Castles of Steel by Robert K. Massie

  Unfortunately, the First Lord ignored or misunderstood the differences between controlling German land artillery at close range from forward positions, and firing naval guns at targets seven or eight miles away with no means of accurately spotting the fall of shot. The German siege howitzer was a fat, short-barreled cannon that lobbed its shell high into the air so that the missile plunged down on its target. An observer close to the target observed the location of the shell’s impact and then signaled the battery to correct the range until the shell fell precisely on the desired spot. Large naval guns had an entirely different design and purpose. Shells fired from a long barrel in a low trajectory over thousands of yards were designed to strike and sink enemy warships at the greatest possible range. Spotting the fall of shot at sea was made easier for ships by the eruption of a great column of water where the shell hit. By tracking these water towers through binoculars and correcting their aim, the ship’s gunners hoped eventually to hit their enemy. When a ship is firing at a fort, on the other hand, the impact of a shell produces, not an easily discernible column of water, but a cloud of debris and dust that further obscures the target, giving the observer, thousands of yards away, little help in correcting his aim. In addition, warship shells fired in a flat trajectory would not plunge onto or near the target; more likely, they would pass overhead and hit many yards—even hundreds of yards—behind.

  But all of this was still to be learned.

  The meeting of the War Council on January 13, 1915, was a prolonged and exhausting session lasting all day. Not until after sunset did the council turn to the Dardanelles. Churchill explained Admiral Carden’s plan, which had arrived at the Admiralty the day before. As Hankey described the scene:

  The War Council had been sitting all day. The blinds had been drawn to shut out the winter evening. The air was heavy and the table presented that rather disheveled appearance that results from a long session. . . . At this point events took a dramatic turn for Churchill suddenly revealed his well-kept secret of a naval attack on the Dardanelles! The idea caught on at once. The whole atmosphere changed. Fatigue was forgotten. The War Council turned eagerly from the dreary prospect of a “slogging match” on the Western Front to brighter prospects, as they seemed, in the Mediterranean. The navy, in whom everyone had implicit confidence and whose opportunities so far had been limited, was to come into the front line. . . . Churchill unfolded his plans with the skill that might be expected of him, lucidly, but quietly and without exaggerated optimism.

  Pointing to a map, the First Lord declared that the Admiralty “believed that a plan could be made for systematically reducing all the forts within a few weeks. Once the forts were reduced, the minefields could be cleared and the fleet would proceed up to Constantinople and destroy Goeben.” Churchill declared that ships for the enterprise, including Queen Elizabeth, were available.

  Churchill’s argument, Lloyd George said later, was delivered “with all the inexorable force and pertinacity, together with the mastery of detail he always commands when he is really interested in a subject.” So deep was the sense of frustration, so strong the apparent need that something be done, and so infectiously enthusiastic was Churchill’s presentation, that most of those who heard it were captured by its novelty and simplicity. There was no opposition. Churchill’s principal naval advisers, Admirals of the Fleet Fisher and Wilson, were present, but were not called upon for their opinions, nor did they offer any remarks. Their silence permitted Churchill and the other ministers to take their acquiescence for granted. Kitchener said the plan was worth trying and that “we could leave off the bombardment if it did not prove effective.” During the discussion, Asquith was seen to be writing. At length the prime minister read out the conclusion he had written: “That the Admiralty should prepare for a naval expedition in February to bombard and take the Gallipoli peninsula with Constantinople as its objective.” The War Council approved unanimously. Later, many of the ministers at the meeting differed as to whether any final decision had been made. Asquith himself understood that the council was pledged to nothing more than preparations. Eventually the Dardanelles Commission was to ask, How could a fleet “take” a peninsula? How could it occupy Constantinople? But these and other questions were not asked until two years later.

  Up to mid-January, operational planning at the Admiralty seemed to be proceeding smoothly. The French government promised to place a squadron of four battleships under Carden’s command. Nevertheless, even as plans for the naval attack were taking form around him, Fisher’s enthusiasm was fading. As early as January 19, the First Sea Lord was complaining to Jellicoe, who he knew would provide a sympathetic ear: “The Cabinet have decided on taking the Dardanelles solely with the navy using fifteen battleships and 32 other vessels, and keeping out there three battle cruisers and a flotilla of destroyers all urgently required at the decisive theater at home. There is only one way out and that is to resign. But you say ‘No!’ which simply means I am a consenting party to what I absolutely disapprove. I don’t agree with one single step taken. . . . The way the war is conducted both ashore and afloat is chaotic! We have a new plan every week.” Two days later, Fisher wrote again to Jellicoe, “I just abominate the Dardanelles operation, unless a great change is made and it is settled to be a military operation with 200,000 men in conjunction with the fleet. I believe Kitchener is coming now to this sane view of the matter.”

  Fisher was not opposed to all amphibious operations; indeed, he had always believed that the British army “is a projectile to be fired by the navy.” It was the navy’s job to carry soldiers from here to there, but not to fight a land campaign. He was quite prepared for a combined navy-army operation but he would have liked it somewhere other than at the Dardanelles. His own strong preference was for a large-scale Russian landing on the German Baltic coast, followed by a march to Berlin. With this in mind, his great building program, initiated within a week of his return to the Admiralty in November, had called for a large number of armor-plated landing barges capable of carrying 500 men each and equipped with ramps for rapid disembarkation. The first of these craft were now approaching completion. But now, apparently, they were to go, not to the Baltic, but to the Dardanelles.

  Underlying the specific reasons Fisher gave for opposing Churchill lay deeper reasons based on personality. His motives for turning against the Dardanelles operation stemmed at least in part from the strange administrative position into which they all had drifted. In November 1914, Asquith had formed the War Council as a select committee of the Cabinet, including Asquith, Haldane, Kitchener, Lloyd George, and Grey, along with some others like Arthur Balfour, the Conservative former prime minister. There was already an imbalance at the top: the secretary of state for war was an eminent soldier and a national hero, while the First Lord of the Admiralty was a civilian with no naval and only early military experience. Churchill was keenly aware of this inequity: “I had not the same weight or authority as those two ministers [Asquith and Kitchener] nor the same power, and if they said ‘This is to be done, or not be done’ that settled it,” said Churchill. This modest statement is not entirely convincing. Churchill possessed unparalleled powers of persuasion and argued with incomparable virtuosity. But in the first year of war Kitchener’s prestige and authority were overwhelming. “All powerful, imperturbable, reserved, he dominated absolutely our counsels at this time,” Churchill said of him. On specific matters of strategy and prosecution of the war, Asquith, an urbane political and parliamentary compromiser, and Churchill, a brilliantly imaginative and articulate forty-year-old, simply could not challenge this colossus.

  Below this level of supreme authority stood the generals and admirals present in War Council meetings to advise if called upon. Here, a misconception had hardened into permanence. Ministers assumed that the service chiefs would freely speak their minds, without being invited to do so, but these experts did not consider that they should break in to express opinions or dissent. Asquith, who always presided, never
invited the attending service chiefs to speak but rather allowed himself to be wholly guided on military and naval matters by the secretary of state for war and the First Lord of the Admiralty. Fisher rarely spoke and never protested. “I made it a rule that I would not at the War Council kick Winston Churchill’s shins,” he said. “He [Churchill] was my chief and it was silence or resignation.” Thus, whether they agreed with the First Lord or not, the admirals sat silent; unfortunately, this silence was taken as assent. The War Council took it for granted that when Churchill spoke, he had first settled things within his department and was speaking for the entire Admiralty.

  There was another imbalance that grated on Fisher. His position was entirely different from Kitchener’s. Unlike Kitchener, he was not a minister; he was only a technical adviser. He could not make policy or vote, even on matters that affected the navy. Yet to the British public Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher of Kilverstone was something more than the incumbent First Sea Lord: he was the Royal Navy. His reputation was as overwhelming as the dreadnoughts he had built, and he spoke with the blast effect of their massive guns. To Fisher, sitting and listening day after day while Kitchener dominated the War Council with his opinions, it seemed that the imperial war lord was showing an inappropriate disregard—even disrespect—for what in Britain had always been the senior service.

  Until mid-January, Fisher did not openly complain about the Dardanelles plan; indeed, it was he who had proposed adding Queen Elizabeth. But following the January 13 meeting, Fisher had deeper misgivings. He tried to fix his forebodings about the Dardanelles adventure into some logical argument that would establish his general sense of uneasiness and that he could present to Churchill, whom he enormously liked and admired. But when he tried, Churchill had no difficulty, either privately or publicly, in proving him wrong. Not only did Fisher’s own cherished scheme, a naval campaign in the Baltic, now obviously have no chance—but also, as he saw it, the Grand Fleet, the central pillar of British naval supremacy and war strategy, was now being nibbled away by the devouring demands of the Dardanelles. Fisher, after all, was the First Sea Lord who, ten years earlier, had brought the British navy home and concentrated it against the growing threat from Imperial Germany. Now, returned to office, he insisted that nothing be done to permit the loss of this hard-won supremacy.

  Fisher himself precipitated a crisis on January 25 when sent his views in writing to the prime minister with a copy to Churchill. “First Lord,” he wrote in a cover note, “I have no desire to continue a useless resistance in the War Council to plans I cannot concur in, but I would ask that the enclosed may be printed and circulated to members [of the War Council] before the next meeting.” The memorandum pointed to the folly of the whole Dardanelles scheme. “We play into Germany’s hands,” Fisher wrote, “if we risk fighting ships in any subsidiary operations such as coastal bombardments or the attack of fortified places without military cooperation, for we thereby increase the possibility that the Germans may be able to engage our fleet with some approach to equality of strength. . . . Even the older ships should not be risked, for they cannot be lost without losing men and they form the only reserve behind our Grand Fleet. . . . The sole justification of coastal bombardments and attacks by the fleet on fortified places, such as the contemplated bombardment of the Dardanelles forts . . . , is to force a decision at sea, and so far and no farther can they be justified.” Britain, Fisher argued, should be content with maintaining the North Sea blockade of Germany. “Being already in possession of all that a powerful fleet can give a country, we should continue quietly to enjoy the advantage without dissipating our strength in operations that cannot improve the position.” Although Fisher asked that this document be circulated to the War Council, Asquith, on Churchill’s recommendation, refused to do so.

  Instead, Churchill replied on January 27, declaring that the central argument in Fisher’s paper was indisputable: the primary responsibility of the Admiralty was to maintain the Grand Fleet at a strength sufficient to ensure defeat of the German High Seas Fleet in battle. This responsibility, the First Lord argued, was being faithfully discharged. Once again, as he had in November and December, the First Lord provided a comparative list of the numerical strength of the two fleets. In addition to everything necessary to ensure victory in a climactic North Sea battle, Churchill pointed out, Britain also had twenty-one old battleships, heavily armed and armored, completely manned and supplied with their own ammunition, lying idle since they were unfit to meet modern German ships. “Not to use them where necessary because of some fear that there would be an outcry if a ship is lost would be wrong,” Churchill insisted.

  Meanwhile, planning for the operation continued. By the last week of January, supplies were assembled and ships were under orders. All that was needed was the final approval of the War Council. This was to be given at a meeting scheduled for 11:30 on the morning of January 28. That morning, Churchill found Fisher’s resignation on his desk: “I entreat you to believe that if as I think really desirable for a complete unity of purpose in the war that I should gracefully disappear and revert to roses at Richmond,” Fisher had written. “There will not be in my heart the least lingering thought of anything but regard and affection and indeed much admiration towards yourself.” Knowing that Asquith had refused to circulate his memorandum and that War Council members would be unaware of his views, Fisher also wrote to the prime minister, saying that he did not wish to attend the War Council meeting that day: “I am not in accord with the First Lord and do not think it would be seemly to say so before the Council. . . . I say that the . . . Dardanelles bombardments can only be justified on naval grounds by military cooperation which would compensate for the loss in ships and irreplaceable officers and men. As purely naval operations they are unjustifiable. . . . I am very reluctant to leave the First Lord. I have a great personal affection and admiration for him, but I see no possibility of a union of ideas, and unity is essential in war so I refrain from any desire of remaining as a stumbling block. The British Empire ceases if our Grand Fleet ceases. No risks can be taken.”

  The withdrawal of Fisher’s support on the very day that the War Council was scheduled to approve the enterprise was awkward for both Asquith and Churchill. Struggling to keep the old admiral in line, the First Lord insisted that Fisher talk to the prime minister. Arriving with Churchill in Asquith’s Downing Street study a few minutes before the council meeting began, Fisher described to the prime minister his objections to a Dardanelles operation. Churchill urged that it be allowed to continue. Asquith, forced to choose, decided that the attack should go forward. Fisher received this decision in silence and both the prime minister and the First Lord assumed that he had accepted it. Together, the three men then went downstairs to the meeting of the War Council in the Cabinet Room.

  Fisher attended this meeting in the belief that in their just completed conversation, Asquith had said that a final decision on the Dardanelles was not to be taken that day. The mood at the council meeting was cheerfully optimistic; Churchill’s continuing enthusiasm had colored the views of his colleagues. The First Lord reported that preparations for the attack on the Dardanelles were well advanced, but that the council must understand that the expedition “undoubtedly involves risks.” As soon as Churchill finished, Fisher intervened to say that “he had understood that this question would not be raised at this meeting and that the prime minister knew his views on the subject.” To this, Asquith replied that “in view of the steps which already had been taken, the question could not be well left in abeyance.” Fisher thereupon stood up and made for the door. Kitchener saw this and, jumping to his feet, succeeded in reaching the door first. Steering Fisher to a window, he quietly asked the admiral what he was going to do. Fisher replied that he would not go back to the table and that he intended to resign as First Sea Lord. Kitchener pointed out that Fisher was the only man present who disagreed with the proposed operation; that the prime minister had made a decision and that it was the
First Sea Lord’s duty to his country to accept it and continue in office. Reluctantly, Fisher went back to the table where ministers were competing in optimistic predictions. Kitchener now declared that a naval attack was vitally important; the great merit of this form of offensive action, he said, was that “if satisfactory progress could not be made, the attack could be broken off.” Balfour said that “it was difficult to imagine a more hopeful operation.” Grey said that “the Turks would be paralyzed with fear when they heard that the forts were being destroyed one by one”; that the neutral Balkan powers, all anxious to be on the winning side, would watch the progress of this effort, and that he hoped that success would finally settle the attitude of Bulgaria. Through all of this, Asquith noticed, Fisher maintained “an obstinate and ominous silence.”

  The meeting adjourned at 2:00 p.m. to resume in the late afternoon. During this interval, Churchill, who had seen Kitchener talking privately to Fisher, spoke to the old admiral in his room at the Admiralty. The conversation was “long and very friendly,” in Churchill’s phrase, “I am in no way concealing the great and continuous pressure which I put upon the old admiral,” Churchill admitted later, and Fisher often complained to friends about his inability to withstand these tactics. “He always out-argues me,” he said to one. And to another: “I am sure I am right, I am sure I am right, but he is always convincing me against my will. I hear him talk and he seems to make the difficulties vanish and when he is gone I sit down and write him a letter and say I agree. Then I go to bed and can’t sleep, and his talk passes away and I know I am right. So I get up and write him another letter and say I don’t agree, and so it goes on.” Something of this kind happened on the afternoon of January 28. By the end of his talk with Churchill, Fisher had consented to support the Dardanelles operation.