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In my view, the two central chapters of Bierstadt's graphic narrative of what turned out to be a top story of the twentieth century—mass graves — are chapter 2, "The Truth about Smyrna," and chapter 7, "The Part That Greece Has Played." At the core of the Smyrna catastrophe, involving a preponderantly Greek population in the city itself and in the surrounding villayet, was an order by Secretary Hughes transmitted by the US high commissioner at Constantinople and commander of US naval forces in Near Eastern waters that very strict neutrality was to be observed by all US personnel, civilian and military. Not only was the use of force against the Turks forbidden, but even the threat of force was prohibited. Bierstadt notes, "Great Britain, France, Italy, and the United States all had war vessels in Smyrna harbour. The United States had four destroyers there . . . two inside and two outside of the harbour. ... It was a matter of common knowledge that the sympathy of the French and the Italians was strongly Turkish, for these nations had supported Turkey in her war with Greece, whose rather passive ally was Great Britain. The United States was neutral, very neutral." The Turks, of course, took such neutrality from Washington as moral support. At about 9 a.m. on 9 September 1922, the Fourth Turkish Cavalry regiment entered Smyrna. Looting, murder, and outrage commenced by Turkish regulars and irregulars under Kemal's leadership and continued for some three days, including significant destruction of American property. Bierstadt concludes about the casualties, virtually all Greek: "It is impossible to achieve complete accuracy as to the figures involved in the Smyrna debacle, but by checking one authority against another it is computed that approximately 100,000 persons were massacred, 280,000 were crushed together on the quais praying for safety, and still another 160,000 were deported by the Turks into the interior, never to be seen again." All told, some 1,150,000 Greek refugees were driven from their homes in Anatolia and its environs under Kemal's orders. Bierstadt ends his chapter on Smyrna with an ironic observation about US and Turkish priorities in the Near East under the new Harding/Coolidge and Ataturk administrations: "The only American building of any importance within a mile of Smyrna that was saved was the plant of Standard Oil Company, which [US] sailors were landed to protect." An explanation for Greece's military presence in Anatolia — or Asia Minor as it was more often called in 1924—is found in chapter 7 and is exceedingly interesting and complicated in light of Turkey's explanation for Kemal's draconian treatment of all Greeks, civilian and military, in the fall of 1922. It was argued that the landing of Greek troops on 15 May 1919 at Smyrna, in order to protect Greek populations that were endangered by the incredible complexity of postwar settlement among the Great Powers, was accompanied by atrocities "against Turks, and whatever the Turks did after that—the murder of the Greek metropolitan in Smyrna in 1922 for example — was merely by way of retaliation." Most often the whole terrible tragedy from 1919 to 1922 in Anatolia is passed over with a paragraph or two in textbooks for college students on international relations in the Middle East as but one phase of Kemal's ascension to supreme rulership as modern Turkey's Ataturk. The Greeks were emboldened in June 1920 to mount an offensive into the interior of Anatolia in order to secure protection of Greek communities there. Taking advantage of Kemal's preoccupation with Armenia, Greece was initially successful. But at the battle of the Sakaria River, the tide turned in favor of the Turks, who drove the Greeks back to the Mediterranean, taking Smyrna on 11 September 1922. In retaliation for the invasion of Turkey by Greece, it is said, the Turks vented their vengeance on the Greek population in Smyrna and throughout the Anatolian peninsula. Bierstadt sees this as a Turkish policy of pure extermination. The neutrality of American policy on Smyrna has been noted, but it is also necessary to look at US relations with Greece more generally during the First World War and its chaotic aftermath. To trace this policy is to pass into the labyrinth of much-analyzed world politics that to this day has not been completely mapped by historians. Into this maze both the United States and Greece inadvertently stumbled, since the main players were the chief antagonists of the war itself—the British, French, Germans, Russians, Austrians, and, by cleverly designed moves, the Italians and the Turks — but with the Americans emerging from the war as a major power. The Greeks suffered a cruel fate, first by joining the Allied cause against the Central Powers only in mid-1917 and second by seeing the war enter domestic politics in the feud between King Constantine and the iconic Eleutherios Venizelos. From the late planning among the Allied powers in the war through the Versailles Peace Conference in early 1919 and Treaty of Sevres solemnly signed by Turkey and the Allies in August 1920 but never implemented, Greece's aim to protect its fellow countrymen in Anatolia remained constant, but Allied support for this effort waxed and waned, leading to frustration in Athens over perceived betrayal of Greek interests by the Allied Powers that, in turn, necessitated a military expedition in Anatolia. US policy in this period and especially after Harding's victory in the 1920 election moved unsteadily from support to opposition of Greece, leading to the new Harding administration's withdrawal of the US ambassador in Athens, a post that, as of the writing of this book in 1924, had not yet been filled again. Indeed, Wilson's last nominee as ambassador to Athens, the very qualified Edward Capps (who wrote the foreword for Bierstadt's book), was never formally approved by a Republican-dominated Senate during the last two years of Wilson's presidency. Although the tone and timing of the book would classify it as "contemporary history," and not the final verdict on this tumultuous period in world politics, it still has important relevance in our own time. Like Mediterranean Quarterly itself, this volume challenges easy textbook narratives about the roles of Greece and Turkey in international affairs during the twentieth century and into this century as well. It also fills in empty spaces in the tale of atrocities in our modern era, a time so promising in terms of human progress in the fields of medicine and elsewhere, yet so filled with horror for countless millions who can only be accounted for in books like this, freshly published soon after the tragedy has occurred. Today, films, television, and information technology also add to our early insights into these horrific events. To make better judgments about where the human condition should be headed in the future, two kinds of environmental studies are essential — one pertaining to humanity's relations with nature and one relevant to humanity's relations with itself. This book, written in haste and great passion by an observer of human affairs involved with humanitarian organizations dedicated to relief of the suffering of those visited by the horrors of mass murder, helps us, including those in the halls of Congress and in the White House, to come to grips with our relations with ourselves and others in world politics. It places warning signposts along the way about getting our facts straight to avoid oversimplification—to take complexity seriously and to tread carefully. Relations between Greece and Turkey occasionally feature some heroic figure, an Ataturk or a Venizelos, but like their counterparts in ancient times, they epitomize their traditions but never transcend them. Published in the era of the Great American Novel, when book-writing was still taken very seriously, The Great Betrayal in its serial form did not go unnoticed in the State Department of Hughes. The secretary of state, knowing the power of such books as this to tarnish one's historical image, not to mention alienate key domestic constituencies, summoned both publisher and editor to Washington for a full day's summit with himself, an assistant secretary, and the chief of the Near East division (a Mr. Dulles) with reference to "grave errors" in the work. After considerable discussion at the highest levels of US foreign policy, no resolution of differences emerged. Bierstadt concludes that the department "was unable to point to any error in fact. . . . [They] simply disagreed with the conclusions I had drawn." This being the United States, the full book was published, and its portrait of Hughes with reference to Smyrna and US-Greek relations in the early 1920s remained as painted by the author. In reviews of this sort in serious quarterlies devoted to international relations, one is often tempted to speculate on what possible impact a given book might have on public policy. But in this case no speculation is necessary. Perhaps The Great Betrayal did not immediately change US foreign policy, but it may have achieved a much more significant result in its influence on historians who have the final verdict on this policy, and this from the reaction of Secretary Hughes himself, who devoted a full, futile day to damage control for his image's sake. Here, the secretary found himself in the impressive company of some of his predecessors and successors who have discovered themselves in similar straits, especially Dean Rusk and Colin Powell in our era, both of whom have taken historical heat for decisions they may or may not have been responsible for in the first place. Of course, each secretary is free to write his or her own book on "my years as secretary of state." This being the United States, they too will be published. It is unlikely, in any case, that Hughes, as secretary of state, has been remembered in standard histories of US diplomacy for his neutrality regarding Turkish actions against Greeks in 1922. Instead, the Washington disarmament conference, US relations with Japan, the Open Door, and China, as well as Latin American issues, seem to have become part of whatever legacy he left as secretary. Indeed, in textbooks this period in Greek-American relations seems to have no place at all. This insignificance of the extermination policy in Anatolia is itself significant for the present and justifies the reprint in 2008 of The Great Betrayal.
DOI 10.1215/10474552-2009-037 |