Liman von Sanders takes command at the Dardanelles

A British chronology of the war records under 25 March 1915 that General Otto Liman von Sanders took command of the Turkish-German forces at the Dardanelles. The Turks gathered all the units defending the straits into a single army, the 5th Army, and entrusted it to the German general. The dates in the sources differ slightly. According to Liman’s memoirs, the War Minister Enver Pasha came to him late in the afternoon of 24 March and asked whether he would take over the new army. Liman agreed at once. Elsewhere in the same memoirs, however, he gives 25 March as the day of Enver’s decision. Turkish sources hold that the 5th Army was formed on 24 March. On the evening of 25 March Liman sailed from Constantinople, and on the morning of 26 March he landed at the port of Gallipoli.

A German general in the Turkish army

The sixty-year-old Liman, a Prussian general born in Stolp in Pomerania, had come to Constantinople in December 1913 at the head of a German military mission meant to reform the Ottoman army after its defeats in the Balkan Wars. The Turks gave him command of the corps stationed in the capital. This provoked sharp protests from Russia and France, which did not want a German commanding troops on the Bosporus. The dispute was settled in January 1914. Liman received the rank of marshal of the Ottoman army and the post of inspector-general, and gave up command of the corps. After the outbreak of war he commanded the 1st Army, which defended European Turkey and the area around the capital.

Liman’s relations with Enver and with the German embassy were at times strained. The German ambassador had even tried to replace him with Field Marshal Colmar von der Goltz. Now it was Goltz who took over command of the 1st Army from Liman.

After 18 March

Liman had long argued to the Turkish high command that the defence of the Dardanelles had to be placed under a single commander. He was supported in this by the German ambassador and by Admiral Wilhelm Souchon. Enver was brought round by the events of recent days. On 18 March the Turkish forts and mines had repulsed the great attack of the Allied fleet. Liman had no doubt, however, that the Allies would not give up so great a prize and would attempt a landing. From Athens, Sofia and Bucharest came reports of a concentration of 50,000 or even 80,000 troops on the islands of Lemnos and Imbros. The Turks knew of the arrival of Generals Ian Hamilton and Albert d’Amade, and also that on 17 March British officers had bought 42 large lighters and five tugs at Piraeus.

Liman left in haste. He took with him only his Turkish chief of staff, Kâzım Bey, and two German aides-de-camp. The rest of the staff was to follow later. With the exception of one German captain, all the officers of the 5th Army staff were Turks. The British official history later pointed out the similarity to the departure of Hamilton, who eleven days earlier had left London just as suddenly and without a complete staff.

A new defence plan

The 5th Army initially numbered five divisions. On arrival Liman concluded that they were badly deployed. As he wrote, the troops had been spread along the whole coast like the frontier guards of old. The enemy would have met some resistance everywhere, but for lack of reserves it would not have been possible to defend anywhere effectively. Liman therefore ordered the divisions to concentrate and to leave only essential posts on the shore.

He most feared a landing at the neck of the peninsula, on the isthmus of Bulair. Its capture would have cut off the troops on Gallipoli by land and by sea. He therefore concentrated two divisions there, the 5th and the 7th. He entrusted the southern part of the peninsula to the 9th Division, and kept in reserve the newly formed 19th Division of Lieutenant-Colonel Mustafa Kemal. Liman considered most likely, however, a landing on the Asian shore of the straits, near the island of Tenedos. The 11th Division stood there, and the 3rd Division was also brought from Constantinople, although its transfer lasted until the beginning of April. The soldiers built roads and fortifications, and units practised rapid marches to threatened points.

“The British allowed me four full weeks before their great landing,” Liman wrote after the war. When Hamilton’s troops landed on the Gallipoli peninsula on 25 April 1915, the Turks were far better prepared than in March. Liman commanded the 5th Army throughout the campaign, until the Allied evacuation in January 1916.