The story of the highly controversial First World War campaign that nearly destroyed Churchill's reputation for good and of his decades-long battle to set the record straight--a battle which ultimately helped clear the way for Churchill's appointment as Prime Minister in Britain's "darkest hour."

This book, based on comprehensive archival research in official and private papers, offers a new history of the infamous British disaster at Gallipoli in 1915. Contrary to all previous accounts, it shows that the campaign originated not in the search for an alternative to the Western Front, but in the need to lower the price of bread in Britain.

In the Australian psyche, the Gallipoli campaign is the action on Gallipoli Peninsula. But an important addition to that land campaign was the part played by the Australian submarine HMAS AE2. The AE2 achieved a daring passage through the Dardanelles on 25 April 1915 when Anzac troops were landing on the other side at Anzac Cove. The Royal and French navies' previous attempts at passage had ended in disaster. AE2's mission to 'run amuck' ended after five days in the Sea of Marmara when it was caught by the Turkish Sultanhisar torpedo boat. After being holed, AE2's captain Stoker scuttled the submarine and its crew were saved by Sultanhisar's captain, Ali Riza. Beneath the Dardanelles tells AE2's story from both the Australian and Turkish perspectives, and features extracts from the memoirs of the two captains. Rarely in military books are both sides of a battle presented so evenly. The submarine lay undiscovered on the bottom of the sea until 1998 and awaits its destiny as the largest historical Australian relic of the Gallipoli campaign. The future of AE2 will be newsworthy for years to come and this book makes an important contribution to that story.

Presenting more than 150 never-before-published photographs of the campaign, many taken by the soldiers themselves, together with unpublished written material from British, Anzac, French and Turkish, including eyewitness accounts of the landings, this is an unrivalled account of what really happened at Gallipoli. Van Emden's gripping narrative and lucid analysis of Churchill's infamous operation, complements Chambers's evocative images, showing how the rapid spread of diseases like dissentry, the lack of clean water and food, the tremendous losses on both sides affected morale, until finally in January 1916, in what were the best-laid plans of the entire disastrous campaign, the Allies successfully fooled the Turkish forces and evacuated their troops from the peninsula with no additional casualties. Leading First World War historian Richard van Emden and Gallipoli expert Stephen Chambers have produced an entirely fresh, personal and illuminating study of one of the Great War's most catastrophic events.

Acclaimed naval military expert Dan van der Vat argues that the disaster at the Dardanelles prolonged the war by two years, led to the Russian Revolution, forced Britain to the brink of starvation, and contributed to the destabilization of the Middle East. With never before published information on Colonel Geehl's mine laying operation, which won the battle for the Germans, The Dardanelles Disaster is essential reading for everyone interested in great naval history, Churchill's early career, and World War I.

The noted historian’s decisive and devastating history of the WWI Battle of Gallipoli “sets a new standard for assessing the Allied Dardanelles campaign" (Mustafa Aksakal, American Historical Review). The Gallipoli campaign of 1915–16 was an ill-fated Allied attempt to take control of the Dardanelles, secure a sea route to Russia, and create a Balkan alliance against the Central Powers. A failure in all respects, the operation ended in disaster, and the Allied forces suffered some 390,000 casualties. In this conclusive study, military historian Robin Prior assesses the many myths about Gallipoli and provides definitive answers to questions that have lingered about the operation. Prior proceeds step by step through the campaign, dealing with naval, military, and political matters and surveying the operations of all the armies involved: British, Anzac, French, Indian, and Turkish. Relying on primary documents, including war diaries and technical military sources, Prior evaluates the strategy, the commanders, and the performance of soldiers on the ground. His conclusions are powerful and unsettling: the naval campaign was not “almost” won, and the land action was not bedeviled by “minor misfortunes.” Instead, the badly conceived Gallipoli campaign was doomed from the start. And even had it been successful, the operation would not have shortened the war by a single day. Despite their bravery, the Allied troops who fell at Gallipoli died in vain. A Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2009

"First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Profile Books"--T.p. verso.