Britain
Winston Churchill
1874–1965 First Lord of the Admiralty, 1911–1915
At 40, Churchill was the most energetic and imaginative member of the British cabinet, and he had prepared the navy for war. When the Western Front stalled, he looked for an alternative to sending armies to chew barbed wire in Flanders, as he put it, and championed an attack on the Dardanelles by ships alone. The naval attack failed on 18 March, the army that followed was committed without proper planning, and the opposition of Admiral Fisher, who resigned in May, brought down the Liberal government. Churchill lost the Admiralty, left the government in November and served for several months as a battalion commander in the trenches. He returned to office in 1917 as Minister of Munitions, and defended the Gallipoli plan for the rest of his life.