Dominic Sandbrook

We could send shells, we could send whatever they needed to fight the war on the Eastern Front.

Number two, if we took the Straits and we were bombarding or indeed occupying Constantinople...

Maybe there would be a coup within the Young Turk regime.

Or maybe we could simply impose our own friendly regime that would change sides and bring the Ottoman Empire in on the Allied side.

And if we took Constantinople...

A show of force like that would surely persuade the other Balkan neutral countries.

So Greece, Romania, maybe Bulgaria, maybe Italy.

It would persuade them to join the war on our side.

So basically everybody would pile in and we'd win the war.

And in fact, even after the Gallipoli operation had failed, there were people who said, yeah, Churchill's idea wasn't that mad.

So for example, we mentioned Clement Attlee.

Attlee had a terrible time at Gallipoli, but he always said, do you know what?

On paper, it was a brilliant idea and it could have worked.

Yeah, I guess so.

So Churchill at this point is not talking about using troops.

And we'll get on to how the plan changes.

Yeah, that's magically the Turks then change sides.

It seems improbable.

Well, when you look at the plan, it's very, very risky.

So first of all, just sailing up the straits, there are Ottoman forts on both sides.