WI no Dardanelles campaign?

What are the ramifications of the British and the French not attempting to force the Dardanelles?

The reputation of Winston Churchill is not damaged. He does not leave the cabinet (although i suspect the Conservatives would have had him out as a condition of joining the Asquith coalition), I wonder what that means for both Churchill and us? Perhaps no wilderness years, perhaps PM sooner, perhaps no Churchill in 1941 etc.

The Anzac troops are not killed there in large numbers perhaps having an impact on what has been described as the beginning of Australian and New Zealand national consciousness ( although i suspect those loyal empire troops would have just as easily been slaughtered in France as the Canadians & Newfoundlanders were) and a lingering distrust of Britain and the delayed fracturing of the allegiances of empire from our antipodean cousins.

I suspect that Churchill and others would have looked for another landing spot on the "soft underbelly of Europe" ( to coin a phrase) because they wanted to get out of the circle of death in France and Belgium.
 
I am not sure why they needed to promise Russia anything, they were already in the war.

The British do need Russia to stay in the war. By November 1914, General von Falkenhayn had seen enough of trench warfare to conclude that Germany could not win a two-front war. He informed Bethman: “So long as Russia, France and Britain held together, it would be impossible to defeat our enemies decisively enough to get a decent peace, Either Russia or France must be chiseled off.”

Falkenhayn urged Russia, as the tsar’s mother belonged to the Danish royal family. In December 1914, through Copenhagen, Bethmann sounded out the Russians. “The Tsar and Sazonov are confident of victory,” his Danish contacts reported. Further soundings convinced Bethmann that a separate peace was not in the cards. Despite Nicholas not refusing to discuss a settlement through the king of Denmark, the Russians were too afraid of revolution to risk bringing the army home from the front. The ruling circles in Petersburg hope that the Straits will soon be opened and that they will receive all necessary material by this route was the message to Falkenhayn. That deliverance depended on the British attack on the Dardanelles succeeding.
 
Yes, it had already been agreed at Entente discussion on war aims in late 1914.
Well it's not as though Britain or France didn't have a history of reneging on their deals after the fact if necessary. Russia might get on its high horse, but if Britain and France are already militarily occupying Constantinople and the zone along both sides of the Bosphorus there's not really much they can do. They'll most likely just pay the Russians off with some extra German territory and reparations - perhaps West Prussia and Upper Silesia to go along with East Prussia and Posen, they can add it to the Kingdom of Poland.


Indeed. However there is the core Turkish lands which the Ottomans would continue fighting to hold (including Istanbul) and effectively the rest. This scenario is very similar to what happened OTL.
If they successfully land at Iskander and in concert with an offensive from the south manage to capture most of the Ottoman troops in Palestine I would hope that that they had the good sense not to try and advance into the Anatolean plateau. Farthest I could see them going would be a front running roughly Alexandretta - Antep - Urfa - Diyarbakir - Siirt.
 
Indeed. However there is the core Turkish lands which the Ottomans would continue fighting to hold (including Istanbul) and effectively the rest. This scenario is very similar to what happened OTL.
In the sense that the Turks end up losing the Arab-populated areas, sure, but they dynamics, speed, and scope of the Middle East campaign is immensely different.
 
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