In early 1915, the Entente Allied command decided to carry out a naval operation in the Dardanelles Strait.
The author of the plan was the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, and the objective was to capture the Dardanelles and make a breakthrough to Istanbul.
According to the initial plan, this objective was to be achieved solely by the use of warships.
These ships were expected to destroy the coastal fortifications and batteries, which would force the Turkish land forces to withdraw inland.
However, all did not go according to plan, and in April 1915, the Allies were forced to launch a landing operation.
At the cost of significant losses, they managed to capture a small stretch of land in the strait, but the strong resistance of the Turkish army did not allow them to develop further successes.
By the end of August 1915, it became clear that the operation had failed, and the decision was made to evacuate the Allied land units.
The last military units were evacuated in the winter of 1916.
The British Empire’s losses in this campaign amounted to 113,000 soldiers, while the Turkish army lost about 250,000 soldiers.
This failure had profound strategic and political repercussions.
The Dardanelles operation weakened Allied morale and strengthened Turkish resistance, making it one of the most costly and controversial campaigns of World War I. The Allied retreat marked the end of the Allied withdrawal.
The Allied withdrawal marked the end of an ambitious but poorly executed strategy that had a lasting impact on the course of the conflict.
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