Naval War College Review

Volume 74 Number 2 Spring 2021 Article 15

2021

The Greek Genocide in American Naval War Diaries: Naval Commanders Report and Protest Death Marches and Massacres in Turkey’s Pontus Region, 1921–1922

Michael Imbrenda

Robert Shenk

Sam Koktzoglou

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Recommended Citation Imbrenda, Michael; Shenk, Robert; and Koktzoglou, Sam (2021) "The Greek Genocide in American Naval War Diaries: Naval Commanders Report and Protest Death Marches and Massacres in Turkey’s Pontus Region, 1921–1922," Naval War College Review: Vol. 74 : No. 2 , Article 15. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol74/iss2/15

This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Naval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Imbrenda et al.: The Greek Genocide in American Naval War Diaries: Naval CommanderBOOK REVIEWS 171

a new, illuminating insight through communities of the Black Sea coast, this case study of a captain’s career. using the U.S. Navy as the narrator.

JOHN B. HATTENDORF The bulk of The Greek Genocide in American Naval War Diaries uses condensed accounts from the war diaries deposited in the National Archives of American destroyers based The Greek Genocide in American Naval War Dia- on the Pontic coast to build a body ries: Naval Commanders Report and Protest Death of compelling evidence of wartime Marches and Massacres in Turkey’s Pontus Region, atrocities. Shenk, who previously has 1921–1922, ed. Robert Shenk and Sam Koktzo- written more broadly on the region glou. New Orleans: Univ. of New Orleans Press, in America’s Black Sea Fleet, and 2020. 400 pages. $24.95. Koktzoglou highlight the challenges Living in an information-saturated naval officers faced in discerning the world in which social media and ground truth in a wartime environ- ubiquitous cell phone use allow the ment in which sea power stopped at worst atrocities of war to be livestreamed the shoreline. The accounts capture on a global scale in a matter of hours the conflicting narratives heard, the can make it hard for us to understand incomplete information available, and a time not so long ago when acts of the sense of impotence felt by U.S. naval senseless violence were obscured by officers with no sanction to intervene. long distances and the fog of war. Using the naval war diaries as the In the aftermath of the First World War, backbone of the narrative and the Ottoman Empire disintegrated into a supplementing them with testimony bloody intercommunal conflict between from American businessmen and aid millennia-old Greek communities along workers, Shenk and Koktzoglou make the Black Sea and a new nationalist the case that elements of the Turkish Turkish government. There to witness it government were involved in a direct was the U.S. Black Sea Fleet, which was effort to carry out what is defined in tasked with maintaining the security of the modern era as genocide against the American interests, primarily relating to Greeks of the Pontus region. The war tobacco companies and U.S. relief work- diaries detail a series of forced removals ers, in the Turkish hinterland during the of the military-age males of the local Greco-Turkish War. As neutral observers Greek population conducted by Turkish (the United States never declared war on forces, often resulting in reports of mass the Ottoman Empire, despite its alliance killings. Furthermore, the naval diaries with the Central Powers), the fleet used present accounts brought by internally this network of contacts to report on al- displaced persons and American aid legations of ethnic cleansing and forced workers from the interior of Anatolia population removal. While the plight of detailing the wholesale destruction the Ottoman Empire’s Greek population of Greek villages, ethnic cleansing, on the Ionian coast during the great fire and mass rape. Coupled with these of Smyrna in 1922 is covered well in pre- stories are discussions with Turkish vious scholarship, editors Robert Shenk government officials outlining their and Sam Koktzoglou shed additional justifications for such extreme tactics, light on the fate of the Pontic Greek as well as the uncertainties USN officers

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faced regarding the true extent of the killings and Turkish motivations. Some of the accounts from survivors of the mass killings and rapes are not for the “Vincere!”: The Italian Royal Army’s Counter- insurgency Operations in Africa, 1922–1940, by faint of heart, and underscore the sense Federica Saini Fasanotti. Annapolis, MD: Naval of powerlessness felt by the commanders Institute Press, 2020. 224 pages. $44. of the Black Sea Fleet, who, despite their Most military historians are familiar possession of state-of-the-art weapons with the colonial histories of Spain, of war, could do little to stop the chaos. France, Italy, and Great Britain on That is not to say that USN officers the North African littoral (along with stood by and did nothing. The war dia- Belgium in the Congo, as well as ries provide several portraits of heroism Germany and Portugal in southwest by officers attempting to avert further and southeast Africa). This recent work bloodshed and the great professional considers in detail the experience of risks some destroyer captains incurred. one of these participants as it appears One account in particular highlights from eighty years of retrospection. the power one officer can have when With a title that can be read as conquest compelled by humanitarian virtue. Cap- or victory, the book deals with the tain Arthur L. Bristol Jr. of USS Overton timely topic of low-intensity conflict in risked his future career prospects by Africa in the first part of the twentieth sending a well-timed letter to compel century by a European power: Italy’s his commanding officer, Admiral Royal Army in Libya and Ethiopia Mark Bristol (no relation)—who had (or the Kingdom of Abyssinia). These a well-known affinity for the national- were campaigns fought to pacify the ist government—to issue a formal coastal regions and interior. It is not a complaint to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk surprise—with success in the global war over the planned forced removal of on terrorism and the “Long War”—that noncombatants. This likely spared the something is familiar in these colonial lives of twelve thousand Greek women campaigns fought within the same and children. In multiple accounts, we locations, terrain, and populations as see naval commanders struggling to today’s. Yet while tactics, techniques, or define actions and concepts for which procedures might be similar, the policy they had no words: genocide, ethnic and strategic goals were very different, cleansing, and a nascent sense of the as were the actual results of the conflicts. responsibility to protect. We witness in The study divides logically into these accounts the internal struggle two stand-alone parts, the 1922–31 of U.S. naval officers caught between campaign in Libya and the 1936–40 the promise of America’s new global campaign in Ethiopia. Introductions role and the limits of that promise. and conclusions provide context for The Greek Genocide in American each campaign; sections on acronyms Naval War Diaries is a compelling, and personalities, as well as glossaries primary-source resource for scholars and notes, support the narrative. The seeking to understand the human face well-written narrative also provides of sea power in the twentieth century. after-action lessons that are of interest to MICHAEL IMBRENDA current efforts in the region. One theme

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