Q: Russians and Greeks

I’m studying Churchill’s The World Crisis, Volume 2, 1915, describing the naval assault on the Dardanelles. It occurs in Chapter 9: “The Fall of the Outer Forts and the Second Greek Offer.”

After the successful naval bombardment of the Turkish outer forts in February 1915, Churchill felt close to gaining the support of the Greeks. His plans fell apart when “the Russian Government would not at any price accept the cooperation of Greece in the Constantinople (today’s Istanbul) expedition”*

What problem did Czar Nicholas II have with Greece?  What did the Russians see as a threat, which caused them to take this position? —J.D.

*Quotations are from Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, vol. 2, 1915 (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1923), and the modern paperback (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), pages 201-04.

A: “Quos Deus vult perdere…”

You cite a poignant episode in The World Crisis. In early 1915, the hitherto neutral Greeks became interested in  joining the Triple Entente against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. Churchill’s actions demonstrate two of his lifelong goals: coalitions and collective security.

Czar Nicholas’ refusal of aid from the Greeks when victory seemed possible poses an example of what Winston Churchill frequently described as “falling below the level of events.” WSC did not conceal his distress that a supreme opportunity was thrown away:

The time-honoured quotation one learnt as a schoolboy, “Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat” [Those whom God wills to destroy He first makes mad], resounded in all its deep significance…. This was, indeed, the kind of situation for which such terrible sentences had been framed—perhaps it was for this very situation that this sentence had been prophetically reserved.

Military alliances in 1914. Italy (part of the 1882 Triple Alliance) ultimately joined the war against the Central Powers in May 1915. (Map by Historicair, Futeflute and Bibi Saint-Pol, Creative Commons)

“Before the end of April”

Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, while sympathetic to France and Britain, had refused to join them in the war until the naval assault on the Dardanelles in early 1915. This produced what Churchill calls “an immediate change.” Venizelos now proposed sending three Greek divisions to invade Turkey on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

Churchill’s fertile imagination conjured up a stunning vision:

There was surely a reasonable prospect that with all these forces playing their respective parts in a general scheme, the Gallipoli Peninsula could even now have been seized and Constantinople taken before the end of April….

One must pause, and with the tragic knowledge of after days dwell upon this astounding situation which had been produced swiftly, easily, surely, by a comparatively small naval enterprise directed at a vital nerve-centre of the world.

The Czar’s veto

Two days later “a terrible fatality intervened.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Saznonov reported that Czar Nicholas II “could not in any circumstances consent to Greek cooperation in the Dardanelles.”

Russia, which had long coveted Constantinople, had welcomed the Dardanelles operation. But Russia saw Greece as a rival for the spoils. Suppose the Greeks joined in occupying the Turkish metropolis? The Russians would never allow Greek King Constantine to appear in Constantinople.

Desperately, Churchill and Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey sought to save the opportunity. Suppose the Greeks were limited to one division? Suppose Constantine promised not to go to Constantinople? Affronted, the King “relapsed into his previous attitude of hostile reserve.”

Meanwhile in St. Petersburg, Churchill wrote, Czar Nicholas remained adamant:

Russia—failing, reeling backward under the German hammer, with her munitions running short, cut off from her allies—Russia was the Power which ruptured irretrievably this brilliant and decisive combination….

Was there no finger to write upon the wall, was there no ancestral spirit to conjure up before this unfortunate Prince, the downfall of his House, the ruin of his people—the bloody cellar of Ekaterinburg?

(Churchill refers to the murder of the Czar and his family by the Bolsheviks in Ekaterinburg on 17 July 1918.)

Alliances denied

The refusal of Nicholas II to see the larger picture and make the necessary compromises astonished Churchill. Always a proponent of collective security, he could not believe the Czar would throw away such a glittering prospect. Churchill believed even more was at stake. He was sure that victory over Turkey could bring Romania and Bulgaria into a “Balkan Front” against the Germans.

Once the Dardanelles fleet turned back on March 18th, and after the failure to take Gallipoli in succeeding months, the Bulgars weighed their options. In October Bulgaria joined the Central Powers and invaded Serbia. (The term “Prussians of the Balkans,” as Churchill famously labeled the Serbs, was originally applied—disparagingly—to the Bulgarians by Russian Chancellor Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky in 1903.)

Bulgaria’s actions finally brought the Greeks into the Entente, but never with full-fledged zeal. Constantine’s royalists continued to favor Germany, and he and Venizelos sparred, alternately in and out of power, until the King’s death in 1923.

Churchill’s lament

The Greek and Russian imbroglio flew against all Churchill’s instincts to build coalitions. On 6 March 1915—with Dardanelles prospects still promising—he drafted a letter to Sir Edward Grey:

I beseech you at this crisis not to make a mistake in falling below the level of events. Half-hearted measures will ruin all, and a million men will die through the prolongation of the war. You must be bold and violent. You have a right to be. Our fleet is forcing the Dardanelles. No armies can reach Constantinople but those which we invite, yet we seek nothing here but the victory of the common cause.

Tell the Russians that we will meet them in a generous and sympathetic spirit about Constantinople…. If Russia prevents Greece helping, I will do my utmost to oppose her having Constantinople. She is a broken power but for our aid, and has no resource open but to turn traitor—and this she cannot do. If you don’t back up this Greece—the Greece of Venizelos—you will have another which will cleave to Germany.

“Mortal folly done and said”

Churchill decided to sleep on his draft. It proved a wise decision. Morning bought a “laconic telegram” from Athens: “The King having refused to agree to M. Venizelos’ proposals, the Cabinet have resigned.” Churchill’s most powerful Greek ally was temporarily out of the picture.

Churchill published his letter in The World Crisis—“not in any reproach of Sir Edward Grey or the Foreign Office. They felt as we did. They did all in their power. But I print it because it registers a terrible moment in the long struggle to save Russia from her foes and from herself.”

“Mortal folly done and said,” Churchill frequently quoted Housman— “And the lovely way that led To the slime pit and the mire And the everlasting fire.”

Thank-you for your question. It is an example of the myopia of nations and leaders who cannot see the way to their own salvation through concerted action. And it is not so unfamiliar today, as we are often reminded on the evening news. It makes one wonder—as Churchill did—what might happen “if God wearied of mankind.”

Related reading

“Dardanelles Straits, 1915: ‘Success has a Thousand Fathers,” 2024.

“Gallipoli Peninsula, 1915: “Failure is an Orphan,” 2024.

“Dardanelles-Gallipoli Centenary,” 2015.

“Dardanelles Then, Afghanistan Now: Apples and Oranges,” 2009.

“Lenin as Plague Bacillus, Churchill as Munitions Minister,” 2024.

It is remarkable how we still encounter in Churchill words of astounding currency. A friend in Portland, Oregon asked for verification of a Churchill quotation: “A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril….”  (“The Tasks which Lie Before Us,” House of Commons, 29 November 1944.)  A good, solid maxim, but not out of the ordinary.

A friend sends James K. Galbraith‘s thoughtful article, “From the Destruction of Greece to Democracy in Europe” (Boston Globe, 22 August):

Last year’s third bailout of Greece, imposed by Europe and the International Monetary Fund, does to Greece what Versailles did to Germany. It strips assets to satisfy debts….a quagmire of graft to support an illusion that Greece could “compete” as part of the euro. Already in 2010 the IMF knew it was breaking its own rules by pretending that Greece could recover quickly, sustain a huge primary surplus, and repay its debts….

Europe crushed the Greek resistance in 2015. Not because Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, thought his economic plan would work; he candidly told the Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, that “as a patriot” he would not sign it himself. But Germany wants to impose its order on Italy and on France, where civil society continues to fight back….Greece was given collective punishment as a lesson. It was done to show that “there is no alternative.” It was done to stop any other attempt to develop, articulate, and defend a more rational policy. It was done to protect the power of the European Central Bank, the German government in Europe, and the policy-making authority, in face of a long record of failure, of the IMF. Greece is now a colony — the polite say “protectorate.”

The Downward Spiral

My friend describes this as “a slam-dunk on the European Union that exceeds anything Nigel Farage said.” (Farage is the UK Independence Party leader who helped win the Brexit vote on June 23rd.)

Galbraith praises Varoufakis’s Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25)—which sounds oddly like Farage’s Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy Group (EFDD), but isn’t. It is supposedly “a transnational European progressive movement” that restores national voter control within the EU. But as the author seems to admit, DiEM25 has as much a chance as Bernie Sanders’ “Our Revolution.” The EU is not salvageable.

We think of Greece as the historic cradle of liberty. Once prosperous, her throat was cut by the socialists who stayed in power by dispensing ever greater largesse, and through the superstate they invented, the European Union.

Greece joined the EU in 1981, and adopted the euro in 2001. She was in time to be among the first wave of countries to launch euro banknotes and coins on 1 January 2002.  Amid the more or less free-trade community and during 1980s prosperity, Greece did very well for herself; in the 1990s, somewhat worse; after adopting the euro, dismally:

Churchill’s Hopes?

A colleague who read all this asked: “Would Churchill’s  goals for peace in Europe be achieved if everyone left the EU except Germany and France? My understanding is that he was motivated not by a single European state. He meant to eliminate seventy-five years of animosity and war between those two powers.” 

It is not possible to conflate Churchill’s time with ours in that way. He certainly did not believe that the path forward after World War II lay in a federal union. He said so plainly enough. (See “Churchill’s View” here.) The ideas of sovereignty, democracy and free trade—which Churchill espoused—are evergreen. Open borders, a European army, and unelected bureaucrats writing the laws of nations are not.

But the Greek debacle is nothing compared to what’s coming in Italy and Spain. I fear the world is in for upheavals that may prove impossible to handle by the current crop of platitudinous, principle-less, self-enriching, politically correct national leaders. And then what? Who knows? Those of us who will be dead may relax. As for the rest of you, good luck.

Damaskinos, 1944

On Christmas eve 1944, Prime Minister Winston Churchill left family celebrations and flew to Athens. He hoped to mediate the Greek civil war. Communists and royalists were fighting it out. Armed with one promise Josef Stalin actually kept, Churchill thought he could give peace a chance.

(Stalin’s kept promise was the roundly-condemned “percentages agreement” in Moscow a few weeks earlier. It gave Britain a sphere of influence in Greece in exchange for Soviet spheres in pretty much the rest of Eastern Europe.)

Churchill had never heard of Archbishop Damaskinos, the man his Foreign Office said might reconcile the factions and head off a Communist takeover. In Athens, Churchill fixed a steely eye on the general commanding British troops:

“This Damaskinos—is he a man of God, or a scheming prelate more interested in temporal power than the life hereafter?”

The general replied, “I think rather the latter, Prime Minister.”

“Good,” Churchill replied: “That’s our man.”

Schemer or saint?

The general’s was a harsh judgment. During the war, Damaskinos had issued Christian baptism certificates to Jews fleeing the Nazis, becoming one of the “Righteous Gentiles” during the Holocaust; but he was certainly ready to take and exercise power.

In Piraeus harbor the towering Archbishop was piped aboard HMS Ajax to meet Churchill. It was Christmas day: sailors were celebrating, dressed as goblins, gypsies and hula dancers, occasionally throwing one of their number overboard. The Archbishop, in clerical robes with a headdress that made him even taller, seemed a fellow celebrant. Sailors advanced with every intent of tossing him over the side. They were dissuaded with difficulty, as the captain convinced the priest that it was not a staged insult.

At a conference in the Greek Foreign Office, lit only by hurricane lamps as bombs burst over the Piraeus, Churchill subjected the warring Greeks to a discourse the like of which they had never heard before. The two factions agreed to appoint Damaskinos as Regent; he called for reconciliation, ended the fighting, and left office in 1946 with Greece a constitutional monarchy.

El-Sisi, 2014

Flash forward 70 years almost to the day for another Mediterranean schemer: Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi—no man of God, and likewise no sissy.

In October 2014, after attacks by jihadists in northeast Sinai, el-Sisi bolstered his forces. He routed Hamas insurgents and destroyed tunnels by which arms were smuggled in from Gaza. Then he closed Egypt’s borders to a Hamas delegation, accusing Hamas of engineering violence. Hamas’ attempts to placate Cairo after a long estrangement collapsed. Hoping to curry el-Sisi’s favor, Hamas even severed its ties with the Muslim Brotherhood.

You remember the Muslim Brotherhood—those “reformers” the West backed during the “Arab Spring.” After an election in June 2012, the Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi became Egypt’s president. Alas Mr. Morsi was no sooner in office than he morphed from Jeffersonian democrat to a tyrant, and was deposed by el-Sisi and the Army a year later.

El-Sisi’s coup was protested by those who welcome any leader who is elected, even if an election is not exactly up to the standard of, say, the League of Women Voters. They called for stopping aid to Cairo, presumably until Egypt got back to electing another Morsi. El-Sisi ignored all that, and his determined actions against the jihadists offer a chance to stabilize Sinai. That may take him years, not to mention pacifying other trouble spots deeper inside Egypt.

Idealism and Realpolitik

Recently, author David French suggested that idealism will be the death of us—be it President Bush’s faith in democratic nation-building, or President Obama’s arming of unpredictable zealots: “We have to replace foolish hopes and deadly dreams with hard-nosed evaluations of action. Allies such as the Kurds have proven themselves reliable time and again, and Egypt’s new government has shown promise in its treatment of Hamas.” We seem, French writes, “more willing to arm jihadists in Syria than to arm the Kurdish peshmerga in Iraq.”

History doesn’t repeat, Mark Twain said, but it sometimes rhymes. In Athens 70 years ago, a hard-nosed Churchill saved Greece with realpolitik and a tough-minded leader who stifled the forces of anarchy. The situation is not the same today. The opportunity is eerily similar. Churchill said late in life:

The Middle East is one of the hardest-hearted areas in the world. It has always been fought over, and peace has only reigned when a major power has established firm influence and shown that it would maintain its will. Your friends must be supported with every vigour and if necessary they must be avenged. Force, or perhaps force and bribery, are the only things that will be respected. It is very sad, but we had all better recognise it. At present our friendship is not valued, and our enmity is not feared.