I was able to read a short (173 pages) book published in
Greek, in Greece, focusing on clarifying the activities of Greek High Commissioner
in Asia Minor, Aristeidis Stergiadis, during the collapse of the Greek Army of
Asia Minor after the Turkish Grand Offensive in August 1922. It is written by
Konstantinos D. Vlassis. Vlassis is a not an academic historian (he holds an MA
in Modern and Contemporary History) but has made a name of himself as a popular
historian focusing on the activity of Post-November 1920 anti-venizelists governments,
especially during the period right before and during the collapse of the Greek
position in Asia Minor/Anatolia in 1922. He has an anti-venizelist bent in his
works, and aims to combat what he considers a Venizelist bias in the historiography
of the war in Greece, especially among scholars and people descended from Asia
Minor refugees and expellees. What makes him unique is his focus on the use of
primary sources (in this way he reminds me of the non-academic historical scholar
of the US Civil War, William Marvel). While one can disagree with the conclusions
he extracts from those primary sources, one cannot deny that he does bring to
light and uses some very interesting primary sources.
In this book he aims basically to counter both Venizelist interpretations
of the events of 1922, as well as post-event rationalizations by Stergiadis
himself, concerning the role the High Commission played during the period
between the collapse of the Greek front, and the evacuation of the Greek government
administration from Smyrna/ Izmir. On that front his most important findings
are that a) Stergiadis became aware of the collapse of the front much more
earlier than the Greek government, and the Commander in Chief of the Army of Asia
Minor Georgios Chatzanestis, asking early on both the Greek government and the
consuls of the Major Powers to arrange for the protection of the Smyrna Zone by
an international force (this was rejected by the consuls) b) that Stergiadis had
given an order on 19th August (O.C) to prepare the evacuation of the
Greek administrative apparatus without informing the local population of that
decision, that on 21/22 August (O.C) he had asked the government to prohibit
the exit of the population from Asia Minor to Greece citing the lack of
shipping which was focused on evacuating as much of the army as possible for
use in Thrace, and that quite quickly these restrictions (between the 22 or 23rd
of August) were lifted, which resulted in potentially about 200,000 Greeks,
Armenians, Circassians and other anti-Kemalist Muslims evacuating to Greece
before the entry of Turkish forces into Smyrna/Izmir.
Stergiadis next to Liutenant General Leonidas Paraskevopoulos (Commander in Chief of the General HQ of the Greek army 1918-1920)
For those of us interested in the military history of the
war, the booklet contains some interesting information. First, the focus on
evacuating as much of the army as possible had a strategic goal, which was to
reinforce the Greek forces in Eastern Thrace. More importantly the primary
sources presented by Vlassis (telegrams sent by the High Commission in the
period between the breaking of the military front and the final evacuation of
the administrative apparatus) finally provide the details of the removal of Chatzanestis
from command of the Army of Asia Minor. The decision was not initiated in
Athens , or by the High Commissioner. Instead it was forced upon both by the
staff of the general HQ in Smyrna/Izmir where opposition to Chatzanestis was
reaching the level of a potential mutiny.