The catastrophic Gallipoli campaign of WWI that sent tens of thousands to their deaths

He proposed a direct naval attack on the capital city of the Ottoman Empire: Constantinople.

The hope was that a surprise attack of such nature would knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war and open a supply route to Russia.

Also, it was believed that it would compel the Central Powers to redirect troops from the Western Front, thereby making the situation easier for the Allied forces.

The Gallipoli Campaign was officially approved by the British War Council in January 1915.

Then, in February 1915, the British Navy initiated a bombardment of Turkish coastal defenses in the Dardanelles to secure a safe passage for their ships en route to Constantinople.

However, the assault ended in catastrophe. During the ill-fated naval assault on March 18, 1915, the British battleships HMS Irresistible and HMS Ocean, as well as the French battleship Bouvet, were sunk by Ottoman mines in the Dardanelles Strait.

As a result, the plan of attack was changed. The British army commander, General Sir Ian Hamilton, decided to carry out a large invasion of the Dardanelles to neutralise the defenses, and create the safe passage for the navy.

The 29th Division of the British army was assigned to this task, along with two divisions of the newly formed Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC).

The ANZAC troops had been on the way to England but were redirected to British-controlled Egypt so that they could be sufficiently trained in preparation for the landing.

So, it would be a joint Allied operation, involving British, French, Australian, and New Zealand forces, and initially centered on a naval operation aimed at forcing passage through the Dardanelles Strait to capture Constantinople.

The Gallipoli invasion occurred early in the morning of the 25th of April 1915. British and French troops landed at Cape Helles before dawn, while the ANZACs, under the command of Lieutenant General Sir William Birdwood, were sent further north to Gaba Tepe.

However, the darkness and weather conditions meant that they travelled too far and, instead, landed at Ari Burnu.

As the troops disembarked on the shore, they encountered heavy Turkish defenses with very little natural shelter to protect them from enemy fire.

The Turkish defense was under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kemal, who famously ordered his troops to 'die rather than retreat' to hold back the Allied advance.

The ANZAC troops had to fight up a line of steep cliffs and, by the end of the day, they had failed to push back the Turkish soldiers, only holding onto the beach.

As a result, the ANZACs began digging trenches to protect themselves from Turkish counterattacks. Therefore, the ANZAC troops are often referred to as 'diggers'.

Both sides suffered high rates of casualties, with around 2000 Australian and New Zealanders killed in one day.

Soon, the British planners realised that the situation on the Gallipoli peninsula was now the same as the Western Front: both sides had created lines of defensive trenches and entered a deadlock.

The next few months were difficult, with hot summer temperatures and attempted attacks by both sides, resulting in high death rates and very little progress.

In fact, diseases such as dysentery and malaria spread rapidly due to inadequate sanitation, summer heat, and swarms of flies, which contributed to thousands of non-combat casualties.

On 18–19 May, the Turkish forces launched a coordinated assault on the ANZAC positions, involving 42,000 soldiers. 

Due to the strong defensive positions, the ANZACs killed 10,000 of them and survived the assault.

Next, the British army decided to try and break the deadlock by landing another large invasion force at Suvla Bay.

On August 6, 1915, General Frederick Stopford led the landings. At the same time, to try and distract the Turks from this new landing force, the ANZAC troops already at Gallipoli were ordered to launch an attack at Lone Pine and the Nek.

The attack at Lone Pine on the 6th of August saw another 2000 Australians and New Zealanders killed or wounded over four days of fighting.

The allied soldiers had managed to capture the strategic objective but were unable to hold it and had to withdraw back to their trenches.

At the Nek on the 7th of August, soldiers from the Australian Light Horse made bayonet charges by were quickly halted by Turkish machineguns.

The last significant battle took place on 21 August at Hill 60 and Scimitar Hill. The two invasion forces, the ANZACs and the British at Suvla Bay, attempted a coordinated attack in order to combine their forces.

However, after heavy casualties, the attempt failed and both armies returned to their original starting positions.

In October, a new British army commander, Sir Charles Monro, finally decided that the Gallipoli campaign had been a failure and tried to plan an escape.

In December, the soldiers and equipment were secretly loaded onto ships under the cover of night and escaped.

On the 20th of December, the Turks finally suspected something had happened and launched an attack on the beach, only to find it empty. 

Despite the campaign’s failure, the evacuation of Gallipoli between December 1915 and January 1916 was remarkably successful, with over 80,000 Allied troops withdrawn without a single fatality due to deception tactics that misled the Ottoman forces.

However, after seven months of fighting, over 130,000 lives were lost: approximately 87,000 on the Ottoman side and about 44,000 from the Allied forces, including 8,709 Australians and 2,721 New Zealanders.

Gallipoli's tragic legacy is remembered annually on April 25 as ANZAC Day, a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand honoring the soldiers who served and those who lost their lives in the campaign.