Description
This Australian recruitment poster shows an infantryman and maps of Australia and Turkeys Peninsula of Gallipoli in the background. Although Australian troops fought in France and Belgium, the military engagement at Gallipoli was of particular significance for the new state of Australia. In 1915, as fighting reached a stalemate on the Western Front, Winston Churchill, then Britains First Lord of the Admiralty, devised a plan to attack Germany by the back door, by seizing the Dardanelles and eliminating the threat of Germanys ally, Turkey. Churchill called up large numbers of Australian and New Zealand troops to assist in the military campaign. When Britains naval blockade of the Dardanelles Straits failed, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs) joined Allied forces in storming the Gallipoli peninsula. The Allies met fierce resistance from Turkish troops, and thousands of Australian and New Zealand soldiers lost their lives in the initial days of the campaign. As on the Western Front, the fighting soon reached an impasse and, after eight months of combat, the Allies retreated in December 1915. With no decisive victory, the Gallipoli campaign was a fiasco that did little to change the outcome of the war. Back in Australia, enlistment rates plummeted with news of the atrocities and high casualties suffered by Australian troops. Like many Australian war posters, this image was derived from an earlier English poster that differed only in depicting maps of England and the Western Front in the background.
Details
- Work Date:
- 1915
- Medium:
- color lithograph
- Credit Line:
- Gift of Bartlett H. Hayes, 1985