The age-long misfortunes of the Armenian race have arisen mainly from the physical structure of their home. Upon the lofty tableland of Armenia, stretching across the base of the Asia Minor Peninsula, are imposed a series of mountain ranges having a general direction east and west. The valleys between these mountains have from time immemorial been the pathways of every invasion or counter-attack between Asia Minor in the west and Persia and Central Asia in the east…. After the rise of Russia to power, the struggle for possession of the Armenian regions, as containing the natural frontiers of their own domains, [it] was continued by Russia, Persia and the Ottoman Empire. —Winston S. Churchill, The Aftermath (1929)

The Armenian Tragedy

For nine years after the outbreak of war in 1914, Turkish governments conducted systemic genocide among the Armenian people. It was not the first assault on those who had inhabited their lands for millennia. The First World War brought further atrocities. When the Czar’s forces threw back Enver Pasha’s assault on Transcaucasia, some Armenians supported the Russians. The Ottomans said they were “traitors, saboteurs, spies, conspirators, vermin and infidels.” This incitement led directly to what its victims and their descendants describe as the Armenian holocaust.

For years the deadly comb swept back and forth through Armenian communities. Deportations to outlying parts of the Ottoman Empire began in May 1915. Armenian property was seized, men were murdered, woman and children rounded up. In the slave markets of Syria and Mesopotamia, women were sold, violated by Turkish soldiers, or left to die. Twenty-five concentration camps existed within Turkey proper. Through 1923, between one and one and one-half million Armenians died. In America, Theodore Roosevelt described the almost daily reports of murders as “the greatest crime of the war.” Up to then, he had a point. Hitler’s assault on the Jews had yet to come.

“The moral sense of Liberal Britain”

The young Churchill was aware of Armenian suffering. In 1894-96, Abdul Hamid’s Hamidian massacres killed between 100,000 and 300,000. “Whatever happens,” he wrote his mother, “it is evident that we pose as champions of humanity in general and of Armenians in particular alone and unassisted. But that is after all entirely in accordance with precedent.” The “precedent” was Prime Minister Gladstone’s outrage over an earlier pogrom in the 1870s. Speaking in 1946, Churchill recalled how “Mr. Gladstone stirred the moral sense of Liberal Britain.”

During the Second Battle of Ypres in Spring 1915, the horror of German poison gas broke upon a shocked world. It is well established that Churchill supported use of deadly gasses only after they were used by the enemy. Ypres was the tipping point. By October, reports of Armenian massacres, shootings and deportations were mounting, while at Gallipoli, few Allied prisoners were alive. Grimly, Churchill addressed the War Cabinet:

I trust that the unreasonable prejudice against the use by us of gas upon the Turks will now cease. The massacres by the Turks of Armenians and the fact that practically no British prisoners have been taken on the [Gallipoli] Peninsula, though there are many thousands of missing, should surely remove all false sentiment on this point, indulged in as it is only at the expense of our own men.

After the war, the Treaty of Sèvres guaranteed an autonomous Armenian state, though Armenians continued to suffer outside its borders. Churchill described “massacring uncounted thousands of helpless Armenians, men, women, and children together, whole districts blotted out in one administrative holocaust…beyond human redress.”

Peace to end peace

“It seemed inconceivable,” Churchill wrote, that the victors would not make their will effective” against “Armenia’s persecutors and tyrants.” So in March 1920, they offered a mandate (trusteeship) to shepherd Armenian independence. No power would take it, nor would the League of Nations. “Unsupported by men or money,” Churchill believed, the League declined “promptly and with prudence.” U.S. President Woodrow Wilson might take a mandate “if left to himself.” But an isolationist Congress blocked Wilson’s international predilections.

Churchill concluded: “The ghastly fate of the Armenians has yet to be recorded.” At the same time, he added, the victors’ attitude towards Turkey “was so harsh that Right had now changed sides.” Defeat in war was one thing. The “destruction and death of the Turkish nation” were things no Turk could countenance

Churchill’s attitude toward Turkey eased after he became War Secretary in January 1919. He found British forces stretched thin as the armies receded during demobilization. A “massacre of the Armenians” would follow withdrawal from the Caucusus. Yet Churchill wished to remove British troops from Turkey.

Repercussion and republic

Events soon tested Churchill’s instinctive sympathy for the Armenians. In September 1919 Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, warned him of trouble in the Caucasus:

The Armenians, feeling that we were their friends, have murdered every Turk man, woman and child they have been able to lay their hands on, and not only murdered them, but have practiced the most devilish horrors such as peeling unfortunate people alive. That such brutes as these should be saved from the vengeance of the Turks is an affair which I personally think is not our business but which the Americans or some other philanthropists might with advantage take on.

While sharing Wilson’s horror, Churchill thought of the much broader travails Armenians suffered. “We must not,” he replied, “make difficulties in small things and must facilitate any bona fide effort to stabilise the Armenian situation.”

The First Republic of Armenia, declared at Yerevan in May 1918, lasted only two years. When Yerevan fell to Turkish nationalists. Churchill wrote:

…as in Cilicia, another extensive massacre of Armenians accompanied the military operations. Even the hope that a small autonomous Armenian province might eventually be established in Cilicia under French protection was destroyed. In October France, by the Agreement of Angora, undertook to evacuate Cilicia completely. In the Treaty of Lausanne, which registered the final peace between Turkey and the Great Powers, history will search in vain for the word “Armenia.”

Hope and tragedy, 1920-23

Ever the seeker of  just outcomes, Churchill’s eye fell on Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Churchill saw in him the potential for a democratic Turkish state. Soldier, revolutionary, founding father and first president of the Republic, he was “a Captain who with all that is learned of him, ranks with the four or five outstanding figures of the cataclysm.”  In 1921, Turkish forces opposing the Greeks threatened to march on British garrison at Chanak. Churchill urged “a friendly peace.” (This is incidentally the opposite of that bellicose attitude his critics say he habitually adopted.) In 1923-24, Atatürk signed the Treaty of Lausanne, which established the borders of modern Turkey.

Although Lausanne marked the end of Armenian pogroms, the country’s short-lived independence ended quickly. The Red Army advanced unopposed into Armenia in November 1920, proclaiming a Soviet Republic. Allied policy, and the paralysis of President Wilson, had thrown together two natural enemies, the Turks and Russians. The result, Churchill declared, was “a series of tragedies.”

“The ire of simple and chivalrous men and women”

Finally in 1991, seven decades after the Bolshevik invasion, Armenia seceded from the Soviet Union and regained her independence. Could things have been better, sooner? Yes, Churchill thought, but with great difficulty:

The Armenian people emerged from the Great War scattered, extirpated in many districts, and reduced through massacre, losses of war and enforced deportations adopted as an easy system of killing, by at least a third. Out of a community of about two and a half millions, three-quarters of a million men, women and children had perished….

Opinions about them differed, one school dwelling upon their sufferings and the other upon their failings…. Atrocities perpetrated upon Armenians stirred the ire of simple and chivalrous men and women spread widely about the English-speaking world.

Note

Thanks to Howard Kaloogian of the Hillsdale College Development Department, whose queries about Churchill’s views on Armenia inspired this essay.

Further reading

See Churchill’s lengthy account of Armenia’s unfortunate geographic situation, partially quoted at the top of this article, in The Aftermath, Chapter XVIII.

A reader refers us to The Polar Bear Expedition: The Heroes of America’s Forgotten Invasion of Russia 1918-1919 (2019). It repeats a misunderstanding about Churchill’s role in aiding the White Russians against the Bolsheviks. By the spring of 1919 in Russia, we read:

…the cat was out of the bag: whether its allies—English, French, White Russians—liked it nor not, the U.S. was pulling out. On March 4, the British War Cabinet decided to follow suit, ignoring the arguments of the virulently anti-Bolshevik Winston Churchill, who as secretary of war had proposed increasing the Allied commitment in Russia to one million men.

“The passage makes Churchill sound like a madman,” our reader writes. “What is the truth of the matter?”

The Allied Venture

First, it wasn’t simply America’s invasion. After the Armistice of November 1918, various Allies sent troops to assist Anton Denikin and Alexander Kolchak, leading rebels against Lenin’s Soviet government. Allied intervention on behalf of the White Russians involved hundreds of thousands of troops. By far the largest contingents, up to 70,000 each, were from Czechoslovakia and Japan. America’s commitment was 11,000, Britain’s 7,500, France’s 15,000. Czech casualties dwarfed those of the others. Second, Winston Churchill never demanded the Allies send a million troops. He did mention the likely involvement of a million White Russians.

What really happened? Sir Martin Gilbert’s Official Biography, World in Torment 1916-1922, offers the truth. Churchill did powerfully support aiding the White Russians. He was also mindful how far the Allies could go. He also favored a firm decision. When he realized they would not go far enough, he urged disengagement.

Quandaries over White Russians

The British War Cabinet met on 10 January 1919, a week before the Paris Peace Conference began. The day before, Churchill had accepted Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s offer of the War Office. Churchill’s chief task was to demobilize and bring home four million men. He was well aware of their sacrifice. A million British, Indian, Canadian, Australian and other soldiers had given their lives. Martin Gilbert describes the White Russians discussion:

Sir Henry Wilson pointed out that during the past week “there had been signs of unrest in the Army at home, and it was notorious that the prospect of being sent to Russia was immensely unpopular.” [But Marshal Foch had said it was urgent] “to stop the advance of Bolshevism before it penetrated Austria and Germany.” Churchill supported Foch’s appeal…. He then suggested that the defeated German army should be used to check the westward advance of Bolshevism….

Wilson was Churchill’s senior adviser on military affairs, but frequently disagreed with his civilian chief. Wilson was convinced, he wrote in his diary, “that we (British) should keep out of the scrum. If the Americans and French like to go in, let them.” He agreed with Churchill’s idea about using the defeated German army: “We should order the Boches to hold up Bolshevism.” But few in the Cabinet wanted that.

Paris Peace Conference

So informed, the Prime Minister went to Paris. Lloyd George, Gilbert continues, “favoured conciliation rather than intervention.” Backed by U.S. President Wilson, he invited the Bolsheviks to a peace conference at Prinkipo, a Turkish island near Constantinople. Learning of the Prinkipo proposal, Churchill protested that it would amount to recognizing Lenin’s vicious regime.

In London, Cabinet opinion was strongly against British intervention. Lord Curzon, shortly to become foreign minister, wanted other countries to act. Austen Chamberlain wanted no intervention by anyone. President Wilson in Paris opposed intervention. If it occurred, he said, Britain and France would “have to sustain the whole cost.” The White Russians, Wilson believed, could not survive “for a moment” by themselves.

Above all, Gilbert writes, Churchill wanted a firm decision. “He offered his colleagues three clear choices: authorize him to intervene with British troops; aid the Whites with guns and equipment; “or to withdraw.” Lloyd George, continues Martin Gilbert,

… asked Sir Henry Wilson to prepare a statement showing the military effect of each of the three possible policies…. Churchill himself sent a long note to Wilson, in which he asked him to assume, in his calculations: (a) that the Prinkipo Conference will not take place and that the Allied Governments will instead make a united appeal to all loyal Russians to exert themselves to the utmost against the Bolsheviks; (b) that no troops can be sent from this country by compulsion to carry on the war in Russia.

Churchill’s Views

Churchill envisioned helping the Whites but not bearing the full burden. Repeatedly he insisted, “the only chance of making headway against the Bolsheviks was by the use of Russian armies,” Gilbert continues:

There were, he said, nearly half a million anti-Bolshevik Russians under arms, and the Russians themselves planned to double this figure. “If we were unable to support the Russians effectively,” he added, “it would be far better to take a decision now to quit and face the consequences, and tell these people to make the best terms they could with the Bolsheviks.”

“I am all in favour of declaring war on the Bolsheviks,” Sir Henry Wilson declared, “but the others, except Winston, won’t.”

Before leaving  the Peace Conference, President Wilson supported the Prinkipo meeting, but later he waffled.  The Bolsheviks had “raised a number of issues” he said, which were “insulting”: repayment of debts, concessions and territorial compensations. In the event, the Prinkipo conference never occurred.

A Plea for Decision

Winston Churchill didn’t waffle. Again as Martin Gilbert shows, he implored his colleagues to make a decision—but to understand what withdrawal would mean:

The complete withdrawal of all Allied troops was, at least, “a logical and clear policy,” but [Churchill] feared that its consequences “would be the destruction of all non-Bolshevik armies in Russia,” a total of half a million men, whose numbers were increasing. “Such a policy,” he continued, “would be equivalent to pulling out the linch-pin from the whole machine. There would be no further armed resistance to the Bolsheviks in Russia, and an interminable vista of violence and misery was all that remained for the whole of Russia.”

“There is no ‘will to win’…”

The President no sooner arrived in Washington than he announced withdrawal of U.S. troops “at an early date.” On 23 February, a British battalion, the 13 Yorks, refused to march in support of fellow forces on the Archangel front. Their Commander, General Ironside, said they’d been aggravated by the American announcement. Four days later, Churchill  sent Lloyd George an anguished letter, which perfectly understood the attitude of the British battalion: “The lack of any “will to win” communicates itself to our troops and affects their morale: it communicates itself to our Russian allies and retards their organisation, and to our enemies and encourages their efforts…. [The Alliles] are pausing midway between these two courses with an equal dislike of either…. It is necessary [that you] hammer out a policy…. No one below you can do it.”

Withdrawal

Lloyd George acted. When he returned from Paris, the War Cabinet voted to begin evacuating British troops from Russia. On 5 March Churchill asked his chiefs of staff to implement withdrawal. Again we have Martin Gilbert to thank for his exact words. They show Churchill as anything but a mad warmonger. He asked for

a definite timetable for this operation prepared with the necessary latitude… I am extremely anxious about this position, and from day to day my anxieties increase [and] I have announced to Parliament and pledged the War Office to leave no stone unturned [so long as we act in] a manner not incompatible with the honour of our army. I should like also to be able to raise the morale of our men out there by promising them definitely in a message direct from me that they will either be relieved by volunteers from England or withdrawn altogether as soon as Archangel is open….

In Retrospect

Historical assessments of the Allied intervention on behalf of the White Russians are almost all negative. The Bolsheviks concluded that the West wished to destroy them. The operation prolonged a bloody civil war with nothing to gain at the end but Russian enmity. It is debatable whether that enmity still mattered when Russia and the West faced a more implacable foe in 1940. Stalin was many terrible things, but he was also a pragmatist.

Churchill’s view in 1919 was clear:  As he wrote to General Harington, Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff: “We may live to regret bitterly the opportunities and resources we are losing through the present indecision.” Churchill’s view many years later was unaltered. “If I had been properly supported in 1919, I think we might have strangled Bolshevism in its cradle,” he said at a Washington press conference in 1954. “But everybody turned up their hands and said, ‘How shocking!’”

No evidence exists that Churchill wished to commit a million Allied troops. The British contingent he envisioned was small, and made up of volunteers. Above all, Churchill wanted decision, not hesitation, which he abhorred all his life.