There was stalemate on the western front, several efforts were made to make a breakthrough, but every one resulted in failure with thousands of casualties. The Germans were too dug in to make the British artillery bombardments effective and so there were massacres such as the Somme.
• Turkey had joined the war by attacking Russia, although this attack was easily beaten off by the Russians, turkey was now an enemy and it controlled the only entrance to the Black sea at the Dardenelles. This prevented Russia from receiving supplies and trade from the Mediterranean, an important link to the other allies
• If Turkey could be crushed then it would perhaps cause other powers in the area such as Bulgaria and Greece to ally with Britain France and Russia against Germany, if this occurred then Austria-Hungary would be in an untenable position and would be forced to pull out of the War leaving Germany on its own surrounded by the enemy.
• It was hoped that if another front could be opened then a breakthrough could be made rather than continual trench warfare. If Germany was surrounded it would have to fall to the allies.
• The idea was primarily proposed by Winston Churchill
• The war was a failure because after destroying the forts on the coast totally by naval bombardment the allies took far too long to land troops in order to attack the forts further inland. There was a whole months delay between the destruction of the forts and the landing on 25 April
• The force of the Australia and New Zealand army corps which landed had never practised landing on an enemy beach and their commander sir Ian Hamilton had erroneous maps of the region.
• The Turks had had time to prepare so when the Anzacs actually managed to land successfully it just became trench warfare again except with more heat, diseases and less water.
• Eventually Gallipoli was evacuated