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Paradise Lost: Smyrna, 1922 | 
 enlarge | Author: Giles Milton
Publisher: Basic Books
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy Used: $15.39
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Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 12554
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 464
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.7
ISBN: 0465011195
Dewey Decimal Number: 355
EAN: 9780465011193
ASIN: 0465011195
Publication Date: July 7, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
On Saturday, September 9, 1922, the victorious Turkish cavalry rode into Smyrna, the richest and most cosmopolitan city in the Ottoman Empire. The city’s vast wealth created centuries earlier by powerful Levantine dynasties, its factories teemed with Greeks, Armenians, Turks, and Jews. Together, they had created a majority Christian city that was unique in the Islamic world. But to the Turkish nationalists, Smyrna was a city of infidels. In the aftermath of the First World War and with the support of the Great Powers, Greece had invaded Turkey with the aim of restoring a Christian empire in Asia. But by the summer of 1922, the Greeks had been vanquished by Atatuerk’s armies after three years of warfare. As Greek troops retreated, the non-Muslim civilians of Smyrna assumed that American and European warships would intervene if and when the Turkish cavalry decided to enter the city. But this was not to be. On September 13, 1922, Turkish troops descended on Smyrna. They rampaged first through the Armenian quarter, and then throughout the rest of the city. They looted homes, raped women, and murdered untold thousands. Turkish soldiers were seen dousing buildings with petroleum. Soon, all but the Turkish quarter of the city was in flames and hundreds of thousands of refugees crowded the waterfront, desperate to escape. The city burned for four days; by the time the embers cooled, more than 100,000 people had been killed and millions left homeless. Based on eyewitness accounts and the memories of survivors, many interviewed for the first time, Paradise Lost offers a vivid narrative account of one of the most vicious military catastrophes of the modern age.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Paradise Lost - Smyrna 1922 by Giles Milton July 14, 2008
Roger L. Jennings (Queensbury NY)
42 out of 59 found this review helpful
Giles Milton turns out a lot of books by repeating what is in other books without also independently verifying what he is reporting. This book is about the rescue of 350,000 Greeks, Armenians and Jews in 11 days by Asa K. Jennings, my Grandfather. He is the highest decorated person in modern Greek history. Milton credits, for example, Asa Jennings along with a nurse who cared for the refugees and later wrote a book as though she was the saviour. However, there is no support in official records of the US Navy, Greek Government, etc. The Milton book is not a scholarly work. Those who are interested in the subject of Smyrna should read the best work written which is Ships of Mercy by Christos Papoutsy. The book Twice a Stranger by Bruce Clark does a great job explaining the conditions in Turkey at the time,but does not deal specifically with Smyrna. I did offer Milton access to boxes of original records of the rescue, but he declined being in a rush to publish. Roger Jennings
 Written from an unusual viewpoint - and the publisher doesn't warn you July 27, 2008
B. J. O'Brien (Rotterdam Netherlands)
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
The last third of this book is about the terrible days of September 1922; the larger part before that is an account of events during the preceding decade. As such, the book has no direct competitors. There is considerable material available for the dedicated researcher into the Smyrna tragedy, but only a few other books in English - Horton's book of 1926, for example, and one by Housepian Dobkin of 1971; and these are primarily about the September days. It was an excellent idea to design a book in the structure Milton has chosen and to write it in a style to appeal to a broad readership.
But the next most important thing about the book's design is more debatable. Smyrna was a city with an extraordinary ethnic mix. One element was tiny in number but great in economic and social power: a group of rich families called the Levantines. Rather disgracefully the publisher's blurb doesn't mention this, but a fundamental feature of the book is that, as far as he possibly can, the author tells his story from the viewpoint of the Levantines. This is a new approach: Horton and Housepian Dobkin say little about the Levantines. (Even so, Horton gives a much clearer definition than Milton of the term `Levantine'. Milton sometimes prefers fluency to clarity of explanation. But that is an aside.)
The book certainly makes a contribution to Smyrna studies, by drawing on hitherto unknown Levantine source material, but it is obviously intended for the general reader. If the author concentrates on the viewpoint of one tiny minority, can he give the reader, who may well start with little or no knowledge of the subject, an intelligently balanced understanding of the whole complex tragedy? That is the issue that Milton and his publishers had to consider when they conceived this book.
I don't want to accuse Milton of taking the Levantine side and being biased against some other group on some controversial issue or other. The real difficulty with his approach can be shown by a couple of examples. We are told that when the future of Smyrna was discussed at Versailles in 1919, the Levantines attempted to influence the deliberations, and did so. Well then, what about all the other ethnic communities of Smyrna? Did they also attempt to influence the outcome at Versailles? The author doesn't say whether they did or not. Soon after, we hear that Allied forces land at Smyrna and their commander talks to some of the leading Levantines before he decides how to dispose his troops. Did he talk to any leaders of any of the other communities? Did they try and talk to him and get turned away? We don't know. The author doesn't say.
There is another balance issue within this main one. You might easily get the impression from this book that most of the Levantines of Smyrna had British nationality, which, as far as I can tell from other sources, was not the case. The British Levantines were a minority within a minority.
The writing is fluent and, if you read without thinking too hard, you may not notice points like those above and so get an unbalanced view of the story. If, on the other hand, you do read carefully, you frequently have to observe: "Of course, although the author doesn't say so, that is only one aspect of the story. Maybe it looked different to some of the other people in Smyrna. Or maybe not. I can't tell." This rather reduces the pleasure of reading the book.
A slightly different issue is this. In September 1922 most of the Levantines, being rich and often having foreign passports, managed to escape fairly easily, while the ordinary citizens of Smyrna and the refugees from the countryside were either massacred or rescued after experiences of appalling desperation. Throughout the book the reader is encouraged to identify with the lucky Levantines and observe the main victims of the impending tragedy through Levantine eyes. Isn't this rather tasteless? After a hundred pages describing the sufferings of the Greeks and Armenians the book ends elegiacally with the author meeting an elderly member of a Levantine family that lost its wealth in the catastrophe. This is entirely consistent with the whole concept of the book, and yet the reader may feel: Are there no elderly Greeks or Armenians who lost their own flesh and blood that he could have met?
My assessment. If you already possess a small collection of books on the Smyrna catastrophe this one is worth having, since it does contain some interesting new material. If you just like the idea of a reliably balanced book about a little-known historical event, perhaps for a stimulating read on holiday, this book is not it; so find a book on some other historical subject. If you are midway between these two cases, get this book but remember all the time that you are reading a book that by its very design can only give an unbalanced view of the story.
 A major tragedy, but with elements of great humanity and courage. August 7, 2008
Nicholas Warren (New York, NY USA)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
This is a rare book I wanted to keep reading until the end. The author's style is both fluid and interesting.
Although the tragedy at Smyrna in 1922 is the denouement, the book takes a much longer, and broader, view of Turkey immediately prior to being on the losing side in World War 1, the war itself (including the Armenian genocide), the dismemberment of the last of the Ottoman Empire by the victors, the charismatic premier of Greece (Venizelos) and his "Great Idea" to invade weakened Turkey and bring the western parts, populated by many Greek-speaking people, back into a larger Greece, as if it were the Ancient Greek Ionian settlements. Greece has the support of the Western powers in that venture, but its forces are eventually defeated by a brilliant, and equally charismatic, Turkish general Mustafa Kemal, who later became the Turkish Republic's first premier as Kemal Ataturk. He was responsible for modernising Turkey and moving it rapidly into the twentieth century. The victorious Turkish soldiers reach Smyrna (now Izmir) on the western coast and force the evacuation of the Greek forces. Unfortunately, Kemal cannot maintain order among his victorious troops for long and the tragedy of the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians and Greeks ensues (there were more Greeks living in Smyrna than in Athens itself and Aristotle Onasis was one of the fortunate survivors as a young boy), as well as the burning and looting of most of the non-Turkish parts of Smyrna. The victorious powers of World War 1 have warships just off the coast but refuse to intervene to save the people for fear of creating an international incident by being seen to favor Greece in a limited dispute. Immediately following, was an enforced migration of Turks in Greece to Turkey and Greeks in Turkey to Greece (nearly two million people, in total).
The story describes the horrors of warfare in graphic detail (beware, young girls are raped and have their breasts cut off before being killed)but, as in other stories of extreme tragedy, there are incidents of incredible humanity to others, at great personal risk, described. Why does evil have to be a catalyst for acts of great goodness?
I take issue with other reviewers who see this as a biased account from the perspective of the "Levantines" -- rich European families who had made Smyrna their home for more than one hundred years and were the backbone of a thriving trade economy. In one sense, that is true, as their sources were more available to the author but, in another and more significant sense, it is not. The story is still highly politically charged, according to whether you are a Greek or Turkish sympathiser. The author carefully avoids writing the story from either of those two perspectives. Writing it from the "Levantine" perspective, while not totally ideal, is probably far more objective than from either of the other two perspectives, and so, a measure of balance is achieved. I always felt the author was trying not to be overtly pro-Greek or pro-Turkish. He is balanced in describing appalling massacres committed by both sides (the Greeks during their invasion and the Turks after defeating the Greeks and, ultimately, at Smyrna). He presents a sympathetic, if not totally admiring, picture of both Venizelos and Kemal (Ataturk) and a favorable picture of the previous Turkish governor of Smyrna who went out of his way to promote harmony among the varied ethnic populations in Smyrna, in the interests of Smyrna's economic success, despite being heavily criticised by his central government in Istanbul.
If you are of Greek or Turkish ancestry reading this story, I hope its balance (in the sense of the above) will promote a greater understanding of the other side and help to heal the rift betwen these two historically great nationalities. If you are Armenian, I hope that your tragic story will be better known by everyone.
A wonderful book that made me fight back tears at times!
Problematic but poignant July 31, 2008
R. Henderson (Silver Spring, MD United States)
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
While I understand and do not disagree with the concerns of the author of the lengthy review, the last third of the book was one of the most moving portrayals of human suffering I've ever read. The early departures into counterfactuals and value judgments added little to the book, and no doubt a subject matter expert would take issue with character sketches of major and minor figures, but the author does a praiseworthy job of putting human faces on unimaginable suffering. I have yet to find a comparable book devoted to the Armenian genocide.
Very well written August 18, 2008
Margaret (Pearland, Texas United States)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This history of the Turkish city Smyrna in the early 20th century makes for compelling reading. I could not put it down once I had started. I had previously been unaware of this horrible story -- the death of over 100,000 people in less than a week, and the dislocation of so many more. I was unaware that Greek forces had invaded Turkey in the 1920's and pushed well into Turkish territory. When the Turkish army was able to repel this attack, it is little wonder (tho horrific) that they vented their rage on this primarily Greek city (more Greeks in Turkish Smyrna than in Athens at the time). The city is basically destroyed.
Poignant are the descriptions of the British, French, etc communities that had lived their lives of extreme priviledge for almost 200 years. While they still felt the bond with, for example, Great Britain, the British didn't much return the favor. These families had gone to Turkey during the reign of George III, made fortunes, and lived in luxury. Then, for many of them, everything was lost in a matter of days.
Poignant also are the descriptions of the brutality of the army: the looting, rape, murder, and the fire that destroyed the city.
But, to be honest, I didn't walk away from this book with any hatred for the Turkish army. First, we are talking about almost 90 years ago. Second, they were at the rag end of repelling a foreign invasion. Third, armies do awful things sometimes.... and Turkey was in the midst of its own post-Ottoman upheavals. Still, it was very sad and didn't need to have happened. There is never any excuse for ethnic cleansing.
I was saddened by the review that mentioned primary sources that weren't used. I still strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in 20th century history.
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