Declassified telegrams published by the Greek newspaper Elefthero Vima in 1934 reveal the full picture of what Greece lo...

Declassified telegrams published by the Greek newspaper Elefthero Vima in 1934 reveal the full picture of what Greece lost when it lost the Asia Minor Campaign, and how close it came to winning. The first telegram, dated June 10, 1920, is signed by Eleftherios Venizelos himself. Writing from Spa, Belgium, where the Allied powers were meeting after World War One, Venizelos coordinated directly with British Field Marshal Wilson on a joint operational plan. The plan called for Greek and British forces to advance simultaneously on the Eskishehir-Afyon Karahisar line, with Greek divisions placed under British command and the Royal Navy providing amphibious support. This was not a unilateral Greek adventure. It was a formal Allied military operation. The second telegram tells a different story entirely. Dated May 19, 1921, it was sent by the new Greek commander-in-chief, General Papulas, to War Minister Nikolaos Theotokis, one of the six officials later executed in November 1922. Papulas reported that the British consul in Smyrna had come to ask, almost apologetically, that the visit of King Constantine be delayed or cancelled so the Royal Navy fleet currently in port could leave quietly before the king arrived. The British did not want to be seen alongside the restored Greek monarchy. Between those two telegrams, the entire Greek-British alliance in Anatolia dissolved. Venizelos had built a campaign in which British brigades fought alongside Greek divisions. His successors, who had never believed in the campaign and called it a colonial adventure, inherited an operation they had no intention of winning. By 1922, the British fleet that once coordinated amphibious landings with Greek forces was steaming out of Smyrna to avoid an awkward diplomatic moment, while the city burned. The Asia Minor Catastrophe cost an estimated 100,000 Greek lives and ended with the expulsion of over a million Greeks from their ancestral lands. #AsiaMinerCatastrophe #MikrasiatikiKatastrofi #GreekHistory