The Macedonian Wars cannot be described as a series of proper wars. They were actually a sequence of combats between Ottoman occupation forces and Greek and Bulgarian paramilitaries which strived to secure a good position before Macedonia was lost to the Ottomans.
Many Greek officers resigned from the Greek Army and joined the struggle against Turkish and Bulgarians which eventually brought 51% of Macedonia under Greek control.
The Macedonian wars were among the most savage in the region especially from the Greek and Bulgarian sides and often involved ethnic cleansing and other acts against civilians. However, the conflict was not without its heroes, the most prominent of all being the Greek Pavlos Melas.
By 1912 it was obvious to all that the weakened Ottomans could no longer sustain or defend their vast empire. The young Balkan states enstrengthened their armies and started provoking Turkey mercilessly until 1912 when the Ottomans declared war on Bulgaria and Serbia. Greece and Montenegro immediately declared war on the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan Wars started.
Led by Prince Constantine, the Greek army swept through Ottoman territories and after horrible battles with the brave Ottoman troops conquered last parts of Thessaly, Hepirus and Macedonia.
The Turks were badly defeated.
Not long before the First Balkan War finished, Greece and Serbia noticed that Bulgaria had gained much more land that its forces and battle efforts would justify. The ultra-nationalist behaviour of the Bulgarian King who dreamed of a Bulgarian Empire at the expense of Greeks, Serbs and Turks trigerred the second and hopefully last Balkan War.
Greece, Serbia, Romania and the Ottomans formed an unwritten alliance and hampered Bulgaria from all sides. The result was especially pleasing for everyone except Bulgaria as almost all of Bulgaria's gains of 1912 changed hands.
The Balkan Wars officially ended with the Treaty of Bucharest which gave the southern part of Macedonia, South Hepirus, the North Aegean Islands and Crete to Greece. But the victories of the Greek Army were not yet over...
Many Western Europeans view WW2 as a senseless and pointless conflict that costed the life of millions without producing any effect and without ever justifying its cause.
In the Eastern Front things were very different.
With former powers Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire on the German side, the danger was imminent for all other Balkan nations. Both powers were badly wounded from the Balkan Wars and they saw WW2 as an excellent chance for revenge.
Greece had difficulty in entering the War due to the stance of King Constantine I. Constantine was married to the Kaiser's sister and was a devoted Prussophile. He insisted to Greek neutrality by all means and PM Eleftherios Venizelos had to form an independent government in Crete to enter the War on the Allies side.
The subsequent Allied victory led to the Treaty of Sevres according to which Greece annexed Eastern and Western Thrace, the remaining islands of the Aegean and the right to occupy a large part of Asia Minor for 5 years before a refferendum would decide Asia Minor's fate. Given the Greek population majority of Asia Minor and the Greek upper hand of the situation the result of the refferendum was more than certain...
1921 found the Greek Army in its most prominent position after 1830. With superior equipment, veteran troops and an unblemished (in fact glorious) record for the past 20 years it seemed capable of holding if not expanding Greek domination in the region.
This would have happened had there not been Kemal Ataturk's strategical genius, Greek politicians' incompetence and careful planning of what evolved as to become the greatest Greek disaster of the 20th century.
Having put aside the Ottoman Sultan, Kemal Ataturk realised the dreadful position his nation was at. Having lost the majority of its territories it was threatened by a status quo of Greek, Arab and Western domination of Asia Minor and teh Middle East. In order to change this Kemal organised random armed raids against his most unstable opponents: The Greeks.
In the meantime Greece had managed to estrange itself from all of its allies by re-establishing the unpopular (and insane) King Constantine to his thrown and voting against Venizelos in the general elections. The new royalist far-right government decided that an invasion of Turkey would solve the problem of Asia Minor once and for all.
Four Greek armies were organised and in 1922 the full-scale invasion of Turkey began. I am shamed to say that during those initial victorious stages of the campaign Greek troops committed acts of violence and abuse against the Turkish population contrary to the eternal ethos of the Greek soldier. Ultra-nationalism and previous experiences at the hands of the Turks made that invasion much more savage as it should have been.
Despite that, the Greek army was no match for the poorly trained and equipped soldiers of Kemal. In a few months they had reached Ankara, occupying more than half of modern Turkey, General Pangalos threatening Instabul from Eastern Thrace with a superior force.
However, victory leads to arrogance, arrogance leads to underestimation of the opponent and underestimation of the opponent always leads to defeat. Kemal's army fueled with passion for their defeated homeland and equipped with Italian weapons (the Italians didn't like Greek expansion in their domain) counter-attacked.
At the time when the Third Greek Army was surrounded and obliterated in the centre of Turkey, the Greek generals were having tea at Smirni adoring their superior ability. The destruction of the 3rd Army and the ill supply lines of the 4th led to a massive Greek retreat towards the Aegean coast. Prince Alexander, head of the intact Second Army that was responcible for guarding the rear was ordered to cover the retreating troops and hold positions.
He refused and returned to Greece.
Even the very able General Pangalos who was able to hold Eastern Thrace for Greece was commanded to retreat within the total confusion.
Destruction was total. Two million Greeks who had lived in Asia Minor for over three millenia were forced to flee to Greece. Those who remained were butchered. Eastern Thrace, Asia Minor and two Aegean Islands were lost to Turkey. The king abdicated and teh prime minister Gounaris was executed. A coup followed. The only thing saved was the Greek minority of Instabul, only to be expelled 30 years later.
The scars of the Asia Minor campaign still hurt in the heart of every Greek. If Hellenism has ever experienced a Holocaust this was it.
The Second World War found Greece under the dictatorship of the Cephalonian Ioannis Metaxas. In the 28th of October 1940 the Italian ambassador in Athens delivered the fascist ultimatum to the dictator. Despite being a fascist himself and a declared Germanophile, Metaxas delivered a staggering NO to Mussolini's demand and hours later the Italian artillery attacked Greece from the Italian protectorate of Albania.
Three months later half of Albania was under Greek occupation with the Italian Army literally thrown into the Adriatic Sea. But Hitler's tanks and the collapse of Yugoslavia were too much for the exhausted Greek fighters.
World War Two costed to Greece 700,000 dead, a number very disproportionate to its 7 million population of the time. The Nazi's were ruthless with the indomitable Greeks killing 50 random Greek civilians for every dead Nazi soldier during the resistance. The simultaneous hanging of fifty resistance fighters from the same pole in Athens remains recorded in the Guiness Book of Records. Thousands died of famine since all food produced in Greece was channeled to Germany.
Even though we were defeated by the Germans, the legacy of 1940 - 1944 will remain to the minds of all Greeks as one of our greatest victories. A victory of humanity and faith to freedom against the horror of oppression and totalitarianism we have experienced so many times in the past.
The main reasons why 8,000 - 10,000 Greek Jews survived the Holocaust are:
a) The refusal of the Orthodox Church to co-operate with the Germans for their deportation.
b) The reluctancy of the Italian authorities to deport them.
c) The protection of the Jewish population by the Greeks as a means of resistance to the Nazi rule.
Despite that, by the end of WW2, Greece had lost 81% of its Jewish population and 70,000 Greek Jews perished in Auschwitz. 5,000 Jews remain in Greece today.
Source:
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
www.ushmm.org
I pray every day that peace presides on the world and that no more people die in combat or as a result of combat for any reason. I study war because I want peace. Let us not repeat the errors of the past.
EIPHNH YMIN
(Peace to you - Jesus of Nazareth)