What was the legacy of Gallipoli? Would the world have been a different place today if it had never happened?

Here, historian Sir Hew Strachan describes how the Ottoman Empire changed, and wonders what might have happened if the Allies had managed to break through the Dardanelles and link up with Russia.

Did Gallipoli change the course of the First World War?

At first the British government thought that a victory at Gallipoli would shorten the war by removing the Ottoman Empire and freeing up Russia to put pressure on Germany’s Eastern Front. However the failure of the Allies at Gallipoli had the opposite effect: the Ottomans were able to send more troops to fight against Russia and in Mesopotamia, using up Allied troops badly needed on the Western Front. Gallipoli almost certainly made the First World War last longer, leading to many more deaths on all sides. Professor Eugene Rogan goes into more detail in his book ‘The Fall of the Ottomans’.

Changes in each country

Gallipoli and the First World War changed things in the countries that took part.  In Australia, Gallipoli changed everything, as historians Stephen Chambers and Peter Stanley describe in the videos on the Australia and Gallipoli page.

Indian historian Vedica Kant describes some of these changes in the last video on the Indians at Gallipoli page.