ANZAC Day: Two Tragic anniversaries

Two terrible events occurred a hundred years ago this week.

Yesterday, Friday 24th April was the commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

There is some debate about whether we should use that word or just call it a massacre. I agree with my colleague Saj Karim who did some great work in the European Parliament on this issue that we should use the word genocide, not least because the person who is usually credited with originally coining the term "genocide" in the first place was specifically thinking of the murder of millions of Armenian men, women and children in 1915 when he did so.

This ghastly crime was one of Hitler's inspiration for some of his own most evil actions: there is evidence that he actually said in a speech to his commanders at Obersalzberg a week before invadint Poland,  "Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

Hitler was wrong:This month the European Parliament spoke of it and so have many others.

And then today, ANZAC Day,  is the anniversary of the first landings at Gallipoli, a tragic botched campaign in which thousands of brave men gave their lives.

This was the campaign for which the expression "Lions led by Donkeys" was first used to describe allied footsoldiers. That biting expression contains a great deal of truth, but ironically in the Gallipolli campaign the main problem was very much the opposite of that most often presented in the "Oh what a lovely war" view of the Great War/World War One.

The popular image of World War one is of aggressive, callous and ruthless generals who didn't care about getting their soldiers killed and who threw thousands of lives away by sending their men "over the top" to attack impregnable positions.

Like most myths, this has an element of truth, particularly in respect of the Western Front.

At Gallipoli, however, overcaution by allied generals was probably a more important cause of British, Australian, and New Zealand casualties than overly aggressive tactics. The Turks were given time to prepare defences covering the most likely landing sites, One of the opposing commanders was Mustafa Kemal, later dictator of Turkey and founder of the modern Turkish state, who made his name during the campaign, and moved his units quickly into key positions. Both sides took heavy casulaties during the fighting but the Allies failed to achieve any of their objectives.

The only good thing to come out of the campaign is that lessons were learned about how not to conduct an amphibious assault which undoubtedly saved many thousands of Allied lives in subsequent campaigns including the D-Day landings.

Today is a day to remember all the brave men who fought and died for their countries during the Gallipoli campaign.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Quote of the day 24th July 2020