Gallipoli succeeds and knocks Turkey out of the war. Guarantees passage of Entente ships for duration of the war. Greece and Romania enter the war on the Entente side, Bulgaria remains neutral. British and French troops move out of Salonika and are reinforced by troops from Palestine and the Middle East.Is there anything the Entente could have done once the trenches settled in on the Western Front to defeat the Central Powers earlier than November 1918?
Bonus points if it doesn't include America coming into the War early.
Russia was being supplied at about the limit of British and French capacity to do so, at least until well into 1916, by which time Russia’s own industries were providing the armaments the army required.Gallipoli succeeds and knocks Turkey out of the war. Guarantees passage of Entente ships for duration of the war... Russia is supported and supplied much better in the East...
Russia was being supplied at about the limit of British and French capacity to do so, at least until well into 1916, by which time Russia’s own industries were providing the armaments the army required.
While 90% of Russia’s wheat exports prior to the war went via the Dardanelles, foreign trade simply was not a major part of the Russian economy of the time and didn’t generate a great amount of revenue for the government. Given the manpower shortages caused by the war, and the massive burden placed on the Russian rail network by the need to provide supplies and men to the front, and food and Ukrainian coal to Petrograd, any resumed export of the Ukrainian wheat crop would be far short of the pre-war volume and unlikely to be enough of an increase in the Russian economy to change the overall military situation in the East.
There is also the fact that a victory for the Dardanelles expedition and reopening of the straits would mean a resumption of Rumanian oil and Ukrainian coal exports to Italy; reducing the pressure the Entente can apply to Italy to bring them into the war.
The Gallipoli landings were on April 25, 1915 and were only ever going to succeed with initial shock and surprise; once the Ottomans began to respond the assault bogged down and never had an opportunity to recover. General consensus is that for them to have had any significant possibility of success, they would have had to have taken place without the previous naval assault on the Straits that resulted in the Turks increasing their forces in the Dardanelles from one division to six, so March 1915 or even earlier. Italy did not enter the war until late May 1915 and one of the guarantees the British government gave them was the supply of British coal to make up for their lost imports from Rumania and Russia.Last time I looked Italy was already in the war at the time of Gallipoli so no issue there then.
Transporting armaments from Odessa would have been an advantage over transporting the same arms from Murmansk and Archangel, but the advantage is not going to be decisive because the Entente would not have been able to supply much more because of the Shell Crisis.The advantage that the Black sea supply would have would be in drastically reducing the load on the Russian railway system caused by landing Entente supplies at Murmansk or Vladivostok.
The Russian army was 5 million men strong, how large an expeditionary force are you proposing? Bearing in mind that every man sent in an expeditionary force to Russia is one less men on the Western Front.Also the British and French troops would be able to stiffen the Russians and Romanians in the same way as the Germans did for the A-H armies.
The Gallipoli landings were on April 25, 1915 and were only ever going to succeed with initial shock and surprise; once the Ottomans began to respond the assault bogged down and never had an opportunity to recover. General consensus is that for them to have had any significant possibility of success, they would have had to have taken place without the previous naval assault on the Straits that resulted in the Turks increasing their forces in the Dardanelles from one division to six, so March 1915 or even earlier. Italy did not enter the war until late May 1915 and one of the guarantees the British government gave them was the supply of British coal to make up for their lost imports from Rumania and Russia.
Transporting armaments from Odessa would have been an advantage over transporting the same arms from Murmansk and Archangel, but the advantage is not going to be decisive because the Entente would not have been able to supply much more because of the Shell Crisis.
The Russian army was 5 million men strong, how large an expeditionary force are you proposing? Bearing in mind that every man sent in an expeditionary force to Russia is one less men on the Western Front.