Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance (52 page)

The most poignant memory of the declaration of war is found in Mary Whittall’s ‘A Book’. See also Giraud,
Days off
.

Clifford Heathcote-Smith’s correspondence is scattered through various files in the National Archives. See FO195/2460 for despatches on the outbreak of war. There are also letters and memos from George Horton; of particular interest are FO383/81/1401 and 16918.

George Horton wrote at some length about Rahmi Bey in
The Blight of Asia.
For more on anti-Greek propaganda, see Georgelin,
La fin
.

Rahmi’s Double Game

The story of Whittall’s Union Jack is in Wookey,
Fortuna
. Other family stories from this time are taken from Mary Whittall, ‘A Book’. There are many references to Rahmi Bey’s benevolence in the National Archives. See especially FO383/91/251, 1401, 16918 and 31782. See also Horton,
The Blight of Asia
.

Enver Pasha’s offensive in the Caucasus is one of the less well-known campaigns of the First World War. My account was drawn from the following: W. E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff,
Caucasian Battlefields
, Cambridge, 1953;
Source Records of World War I
(7 vols), ed. Charles Horne, vol. 3, 1923. This contains eyewitness accounts of the fighting. Edward Erickson,
Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War
, London, 2001,.
History of the First World War
, ed. Barry Pitt, in 128 parts issued in eight volumes; see vols 15 and 16, 1970–72. Ward Rutherford,
The Russian Army in World War I
, London 1975, especially. An excellent eyewitness account of the army’s preparations for battle is to be found in Clarence D. Ussher,
An American Physician in Turkey
, 1917, republished in 2002 by Sterndale Classics, London.

For more on Sir Edward Grey’s memo, see Llewellyn Smith,
Ionian Vision
. See also NA: FO371/2242. Rahmi Bey’s negotiations with Admiral Peirse are in Horton,
The Blight of Asia
. See also J. Corbett and H. Newbolt,
Naval Operations
, vol. 2,. 196ff., London, 1929; Paul G. Halpern,
The Naval War in the Mediterranean, 1914–1918
, London, 1987.

Numerous memoirs support Brussalis’ and Simes’s assertion that the war years were a time of abundant food.

There is an extensive and growing literature on the Armenian genocide. Walter Geddes’ account is in Horton,
The Blight of Asia
; Morgenthau’s in
Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story
. See also Trumpener,
Germany
; Johannes Lepsius’s influential
Le rapport secret du Dr Johannes Lepsius sur les massacres d’Arménie
, Paris, 1918; James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee,
The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916
, originally published in 1916 and republished in 2000 by Taderon Press, New Jersey. See also Ussher,
An American Physician in Turkey
.

Three excellent eyewitness accounts are: Raphael de Nogale,
Four Years Beneath the Crescent
, London, 1926; Lewis Einstein,
Inside Constantinople
, London, 1917; and Harry Stuermer,
Two War Years in Constantinople
, 1917.

‘The Ten Commandments’ document is in the National Archives, FO:341/4172/31307. There is a most interesting explanatory note by Heathcote-Smith, detailing how he acquired the document.

Saving the Enemy

There is much about the British bombing raids in the National Archives. See FO383/234, especially documents 103912, 104400, 105783, 111886, 112718, 114371, 119636, 126381, 131038 and 137673 (on the detention of Levantines). See also Horton,
The Blight of Asia
. For more on the Levantine internment, see Whittall, ‘A Book’.

On the capture of Long Island, see Liman von Sanders,
Five Years
; and Horton,
The Blight of Asia
.

See Horton,
The Blight of Asia
. For general background, see John Keegan,
The First World War
, London, 1998.

For more on the deportations, see the reference sources for. 84–88; also, Toynbee,
The Western Question
; and an essay entitled ‘Turks and Greeks in Asia Minor’, by Félix Sartiaux,
New Europe
, 19 February 1920. See also
Persecutions of the Greek Population in Turkey since the Beginning of the European War
, Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, London, 1918; and
The Black Book of the Sufferings of the Greek People in Turkey from the Armistice to the End of 1920
, Constantinople, 1920. The story of the hidden deserter is in Turrell,
Scrap-book
.

See Horton,
The Blight of Asia
, and
Recollections
Grave and Gay, Indianapolis, 1927. For mid-war Bournabat, see Turrell,
Scrap-book
, and Eldon Giraud,
Days of my Years
.

For more on Salonica, see Horton,
Recollections
, and the following: Alan Palmer,
The Gardeners of Salonika
, London, 1965; Mark Mazower,
Salonica: City of Ghosts
, London, 2004.

Rahmi’s plot against the central government is in NA: FO371/3448. See especially document 167738.

PART TWO: SERPENTS IN PARADISE

Peace and War

Lieutenant Colonel John Barker’s manuscript is in the IWM, manuscript 96/36/1. See also Captain Gilbert Rogers’ account in IWM: 92/36/1. There are many other fascinating documents covering the period 1918–22; to my knowledge, none of these has ever been cited before.

On the British prisoners of war, see NA: FO383/458/119437. See also FO371/3421 and FO383/534. This latter includes letters of thanks for the role played by Herbert Octavius Whittall.

For Dixon’s arrival, see NA: FO371/415722090 and 22088. For British intelligence reports, and information on the unsettled countryside, see reports by Lieutenant Colonel Ian Smith, W. Lewis Bailey and the British Chamber of Commerce in Smyrna, all in FO371/4157.

Annie Marshall’s account was published under the title ‘Impressions of Smyrna in War-Time’,
The Contemporary Review
, March 1919; David Forbes’s report is in NA: FO371/4165.

The story of Alp Arslan’s abduction was recounted to me by Rahmi Bey’s daughter-in-law. See also Eldon Giraud,
Days
, and Arslan’s own account, published in French in
Tempo Magazine
, no. 19, April 1988.

The best general account of the occupation is Philip Mansel,
Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire
, London, 1995. See also Harold Armstrong,
Turkey in Travail
, London, 1925,; J. G. Bennett,
Witness
, London, 1962; Neville Henderson,
Water Under the Bridges
, London, 1945.

Lord Curzon’s ‘The Future of Constantinople’ is in the BL, see MSS EUR, F112/268. See also Erik Goldstein, ‘Holy Wisdom and British Foreign Policy’,
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies
, vol. XV, 1991. On the Allied occupation, see the manuscript entitled ‘The Occupation of Constantinople’, by Brigadier General Sir James Edwards, NA: WO161/85.

Ward Price’s account of Kemal is in George Ward Price,
Extra-Special Correspondent
, London, 1957, p. 104. For more on this period of Kemal’s life, see Andrew Mango,
Ataturk
, London, 1999, and Lord Kinross,
Ataturk: The Rebirth of a Nation
, London, 1964.

The best general account of the Paris peace conference is Margaret Macmillan,
Peacemakers
, London, 2001. For more specific information on the Greek perspective, see N. Petsalis-Diomidis,
Greece at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919
, Institute for Balkan Studies, 1978. See also NA: FO371/4165, especially 52429, which describes a meeting between Clifford Heathcote-Smith and Metropolitan Chrysostom.

Other documents of interest include
Mémoire soumise à la conférence pour le Patriarcat Oecuménique
, Paris, 1919; Eleftherios Venizelos,
Greece Before the Peace Congress of 1919
, American-Hellenic Society, 1919;
Hellas and Unredeemed Hellenism
, American-Hellenic Society, 1920 (this includes two interesting essays, ‘Smyrna, a Greek City’ by Charles Vellay, and ‘Hellenism in Asia Minor in the Middle Ages’ by Charles Diehl). See also NA: FO608/89/1 for documents sent to Paris by Greek communities living in towns across Anatolia.

See also Harold Nicolson’s gossip-filled account,
Peacemaking, 1919
, London, 1933.

For more on Wilson, see C. E. Callwell,
Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson
(2 vols), London, 1927.

Blood on the Quayside

See Eldon Giraud,
Days
, for more about Bournabat.

The best and most detailed account of the Greek occupation and subsequent administration of Smyrna is Victoria Solomonides, ‘The Greek Administration of the Vilayet of Aidin, 1919–1922’ (unpublished doctoral thesis). A copy of this is held in the Institute of Historical Research in London. See also A. A. Palles,
Greece’s Anatolian Venture and After
, London, 1937; George Glasgow, ‘The Greeks in Smyrna’,
The New Europe
, 25 March 1920. Winston Churchill’s quotation is from
The World Crisis: The Aftermath
, London, 1929.

Ian Smith’s intelligence report is in NA: FO371/4231. See especially document 14564. On the general situation in Smyrna, see James Morgan’s report in NA: FO371/4157.

There are many eyewitness accounts of the Greek landing. Of particular interest are those by Alfred van der Zee, Donald Whittall, George Perry, Ahmed Feizi, Commander R. L. Berry, Dr Alexander MacLachlan and the commanding officer of the USS
Arizona
. These are all in NA: FO406/41.

See also Lieutenant Lycett Gardner, IWM: PP/MCR/84; and ‘An Authentic Account of the Occurrences in Smyrna’, FO371/5140/E1448 (this file includes several other accounts). FO371/4231 also has a report by Mr D. Forbes and information about the various British attempts to deal with Colonel Zafiriou. For British reactions to the occupation, see FO371/4201. See also
The Times
, 9, 19 and 24 March 1919; and the
Address of W. A. Lloyd
, Anglo-Hellenic League, 1920. The account by Phanis Kleanthis, published in Greek under the title
Hellenic Smyrna
, is cited in Georgelin, ‘Aperçu’.

The account of the protest meeting is taken from Halide Edib,
Turkish Ordeal
, London, 1928. Other Turkish and British reactions can be found in NA: FO406/80101. This includes letters written by the grand vizier and various reports by British intelligence agents serving in Turkey.

Ex Oriente Lux

Colonel Toby Rawlinson’s escapades are admirably described in his
Adventures in the Near East, 1918–1922
, London, 1923.

Kemal’s activities are set out in Mango,
Ataturk
; Kinross,
Ataturk
; and Edib,
Turkish Ordeal
. Also useful is Heathcote-Smith’s unpublished manuscript, ‘History of the Nationalist Movement’, NA: WO32/5733/2737/2. There is much of interest in FO371/4158. This file includes Rawlinson’s reports from Anatolia and Captain Hurst’s intelligence reports of Kemal’s movements.

Toynbee’s account of Stergiadis is in
The Western Question
. Horton,
The Blight of Asia
, also has many interesting facts about the Greek governor. Much more detailed information is to be found in Solomonides, ‘Greek Administration’, and Llewellyn Smith,
Ionian Vision
.

For more about Smyrna at this time, see Bennett,
Witness
; Sir Tom Bridges,
Alarms and Excursions: Reminiscences of a Soldier
, London, 1938; and Eldon Giraud,
Days
. Helena van der Zee’s account was given to me in unpublished typed manuscript by Willy Buttigieg. It is lacking a title page – and has no attributed author – but references within the text suggest that it could only have been written by Helena. It will be hitherto referred to as van der Zee, ‘Memoirs’. There is an interesting picture of the city in late 1919 in
L’image de la grèce: Smyrne
, Frederic Boissonas, Editions d’Art Boissonnas, Geneva, 1919.

Horton’s report on Stergiadis’s governorship is in
Report on Turkey: USA
Consular Documents
, Athens, 1985. The Greek perspective, as seen from inside Smyrna, is best represented by E. Dourmoussis,
La Vérité sur un Drame Historique: La Catastrophe de Smyrne, Septembre 1922
, Paris, 1928.

For a detailed eyewitness account of the Greek army’s advance into Aidin, and the preceding massacre, see W. A. Lloyd, ‘More Turkish Massacres in Asia Minor’,
Review of Reviews
, December 1919. Lloyd was a New Zealander who travelled to Smyrna to investigate conditions under the Greek administration.

The Shattered Vase

Edib’s account of the British occupation of Constantinople, and subsequent events, is in
Turkish Ordeal
. For the British perspective, see Andrew Ryan,
Last of the Dragomans
, London, 1951. For a detailed analysis of events unfolding in Anatolia, see Mango,
Ataturk
. See also A. L. Macfie, ‘British Views of the Turkish Nationalist Movement in Anatolia, 1919–1922’,
Middle Eastern Studies
, vol. 38, no. 3, July 2002.

For more on Rahmi Bey’s arrest, including petitions for his release, see NA: FO608/109, especially documents 345/369/408/460/461. See also FO371/6502; Briton Cooper Busch,
Mudros to Lausanne, 1918–23
, New York, 1976; and Compton Mackenzie,
Greek Memories
, London, 1932.

On the Greek advance, see Llewellyn Smith,
Ionian Vision
, and Toynbee,
The Western Question
. Winston Churchill’s analysis of the situation is in his
World Crisis
.

See Giraud,
Days off
; Giraud,
Days of my Years
; Turrell,
Scrap-book
.

See Llewellyn Smith,
Ionian Vision
; see also E. Chivers Davis, ‘Election Week in Athens’,
The Balkan Review
, vol. 4, no. 5, 1920.

This is drawn from Llewellyn Smith,
Ionian Vision
; Toynbee,
The Western Question
; Edib,
Turkish Ordeal
.

Into the Desert

My account of the atrocities was drawn from three principal sources: a parliamentary paper (HMSO, 1921) entitled
Reports on Atrocities in the District of Yalova and Guemlek and in the Ismid Peninsula
; Maurice Gehri, ‘Mission d’enquête en Anatolie, 12–22 May, 1921’,
Revue Internationale de la Croix-Rouge
, no. 31, Geneva, 1921; Toynbee,
The Western Question
.