Gallipoli, Jutland and the Eastern Front: The First World War Beyond the Trenches

The war on other fronts

• The First World War was a world war, not just the trenches of France and Belgium. There was also fighting on the Eastern Front, in Italy, the Middle East, and Africa, and at sea.
• The Eastern Front was the largest of these, where Germany and Austria-Hungary fought Russia across a huge area. The front was so long that the armies could still move, so it was a war of movement rather than the frozen trench lines of the west.
• At the Battle of Tannenberg (August 1914) the German commanders Hindenburg and Ludendorff surrounded and destroyed an entire Russian army, taking around 90,000 prisoners.
• Russia had many men but was poorly equipped and badly led, so defeats like this drained the country and helped push it towards revolution in 1917.
• The map of the Eastern Front marks the farthest Russian advance in 1914, the farthest Austro-German advance in 1916, and the front line in 1917, running through what is now Poland and Belarus between Germany and Austria-Hungary to the west and Russia to the east.

These other fronts forced Germany to fight in two directions at once, splitting its army both east and west.

The Gallipoli campaign

• With the Western Front at a deadlock, the Allies looked for another way to win by attacking the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), which had joined the war on Germany's side.
• Success would open a sea route to Russia through the Dardanelles straits and knock Turkey out of the war. The head of the navy, Winston Churchill, championed the campaign.
• It began in early 1915 as a naval attack to force a passage through the straits, but Turkish mines and shore guns sank several battleships and the attack was called off.
• In April 1915 troops, including the Anzacs (Australian and New Zealand forces), landed on the Gallipoli peninsula.
• The Turks held the high ground, and the fighting became the same trench stalemate as in France.
• After months of heavy losses from fighting, disease, and heat, the Allies evacuated over winter in 1915-16.

Why Gallipoli failed: poor planning, difficult terrain, and underestimating the Turkish defence.

The war at sea: Jutland

• Britain's control of the sea let it blockade Germany, stopping food and raw materials reaching German ports, so Germany needed to challenge the powerful British navy.
• The Battle of Jutland (31 May to 1 June 1916), fought in the North Sea off Denmark, was the war's only major clash between the two main battle fleets.
• Britain (Admiral Jellicoe) lost more ships and men than Germany (Admiral Scheer), but the German fleet retreated to port and never seriously came out again, so both sides claimed to have won.
• Britain kept control of the sea and the blockade held for the rest of the war.
• The blockade slowly starved Germany of food and raw materials, and was one of the reasons its war effort collapsed in 1918.

The U-boat campaign

• Unable to beat the British navy in open battle, Germany used U-boats (submarines) to sink merchant ships carrying food and supplies to Britain.
• In 1915 a U-boat sank the passenger liner Lusitania, killing nearly 1,200 people including 128 Americans, which turned opinion in the neutral USA against Germany.
• In February 1917 Germany returned to unrestricted submarine warfare, sinking any ship bound for Britain without warning, hoping to starve Britain into surrender.
• Heavy losses by spring 1917 meant that Britain came close to running short of food, and the sinking of American ships helped bring the USA into the war in April 1917.
• The answer was the convoy system: merchant ships sailing in large groups guarded by warships, which made them harder to find and sink, so shipping losses fell sharply.