Erik Sass is covering the event of the state of war on the dot 100 years after they happened . This is the 253rd installment in the series .
24 February 2025: Greece Splits Into Rival Factions
Like a growing whirlpool , the First World War sucked in more and more countries as the conflict gyrate ever further out of control . From 1915 - 1916 firstItalythenBulgaria , Portugal , andRomaniaabandoned neutrality to throw in their lot with one of the two match coalitions – and this was only the beginning .
After refuse to aid its erstwhile ally Serbia when hostilities broke out , as the fighting trail on Greece – one of the last neutral states in the Balkan Peninsula – step by step edged closer to warfare , incite in part by irredentist claims to ethnically Hellenic areas of Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire , and even more by relentless pressure from the Allies .
The pressure became literally sweep over in October 1915 , when the French and British occupied the northerly Grecian larboard city of Salonika in a belatedattemptto aid Serbia , doomed by the Central Powers ’ autumn offensive . Their reaching in infringement of Greek neutrality ( nobody seemed to worry about honour the neutrality of little states anymore ) precipitated a dramatic falling out between the country ’s pro - German King Constantine and its most powerful politician , the pro - confederative Prime Minister Eleutherios Venizelos , a popular elder statesman who invite the Allies to occupy Salonika ( top , the view from a British battlewagon in Salonika harbour ) .
The Independent
After being forced to resign for trespass his authority , Venizelos went into receptive opposite and start out plot with his powerful foreign patrons to bring Greece into the state of war . Meanwhile , after theirconquestof Serbia the Central Powers invaded northerly Greece in May 1916 , mention the Allied presence in Salonika . For their part the Allies reenforce their position with troops withdrawn fromGallipoli , despite British misgivings ( in diplomatical price the occupation of Salonika was always a Gallic project , reflecting France ’s senior function in the confederation as well as the political connections of General Maurice Sarrail , the French commandant in Salonika , who had the financial support of the powerful socialist axis in Parliament ; above , Allied scout troop in Salonika ) .
For the Allied troops their time in the ancient polyglot metropolis , which also play host to the provisional regime of Serbia and Albania , was a coloured experience to say the least . One observer , the British state of war correspondent Vincent O’Connor , described the scene in the market place : “ Frenchmen , Englishmen , Canadians , Australians , Servians , Greeks , Jews , Turks , all are here in bewildering assortment , and there are others to come . superior general , colonels , subaltern , corporal , rank and file ; footling boys and girl who go to and fro betray papers and furtively hoard those bequeath behind trade again … ”
A Forgotten Front
Greece somehow maintained a precarious neutrality through the mounting tenseness , but in May 1916 the Greeks surrender the key fortress of Rupel to the Bulgarians without a slam , spurring Allied suspicions that the Greeks might be about to go over to the enemy . They responded by ratcheting up the air pressure with a naval encirclement of the country , followed by an ultimatum to King Constantine demanding that he demobilize the Greek Army in June 1916 . The following month the Allies expand their line of northerly Greece with the arrival of the Serbian Army , vivify after its fateful retreat through Albania with six calendar month of rest and resupply on the Greek island of Corfu .
Click to expound
In August 1916 the Central Powers clashed with Allied force in northerly Greece , where the Bulgarians captured Florina and forced Sarrail ’s French Armée d’Orient back in the Vardar River Valley , before the Allies finally halted the offensive ; the Bulgarians were also shortly distracted by the entry of Romania into the warfare on the side of the Allies . Then in September the Allies set up a counteroffensive in a futile effort to help the beleaguered Romanians , pushing the Bulgarians and German Eleventh Army back and threaten the Central Powers ’ control of Monastir ( now Bitola , Macedonia ) .
Imperial War Museums / Robert Hunt Library / Mary Evans
While the fighting in this region is often viewed as a sideshow or “ forgotten front ” of the First World War , it for sure did n’t seem that way to the ordinary soldiers station in the mountainous foothill and tableland of southerly Macedonia , and indeed the Monastir Offensive from September 12 - December 11 , 1916 , was no less blinking than other theatres , with hardships blow up by primitive terrain , disease and harsh atmospheric condition . As elsewhere , wretchedness was cosmopolitan . Ruth Farnam , an American adult female volunteer as a nurse in the Allied armies , visited a recently seize area just behind the Serbian - harbour dower of the front near Florina :
A newswriter , G. Ward Price , recorded similar impressions of the Bulgarian retirement :
The stark peach of the natural surroundings only highlighted the horrors of the battlefield , also described by Price :
An Open Split
As the fighting deepen along the frontier between Greece , Serbia and Bulgaria , the Allies once again sought to bring their legion rural area into the state of war on their side , with the more and more aggressive French take the leash . After landing on the island of Crete and declare the establishment of a provisional governing in September 1916 , on October 9 Venizelos returned to Salonika from Crete with his supporters on Allied ships , proclaiming that they were charter over the responsibility of national defence from the peaceful monarchy .
The Telegraph
On October 18 , 1916 Venizelos formally instal his new tentative regime in Salonika , completing the split with King Constantine in Athens . The Allies also storm Constantine ’s new prime minister of religion , Nikolaos Kalogeropoulos , to leave office while issuing fresh demand that Constantine pull in one’s horns the portion of the Greek Army which remained mobilized south to Thessaly , thus reducing the threat to their own scout group . In the coronate humiliation , French leatherneck surrounded the Royal Palace in Athens , and the Allies demanded that Constantine give up the ships of the Greek Navy , which he duly move around over to Gallic mastery .
By November 1916 the Allies were in effect in ascendence of northerly Greece , while the new government prepare by Venizelos was drawing support away from King Constantine . But the country stay separate , with two governments prevail in analogue from their respective capital , in a chaotic full point that became know as the “ National Schism ” or “ Greek Vespers ” ( have-to doe with to a dark time in the nation ’s story ) . It would have to run several more upheaval before one could be restored .
See theprevious installmentorall entering .
