Battle of Gallipoli

1. How did geography matter in WWI?

• The outcome of a battle, in this case the battles of World War I, greatly depended on the knowledge the military had of the geography on which the battle took place. Misunderstanding or lack of clarity on this subject determined the losing side of a battle. Take the Battle of Gallipoli for example, the Allied forces had poor maps of the territory they were supposed to land and attack from. Their maps lacked several landforms, resources, enemy defenses and bases. As a result, the ANZAC and British forces had a huge disadvantage and had to spend valuable time locating and familiarizing themselves with their surroundings. For example, the peninsula had a desert-like environment so water supplies were scare. Wells were hard to find, and even then, many held salt water, which served useless for drinking purposes. It was like walking into a foreigner’s house blind and being told to run, one does not know what one will run into or where it may be located. During this time, Allied forces were vulnerable to the Ottoman troops fighting on their home front, land they were already accustomed to. The civilians didn’t rely on maps half as heavily as the foreign Allied troops, but even accurate maps are useless when you literally are blinded from seeing your surroundings. This was the case during the first Battle of Gaza, everything was covered in a thick layer of fog. Although the British seemed to advance without much trouble, this was an obvious disadvantage for the Turks, as they had difficulty sending any reinforcements. This confusion only led to more battles of Gaza. In that battle neither side knew exactly what was in their surroundings, however it was the opposite case in the Battle of Verdun. The geography in this region was covered in hills scattered with fronts. Each side knew what they had and what they were fighting against; thus causing a long struggle for both sides, since they were each battling their equal. The knowledge troops had of thier surrounding geography, or lack there of, determined the outcome of many battles.

 

2. What was the soldier’s experience in WWI? 

• At first, many men enlisted to go fight on the battle front as they were eager to fight for their country; but as WWI continued, the experience of proved to be more than traumatic for the average soldier. An Allied soldier fighting in the Battle of Gallipoli wrote about having insomnia as a result of all the violence and never-ending death he was surrounded by. A general fighting with the Central Forces in the Battle of Romani wrote about how war can make you cling to “the tiny spark of hope that some miracle will intervene in his favour”. He also states that, “in war it is sometimes necessary to carry out hopeless undertakings”. We can see here that war, especially WWI, ‘desperate times call for desperate measures’ and all logic and reason are left behind in order to do what you “must”. To emphasize this and the traumatic experiences that give one insomnia, a quote from a German soldier, who fought in the Battle of Verdun, summarizes the losses of WWI, “I arrived with 175 men, I returned with 34 of whom several had half turned insane”. One can also notice a bit of emotional detachment as a result of all the violence, the narrator seems to prefer to go with a more objective and factual point of view, perhaps because the painful emotion in anything other than these simple numerical facts is too strong to express. In WWI, men who had once left their homes bursting with life to fight for victory at the battle front, returned as wounded souls, or not at all.

 

3. How did imperialism play a role in the war? 

• Empires with many foreign colonies, due to imperialistic values, proved to be an advantage during WWI in the sense that it meant more resources. In the Battle of Gallipoli for example, half of the war strategy relied on the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps otherwise known as the ANZAC. The fact that Britain conquered these territoriea was precicsely what gave the Allied Forces opportunity to attack the Ottoman Empire in hopes of later taking Austria-Hungary out of the war. This also what served as an advantage in the Battle of Romani, as they also had ANZAC troops, and for the first Battle of Gaza, as they drew resources from colonies claimed by the participating countries represented in the battle. Imperialism clearly created key advantages for those in power in WWI, this in turn allowed them to challenge enemy forces.

 

4. In what ways were many tactics or strategies of early WWI battle still “living in the past”?

• Certain tactics, strategies and technology used in WWI battles were still “living in the past”. In Gallipoli for example, the Allied forces had a big problem due to incomplete maps of the territory they were to position themselves on. This lack of information was significant even for it's time, as soldiers usually had a better sense of their surrounding geography in order to better calculate what they were going up against and what they could plan to counteract it. Moving on, even for it’s time, the first Battle of Ypres was definitely “living in the past”. Soldiers fought the battle with long swords, which they later changed to knives and daggers. These weapons belong to the time of King Arthur and white knights in shining armor, but are hardly efficient in modern warfare. Logically speaking, how much more time and effort does it take to stab someone to death rather than shoot them? In general, trench warfare is “living in the past”. Take the Battle of Verdun for example, the strategy is useless: gain a couple meters, loose a couple meters, gain, loose, the whole ordeal was a stalemate, which tranches so often caused, that lead to nowhere but death. As the battle continued, trench warfare was not only pointless, but proved a useless tactic as it was easily defeated with the use of tanks. These examples show how WWI is a war of the past, using strategies and technology that were even lacking for it's time.