June 1, 2015

Finest Hour 107, Summer 2000

Page 26

By Barry Gough

Fisher, Churchill and The Dardanelles, by Geoffrey Penn. Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Leo Cooper 1999, 299 pages, published at $36.95. Member price $30.

The immediate objective was Constantinople, Turkey’s capital, garrisoned by the German Army. The more significant intent was to assist the sagging army of Czarist Russia, pinned down on the Eastern Front and expected to collapse under pressure of repeated German and Austro-Hungarian assaults. The year was 1915, by which time the Western Front had been established, with the opposing armies stalemated by lines of trenches.

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To the so-called “Westerners” among British policymakers, such as General Sir William Robertson, the only logical course of action, on strategic grounds, was to pour in more armies to the Western Front. To the “Easterners,” among whom Winston Churchill and Lord Kitchener were prominent, the natural course was to capture Constantinople, ship supplies and materiel into the Black Sea, shore up Russian forces and, not least, take the pressure off the Western Front.

It sounded like a satisfactory project, and, not least among the benefits, it might give employment to the Royal Navy which, to that point, had triumphed over the German East Asiatic Squadron in the Battle of the Falkland Islands and was, generally speaking, holding its own in the North Sea. Worth remembering, too, is the impatience of British strategists and statesmen, anxious as they were to end the war as quickly as possible. The war had not ended by the previous Christmas as hoped and expected; Churchill, who by nature was impatient for action and results, stood at the forefront of those anxious to use the Royal Navy to good effect. Thus was born the Dardanelles Expedition.

Geoffrey Penn, an established writer in naval history, takes as his theme the interaction of Admiral Sir John Fisher, the First Sea Lord, and Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty. His intention is to explain the difference in their viewpoints and policies. As the narrative unfolds it becomes abundantly clear that he backs the sailor professional, Fisher, against the cavalry enthusiast, Churchill.

Penn is not the first to have explored this matter. Trumbull Higgins’s Winston Churchill and the Dardanelles: A Dialogue in Ends and Means (London and New York, 1963) is still the better book, though based on fewer sources. Curiously, it is not included in Penn’s bibliography. Another, “lessons learned” critique was undertaken by Captain W. D. Puleston: The Dardanelles Expedition: A Condensed Study (Annapolis, 1926). Based on the study of memoirs and official documents of the formal Dardanelles inquiry, Puleston concluded in unreserved words that the British government of the day had no ability to direct the course of the war: “in war time with civilian ministers unwilling to be advised, it [the British government] imperils the existence of the nation and empire. It is doubtful if even Great Britain could survive another World War and another Churchill.” In fact, Britain did survive another World War, and the same Churchill.

Fisher is indeed an attractive figure for naval historians and biographers. Energetic, strategically-minded, a reformer, a financial analyst and a keen judge of professional competence, Fisher holds a sort of romantic motif for the Edwardian age. An unlikely leader of the Navy, for aristocratic connections were nonexistent to him, he nonetheless won the confidence of King Edward VII and successfully charted his way through the shoals of Naval reform in the first decade of the 20th century. Not least among Fisher’s contributions was his understanding of submarines, flotilla operations, torpedoes and air power. He poured out his ideas one after another in rapid succession, and in this sense he was entirely compatible with Churchill, who had an equally fertile mind and energy to match.

Churchill brought Fisher back to the Admiralty in October 1914, when Prince Louis Battenberg could not be retained as First Sea Lord on grounds of his German birth. Fishers reappointment was wildly praised by the press, but in the back rooms in Whitehall and the Admiralty and in the ships of the fleet there were rumbles and worries.”They will be as thick as thieves at first until they differ on some subject,” wrote Admiral Wemyss, who forecast a breach between Fisher and Churchill when they began to quarrel “as to who is going to be number one, when they will begin to intrigue against each other.” This was a correct observation.

The British war cabinet adopted the Dardanelles plan in January 1915, and did so at a time when Fisher was still lukewarm in his support of the scheme. As time passed and the plan began to be put into effect, queries were asked about whether or not the attack could succeed with ships alone, and if not, what shore units would be required. In the end, the British employed 400,000 men in the campaign including Dominion and colonial troops, particularly from Australia. They lost almost 120,000, of whom 31,389 were killed. The Turks employed 800,000 with a loss of 218,000, of whom 66,000 were killed.

At the outset, as Penn explains, Fisher was prepared to commit the appropriate naval forces. Once he realized the damage that the campaign might do to the Senior Service, and to the Navy’s capabilities in the North Sea, Fisher’s enthusiasm waned and he became downright hostile. Churchill, by contrast, continued to press for more naval resources, and a fight ensued on constitutional grounds as to the relationship of statesmen and the professional head of the Service. The differences were irreconcilable, and after numerous threats to resign, Fisher left office, dragging Churchill with him.

Penn makes clear that Prime Minister Asquith’s war cabinet, if ever effective, was hopelessly inefficient and lacked integrity of purpose. The senior heads of government—Grey, Haldane, Kitchener, Churchill and Lloyd George—kept independent agendas. In the major reconstitution of the Cabinet which followed the double resignation and the crisis at the Admiralty, none other than Arthur Balfour, who knew all the tricks of his colleagues, was brought in as the regulator. After these dramatic events, and a crisis caused by a shortage of shells, Churchill and Fisher hankered for action. Returns to power were imagined, and correspondence was exchanged between the two as to how a re-entry might be effected.

Fisher continued to grumble about Churchill but took no public action. Churchill, too, remained largely silent about Fisher. When the Dardanelles Commission called for statements from the two, they actually passed drafts of their independent replies back and forth so that there would be no differences of fact or opinion. When Fisher died in 1920, he passed from the British scene with a whimper rather than a bang. Not until the publication of Fisher’s biography by Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon in 1929, who severely criticized Churchill, did the latter subject Fisher to criticism and even ridicule. Churchill’s reaction can be found in any edition of Great Contemporaries published since 1938.

Geoffrey Penn is critical of the received view of historians on Fisher, but he errs in failing to cite them specifically or to analyze their perspectives. Arthur Marder’s distinguished work on this subject, though mentioned, seems set aside. Penn’s judgement invariably supports Fisher against Churchill, and readers will find this a persistent problem. However, toward the end of the book Churchill gets his due and is partially salvaged.

This work lacks rigorous analysis and is a heavy read. Because it is based on sources available in print, it is a good summation of that literature. However, there is much new to be found in Admiralty and Churchill manuscripts, and when these have been exploited a richer account will be available on the interaction of these two remarkable figures.

Dr. Gough ([email protected]) is a Professor of History at Wilfrid Laurier University, was a symposiast at the third Churchill Center Symposium on Churchill’s Marlborough, and is researching British naval history for a book.