were asked to take charge of the Turkish gendarmerie, the three most senior military and civilian commanders were drawn from the European powers. Von Sanders’ appointment was not a specific demonstration of pro-German sympathies as some suggest. A German had been chosen as Inspector General of the army, but the Young Turks made it clear that ‘all else, in finance, administration, navy, and reforms’ would be under English guidance. [11]

The Young Turks steadfastly wanted to remain on good terms with the British. Britain and Turkey were traditional allies and the disaster of Gallipoli should never have arisen. [12] The Turks generally disliked the Germans and their growing influence, [13] and made three separate attempts to sign an alliance with Britain, but were rebuffed on each occasion. [14] In July 1914, Djemal pleaded with the French Foreign Minister to accept the Ottoman government into the Triple Entente, [15] ‘and at the same time protect us against Russia’. [16] Poor fools. A crucial feature of the Entente was the alliance with Russia at the expense of the Turks, not an alliance with the Turks to protect them from Russia. Despite trying to find common ground with France and Britain, and even with their old enemy, Russia, all the overtures made by the Young Turks were dismissed. Turkey could have been a useful ally to the Entente since the Straits would have remained open to them. The American historian, Ron Bobroff concluded that a formal agreement with Turkey would have greatly improved the Triple Entente’s capacity to contain Germany, [17] but Britain and France had other plans and Russia expected to take the prize of Constantinople. This scenario could only take place once the old empire was destroyed along with Germany, and for that very reason the Young Turks were deliberately pushed into the German camp.

War fever and the prospect of taking Constantinople consumed St Petersburg. In February 1914, six full months before the First World War began, the Russian high command was planning to seize the city with an amphibious landing of 127,500 troops and heavy artillery from Odessa. Unfortunately for the Russians, one monumental problem lay ahead. The Naval staff expressed grave alarm at the prospect of the arrival in Constantinople of two battleships which were being built in Britain for the Turkish Navy. These state of the art Dreadnoughts would prevent the landings and the Black Sea fleet would have been entirely at their mercy. [18] The reason Russia was going to war was clearly and absolutely underpinned by the British and French promise of Constantinople, yet Britain was on the point of delivering two new warships which would prevent it. What was going on?

Russia made several unsuccessful requests to foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey in May and June 1914 to have the Turkish contract cancelled. By late July over 500 Turkish sailors had arrived on the Tyne in north-east England to take the first of the mighty warships to Constantinople. The Sultan Osman I and her sister ship, Reshadieh, itself almost completed, had been fully paid for, in part by generous subscriptions from the ordinary people of the Ottoman Empire. Naval regattas and street parties were planned and widespread public excitement anticipated their arrival.

By 30 July the matter became extremely urgent for the Russians. Foreign Secretary, Sergei Sazonov, warned Britain that it was a matter of ‘the highest degree of importance’ that the Turkish ships stayed in England. [19] It appears likely that the thinly veiled threat implied that, if the ships were released, the Czar would not be willing to go to war. He was not to be double-crossed over Constantinople.

Days before this, President Poincare of France had visited St Petersburg to keep the Czar on course for war. Poincare reminded him that, like the British, the French government had no objection to Russia’s taking Constantinople. [20] Within twenty-four hours of Poincare’s departure, Russia mobilised 1,100,000 men together with both the Baltic and Black Sea fleets. [21] It is extremely unlikely that she would have continued the race to war had the prize of Constantinople been denied her.

First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, ordered armed troops in Newcastle to prevent Turkish sailors boarding Sultan Osman I, and specifically instructed that the Turkish flag should not be raised over the ship. The response throughout the Ottoman Empire was of utter outrage. Churchill explained that the warships were vital to Britain, and ‘with a margin of only seven dreadnoughts we could not afford to do without these two fine ships,’ [22] but the truth ran much deeper. The Turkish warships were retained at the eleventh hour for fear of Russian reaction and last-minute rejection of war.

The retention of the Turkish warships served two important functions for the Secret Elite: It kept the Czar on track and it steered the angry Turks towards the enemy camp. As late as July 1914 the majority of the Turkish cabinet had been ‘friendly disposed’ towards Britain, [23] but the act that drove them away from the Entente was the British government’s seizure of the two dreadnoughts. As an essay in provocation, it was breathtaking. [24] ‘If Britain wanted deliberately to incense the Turks and drive them into the Kaiser’s arms she could not have chosen more effective means.’ [25]

For the Secret Elite, two positive outcomes accrued from withholding the ships, but in consequence, a shadow was cast over their long term plan for the Middle East. Russia had been placated and her mobilisation continued towards its inevitable outcome, war. As was always intended, Turkey’s overtures were spurned and she was relentlessly pushed into the German camp. But without the two Turkish Dreadnoughts, what was to stop the Russians sailing into Constantinople when the opportunity presented itself. The answer was already cruising in the Mediterranean.

[1] Pat Walsh, Remembering Gallipoli, p. 11.
[2] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, p. 70.
[3] David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, p. 138; Niall Ferguson, The Pity Of War, p. 61.
[4] Friedrich Stieve, Izvolsky and the World War, p. 44.
[5] Sean McMeekin, The Russian Origins of the First World War, p. 28.
[6] Walsh, Remembering Gallipoli, p 15.
[7] Willy-Nicky Letters, 22 August 1905 and Sidney B. Fay, Origins of the World War, Vol. 1, p. 175.
[8] Encyclopaedia Britannica, These Eventful Years, Vol. 2, pp. 130-132.
[9] Alan Moorhead, Gallipoli, pp. 11-12.
[10] J Laffin, The Agony of Gallipoli. p. 4.
[11] Geoffrey Miller, Straits, Ch.X1
[12] Laffin, The Agony of Gallipoli, p3.
[13] Robert Rhodes James, Gallipoli, p. 8.
[14] Hew Strachan, The First World War, p. 102.
[15] Stieve, Isvolsky and the World War, p. 177.
[16] W W Gottlieb, Studies in Secret Diplomacy, p. 34.
[17] Ronald P Bobroff, Roads to Glory, Late Imperial Russia and the Straits, p. 93.
[18] McMeekin, The Russian Origins of the First World War, pp. 30-34.
[19] Ibid., p. 102.
[20] Gottlieb, Studies in Secret Diplomacy, p. 67.
[21] Immanuel Geiss, July 1914, p. 190.
[22] W S Churchill, The World Crisis, pp. 221-2.
[23] Dan Van Der Vat, The Dardanelles Disaster, p. 28.
[24] L A Carlyon, Gallipoli, p. 42.
[25] Gottlieb, Studies in Secret Diplomacy, p. 42.

Gallipoli 1: The Enduring Myth

The infamous Gallipoli campaign of 1915 was set up to fail. 180,000 allied soldiers were sacrificed, wounded or dead, for a strategic policy which served the imperial designs of the British Empire by failing. This is the essential truth which the next series of blogs will prove. Over the last century, in both Britain and Australia, Gallipoli has been turned into a heroic-romantic myth; [1] a myth promoted by court historians and pliant journalists in order to hide the stark truth. It was a ruse, a sop to the Russians to keep them out of Constantinople in the belief that allied forces would capture the city on their behalf. Put into the hands of incompetent generals and admirals, starved of determined leadership, ill-equipped, ill-advised and certain to fail, the attack on the Dardanelles obligated the Russians to turn back to the eastern front and wait. As an integral part of the imperial strategy, Gallipoli was a stunning success.

So much criticism has been heaped on this oft-termed ‘sideshow’ that the real reason behind Gallipoli has been successfully buried in the horror of its consequences. Allied forces, including the fresh recruits from Australia and New Zealand who rushed to save the Empire, the famed Anzacs, suffered tragic losses in an ignominious defeat at the hands of a much maligned Turkish army on the beaches and slopes of the Gallipoli peninsula. Mainstream historians attributed the disaster to a combination of gross errors which included shockingly poor preparations, underestimating the preparedness and fighting capacity of the the Turkish army, the impetuosity of Winston Churchill, and inept naval and military leadership in the field. Trevor Wilson, professor of history at Adelaide University wrote in 1986, ‘The manner in which Britain’s leaders set about it (Gallipoli) would defy comprehension.’ [2] There was indeed incompetence on several levels that defied belief, but the true reason for the Gallipoli campaign and why it failed has been deliberately suppressed.

Like their counterparts on the Western Front, the shocking sacrifice was of minor concern compared to the political necessity of keeping the Russians out of Constantinople and the oil rich parts of the Ottoman Empire that Britain intended to carve up for herself. Of the many ingenious slights of hand with which perfidious Albion manipulated geo-politics over the centuries, keeping Russia in the war but out of Constantinople was one of the most effective and important.

It proved a disaster for those eager young men who were pitched into the nightmare, unprepared, inappropriately led and without the slightest idea why their lives were deemed so worthless; its towering success came after the war when the Ottoman Empire was broken up to the great advantage of British Imperialism.

We are not alone in questioning the official account of Gallipoli as simply a list of pathetic failures. Harvey Broadbent, the highly respected Australian historian and Director of the Gallipoli Centenary Research Project, voiced the possibility that the British and French Governments of 1915 ensured that the Dardanelles and Gallipoli Campaign did not succeed because it was ‘a ruse to keep the Russians in the war and thus the continuation of the Eastern Front.’ [3] Broadbent accepted that his proposition was controversial. He meant it to challenge the conventional history of the Gallipoli Campaign which has focused for a century on ‘ill-conceived folly by Winston Churchill and Lord Kitchener and a bungled tactical affair conducted by incompetent senior commanders and executed by inexperienced junior commanders, officers and troops.’ [4]

When he first discussed his thesis with fellow Gallipoli historians, Broadbent was subjected to disagreement which ‘came perilously close to abuse.’ His difficulty was that that while circumstantial evidence supported his claim, there was little or no documentary evidence to corroborate it. Documents had been lost. Unexplained ‘gaps have appeared in special collections of critical events at crucial times of the campaign’. [5]

Missing documents and ‘gaps’ in collections at ‘crucial times’ were by no means confined to the Gallipoli disaster. Our book, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, includes an entire chapter detailing exactly how the Secret Elite, the cabal in London responsible for the war, systematically burned, concealed or removed documents which revealed their guilt. Huge swathes of Cabinet and Committee of Imperial Defence records remain ‘missing’ and official memoirs were carefully scrutinised, censored or rewritten. There was a systematic conspiracy by the British government to cover all traces of its devious machinations. The gaps are breathtaking, and no effort has ever been made to explain what happened to them. [6] Recently it was revealed that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of official records from around the time of the First World War still remain inside barbed-wire and high-security protection at a secret location in Hanslope Park in Buckinghamshire. [7]

A century on, and we still cannot be trusted with the truth. Evidence, cross referenced from both primary and secondary sources, forms the bedrock of all historical research, but how are we to reach a balanced judgment and support an assertion when the evidence has been concealed or destroyed? Is circumstantial evidence sufficient? It is surely appropriate to look to legal precedence. Where direct evidence of a corroborated eye-witness account is lacking in the law courts, indirect circumstantial evidence such as DNA, forensic reports or fingerprints are admissible and the cable analogy employed. A cable is made up of many strands which if taken individually are not particularly strong, but as more of the strands are intertwined, the cabal grows stronger. Serious offenders are regularly convicted on circumstantial evidence alone. Since so many of the official records and accounts relating to Gallipoli are missing, we have addressed the burden of proof by building an exceedingly strong ‘cable’ of evidence, sometimes circumstantial, but often clearly documented, which proves that Gallipoli was deliberately set up to fail.

The heroic-romantic myth, so integral to the cult of remembrance, has survived, perpetuated by compliant historians and politicians. As the Australian defence analyst and former army officer, James Brown, has written, Gallipoli and the Anzac sacrifice, is like a magic cloak which ‘can be draped over a speech or policy to render it unimpeachable, significant and enduring.’ [8] Norman Mailer pointed out that ‘Myths are tonic to a nation’s heart. Once abused, however, they are poisonous.’

Over the course of the next two months we will deconstruct that myth and lay before you the evidence of the grave crime that was Gallipoli.

[1] Jenny Macleod, Reconsidering Gallipoli, pp. 7-14.
[2] Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War, p. 108.
[3] Harvey Broadbent, Gallipoli: One Great Deception? http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-04-24/30630
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of The First World War, pp 352-3.
[7] Ian Cobain, The Guardian, 18 October 2013.
[8] James Brown, Anzac’s Long Shadow pp. 28-9.

Blockade 10: The Worm Turns

By 1916 a sea change had taken place in Britain. Early public expectation of a quick decisive victory predicated on naval supremacy and a successful blockade had been shattered by its abject failure. Profound disappointment, indeed a sense of disenchantment, followed. The pliant and supportive British press of 1914 began by 1916 to look for reasons why victory seemed as far away as ever. Their focus turned to the naval blockade. Stories which abounded of vessels being released to neutral nations with cargoes of cotton, oil, ores, fish, meat, flour, lard and much more, drew an angry response. The Daily Mail campaigned against the ‘Sham Blockade’ and the Morning Post criticised the ‘Make Believe Blockade’ They carried rumours that Cabinet Ministers would be impeached and Sir Edward Grey was forced to deny the accusations in Parliament. [1]

For as long as the instigators of war held office, they continually lied to parliament about the blockade, its apparent limitations and its effectiveness. Churchill began the era of the First Blockade with his definitive and much publicised speech at the Guildhall on 9 November 1914, where he assured the nation that a naval blockade was in operation and promised that;

‘The economic stringency resulting from a naval blockade requires time to reach its full effectiveness…But wait a bit….and you will begin to see the results – results which will be gradually achieved and silently achieved, but which will spell the doom of Germany as surely as the approaching winter strikes the leaves from the trees.’ [2]

Winston Churchill set the level of expectation. He proclaimed that Germany would be doomed within a year; that the blockade would absolutely bring Germany to her knees. He lied. He lied too in Cabinet on 3 March 1915, claiming that the blockade was ‘in every sense effective: no instance is known to the Admiralty of any vessel, the stopping of which has been authorised by the Foreign Office, passing them unchallenged. It is not a case of a paper blockade, but of a blockade as real and as effective as any that has ever been established’ [3] False but clever semantics. Any vessel stopped by order of the Foreign Office would certainly have been impounded, but not the vast majority that were challenged on the high seas. Churchill deliberately failed to mention what had actually transpired.

The first blockade degenerated into a farce which was described by Sir Henry Dalziel, member of parliament for Kirkcaldy, on 27 March 1917. in the following terms;

‘For the first eighteen month of the war, the Admiralty were in a state of despair with regard to the actions of the Foreign Office. They were bringing in, day after day, ships which were admittedly carrying cargo to the benefit of the enemy. What happened? A telegram was sent to London to the Foreign Office, and in reply, often in the course of a fews hours, a telegram came informing them that they ought to let the ships go through, for some reasons that were no doubt considered satisfactory by the Foreign Office, but which tended to make our sailors absolutely depressed and in despair. It is a fact that for months at a time the officers themselves absolutely refused to take ships into port. They used to send junior officers and midshipmen, who took the ships into harbour, and, treating the matter jocularly, told the Harbour Master to let the ships away in a few hours to Germany. The whole thing was treated as a farce, though ship after ship, to the knowledge of the officers, carried goods for Germany.’ [4]

The first blockade which lasted for two years was a farce, during which Britain was effectively feeding and supplying Germany; effectively prolonging the war. Heads should have rolled. Guilty men ought to have been mercilessly exposed.

Several strong-minded members of parliament pursued that issue relentlessly, even when threats were made to silence them. [5]  On 12 July 1915, Sir Henry Dalziel raised the question of cotton supplies to Germany despite being ‘threatened if I raised the question tonight that I would be counted out, and I understand that great efforts have been made …to secure that object.’ Dalziel would not be silenced: ‘After nearly a year of war we are permitting, practically with our connivance, the most essential factor in the making of high explosives to go to our enemy, and we are assisting them to make munitions that kill our soldiers. … Without the cotton which we are supplying… Germany would have been practically unable to continue the war up to the present time.’ [6]

In the Upper House, Lord Sydenham continued to berate the government’s inaction over the blockade stating bluntly in December 1915 that ‘had Germany not received indispensable commodities of many kinds the war would have been over before this’. [7] Consider the accusations by these eminent men. The First World War could have ended before the winter of 1915. Both are absolutely clear about that. Turning on the stupidity of the agreement made that year between the British government and some Danish importers, Sydenham went further. He berated them for ‘enabling the enemy to prolong the war’ and added that ‘your new Agreement (with Denmark) will help much more than ever for Germany to be fed, the war prolonged, and your blockade made a joke. [8]

In February 1916, when the failure of an effective blockade was lambasted by an outraged Press, Lord Beresford, a former First Sea Lord and highly respected Admiral, stood in the House of Lords and laid bare the fact that had a full blockade of trade with Germany been put in place, rather than the ambiguous and colander like Treaty of London, ‘the war would now have been over’. [9]

The bitter anger against those responsible for the sham blockade became very personal. At the end of the war Brigadier-General Croft, MP for Christchurch, who fought at the Somme and was twice mentioned in dispatches, accused government ministers of lying about ‘the indefensible export of essential and vital foodstuffs during 1915 and the first half of 1916’. [10] Having witnessed the selflessness and bravery of men at the front, he became intolerant of the  opportunism of politicians at home whom he held responsible. [11] Croft wanted blood. He wanted names. He wanted the public to know who had made these decisions. The answer he was given was that no minister was responsible. Incredulously, Croft responded with warranted sarcasm, ‘We fed Germans because no minister was responsible.’ His patience snapped. ‘No minister was responsible during this time, and yet we find millions of tons of produce and raw materials left this country – ore for shells to blow our men to bits with in the trenches, cotton to provide explosives for these shells, and food to feed the Germans who fired those shells.’’ [12] Read these words aloud and feel the anger. Croft accused the government of ‘actually feeding the Germans and helping them to sustain the war at that time.’ The Brigadier-General suggested that Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith and President of the Board of Trade Walter Runciman be impeached. One can only imagine the consternation amongst the Secret Elite and their agents. Naturally nothing of any consequence followed. As ever they deflected accusations, camouflaged the guilty and ignored the question.

Without a doubt, the most important, detailed and accurate information about the failures of the blockade that had been meticulously recorded and forwarded to the government came from the British naval attache in Scandinavia, Captain (later Rear-Admiral) Montegu Consett. His evidence has been amply discussed in previous blogs. Consett had famously said that, ‘Nothing would have hastened the end of the war more effectively than the sinking of ships trading in ore between Sweden and Germany, or by economic pressure brought to bear on the Swedish ore industry’. [13]  Consett’s damning expose, “The Triumph of Unarmed Forces” proved page by page, statistical column by statistical column, that the blockade between 1914-1916 had been a charade; that Britain had effectively allowed Germany to be fed though Denmark, Sweden and Norway and in so doing, had prolonged the war. The Foreign Office sent their chosen man, Sir Arthur Henderson over to Scandinavia in 1915 to evaluate the situation. His subsequent report, which they refused to publish at the time, refuted Consett’s evidence and claimed that, in Sir Edward Grey’s own words, the amount of leakage in the trade was ‘much less than might have been supposed’. Henderson was immediately rewarded with a peerage as Lord Faringdon. [14]

In a dismissive and patronising speech in the House of Commons on 26 January 1916, Sir Edward Grey criticised ‘reckless statements’ and claimed, ‘we are stopping the trade coming out, and we are also stopping the imports; more than that you cannot do. You cannot do more than stop all imports into the enemy country and all exports coming out.’ [15]  He was, yet again, painting an entirely false picture. What nailed the lie was a military analysis prepared in 1916 for the senior staff conference between the British and French commanders.

Their top-secret ‘Note on the Blockade of the North Sea’ was sent to the Committee of Imperial Defence in March 1916. [16] It plainly demonstrated how inept the blockade had been.

‘Germany has been able to continue to export merchandise and securities, and thus obtain money and credits from neutrals. She has even been able to import, at a high price it is true, the provisions and goods of which she stood most urgently in need…the economic struggle has not yet been undertaken; it is of urgent importance, however, that the Governments concerned should adopt the necessary measures without delay’. The adoption of these measures… ‘would certainly have the effect of diminishing the enemy’s power of resistance, and therefore of shortening the war.’ [17]

So there it was, twenty months into the war and still the blockade was not effective. Indeed the allied military staff went so far as to say that the economic measures which would have shortened the war had ‘not yet been undertaken’. Their assessment stood in stark contrast to the lies which were routinely spouted by Grey and other government ministers. The secret Note advised the government to take a harder line on the export of British coal and to extend the list of contraband to all goods and supplies. In fact they wanted to do away with the whole concept of conditional contraband and absorb everything into one prohibited list.

The facts spoke for themselves. The real blockade had yet to be put in place. The outcry became unstoppable. Time and again contemporary writers, members of parliament, top army and naval officers repeated the mantra that war could have been won within eighteen months had there been a real blockade. George Bowles, Conservative M.P. and Admiralty Lawyer, claimed that the conflict would have been over within four and a half months. [18] Others like Lords Sydenham and Beresford estimated that war would have been over in the last months of 1915. But the war was prolonged. Millions of men were sacrificed. Profits grew ever higher. The anguished voices of reason were eventually carried by the Press and forced change. From 1917 until 1919 a very different blockade came into effect, one which we will return to at an appropriate time.

So how did the Secret Elite reconcile history once the war was ended? How did they justify the sham of the blockade? Their normal tactic was to ignore criticism and remove it from official records. Pretend it never happened. Keep it from the public eye and deny it. Most of the official records of the Admiralty, Foreign Office and Board of Trade were removed, presumed destroyed. Some, a century later, might still be locked away in the secret archives at Hanslope Park in Buckinghamshire. [19] Interestingly, even in 2005, The Imperial War Museum’s Book of The War At Sea, 1914-1918, makes no reference whatsoever to the Blockade. [20] Apparently the heroics of 10th Cruiser Squadron out on the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea, their hardships and sacrifice, their honourable and magnificent contribution, had no part to play in the history of the war at sea. Incredible. Unjustifiable, even if the truth has to be whitewashed.

Those who sought to deny the scandal of the first blockade were, however, thwarted by the publication of Rear-Admiral Consett’s damning book “The Triumph of Unarmed Forces”, published in 1923 and subject to the most extraordinary debate in the House of Lords. [21]  Sir Edward Grey, rewarded in 1916 as Viscount Fallodon, the man at the very heart of the sham blockade, attended the debate. He claimed to know nothing about the details revealed in the book save what he had heard that day, but proceeded to argue that the zealous man on the spot knew only one part of a whole picture, while at the centre ‘some mind which can take in much more’ knew all the consequences. Grey went on to state that if the government had taken the action advocated at that time by Admiral Consett, ‘we should certainly have lost the war.’ [22]

This was an utterly incredible statement and without doubt an act of deliberate obfuscation. His defence was that had a blockade been fully implemented in the early stages of the war, ‘Britain would have had such trouble with the United States that it would have been futile to the future of the Allies’. He reiterated the old canard that, had we upset America in the early years of the war, ‘it would have been absolutely fatal’. [23] Fatal to whom? This is nonsense. There were no conditions under which America would have stopped trading with Britain, or taken sides against her. It might have caused some localised trading difficulty in 1914 but a strict blockade would have ended the war very quickly. Had he forgotten too about the Lusitania, sunk in May 1915 by a U-Boat? What chance then of America siding with Germany? None.

But the charade went on. It prolonged the war and extended the profits. When fully implemented in its second phase from 1917-18, it was much more effective in ensuring that Germany was beaten. Unnecessarily and deliberately extended beyond the signing of the Armistice in 1918, it ensured that she was crushed. Not just beaten, crushed. A million more men women and children were to die of starvation in Germany before the blockade was finally lifted. That was an even more shameful episode to which we will return.

[1] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 26 January, 1916.
[2] The Times, 10 November, 1914.
[3] Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, 1915, p. 295.
[4] Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 27 March 1917 vol. 92. cc226-80.
[5] Hansard House of Commons Debate 22 June 1915 vol. 72 cc1094-1131.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Hansard, House of Lords Debate, 20 December 1915.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Hansard House of Lords Debate, 22 February 1916 vol 21 cc72-128.
[10] Hansard House of Commons Debate, 21 March 1918 vol. 104 cc1231-57.
[11] Andrew S. Thompson, ‘Croft, Henry Page, first Baron Croft (1881–1947)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32633]
[12] Hansard House of Commons Debate, 21 March 1918 vol. 104 cc1231-57.
[13] M.W.W.P. Consett, The Triumph of Unarmed Forces (1914-1918), p. 80.
[14]http://archive.org/stream/greatbritainsmea00greyuoft/greatbritainsmea00greyuoft_djvu.txt
[15] Ibid.
[16] Foreign Office 21 March, 1916.  Secret Note on the Blockade of the North Sea, Printed for the Committee of Imperial Defence. G-67.
[17] Ibid.
[18] George W Bowles, The Strength of England, p. 173.
[19] Ian Cobain, The Guardian, 18 October 2013.
[20] Julian Thompson, The Imperial War Museum, Book of The War At Sea, 1914-1918.
[21] Hansard, House of Lords Debate 27 June 1923 vol 54 cc647-54.
[22] Hansard, House of Lords Debate 27 June 1923 vol 54 cc653-54.
[23] Ibid.