The Mistaken View of Churchill’s First World War “Mistakes”

A common verdict on Churchill’s First World War is that he was the perpetrator of costly disasters, but that he learned from his mistakes. Consider this, from the Imperial War Museum’s website:

At the outbreak of war in 1914, Churchill was serving as First Lord of the Admiralty. In 1915 he helped orchestrate the disastrous Dardanelles naval campaign and was also involved in the planning of the military landings on Gallipoli, both of which saw large losses. Following the failure of these campaigns, Churchill was demoted and resigned from government. He became an officer in the Army and served on the Western Front until early 1916. In 1917, under Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s coalition government, Churchill was appointed Minister of Munitions, a position he held until January 1919.

Churchill’s First World War in a little more than a hundred unfortunate words.

He did not of course “become an officer in the Army”—he already held the rank of major in the Territorial Force (in the Oxfordshire Hussars)—but that is a minor point compared with the implication that the failure of the Dardanelles/Gallipoli campaign was in significant part due to him. Or with the omission of any mention of the tank, the battle-winning innovation that would almost certainly not have been fielded so early had it not been for Churchill’s creation of the Admiralty Landships Committee. No mention either that his decision to keep the naval reservists with their ships after the practice mobilization in early July 1914, rather than standing them down to return home, gained the Admiralty precious days when war came. Or, indeed, of his unilateral decision on 28 July to order the Grand Fleet to steam from its grand review at Spithead (in the Solent, Southern England) “at high speed, and without lights” through the Straits of Dover into the North Sea and onwards to its