Commission For Relief In Belgium 12: Hoover, Servant Not Master

One of the essential skills that the shrewd investor requires is the ability to recognise the moment to sell and move on. The really successful investor has an additional edge; insider information. Herbert Hoover was blessed with well concealed contacts who advised and directed his career paths so that he was guided into safe waters from the storm that would surely follow the closure of the Commission for Relief in Belgium. Towards the end of 1916 Hoover wanted out. For nearly two and a half years he had fronted the international funding for the relief programme and had accrued good impressions upon which he intended to build.

Herbert Hoover could rightly claim to number among his friends, Sir Edward Grey and his acolytes in the British Foreign Office [1] and President Wilson’s special advisor, Colonel Edward Mandel House and Secretary of State Robert Lansing. The Secret Elite on both sides of the Atlantic knew that Hoover had doggedly mastered the successful implementation of Belgian Relief to the advantage of all. His New York office manager, William Honnold told him confidentially that President Wilson intended to create a Relief organisation in America to co-ordinate and collect funds. Hoover instantly saw this as an opportunity for a position within the Wilson government. He confided to an associate in November 1916, ‘I would like to get out of Europe and I would like to get out with dignity’. [2]

In the post-Somme aftermath the war took a desperate turn for Germany. Britain began to apply its naval blockade seriously and Germany struggled through a damagingly poor harvest thanks to their access to Belgian foodstuffs and Romanian grain. In a global context, grain prices continued to rise alarmingly and the Allies found it increasingly onerous to fund relief for Belgium.

Hoover tried to set up a new mode of finance for the CRB which would remove the burden from Britain and France who were financing the Commission with loans from America. The solution was to raise an American loan rather than continuing to channel funds firstly to Britain and France which they then fed into the CRB. J.P. Morgan and his banking associates knew well that the Allies could not continue to support Belgium indefinitely and they advised Hoover to suggest a more direct approach. [3] In December 1916, he confidently reported that: ‘The bankers include Morgans, Guaranty Trust, and all other important groups, who are acting entirely out of good feeling’ were prepared to support the loan. Bankers acting entirely out of good feeling … an oxymoron surely? Hoover then proceeded to advise his men in Europe that the French and Belgian governments should settle the details with Morgan’s bank in London. [4] Clearly it was impossible for J.P. Morgan to advocate a relief loan which his banks could fund through the Federal Reserve System, from which they would make considerable profit, but if the suggestion came from the head of the CRB, it had much more chance of being approved by Congress.

When Hoover set off for America on 13 January 1917 with the clear objective of refocusing his career, the omens for the CRB were not auspicious. The Miners’ Battalion from New South Wales formally requested that their State Relief Fund Committee stop sending money to support Belgian Relief because they could see that the Germans were seizing the food supplies. [5] Apart from New Zealand, the people of New South Wales had contributed more per head of the population than any other state in the world and this was publicly recognised by King Albert of the Belgians. [6] According to one report, Australian soldiers had seen so many instances of relief food going to the German troops that the CRB was asked to return $220,000 of as yet unspent money. [7] Several continents away, Hoover’s men ignored the Australians’ serious and well-founded allegations and produced a ‘barrage’ of positive, fawning articles in the New York Times in recognition of their leader’s achievements. [8]

Herbert Hoover always appeared to be in the right place at the right time. He had been in London at the outbreak of war in 1914, in Berlin with Arthur Zimmermann and the banker Max Warburg in 1915, [9] and in Brussels during Edith Cavell’s trial. [10] Back in Washington on 31 January 1917, he met with President Wilson on the same evening that Germany announced the commencement of its unrestricted submarine warfare. [11] Within three days two CRB ships, the Euphrates and the Lars Cruse carrying 2,300 tons of Maize had been sunk. [12] All Relief shipping was suspended. In the ensuing rush to safe harbour two CRB ships made it to Rotterdam, a further two were torpedoed, and the remainder sought refuge in British ports

The British government declared that it would be ‘a crime on their part’ to allow cargoes of foodstuffs, which were needed immediately in Britain, to be put at risk from German torpedoes and duly ordered that the food be unloaded. [13] Twenty-five thousand tons of merchandise purchased in Britain was instantly held back. Forty-five thousand tons of foodstuffs was ‘unavoidably’ detained and a further forty thousand tons already on the high seas destined for Belgium was ordered into British ports. [14] Allegedly the food was to be held in storage, though not indefinitely, until the Germans gave cast-iron guarantees of their safe transportation. [15] At a stroke, one hundred thousand tons of food was lost to Belgium and sold to, or requisitioned by Britain. [16]

Hoover was faced with an immediate personal dilemma. What would the consequences be for him if he disbanded the CRB? His distrust of Francqui and the CNSA was profound. He sent an urgent cable to London: ‘I wish to make it absolutely clear: the CRB must be liquidated and disappear’, except as a purely benevolent soliciting agency in the USA. ‘The whole of the files must be transferred to New York’. [17] He insisted that a definitive break had to be made if relief was to continue, that the separation had to involve the complete ‘dissolution’ of the original CRB, and that he would ‘positively refuse’ to surrender its money, its organisation or its ships, on any other terms. [18] Who did he think he was? On his instruction alone, the international relief programme was to be liquidated. All the files had to be gathered together and sent to New York. What motivated Herbert Hoover was self-preservation. To hell with Belgian Relief; so much for the starving poor. This was the action of an endangered dictator whose first thought was to close down the operation and remove all evidence of wrong-doing. What caused this panic? Did he suddenly realise that if someone else took charge, the CRB’s true purpose would be unmasked?

That same evening he attended a special dinner in the Astor Hotel in New York as chief guest of five hundred of the State’s most prominent citizens. Though not an official Pilgrims Society meeting, it boasted all the trappings of the elite. In the full knowledge of his absolute instructions to London, the speech he apparently improvised was cynically disingenuous: ‘If we must retire … then other neutrals must take up this work. The world cannot stand by and witness the starvation of the Belgian people and the Belgian children … the obligation of the American people towards Belgium continues.’ He stood on the platform of the Astor Hotel and delivered these words, having just ordered that the whole programme be liquidated. His gall knew no bounds. In justifying what had taken place he declared that ‘the German army has never eaten one tenth of one per cent of the food provided. The Allied governments would never have supplied us with $200,000,000 if we were supplying the German army’. [19] The assembled elite audience swallowed every syllable of the lie.

We do not know what pressure was brought to bear on him, but next morning Hoover sent a second urgent cable to London to stop the liquidation. Everyone was instructed to stay at their posts. Hoover had erred. The ‘great humanitarian’ had over-recached himself. He was answerable to a higher authority. The Secret Elite would decide if and when the CRB and the feeding of Germany would come to an end.

Herbert Hoover found it difficult to stomach the fact that the CRB was not his to dissolve. In Brussels, Brand Whitlock, the head of the American Legation, wanted to leave the relief programme intact under the control of the Spanish and Belgian agencies. Hoover, who passionately disliked and distrusted Francqui and the CNSA, advocated a Dutch takeover. The confusion continued with a flurry of instructions to Brand Whitlock and the CRB office in Brussels, but on 5 March 1917 Hoover wrote a long and confidential letter to Vernon Kellogg in Belgium which betrayed his real objective. A full month before America declared war on Germany, Hoover primed his key men in Belgium for the eventuality. They were instructed to ‘do nothing to create the impression that he [Hoover] was running away from the Relief.’ He had clearly been briefed by the Secret Elite to adopt their basic tactic of making sure that the blame would be pinned on Germany, or the State Department if it ordered the Americans to leave. If the CRB was ‘compelled to abandon its mission’, Hoover instructed that it was to be ‘absolutely’ liquidated as a business and released from all financial obligations. [20]

When this instruction reached Brussels, Whitlock believed that ‘Hoover must be losing his head’. [21] He raged that though Hoover was three thousand miles away, he thought that he knew better than the men on the ground in Belgium, and ‘was able to impose his brutal will on the [State] Department.’ [22] To an extent he was. Hoover had cultivated his friendship with the President’s Advisor, Edward Mandel House, another Secret Elite agent close to the Morgan banking influence. Furthermore, Hugh Gibson, his strongest ally in every way, had been dispatched from the American Embassy in London to the State Department in Washington. Once again his trusted right hand man was employed where Hoover wanted him; at the heart of American foreign policy.

And so it came to pass as they ordained. On 23 March, three CRB ships were sunk, and the US State Department ordered Brand Whitlock and all American members of the CRB to withdraw from Belgium. [23] When the diplomatic staff departed on 2 April, Prentiss Grey and three CRB accountants were left behind ‘to close the books’ and train up their successors. [24] Hoover himself dealt with the business end of his London office. Euphemistically, his purpose was to wrap up the loose ends. The wrap-up became a full-blown disposal of incriminating evidence.

On 6 April, 1917, America declared war on Germany.

A solution was found for the CRB, one which Hoover could still control yet took him out of the direct firing line. He (more probably his Anglo-American patrons) proposed the establishment of a ‘Comite Neutre de Protection et Secours’ under the high patronage of the King of Spain and the Queen of Holland, and the immediate patronage of the Ambassadors and ministers of Spain and Holland. They were to provide the guarantees formerly undertaken by the Americans. The Commission for Relief in Belgium proposed to continue its financial control over the purchasing and shipping of food and the supplies would be turned over to the CNSA in Belgium and Comite Francais in the north of France. [25] Hoover, again reversing all that he had originally proposed, decided to remain as overall chairman of the Commission.

Make no mistake, the provisioning of Germany continued. In his half yearly report to Berlin from February to July, 1917, Baron von der Lancken wrote: ‘we have continued successfully to export to Germany, or distribute to our troops, appreciable quantities of food. Certain parts of the agreement have been voluntarily exploited [by the Belgians]. The advantages which Germany accrues through the relief work continues to grow.’ [26]

In May 1917, America agreed to appropriate $75,000,000 to support the revised Commission. Although credited to the British and French governments, the funds were to be spent, as before, by the CRB. The only matter to which Congress would not give its approval was a $2,000,000 gift which Hoover requested to cover his administrative expenses. [27] He knew no shame. In formally withdrawing his request, Hoover cited the alternative solution to cover his costs. ‘As we have been compelled to resell a large quantity of foodstuffs bought but which we were unable to ship due to the suspension of our operations for a period at the outset of the submarine war, we have made a considerable profit on these goods against which we can debit the Commission’s overhead costs …’ [28] In other words, when Congress refused to pay for his administrative costs, he used the money from the sale of foodstuffs earmarked for the ‘starving poor’ of Belgium. So much for charitable giving.

Does anyone still think that the Commission for Relief in Belgium was anything other than a convenient front to prolong the agony of war while the racketeers made their fortunes?

Herbert Hoover was appointed Food Commissioner for the United States by President Wilson in May 1917, [29] ‘fresh from his triumph on the Belgian Relief Committee’. [30] It was but another step in his corrupt ascent to the 31st Presidency of the United States of America.

[1] George H. Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, The Humanitarian, 1914-1917, p. 298.
[2] Ibid., p. 300.
[3] George I. Gay and H.H. Fisher, Public Relations for the Commission for Relief in Belgium, Document 158, p. 278.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Hawara and Normanby Star, Vol. LXXII, 6 January, 1917, p. 4.
[6] Sydney Morning Herald, 20 February, 1934 in the obituary for William A Holman, President of the New South Wales Belgian Relief Fund.
[7] John Hamill, The Strange Career of Mr Hoover Under Two Flags, p. 348.
[8] Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 311.
[9] Gay and Fisher, Public Relations for the Commission for Relief in Belgium, Documents 134 -137, pp. 241-248.
[10] Brand Whitlock, Letters and Journals, 9 October 1915. http://www.ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/Whitlock/bwTC.html
[11] Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 312.
[12] Gay and Fisher, Public Relations for the Commission for Relief in Belgium, Document 240, p. 361.
[13] Ibid., p. 354.
[14] The Times, 17 March, 1917, p. 8.
[15] Sir Maurice de Bunsen statement to the Associated Press, New York Times, 6 March 1917.
[16] Hamill, The Strange Career, p. 348.
[17] Hoover cable 93 to CRB-London office, 13 February 1917.
[18] Nash,The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 320.
[19] New York Times, 14, February, 1917.
[20] Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 326.
[21] Whitlock, Letters and Journals, 4 March, 1917.
[22] Ibid., 13 March, 1917.
[23] Tracy Barrett Kittredge, The History of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, 1914-1917, primary source edition, p. 418.
[24] Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 339.
[25] Kittredge, The History of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, pp. 435-442.
[26] Michael Amara et Hubert Roland, Gouverner En Belgique Occupee, p. 298.
[27] Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 358.
[28] Gay and Fisher, Document 168, p. 286.
[29] New York Times, 4 May, 1917.
[30] The Times, 20 July, 1917, p. 5.

Gallipoli 19: Anzac Day; Perpetuating The Myth

In 1916, when the British government set up the Dardanelles Commission, they turned first to the most important member of the Secret Elite, Viscount Alfred Milner. Prime Minister Asquith and conservative leader, Bonar Law, both asked him to be its chairman, [1]  but Milner turned the offer down in favour of more immediate work with Lord Robert Cecil at the Foreign Office. [2] Anyone could supervise a whitewash. Alfred Milner’s influence want well beyond that of a commission chairman and he could ensure the conclusion without the need for his personal involvement. They turned to another friend and associate of the Secret Elite, Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer, who accepted the position knowing full well that ‘it will kill me’. [3] And kill him it did. He died in January 1917 and was replaced by Sir William Pickford.

Others volunteered willingly. The position of Secretary to the Commission was taken by barrister Edward Grimwood Mears, who agreed to the post provided he was awarded a knighthood. [4] He had previously served on the Bryce Committee which falsified reports and generated volumes of lies about the extent of German atrocities in Belgium. [5] The British Establishment trusted Mears as a reliable placeman. Maurice Hankey, Cabinet Secretary and inner-circle member of the Secret Elite [6] ‘organised’ the evidence which politicians presented to the Commission. He rehearsed Lord Fisher’s evidence, and coached Sir Edward Grey, Herbert Asquith and Lord Haldane. [7] Asquith insisted that War Council minutes be withheld and thus managed to cover up his own support for the campaign. Churchill and Sir Ian Hamilton collaborated on their evidence and planned to blame the disaster on Lord Kitchener. [8] Unfortunately for them, that strategy sank in the cold North Sea when Kitchener was drowned off the coast of Orkney in 1916, and was henceforth confirmed for all time as a great national hero; an untouchable.

Churchill informed the Commission that Vice-Admiral Sackville-Carden’s telegram (in which he set out a ‘plan’ for a naval attack) was the most crucial document of all, [9] but there is no acknowledgement in the Commission’s findings that Churchill had duped Carden into producing a ‘plan’ or had lied when telling him that his ‘plan’ had the overwhelming support of ‘people in high authority.’ [10] Every senior member of the Admiralty had advised Churchill that a naval attack on its own would fail, but he made no reference to that and scapegoated the ineffective Carden. General Hamilton conveniently added that the only instructions he had received from Kitchener before his departure was that ‘we soldiers were clearly to understand that we were string number two. The sailors said they could force the Dardanelles on their own, and we were not to chip in unless the Admiral definitely chucked up the sponge.’ [11]

Criticisms in the Commission’s interim report in March 1917 were ‘muted and smudged’. The War Council should have sought more advice from naval experts; the expedition had not succeeded but ‘certain important political advantages’ had been secured. In the final report, delayed until the peace of 1919, criticism was again polite, bland and vague. ‘The authorities in London had not grasped the true nature of the conflict’ and ‘the plan for the August offensive was impractical.’ [12] Stopford received a mild reprimand. Major-General De Lisle suggested that politicians were trying to pin the blame on the soldiers. The Commission ostensibly investigated the campaign’s failings, but effectively suppressed criticism, concealed the truth and neither wholly blamed nor vindicated those involved.

Far more important than covering up individual culpability, the greatest fear of the London cabal was that, should the report come close to the truth, it would irrevocably damage imperial unity. Gallipoli had served to lock Australia more firmly into the British Imperial embrace. Before the final report was published, Hamilton warned Churchill that it had the potential to break up the Empire if it ‘does anything to shatter the belief still confidently clung to in the Antipodes, that the expedition was worth while, and that ‘the Boys’ did die to a great end and were so handled as to be able to sell their lives very dearly. …If the people of Australia and New Zealand feel their sacrifices went for nothing, then never expect them again to have any sort of truck with our superior direction in preparations for future wars.’ [13] This was the crux of the matter, even in 1919. The truth would threaten the unity of the Empire, run contrary to the Anzac mythology and expose the lies that official histories were presenting as fact. Prior to the final report, Hamilton wrote again to Churchill that the Commission’s chairman, Sir William Pickford, should be warned about the imperial issues at stake. He, Churchill, should ‘put all his weight on the side of toning down any reflections which may have been made.’ [14] In other words, it had to be a whitewash. The warning was heeded. The following year, Pickford was raised to the peerage as Baron Sterndale. It was ever thus for those who served the Secret Elite.

The truth about Gallipoli was buried and pliant historians have ensured that it stayed that way for nearly a century.

Surely a whitewash was impossible given that the Dardanelles Commission included Andrew Fisher, former Australian Prime Minister and then High Commissioner in London? But he too had bought into the big lie and made no attempt to question or refute its conclusions.

According to historian Les Carlyon, the Australian government did not welcome an inquiry into the disaster because ‘the Anzac legend had taken hold and Australia didn’t want officialdom spoiling the poetry.’ [15] The ‘poetry’, the ‘heroic-romantic’ myth, was created in the first instance by writers such as Charles Bean, Henry Nevison and John Masefield who glorified the Anzac sacrifice within the myth of Gallipoli. [16] Masefield’s effusive cover-up stated, ‘I began to consider the Dardanelles Campaign, not as a tragedy, nor a mistake, but as a great human effort, which came more than once, very near to triumph …That the effort failed is not against it; much that is most splendid in military history failed, many great things and noble men have failed. …This failure is the second grand event of the war; the first was Belgium’s answer to the German ultimatum.’ [17] Of Suvla Bay, where thousands died from thirst and dehydration, Masefield made the astonishing assertion: ‘The water supply of that far battlefield, indifferent as it was, at the best, was a triumph of resolve and skill unequalled yet in war.’ [18] This British apologist and purveyor of nauseating historical misrepresentation was rewarded with gushing praise from Lord Esher, member of the Secret Elite’s inner-core, together with a Doctorate of Literature by Oxford University, the Order of Merit by King George V and the prestigious post of Poet Laureate.

The British, French and Anzac troops who perished at Gallipoli are portrayed by mainstream historians as heroes who died fighting to protect democracy and freedom, not as ordinary young men duped by a great lie. Barely mentioned are the quarter million dead or maimed Ottoman soldiers who defended Gallipoli and the sovereignty and freedom of their homeland against aggressive, foreign invaders. The myths and lies that saturate the Gallipoli campaign are particularly prevalent in the Antipodes. ‘No-one could pass through the Australian education system without becoming aware of Gallipoli, but few students realise that the Anzacs were the invaders. Even after all these years, the Anzac legend, like all legends, is highly selective in what it presents as history.’ [19] And it is a well preserved and repeatedly inaccurate account that is force-fed to these impressionable youngsters.

Commemoration should respectfully educate people about what really happened at Gallipoli, but strategic analyst and former Australian Defence Force officer James Brown writes angrily about a cycle of jingoistic commemoration rather than quiet contemplation, with individuals, groups and organisations cashing in on Anzac Day. ‘A century after the war to end all wars, Anzac is being bottled, stamped and sold. …the Anzac industry has gone into hyperdrive. …What started as a simple ceremony is now an enormous commercial enterprise. …Australians are racing to outdo one another with bigger, better, grander and more intricate forms of remembrance.’ Even the Australian War Memorial has devised an official “Anzac Centenary Merchandising Plan” to capitalise on “the spirit.”’ [20] The myth has been rebranded to mask the pain of the awful reality of Gallipoli. The emaciated, dehydrated victims have been turned into the bronzed heroes of Greek mythology.

A number of Australian historians remain deeply concerned about the relentless militarisation of Australian history, and how the commemoration of Gallipoli has been conflated with a mythology of white Australia’s creation and the ‘manly character’ of its citizens. That mythology is submerging the terrible truth about why so many were sacrificed and has become so powerful and pervasive that to challenge it risks the charge of inexcusable disrespect for the dead. ‘To be accused of being “anti-Anzac” in Australia today is to be charged with the most grievous offence.’ [21] A few brave historians have dared to voice their deep disquiet.

Professors Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds believe that Australian history has been ‘thoroughly militarised’, and their aim is ‘to encourage a more critical and truthful public debate about the uses of the Anzac myth.’ Dissent, they say, is rarely tolerated and ‘to write about what’s wrong with Anzac today is to court the charge of treason.’ Anzac Day has ‘long since ceased to be a day of solemn remembrance and become a festive event, celebrated by backpackers wrapped in flags, playing rock music, drinking beer and proclaiming their national identity on the distant shores of Turkey.’ [22] Their forefathers were duped into volunteering a century before at a cost they never foresaw. It is clear that many of those young Australians who travel en-masse to the shores of Gallipoli every April have also been duped. Should there not be a moral outrage against these obscene celebrations; a moral outrage that these young people have been so misled by the Gallipoli myth that the irony of guzzling beer on the shores where their forefathers died from thirst and dehydration is lost on them.?

Professor Lake revealed that after a radio broadcast, she was subjected to personal abuse and accusations of disloyalty. Harvey Broadbent, another Australian historian who questions the myth, has also been subject to similar comments by some fellow Gallipoli historians that ‘has come uncomfortably close to abuse.’ Like us, Broadbent proposes 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.’ [23] Exactly. Their aim was to keep Russia in the war but out of Constantinople. And they succeeded, but at a terrible cost.

The heroic-romantic myth, so integral to the cult of remembrance, has survived, perpetuated by compliant historians and politicians. As 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.’ [24] Norman Mailer pointed out that ‘Myths are tonic to a nation’s heart. Once abused, however, they are poisonous.’

Gallipoli was a lie within the lie that was the First World War, and peddling commemoration mythology as truth is an insult to the memory of those brave young men who were sacrificed on the merciless shores of a foreign country. The Australian government is outspending Britain on commemoration of the First World War by more than 200 per cent, and commemorating the Anzac centenary might cost as much as two-thirds of a billion dollars. Just as in Britain, the Government of Australia seeks to be the the guardian of public memory, choreographing commemoration into celebration. [25] Nothing attracts politicians more than being photographed, wrapped in the national flag, outbidding each other in their public display of patriotism.

These hypocrites ritually condemn war while their rhetoric gestures in the opposite direction. [26] The War Memorial in Sydney’s Hyde Park proudly exhorts, ‘Let Silent Contemplation Be Your Offering’, yet the deafening prattle of political expediency mocks the valiant dead with empty words and lies. Don’t be fooled.

Those young men died at Gallipoli not for ‘freedom’ or ‘civilisation’, but for the imperial dreams of the wealthy manipulators who controlled the British Empire. They died horribly, deceived, expendable, and in the eyes of the power-brokers, the detritus of strategic necessity.

Please remember that when you remember them.

[1] Milner Papers, Bonar Law to Milner, 25 July 1916.
[2] A M Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, pp. 350-1.
[3] Roger Owen, Lord Cromer: Victorian Imperialist, Edwardian Proconsul, pp. 388-9.
[4] Jenny Macleod, Reconsidering Gallipoli, p. 27.
[5] see previous blog;  The Bryce Report…Whatever Happened To the Evidence? 10 September 2014.
[6] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 313.
[7]  Stephen Roskill, Hankey, p. 294.
[8] Macleod, Reconsidering Gallipoli, pp. 28-9.
[9] Martin Gilbert, Winston S Churchill, p. 248.
[10] Alan Moorehead, Gallipoli, p. 40.
[11] Martin Gilbert, Winston S Churchill, p. 347.
[12] L A Carlyon, Gallipoli  p. 646.
[13] Macleod, Reconsidering Gallipoli, p. 33. [14] Ibid. [15] L A Carlyon, Gallipoli, pp. 645-7.
[16] Macleod, Reconsidering Gallipoli, p. 4.
[17] John Masefield, Gallipoli p. 2.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Kevin Fewster, Vecihi Bagram, Hatice Bagram, Gallipoli, The Turkish Story, pp. 10-11.
[20] James Brown, Anzac’s long Shadow, The Cost of Our National Obsession, pp. 17-20. [21] Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, What’s Wrong with Anzac? The Militarisation of Australian History, p. xxi.
[22] Ibid., pp. vii-viii.
[23] Harvey Broadbent, Gallipoli, One Great Deception? http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-04-24/30630
[24] James Brown, Anzac’s Long Shadow, p 29.
[25] Ibid., pp. 19-22.
[26] Lake and Reynolds, What’s Wrong With Anzac?, p. 8.

Gallipoli 18: Keith Murdoch And The Great Witch-Hunt

Popular wisdom and official histories would have us believe that Sir Ian Hamilton’s career and the Dardanelles offensive were brought to an end by an unknown junior Australian journalist, Keith Murdoch. [1] In Australia, his role has been given iconic status amongst the myths surrounding Gallipoli, but as we have detailed in the previous blog, the decision to remove Hamilton had already been taken on the recommendation of Maurice Hankey, aided and abetted by Major Guy Dawnay. The intervention of Keith Murdoch did play a vitally important role in that it deflected attention away from Hankey and the Secret Elite, making it appear that the truth about the Gallipoli disaster was suddenly exposed by a tenacious journalist. As Alan Moorehead observed in his masterly history, Murdoch’s ‘entry into the explosive scene is one of the oddest incidents in the Gallipoli campaign.’ [2]

So who was Keith Murdoch and how was he able to gain access to the heart of the British Establishment? A Son of the Manse, his father was a Scottish Presbyterian Minister who had emigrated to Melbourne in 1884. Murdoch sought a career in journalism but was handicapped by a serious speech defect. He went to London in 1908 in an attempt to break into Fleet Street and have his impediment cured, but unlike any other young aspirant newspaperman he had ‘ a sheaf of introductions’ from the Australian Prime Minister, Alfred Deakin. [3] One year earlier, Deakin had attended the Colonial Conference in London and was befriended by Alfred Milner with whom he formed a close bond. [4] Milner was the acknowledged leader of the Secret Elite and the most influential spokesman on Imperial affairs. Given his own journalistic connections, Alfred Milner would have been a natural contact to advance the young Murdoch’s career. On his return to Australia in November 1909, Keith Murdoch became Commonwealth parliamentary reporter for the Sydney Evening Sun and was soon in close contact with Deakin’s successor as Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher, and other leading Labour Party Ministers. He helped found the Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA) in 1910 and was totally sympathetic to the developing ideas of Milner and his Round Table associates. [5]

Murdoch had sought the position of Australian Press War Correspondent but was beaten into second place in the AJA election by Charles Bean who later became the official Australian War Historian. Disappointed by this failure, Murdoch sought new horizons, and was ‘told privately’ that a job associated with The Times in London was his if he wanted it. [6] The 29 year-old, left Melbourne again on 13 July 1915 to become editor of the United Cable Service at The Times offices in London.

Official accounts relate that he was asked by the Australian government to break his journey at Egypt in order to enquire into complaints about delays in soldiers’ mail. It was odd that for such a unremarkable task, Murdoch carried letters of introduction from both the Australian Prime Minister (Andrew Fisher) and Minister of Defence (George Pearce). The Prime Minister’s letter specifically stated that ‘Mr. Murdoch is also undertaking certain enquires for the Government of the Commonwealth in the Mediterranean theatre of war.’ [7] How peculiar. A journalist had been asked to conduct an investigation on behalf of his government rather than his employers. There were many Australians at Gallipoli who could have undertaken such a mundane inquiry, which begs the question of Murdoch’s real purpose. What was he sent out to do? What were his private instructions from the Australian government?

On arriving at Cairo in mid- August, he wrote to Sir Ian Hamilton and was duly given permission to visit  Gallipoli and speak to the Australian troops. Hamilton somewhat gullibly wrote in his diary that Murdoch ‘seems a sensible man’ [8] but wondered why his duty to Australia could be better executed with a pen than with a rifle. [9] Keith Murdoch spent four days there and met Charles Bean and two other Australian Journalists. Given that there were at least three other independent Australian journalists already there, why was Murdoch given his rather bizarre task of investigating mail? More pertinent to all that followed, he held confidential meetings with Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, the British war correspondent. According to Murdoch’s biographer, Desmond Zwar, Ashmead-Bartlett was disgusted by Hamilton’s handling of the campaign and asked Murdoch if he would take a sealed letter addressed to Prime Minister Asquith and post it when he arrived in London. [10] Ashmead-Bartlett, on the other hand, related a different story. According to his recollections, Murdoch, fearful of the impact on Australian morale of a winter campaign, ‘begged’ him to write a letter to the authorities which he would carry uncensored to London. Ashmead-Barlett coached Murdoch on what to say when he reached England, ‘but he wants something definite under my own signature.’ [11] Why did Murdoch need a signed statement, and what had any of this to do with the mail?

On 8 September Ashmead-Bartlett agreed to write a letter to Asquith informing him of the true state of affairs at Gallipoli. Men had been sacrificed in impossible conditions. No adequate steps had been taken to keep them supplied with water. ‘In consequence many of these unfortunate volunteers went three days in very hot weather on one bottle of water, and yet were expected to advance carrying heavy loads, and to storm strong positions.’ Within four weeks, nearly fifty thousand men were killed, wounded or missing. The Army was in a deplorable condition and the men thoroughly dispirited. ‘The muddles and mismanagement beat anything that has ever occurred in our military history… At present the Army is incapable of a further offensive… I am convinced the troops could be withdrawn under cover of the warships without much loss… We have not yet gained a single acre of ground of any strategical value.’ [12] This was not news to the British Cabinet or War Office, for Hankey and Dawnay had already revealed the full extent of the disaster.

When Murdoch reached Marseilles he was met by a British intelligence officer with an escort of British troops and French gendarmes and ordered to hand over Ashmead-Bartlett’s letter. [13] It has been suggested that another journalist, Henry Nevison, was eaves-dropping during their private conversation and betrayed them to the authorities, but to this day no convincing explanation has been forthcoming as to how British Intelligence learned of the letter. Murdoch arrived in London on 21 September, made his way directly to the offices of  The Times, and began typing up a report for his own Prime Minster which was highly critical of Sir Ian Hamilton. [14] His first contact just happened to be The Times editor, Geoffrey Dawson, a man at the inner-core of the Secret Elite. [15] According to the Australian historian, Les Carlyon, Murdoch ‘might just as well have been walking around with the sign ‘Pawn’ on his back. Powerful men who wanted Britain out of the Dardanelles, would push him all around the board’. [16] While Carlyon is correct about the powerful men behind the scenes, was Murdoch simply an unwitting pawn or had he already bought into their witch-hunt against Hamilton?

Over the following days Keith Murdoch met with numerous individuals who had been responsible for initiating the Gallipoli disaster including Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, Lord Kitchener, Sir Edward Carson and Winston Churchill.

In an accompanying letter to Asquith, Murdoch criticised Hamilton and the General Staff for ‘disastrous underestimations and stubbornly resisting in the face of hopeless schemes’ and ‘gross wrongdoings’. [17] No mention was made of Hamilton being starved of the men and munitions needed to successfully undertake the campaign or the countless requests that Kitchener studiously ignored. Without checking the accuracy of Murdoch’s accusations, or giving Hamilton a chance to respond, Asquith had them printed on Committee of Imperial Defence stationary and distributed to the Cabinet. [18] Consider the implications. Members of the Cabinet were formally issued with Murdoch’s unsubstantiated report to his own Prime Minister in Australia, as if it was an official British Government document. Was this not fraud?

Murdoch may well have played the role of willing pawn in the Secret Elite’s grand game, but one fact remains irrefutable. From 1915 onwards he was intimately connected to the most powerful men in the British Empire; men who valued his contribution and whose values he shared.

Meantime, Ashmead-Bartlett had been ordered home by General Hamilton, and on his arrival in London immediately met with Lord Northcliffe, another powerful figure closely associated with the Secret Elite. [19]  ‘The snowball was now gathering momentum.’ [20] The witch-hunt continued. He told Ashmead-Bartlett  that a great responsibility rested on his shoulders to inform the government, and the country, of the true state of affairs at Gallipoli.  [21]

On 11 October 1915 Bulgaria entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, and a direct route was opened between Germany and Turkey. It was time to get out. Three days later in the House of Lords, Lord Alfred Milner gave his blessing to a withdrawal from Gallipoli: ‘To speak quite frankly, I should have thought that whatever evils had resulted from the disastrous developments in the Balkans there was at least this advantage, that it might have given us an opportunity which may never recur of withdrawing from an enterprise the successful completion of which is now hopeless.’ [22] Milner had spoken. That very night the Dardanelles Committee decided to recall General Hamilton because ‘he had lost the confidence of his troops,’ [23] Hands were reaching down to push him under the water [24] and ’Kitchener was asked to do the drowning.'[25]

On 17 October the chief scapegoat boarded HMS Chatham to begin the long journey home. He was replaced by General Sir Charles Monro who almost immediately recommended evacuation. When Hamilton returned to England he received a very cold reception and people ‘cut’ him and his wife in the street. [26] The Secret Elite made a spectacular gesture in recalling Hamilton and ensuring through their pawns, Murdoch and Ashamed Bartlett, that his career was over. He was dubbed the man responsible for the disaster; responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of men. In truth, no one could have succeeded at Gallipoli under the conditions that Kitchener and the rest of the cabal imposed. But remember, the plan was set to fail. Constantinople could not be given to the Russians.

In the event, the nightmare was not yet over. Kitchener went in person to Gallipoli in early November and saw for the first time the impossibility of the task. He advised General Birdwood that ‘quietly and secretly’ a scheme should be devised to withdraw the allied forces. [27] On 23 November the War Committee officially decided to evacuate the whole peninsula on military grounds. Three days later the troops, who were still without winter kit, were faced with hurricane force winds and the heaviest rainfall and blizzards to hit the Dardanelles in forty years. Sentries froze to death still clutching their rifles, and five thousand men suffered frostbite. Flood water filled the Allied trenches carrying the rotting corpses of pack horses and Turkish soldiers washed out from their shallow graves. Two hundred British troops drowned. ‘Survivors could think of nothing but getting away from that accursed place.’ [28] On 12 December the men at Suvla and Anzac were told for the first time that they were being taken off. By 9 January the last man stepped safely onto a boat at Helles.

Questions remain unanswered about how the withdrawal was completed without a single casualty.

[1] Denis Winter, Haig’s Command, A Reassessment, p. 291.
[2] Alan Moorehead, Gallipoli, p. 305.
[3] http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/murdoch-sir-keith-arthur-7693%5D
[4] A M Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, pp. 136-7.
[5] The Round Table was the name given to Milner’s organisation which promoted imperial ideals and aimed to influence the Dominions and other territories.
[6] Desmond Zwar, In Search of Keith Murdoch, p. 20.
[7] Ibid., p. 22.
[8] Sir Ian Hamilton, Gallipoli Diary Vol. II, 2 September, 1915.
[9] Zwar, In Search of Keith Murdoch, p. 25.
[10] Ibid., p. 28.
[11] Ellis Ashmead-Barlett, The Uncensored Dardanelles, p. 239.
[12] Ibid., pp. 240-243.
[13] Moorehead, Gallipoli, p. 309.
[14] Travers, Gallipoli, p. 274.
[15] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 312.
[16] Carlyon, Gallipoli, p. 599.
[17] Harvey Broadbent, Gallipoli, The Fatal Shore, p. 246.
[18] Carlyon, Gallipoli, p. 496.
[19] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, pp. 146-7.
[20] Zwar, In Search of Keith Murdoch, pp. 40-41.
[21] Ellis Ashmead-Barlett, The Uncensored Dardanelles, pp. 254-5.
[22] Hansard, House of Lords Debate 14 October 1915 vol 19 cc1045-62.
[23] Travers, Gallipoli, p. 275.
[24] Carlyon, Gallipoli, p. 502.
[25] Ibid., p. 503.
[26] Ibid., 504.
[27] Ibid., p. 619.
[28] Moorehead, Gallipoli, p. 327.

Gallipoli 15: What Do I Care About Casualties?

The docks at Alexandria were crammed with vessels of every type from Ocean liners to Thames tugs. Emptying and repacking badly loaded ships went on round the clock. Ensconced in the Metropole Hotel, General Hamilton and his staff considered their options, and decided to take the southern part of the Gallipoli Peninsula in a coup de main. That is, an attack that relies on speed and surprise to attain its objectives. It was a sick joke. The element of ‘surprise’ had long gone. The Turks had been given five weeks warning and gifted a considerable amount of detailed information on Hamilton’s plan through unrestricted articles in the Egyptian Gazette. [1] Instructed by their German advisors, they trained, practised and created stronger and deeper positions with new banks of barbed wire, freshly dug trenches and underwater obstacles at possible landing sights. With every day’s delay the difficulty of the task and the impregnability of the peninsula increased. The military force should have been sent out and made ready before the naval attack began, but it had been ‘hopelessly botched up from the start and was bound to fail’. [2] Remember that phrase; bound to fail.

Serving under Hamilton as divisional commanders were Lieutenant-General Sir William Birdwood, an English officer who had overseen Anzac training alongside the pyramids in Egypt, Hunter-Weston of the 29th Division and Sir Archibald Paris of the Royal Naval Division. All three disliked Hamilton’s scheme, and Birdwood’s chief-of-staff, Brigadier-General Harold Walker, was absolutely ‘appalled’ by it. His military instincts were first class. General d’Amade, the man who divulged Gallipoli plans to the press, was Divisional commander of the 20,000 French troops. Before leaving Alexandria for Lemnos on 8 April, Hamilton wrote to Kitchener that his commanders could now see all the difficulties with ‘extraordinary perspicacity’ and ‘would each apparently a thousand times sooner do anything else except what we are going to do.’ He later added, ‘The truth is, every one of these fellows agrees in his heart … that the landing is impossible.’ [3] Despite this, Hamilton and his divisional commanders proceeded as instructed. It was ‘impossible’, but they did not insist it should be cancelled. Nor did Kitchener. As ever, what good sense these men possessed lost out to their obsequious obedience to the ruling class masters. And, as ever, tens of thousands of young men were sacrificed to the will of the elite.

By 20 April more than 200 ships were crammed into Mudros harbour, waiting to take the troops to Gallipoli in a multi-pronged attack. Many of the troops advanced in transport ships to within 3 kilometres of the peninsula. Then, in complete silence and total darkness, they descended wooden ladders into rowing boats, roped together in chains of four. Each chain was towed by a launch to within fifty to a hundred metres of the shore, cast off, and rowed by naval ratings as close to the beach as possible. The first heavily laden troops were timed to land just as dawn broke.

British troops were destined for five different beaches, labelled through S to X, around the toe of the peninsula at Helles. Additionally at V Beach an old coal boat, the SS River Clyde, which had been adapted to carry 2,000 troops in her hold, ran straight up onto the beach in front of the old fort at Sedd-el-Bahr. The modern day Trojan horse had been modified to disgorge troops rapidly through sally-ports cut in the hull. Some 25 kilometres further along the western shore at Z Beach near Ari Burnu, the Anzacs would land from rowing boats. Across the Dardanelles, at Besika Bay and Kum Kale, the French division would make a diversionary feint in an attempt to confuse the Turks. As the days passed on Lemnos, the majority of the invading force lived on the transport vessels, but constantly trained ashore or rehearsed rapid, silent transfers down the sides of the ships into rowing boats. The landing was scheduled for 23 April when the moon would wane leaving a pitch black night, but bad weather delayed it.

Between 23 and 24 April, 62,442 troops were transported to the Gallipoli Peninsula on 67 transport ships supported by an armada of warships, destroyers, and associated smaller craft. On V Beach at Helles at 06.22 on 25 April, the River Clyde nosed in and grounded herself. The sally-port doors swung open and the first men from the Munster Fusiliers and the Hampshire Regiment ran out into concentrated gunfire. ‘In seconds the gangways were blocked with dead and wounded whose blood stained red the water around the ship.’ [4] The beach, about 300 metres long and 8 metres wide, was strongly defended with three lines of wire entanglement running across the grass banks. Machine guns and pom-poms were concealed within the walls of the old fort and on the steep cliffs just to the west of it. Turkish infantry commanded the entire beach from the front and both sides. A few of what Hamilton referred to as ‘the forlorn hope’ from the River Clyde made it to the shore and found shelter under a small ridge, but as men kept running from the ship the Turks kept killing them. About 1,000 stayed aboard, safe but impotent until darkness fell. British battleships bombarded the shore defences, but achieved little.

The first to come in on tows at V Beach were the Dublin Fusiliers commanded by Brigadier-General Napier. Officers on the River Clyde screamed at him to go back, but Napier carried on and he and his staff died before they reached the shore. ‘The beach was the scene of sustained butchery, and only forty or fifty men managed to get to the low cliffs and dig themselves in.’ [5] ‘Few survived the first minute. Most did not even leave the boats, which drifted helplessly away with every man in them killed.’ [6] Air Commodore Samson flew over V Beach that morning and later reported that the calm blue sea was ‘absolutely red with blood’ for a distance of some fifty yards from the shore. In a scene reminiscent of the Western Front, bodies lay entangled in the impenetrable wire.

A small group of Lancashire Fusiliers reached the the grass ridge. Some died on the barbed wire entanglements, but others managed to ‘hack and tear’ a passage. Unable to fire their sand-blocked rifles, they fixed bayonets, charged up to a Turkish trench, and drove some defenders off. Six fusiliers were later awarded the Victoria Cross for their gallantry on the beach that morning; the very beach which the Marines had walked over in perfect safety two months previously. [7] When the 29th Division was counting its dead in the thousands, someone made a remark to Hunter-Weston about the causalities. ‘Casualties?’ he snapped, ‘What do I care for casualties?’ [8] All three brigade commanders at Cape Helles died in action, and the two colonels who replaced them were killed instantly. With no senior officer or tactical headquarters onshore, the men struggled through bewildering chaos.

General Hamilton had ordered a landing at an isolated spot four miles along the coast at Y Beach to attack the Turks from the rear and 2,000 men from the Plymouth Battalion and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers landed unopposed. Their orders were to march across the tip of the peninsula, attack the defending forces and join up with the main force at Helles. Without a shot being fired, they climbed a 200 foot cliff, and stopped. The troops were ordered to brew tea and rest. They could have headed south at will and encircled the enemy position at Sedd-el-Bahr and Teke-Burnu, where, less than an hour’s march away, their comrades were being slaughtered. Two Colonels headed the main force at Y Beach but were unsure which of them was in charge. Neither had been given clear instructions and understood they were to stay there until troops from the southern landings joined them. Throughout the day they requested information and instructions from Hunter-Weston, but received none. Neither Colonel felt that he could take matters into his own hands.

Passing Y Beach on the Queen Elizabeth, General Hamilton saw the British troops  ‘quite peacefully reposing…probably smoking’, [9] but declined to pour more troops through that undefended beach without Hunter-Weston’s consent. When he eventually replied, Hunter-Weston refused. For eleven undisturbed hours these troops sat on the cliffs at Y Beach without digging in. The Turks arrived in force and by the following morning there were over 700 casualties. The navy evacuated the survivors, [10] without the permission of an incensed General Hamilton. He was shocked to witness ‘loose groups’ of ‘aimless dawdlers’ on the shore and could not understand why, having dug themselves in, they had failed to establish a bridgehead. [11 ] Incredibly, they had not been ordered to ‘dig themselves in’ and suffered the consequence

W Beach was a death trap of land mines, sea mines and wire entanglements concealed under the surface. Further entanglements stretched along the length of the beach close to the water’s edge. Machine guns were concealed in holes cut in the cliff face, with pom-poms and more machine guns further back. When the 1st Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers reached the shore, a terrible fusillade broke out. ‘Some were caught by the barbed wire under the sea, others, passing over their comrades bodies, hurled themselves on the wire stretching along the foreshore and literally hacked their way through. A long line of men fell at this point under the enemy’s withering rifle and machine-gun fire as if cut down by a scythe.’ [12] Some Lancashires clawed their way to the higher ground and were able to fire on the Turks. Their resistance weakened, but not before the fusiliers suffered 553 casualties out of the 950 who had landed. Survivors bravely struggled to give what help they could to the wounded, ‘many of whom were lying helpless under the weight of of other wounded and dead on top of them.’ [13]

Further north at Z Beach, the Anzacs faced similar horrors. In the darkness an uncharted current had swept the boats about a mile north of the intended landing-place, and some of the attackers faced steep cliffs rather than the low sandbanks they had expected. Most were put ashore at a small cove south of Ari Burnu, which would later be known as Anzac Cove. Heavy Turkish rifle and machine gun fire broke out as the boats carrying the first wave of 15,000 troops were about thirty yards from the shore. Some died as they sat, others drowned under the weight of their packs when they slipped in the water and couldn’t recover. [14] ‘The humped shapes of dead men moved sluggishly in the wash of the surf, the blood in the water round them beginning to show pink as the sky lightened.’ Out on the transport ships ‘the second wave was standing ready to go in, waiting to swing down into the little boats as soon as the dead and wounded had been lifted from them.’ [15]

Men had to drag and claw their way up steep cliffs under remorseless fire, their dead and wounded mates hanging suspended from bushes. ‘Yet through the bewilderment of the beach and up and over the nearby cliffs, the movement forward did not stop.’ Small groups of Australians penetrated inland for a mile or more, but most of the others were still pinned to the beach. By mid afternoon 12,000 troops were ashore. They faced a defensive force of only 4,000, but the Turks held the heights and the Anzacs were unable to break through in any numbers. As more and more waves of men landed in the face of heavy fire, the beach became ‘a crowded shambles, so littered with lines of wounded that it was difficult to pick a way to the sea.’ [16] It appeared that against all the odds the Anzacs might break through, but Turkish troops held in reserve poured into the heights above and pushed them back. Birdwood went ashore that evening and held a meeting with two divisional generals who urged an immediate evacuation. When a message to this effect reached Hamilton in the middle of the night, he refused permission to withdraw, and urged them to ‘dig, dig, dig, until you are safe.’ [17]

Over 2,000 Anzacs were killed that day, with many more wounded. The two hospital ships provided to cover all the landings and were immediately overwhelmed. When wounded men were eventually taken off the beaches, it was to filthy and overcrowded ships with insufficient doctors or medical orderlies. They then faced a voyage of six or seven hundred miles without adequate treatment. ‘The wounded suffered dreadful privations and many who might have survived succumbed to the effects of gangrene or suppurating wounds before they got to a proper hospital in Egypt.’ [18] ‘That “baptism of fire”, as the men called it, was to set the pattern for the for the next eight months: the Turkish army would always look down from the heights onto the attackers below.’ [19]

The disastrous attack on the Gallipoli peninsula began as predicted. Youthful expectation was sacrificed without compunction or care. What did Hunter-Weston care about casualties? Nothing. What did the Secret Elite care about the terrible losses? That was never their concern. The truth of the matter, which has never been honestly addressed, is that the attack was ordered in the expectation of certain defeat. In reality, the thousands slain on that first day alone died, not for civilisation or justice, but for the Machiavellian plans of rich and powerful men at the heart of the British Empire.

[1] Sir Ian Hamilton, Gallipoli Diary, vol. 1, 31 March, 1915 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19317/19317-h/19317-h.htm#Page_127, ]
[2] John Hargrave, The Suvla Bay Landing, pp. 39-40.
[3] L A Carlyon, Gallipoli, pp. 119-122.
[4] John Laffin, The Agony of Gallipoli, p. 55.
[5] Ibid., p. 56.
[6] Robin Prior, Gallipoli, The End of The Myth, p. 101.
[7] Alan Moorehead, Gallipoli, pp. 142-3.
[8] Carlyon, Gallipoli, p. 120.
[9] Hamilton, Gallipoli Diary, vol. 1, 25 April, 1915. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19317/19317-h/19317-h.htm#Page_127 ]
[10] Moorehead, Gallipoli, pp. 145-148.
[11] Hamilton, Gallipoli Diary, vol. 1, 26 April, 1915 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19317/19317-h/19317-h.htm#Page_127
[12] Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, The Uncensored Dardanelles, pp.65-66.
[13] Laffin, The Agony, pp. 53-54.
[14] Prior, Gallipoli, p. 114.
[15] Kit Denton, Gallipoli, One Long Grave, pp. 28-29.
[16] Ibid., pp. 31-33.
[17] Tim Travers, Gallipoli, p. 101.
[18] Peter Hart, Gallipoli, pp.104-5.
[19] Patsy Adam-Smith, The Anzacs, p. 70.

Gallipoli 13: Turkey! Where’s Turkey?

If the Admiralty’s planning for the seaborne attack had been poor, the organisation for the military campaign was shambolic. As Les Carlyon put it so succinctly, ’Instead of being planned for months in London, down to the last artillery shell and the last bandage, this venture was being cobbled up on the spot, and only after another enterprise, the naval attack, had failed.’ [1] The only operation of similar stature that could be compared with this lay thirty years ahead on the beaches of Normandy, and the planning for that amphibious landing took not three weeks, but nearly two years. [2] Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, British war correspondent at Gallipoli, wrote that no country other than Great Britain would have attacked the Dardanelles without months of reflection and preparation by a highly trained general staff composed of the best brains of the army. He added, ‘Never have I known such a collection of unsuitable people to whom to entrust a great campaign, the lives of their countrymen, and the safety of the Empire. Their muddles, mismanagement, and ignorance of the strategy and tactics of modern war brought about the greatest disaster in English history.’ [3] Ashmead-Barlett had, of course, no inkling that the chaos was orchestrated; no idea that third rate commanders had been deliberately chosen to ensure that the campaign would not succeed.

Military leadership was barely functional. [4] The War Council had considered neither tactics nor logistics for an amphibious assault on the peninsula, and until 12 March 1915 had not even chosen a commander. General Sir Ian Hamilton, like Vice-Admiral Carden before him, was selected while eminently more suitable senior officers were overlooked. The genial Scot, then in the twilight of his career, had been Kitchener’s chief of staff during the last months of the Boer War. He was hamstrung by his long-subservient relationship [5] and never once did he challenge Kitchener’s authority. Hamilton was scared of him and the depth of his fear can be gauged from a comment he made in his diary about requesting more troops, ‘Really, it is like going up to a tiger and asking for a small slice of venison.’ Hamilton’s trepidation was based on his experience in South Africa where he witnessed Kitchener’s response to an officer’s appeal for reinforcements by removing half his troops. [6]

Hamilton later recalled how stunned he was when he first learned of his appointment. ‘Opening the door I bade him good morning and walked up to his desk where he went on writing like a graven image. After a moment he looked up and said in a matter of fact tone, ‘We are sending a military force to support the fleet now in the Dardanelles and you are to have command. At that moment K wished me to bow, leave the room and make a start … But my knowledge of the Dardanelles was nil, of the Turk nil, of the strength of my forces next to nil. … K, went on writing. At last he looked up again with, “Well?”’ [7] It is patently clear that Kitchener treated his Boer War subordinate with contempt.

Hamilton was told he would be leaving next day with his staff. ‘The politics of the war, especially those concerning Russia, were driving everything and time was of the essence’, [8] but neither Kitchener nor anyone else had any clear idea about what Hamilton was to do. General Callwell, Director of Military Operations, was brought into the office to give a cursory briefing. He advised that the Greek General Staff had recently studied the possibility of an amphibious landing on the Gallipoli peninsula and estimated that 150,000 men were essential if it was to stand any chance of success. Kitchener dismissed this as nonsense, telling Hamilton that half that number would do him handsomely. [9] Strange indeed, because just two days earlier at a War Council meeting Kitchener himself had stated that a force of 130,000 would be required. [10] Admiral Jacky Fisher, who correctly forecast disaster, had insisted that it would need 200,000 men. [11] Initially, only 75,000 were sent. That might have been enough men ‘for garrison duty around Constantinople and for raiding parties on the way there, but Hamilton didn’t have the numbers to make opposed landings against six Turkish divisions.’ [12] The number of men actually sent in the first instance was predicated on the fleet getting through to Constantinople, not on the numbers required for a successful amphibious attack after the navy had failed.

Kitchener was surely aware that 75,000 men would not be enough, but he assured Hamilton that if a British submarine ‘popped up’ opposite the town of Gallipoli and waved a Union Jack, ‘the whole Turkish garrison on the peninsula will take to their heels…’ [13] How typical of the arrogance and inbred racism of the British imperialist. Like the deferential schoolboy anxious not to provoke the wrath of an authoritarian headmaster, Hamilton didn’t ask for more men lest he upset Kitchener. [14]

He wasn’t the only officer taken aback by the proposed campaign. General Wolfe Murray, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), and General Archibald Murray, (Depute CIGS) were then called into Kitchener’s office, together with Major-General Braithwaite who had been appointed as Hamilton’s Chief-of-Staff against his wishes. [15] Incredibly, none of these Staff Officers had heard of the Gallipoli scheme and ‘the Murray’s were so taken aback that neither of them ventured to comment.’ [16] They had been kept entirely in the dark. The plan was so secret that even the Chief of the Imperial General Staff had not been party to it. Why? How could such a major strategic development come as a surprise to officers at that level? Quite reasonably, Braithwaite ‘begged’ that the expedition be given a contingent of up-to-date aeroplanes, experienced pilots and observers, but Kitchener turned on him, ‘Not one!’ The spotter planes that were provided were old and so heavy that ‘the damned things could barely rise off the water’ and out of rifle range. [17]

Look at the common factors here. Just as Churchill had placed an old subservient Admiral in charge of an ageing fleet, so Kitchener appointed a similarly pliable General to take command of the military force. Both were inadequate and unfit for the task. Nothing that was valued was put at risk so they were instructed to operate with insufficient men and decrepit equipment. Once again, experienced officers who disagreed, said nothing.

Next morning, General Hamilton returned to the War Office for his final and only briefing. Kitchener had penned three different sets of instructions, none of which helped Hamilton understand the enemy, the politics or the country. He was left to his own devices. Thirteen officers had been hurriedly assembled to serve on his staff. Only one had seen active service in the war and one or two, according to Hamilton, had hastily put on a uniform for the first time in their lives with ‘Leggings awry, spurs upside down, belts over shoulder straps!’ He knew none of them. [18]

Hamilton sought up-to-date information about Gallipoli and the Turks from Military Intelligence but all he was given were two small tourist guidebooks on western Turkey, an out of date and inaccurate map that was not intended for military use, and a 1905 textbook on the Turkish Army. The Intelligence officers were unable to assist with any information on weather patterns in the region, and nobody had given thought to the sea currents that would cause such problems during the landings. Nobody could say how many enemy troops were on the peninsula, or name the Turkish and German commanders. [19] It was literally unbelievable.

It was also untrue. In fact, inside the Foreign Office, the War Office and the Admiralty, there were volumes of up-to-the-minute intelligence on Gallipoli and Constantinople gathered from missions, ambassadors and military and naval sources. Between 1911 and 1914, successive military attaches at Constantinople, and vice consuls posted to the Dardanelles at Chanak, had sent detailed intelligence reports on the Dardanelles defences to the War Office. These were never disclosed to Hamilton or his staff. Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Cunliffe-Owen, the British military attache at Constantinople had conducted a detailed survey of the Dardanelles and Gallipoli and on 6 September 1914, sent these highly accurate reports and assessments to General Callwell, Director of Military Operations at the War Office. [20] They included information on gun sites, minefields and the topography of the peninsula. Hamilton was clearly desperate for facts and figures about Gallipoli and the Dardanelles, yet General Callwell withheld the vital information he had received from Cunliffe-Owen. Here was the most senior officer who had studied the Dardanelles in the intelligence department before the outbreak of war, [21] had received Cunliffe-Owen’s reports, had access to all of the information gathered from a range of military personnel stationed in Constantinople and the Dardanelles, yet kept it from Hamilton. [22] Why did the War Office leave Hamilton to cull his facts from tourist guides and outdated maps? Why did General Callwell remain silent? There can be no rational reason other than he was ordered to. His silence would otherwise have equated to treason.

Had the War Office tried to furbish Hamilton with expert advice and local knowledge, Admiral Limpus’s reports would have been brought from the Admiralty; Ambassador Mallet could have advised him in person. Had they wanted him to have the benefit of detailed military intelligence, Cunliffe-Owen would have been included among his staff officers. He was one of very few who had seen Gallipoli on the ground. Why was his wealth of knowledge and experience unwelcome?

Before Hamilton set off for the eastern Mediterranean on 13 March, on HMS Foresight, he went to say goodbye to his former chief, but Kitchener did not even wish him good luck. [23] Hamilton was equipped with little more than enthusiasm and wishful thinking. No attempt had been made to co-ordinate intelligence about the defences at Gallipoli, not even at strategic level, and he had been given no indication of Government policy, priorities or plans. [24] According to the principles laid down in Field Service Regulations, he should have been given an outline plan of the operations he had been tasked to undertake. This was the clear responsibility of General Wolfe Murray, the CIGS, and General Callwell, Director of Military Intelligence, but no plan was produced and all detailed up-to-date intelligence was withheld.

Ian Hamilton was chosen to command the operation for the following reasons: (1) He was considered incapable of performing the task. (2) He knew nothing of Gallipoli or its defences. (3) He would never challenge Kitchener’s orders, no matter how outrageous. (4) Like Admiral Carden, he made the perfect patsy when the Gallipoli campaign failed. It has been suggested that, from the outset, Hamilton was the victim of gross dereliction of duty on the part of the General Staff, [25] but it went much deeper than that. Make no mistake, this was no act of stupidity, dereliction of duty, or a ‘cock-up’. Hamilton did not appreciate it, but without a combined operation with the navy and at least 150,000 well equipped troops, he could never succeed. He was not appointed to succeed. Consider this; ‘At a moment’s notice he had been given an impossible task to perform, and somehow or other he must perform it. It wasn’t bricks without straw – it was bricks without clay, straw, kiln, hod, or anything else.’ [26]

[1] L.A. Carlyon, Gallipoli, p. 72.
[2] Alan Moorehead, Gallipoli, p. 116.
[3] Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, The Uncensored Dardanelles, p. 14 and pp. 247-8.
[4] Robin Prior, Gallipoli, p. 67.
[5] Peter Hart, Gallipoli, p. 63.
[6] J. Laffin, The Agony of Gallipoli, p. 43.
[7] Ibid., p. 33.
[8] Harvey Broadbent, Gallipoli, The Fatal Shore, p. 37.
[9] Laffin, The Agony, p. 34.
[10] Carlyon, Gallipoli, p. 60.
[11] Ibid., p. 54.
[12] Carlyon, Gallipoli, p. 86.
[13] Laffin, The Agony, p. 34.
[14] Carlyon, Gallipoli, p. 87.
[15] Laffin, The Agony, p. 35.
[16] Sir Ian Hamilton, Gallipoli Diary, Vol 1, Chapter 1, 14 March 1915. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19317/19317-h/19317-h.ht
[17] John North, Gallipoli, The Fading Vision, p. 247.
[18] Moorehead, Gallipoli, pp. 82-83.
[19] Laffin, The Agony, p. 35.
[20] Michael Hickey, Gallipoli, p. 28.
[21] T.R. Moreman, Callwell, Sir Charles Stewart, 1859-1928, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2008.
[22] Laffin, The Agony, pp. 12-13.
[23] Moorehead, Gallipoli, p. 83.
[24] Laffin, The Agony, p. 30.
[25] Hickey, Gallipoli, p. 68.
[26] John Hargrave, The Suvla Bay Landing, p. 29.

Gallipoli 11: Confused, Devious or Stark Raving Mad?

Despite overwhelming expert opinion that a naval attack on the Dardanelles must fail, the Secret Elite-dominated War Council met on 28 January 1915 and decided to proceed with their plan. Warships and support vessels from across the world were ordered to head for Lemnos in the Aegean Sea. The Greek island had a large natural harbour at Mudros Bay, which lay just three hours by sea from the entrance to the Dardanelles. Apart from one modern, oil-fired dreadnought, Queen Elizabeth, the battleships were slow and outdated; indeed they had been deemed unfit for battle in the North Sea. [1] Admiral Fisher’s grave concern was that the Grand Fleet remained at full strength, but Churchill was at great pains to show that he could find sufficient ships to take on the Dardanelles without weakening the North Sea defences. [2] No troops were to take part, but Vice-Admiral Oliver, Chief of the Naval Staff, advised Churchill to send two battalions from the Royal Naval Division. They comprised some 2,000 men culled from ships and shore establishments, essentially sailors turned infantry. Oliver commented, ‘they are pretty rotten, but ought to be good enough for the inferior Turkish troops now at Gallipoli.’ [3] Unlike the tens of thousands of men who died facing those ‘inferior’ troops, Vice-Admiral Oliver passed away peacefully in his bed at the age of 100.

Still bristling that his advice had been ignored, Admiral Fisher wrote to Churchill on 29 January, ‘It will be the wonder of the ages that no troops were sent to cooperate with the Fleet with half a million … soldiers in England.’ [4] Fisher lost his fight with the War Council, and the Carden ‘plan’, impossible and implausible that was, was officially endorsed. A major campaign whose success depended on months of detailed joint military and naval planning, careful preparation and, above all, sufficient troops on the ground, went ahead without any of these prerequisites. The fleet ‘was to attempt, without the aid of a single soldier, an enterprise which in the early days of the war both the Admiralty and the War Office had regarded as a military task.’ [5] Admiral Lord Nelson’s sage advice that no ship should ever attack a fort, advice supported by almost every admiral in the fleet, was studiously ignored. [6] Such a headstrong attitude in the face of repeated warnings and accepted practice surely indicated that this was not normal procedure. Every aspect of the naval assault beggars far deeper research, but most historians have simply accepted that the War Council followed Churchill’s lead. He didn’t carry sufficient influence on his own, but encouraged by Grey and the Foreign Office, Churchill championed the Secret Elite agenda and was allowed to proceed.

Minefields, which had been carefully laid in multiple rows across the Straits, constituted their principle defence. The main role of the guns and fortifications was to protect them. One hundred and eleven guns were stationed on the European side of the Straits and one hundred and twenty-one on the Asiatic side. [7] Twenty-four heavy mobile howitzers had also been brought in to support the Turkish artillery, and dummy placements which emitted smoke were constructed to draw the warships’ fire. [8] Additionally, shore based torpedo tubes had been installed at various locations along the Dardanelles. By February 1915 the defences were so formidable that Maurice Hankey reported, ‘From Lord Fisher downwards every naval officer in the Admiralty who is in [on] the secret believes that the Navy cannot take the Dardanelles without troops.’ [9] But no-one with real power chose to listen.

Antagonism amongst senior naval officers grew steadily, and an impromptu meeting of the War Council was held on 16 February. Just before the meeting, Kitchener called one of his intelligence officers, Captain Wyndham Deedes, to his office. Deedes, who had been attached to the Turkish Army for several years and had closely studied the Dardanelles defences, was asked for his opinion on a naval attack. His reply, that it was a fundamentally unsound proposition, angered Kitchener who dismissed the well-informed officer, telling him that he didn’t know what he was talking about. [10] Kitchener and the Secret Elite were faced with a difficult dilemma. They had agreed a plan to keep Russia in the war and out of Constantinople, but members of the armed forces who had no knowledge of the secret cabal or its scheming, began to prove difficult. Why were ships and their brave crews to be sacrificed in a naval operation which everyone knew was bound to fail?

At its 16 February meeting, the War Council attempted to stifle this criticism. Kitchener agreed that the 29th Division comprising 18,000 regular soldiers should be sent to Lemnos ‘within nine or ten days’. The Division was currently in England, earmarked for the western front. In addition 34,000 Anzac troops, who were awaiting transfer to France from Egypt, were placed on stand-by ‘in case of necessity.’ This sudden about turn did not mean that the addition of troops would convert the Carden ‘plan’ into a combined operation. It was a cosmetic compromise. It would appear as if the attack was intended as a joint offensive to deflect criticism, but nothing tangible had changed. The naval attack, which was scheduled to begin on 19 February, would not be postponed to await the arrival of troops, and ‘no thought had been given by the War Council as to what these troops were to do.’ [11] ‘Churchill and Kitchener were agreed that that the Fleet should go through the Narrows before the troops need be used.’ [12]

On 18 February the French Government, having agreed to provide 20,000 troops, urged Britain to suspend the naval operations until their arrival at the Dardanelles. London replied that ‘naval operations having begun cannot be interrupted.’ That was a lie. Not a shot had been fired, but French views did not appear to matter in the Gallipoli campaign. To confuse matters further, Kitchener announced a complete reversal in military deployment. The following day, the very day that the naval bombardment of the Dardanelles began, he withdrew permission to release the 29th Division, and ordered the dispersal of transport ships already in place to take them to Lemnos. His given reason was that, in view of Russian setbacks, these men were needed in France. But his decision was not absolute. He kept the door open by adding that the 29th might be sent to the Dardanelles at some unspecified future date ‘if required’. In Kitchener’s opinion the Australian and New Zealand Divisions already in Egypt would be ‘sufficient at first’ for any attack on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Later, when asked by Prime Minister Asquith if the Anzacs were ‘good enough’ for the task, Kitchener replied, ‘they were quite good enough if a cruise in the Sea of Marmora was all that was contemplated.’ [13] What was going on inside the War Minister’s head? On the one hand, the Australians and New Zealanders were considered quite ‘sufficient’ for an attack on Gallipoli, but with his next breath Kitchener was suggesting that they were fitted only for a cruise. What was his state of mind? Was he confused, deliberately devious or stark raving mad?

Phase 1 of Vice-Admiral Carden’s plan, the long range naval assault, began at 9.15 am on 19 February 1915 with a slow, long-range bombardment of the permanent forts and outer Dardanelles defences at Sedd-el-Bahr on the European side, and Kum Kale on the Asian. It continued all morning. In the afternoon Carden ordered his warships to close to within six thousand yards. The Turkish batteries failed to respond so several ships went even closer and bombarded the shore. With the light fading, and having drawn fire from only two of the smaller forts, Carden ordered the recall. It was evident that, to be effective, the Fleet would have to approach much closer to the shore and engage the Turkish guns individually. [14] Early signs of success from the long-range bombardment had proven deceptive, and the hope that heavy naval gunfire would devastate the targets on land, proved forlorn. [15] Strange. It was exactly as the experts had predicted. The weather broke that night and for five days rough seas, bitterly cold winds and sleet and snow, interrupted the attack.

In London, after a War Council meeting on 24 February, Churchill telegraphed Carden to inform him that two Anzac Divisions, The Royal Naval Division and a French Division were being held ready to move within striking distance. ‘But it is not intended that they should be employed in present circumstance to assist the Naval operations which are independent and self-contained.’ In a further telegram that day, Churchill again warned Carden that that major military operations were not to be embarked upon. [16] Was Churchill as mad as Kitchener? No, they were both working to the Secret Elite agenda. The intention was still to dupe the Russians into believing that Gallipoli was a serious military campaign, designed for their benefit.

On 25 February, when the storm had blown itself out, Vice-Admiral de Robeck led the attack to the mouth of the Straits. The Ottoman gunners withdrew under the heavy barrage, and by the end of the day the outer forts had been successfully silenced. Over the following days, parties of marines roamed at will across the tip of the Gallipoli peninsula blowing up abandoned guns and destroying emplacements. The door to Constantinople lay open. Had 70,000 troops poured through unchallenged, Gallipoli might well have fallen. But that had never been the objective.

By the following week it was too late. On 4 March the landings foundered. Realising that this was not a major invasion, the defenders recovered their confidence and drove the marines off with heavy rifle fire. In total, the naval battalion suffered twenty-three killed, twenty five wounded and four missing. It was little more than a skirmish in terms of what followed, but the Turkish troops gained a considerable boost to their morale. No further landings were attempted until 25 April by which time the defences had been rebuilt and considerably strengthened.

[1] Robin Prior, Gallipoli, The End of The Myth. p. 23.
[2] Churchill letter 12 January 1915; pp. 326-7 World Crisis, 1911-1818.
[3] Martin Gilbert, Winston S Churchill, p. 279.
[4]  Prior, Gallipoli, pp. 28-29.
[5] G Aspinal-Oglander, Roger Keyes, p. 126.
[6] Dan Van der Vat, The Dardanelles Disaster, p. 88.
[7]  Prior, Gallipoli, p. 31.
[8] John Laffin, The Agony of Gallipoli, p. 26.
[9] Prior, Gallipoli, p. 30.
[10] Martin Gilbert, Churchill, pp. 287-8.
[11] Prior, Gallipoli, p. 31.
[12] Martin Gilbert, Churchill, p. 288.
[13] Ibid., pp. 296-302.
[14] Alan Moorehead, Gallipoli, p. 55.
[15] Nigel Steel and Peter Hart, Defeat at Gallipoli, p. 14.
[16]  Gilbert, Winston S Churchill, pp. 304-5.

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.