Churchill and the Dardanelles

The failure of the Allied fleet to force a passage through the Straits of the Dardanelles in 1915 drove Winston Churchill from office in disgrace and nearly destroyed his political career. For over a century, Churchill has been both praised and condemned for his role in launching this highly controversial campaign. For some, the Dardanelles offensive was a brilliant concept that might have dramatically shortened the First World War. To many others, however, Churchill was a reckless amateur who drove his unwilling and misinformed colleagues into a venture that was doomed to fail.

Churchill and the Dardanelles, based on exhaustive archival research, provides a detailed and authoritative account of the Gallipoli campaign's origins and execution, stripping away the layers of myth that have long surrounded these dramatic events, and showing that no simple verdict is either possible or fair. Naval historian Christopher M. Bell untangles Churchill's complicated relationship with the dynamic First Sea Lord, Admiral Jacky Fisher, and reveals for the first time the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to Churchill's removal from office as First Lord of the Admiralty--including Fisher's covert campaign to undermine support for the Dardanelles operation, and the leaks by figures in high places that fueled a bitter press campaign to drive Churchill from power.

Equal attention is also given to the perhaps even more important story of Churchill and the Dardanelles after 1915. As Bell shows, Churchill spent a good deal of time and effort in the following two decades trying to refute his critics and convince the wider public that the campaign had in fact nearly succeeded. These efforts were so successful that the legacy of the Dardanelles did not stand in the way of Churchill becoming Prime Minister in May 1940.

Christopher M. Bell is Professor of History at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He has published widely on twentieth century naval history, and is the author of The Royal Navy, Seapower and Strategy Between the Wars and Churchill and Seapower and co-editor of Naval Mutinies of the Twentieth Century: An International Perspective and At the Crossroads Between War and Peace: The London Naval Conference of 1930.