The Rock of Gallipoli: The Leadership of Mustafa Kemal

摘要

When the Ottoman Empirejoined Germany and the Central Powers against the Allies, a bad situation became worse. With Germany mere miles from Paris and the Russians losing whole armies in the field, the Allied powers knew they could not long withstand a protracted war. They attacked on several fronts all along the Ottoman borders-Russians in the Caucuses and the British and French in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Those efforts were succeeding but too slowly to have an effect. The Ottomans threatened to starve the Russians; the only yearlong seaport available was on the Crimea, and the only access to the outside world ran straight through Istanbul and the Dardanelles. First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill proposed a daring plan to simultaneously secure the waterways to Russia and strike at the heart of Turkey. The Allies would invade a small spit of land called Gallipoli that controlled access to the Dardanelles, the Ottoman capital, and on to Russia itself.