904 Ch. 22 • The Great War
and in August launched an assault that failed miserably. In the meantime,
British, French, and German submarines were active during the campaign,
forcing both sides to adapt supply tactics to the new threat. After commit
ting more than 400,000 men, half of whom were killed or wounded, the
British were fortunate to evacuate their remaining forces in January 1916.
Amid harsh criticism of the campaign’s humiliating failure, Churchill and
Kitchener lost influence. To this day, the Gallipoli Campaign remains con
troversial. Some historians consider it an imaginative, even brilliant stroke
that might have won the war. Others agree with most contemporaries who
believed that it was a needless diversion dictated by British colonial inter
ests in the Middle East and for which Australian and New Zealander troops
paid a disproportionate price.
Still hoping to knock Turkey out of the war, the Allies tried to coax Bul
garia into the war on their side. But in October 1915 Bulgaria joined the
Central Powers, who promised Bulgaria all of Macedonia, which the Allies
could not because of Serb claims there, as well as much of Thrace. Austro
Hungarian and Bulgarian forces thus controlled an important part of the
Balkans. A month later, a Franco-British force landed in Salonika, Greece,
to try to aid Serb troops. But within two months, the German, Austro
Hungarian, and Bulgarian armies had crushed the Serb army, which by
1916 had suffered 100,000 deaths of the 450,000 men serving in 1914.
The Germans called Salonika their “largest internment camp,” since that
campaign tied up half a million Allied troops fighting the Bulgarians. In the
meantime, British troops fought a desert war against the Turks in Palestine
and Mesopotamia.
Smaller British forces were occupied fighting for the German colonies in
Africa (see Map 22.6). German Togoland fell in August 1914, German
Southwest Africa in 1915, and the German Cameroons in 1916. In Ger
man East Africa (Tanganyika), combat continued for the duration of the
war, pitting German troops against British and South African soldiers, and
both sides against mosquitoes and disease. In Asia, Japanese forces cap
tured the fortress and port of Tsingtao (Qingdao) from a German garrison,
and seized the undefended German islands of the Marianas, Carolines,
and Marshalls in the North Pacific.
The Western FrontFollowing Gallipoli, the British again focused on the western front. South
ern England was so close to this front that officers who had lunch in private
railroad cars before leaving Victoria Station could be at the front—and
perhaps dead—by dinner. When British miners managed to blow up a pre
viously unconquerable ridge near Messines in western Belgium, it was said
that the explosion could be heard in Kent.
General Douglas Haig (1861—1928) was named commander in chief of
the British army in France in December 1915. He agreed with Joffre’s plan