On the 25th of April, 1915, precisely 109 years ago, the ANZACs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula in an effort to secure the Dardanelles, a strait that Britain planned to use to strike at the Central Powers and win World War One.
It was a colossal failure. The ANZACs were slaughtered. The Ottomans had a superior elevated position, and the ANZACs pouring out of their invasion craft were gunned down like fish in a barrel. Turns out, invading someone else’s home gives the enemy certain advantages in knowledge and control of favourable terrain. The Dardanelles were not secured by the Allies, and British ships did not bomb civilian homes in Istanbul.
Today, Australia and New Zealand celebrate ANZAC day. They glorify the soldiers who fought at Gallipoli. Soldiers who invaded a foreign land at the behest of a distant monarchy, out of a sense of violent loyalty. Every year, the following poem is read out by Australians as a major event:
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Well fuck that. Let’s condemn.
The ANZACs were invading someone else’s home. Let’s not mince words, it was an invasion. Their aim was to secure the Dardanelles and allow supply of further armed forces, as well as naval bombing of a civilian population center. All this is BAD, and quite self-evident to any Australian who has been educated in the history of the campaign and who is not blinded by nationalist hero-worship.
But it gets worse. Because you see, we know what the ANZACs were working towards. Because although they failed, their allies succeeded in invading the Central Powers and imposing their terms for surrender. These included reparations. The reparations Germany was forced to pay for their defeat in World War I exacerbated an already unstable postwar economy. Germany was left in shame, poverty, and with an uncertain future.
These conditions lead to the radicalisation of the German populace, just as economic hardships in the US are today leading to radicalisation. These conditions lead to the seizing of power by Adolf Hitler.
Hitler took advantage of the desperation of the German people and directed them towards hatred of Jews, trans people, and other minorities. A country with a healthy economy would not have fallen for this propaganda. You cannot construct a villain if people do not feel victimised. As a result of the Allies’ actions following WWI, the Germans felt victimised. They became the sort of people who would adopt fascism, seeing in their misery no other path to prosperity.
This is what the ANZACs were fighting for. To subject a population to the conditions that would lead inevitably to the holocaust. This cycle of endless, senseless violence, is what you kick off when you invade someone’s home to kill them with the aim of taking their money.
And for what? A dead duke? A tangled web of nonsense alliances? A medieval idea of the glory of warfare?
The soldiers who fought in World War One taught the world that war is hell. But there were people, at the time, who already knew this. Predominantly they were anarchists, socialists, feminists, and pacifists. Adela Pankhurst, a socialist living in Melbourne, was arrested in 1917 for protesting against the war and against conscription. A petition calling for her release from prison was signed by thousands of people. She later helped found the Communist Party of Australia. Australia never did introduce conscription for WWI. The people voted against it twice.
The excuse that it was another time, that people didn’t know better, does not hold water. Because people did. People understood that going to the other side of the world to kill people in the name of King George is wrong. The people who failed to recognise this fact failed because of their lack of empathy. Because of their nationalistic fervor to do violence. They were the reactionary conservatives of the time, and they were openly opposed by much of the public for their belief in violence. Those people are what I call evil.
It is because of the mistakes by the Allies, at Gallipoli and elsewhere, that the next generation of ANZAC soldiers had to clean up the mess by killing Nazi scum in New Guinea. And good on them! But bad on the ANZACs who participated in the worldwide effort by the Allies to create the Nazis in the first place. Japan should not have been able to find an ally in Germany and subscribe to the national socialist ideology. That is the fault of the Allies, and Australia deserves its fair share of the blame.
I am grateful that the Ottomans were successful in defending their homeland from the ANZACs. I am grateful that Istanbul was not bombed. But I am angry that every year, Australians who have not learned their lesson from history read a poem that is against condemning the Gallipoli campaign. The ANZACs of World War One were evil, horrible, pathetic men. They all deserved to die.
