This analysis of British war policy considers alterations to the grand strategy during the last years of World War I. The argument is that war policy in this period was strongly affected by pessimism, even defeatism. In the aftermath of the defeats and disappointments of 1917, many could understand how the war could be lost, less how victory could be achieved. By the end of 1917, war policy had been revised so that it aimed less to win the war outright than to bring Germany to the conference table in a less exultant mood, whilst laying the bases for a peripheral war, essentially victorious on...

While previous accounts suggest that Turkey entered into the alliance reluctantly, Millman contends that it not only wanted an alliance but sought as close a relationship as Britain would concede in the prewar years. He attributes the failure of the alliance mainly to Britain's lack of support, namely its inability to fit Turkey into its strategy in the Mediterranean, its failure to produce a coherent operational plan that could encompass Turkish military co-operation, and its unwillingness to provide Turkey with timely and much-needed financial, material, and industrial assistance. Divided...