Greece gaining the following territories

[Snake Featherston]

To try yet again to restate what I've been saying so that the people who bitch about calling a spade a spade will STFU and the thread go back to their fantasies of Greece regaining Constantinople and other areas it could only do so by starting and winning a genocidal war which they provide no evidence for that this is even within Greece's capacity to accomplish, no evidence to prove their assertions that drastically overstate the Greek population in these provinces, and assume in a fashion usually associated with Germanwanks that the rest of Europe will mindlessly act to serve Greece's interests, their own be damned, while dismissing any claims of anyone actually being victimized as "Turkish Propaganda":

1) The comment about the Megali Idea referred to its absurd premise that long-dead civilizations with ancient moralities to our own entitle modern states to boundaries they don't even have the ability to claim by brute force. The statement in turn referred to the reality that conciliating Turkey benefits the USSR and the West far more than benefiting an overstretched Greece that wants to regain boundaries it hasn't had in some cases since the Macedonian dynasties, such as Epirus, mentioned in the OP, hence the reference to the Hellenistic era.

2) The statements about Turkey v. Greece are grounded in the reality that to gain the OP's boundaries, Greece can only do so by either wholesale massacre or ethnic cleansing, it has no other means to do so.

 

[Esopo]

Please don't attempt to read the thoughts of other people, it rarely works. I can't speak for Esopo, but what offended me was the idea of condemning a whole nation for the (from today's view) immoral behavior of some of the people who they consider their ancestors. Putting polytheism among pedophilia and incest also didn't help.
Comparing Israel and Greece, you miss the fact that the Greeks were actually a majority in many of the territories. And not due to planned settlement.

Yes.
And what i find insulting too is to summarize and get rid of the whole ancient greek civilization calling it pedophile, incest and so on. If i did the same towards some other countries i would have be banned for bigotry.

 

[Esopo]

Were I insulting the Aztecs by referring to them as people whose obsession was ripping people's organs out that would not be receiving anywhere equivalent objections. When I refer to elements of the South, where I come from, with actually far harsher rhetoric than this, nobody objects. I note a historical truth about long-dead civilizations and this is somehow offensive here but when I refer to the CSA, for instance, as treacherous backstabbers rebelling for freedom to rape and whip their way through their black population the same people nowhere object to that attack.

Sorry, you need to do better to convince me why what I said there deserves some kind of attraction when I'm the kind of guy perfectly willing to be much nastier about movements my own ancestors were involved in. If people are offended by noting that the Hellenistic world worshiped many gods, that's historical reality, tough shit. If they're offended by noting the Hellenistic world was run by people who received worship as Gods and humped their sisters, so be it.

If they derived from my statement there about the Hellenistic world some grave moral insult that never exists when I make any other equivalent statements about other societies in other areas, including those of my own ancestors, and suddenly find this worth objecting to where all those others are not, well I have no sympathy whatsoever for such selective moral myopia. When I note and accurately so that the German Empire was run by militaristic spinleless weasels and the Nazi state were run by omnicidal menchildren, nobody objects. When I call the USSR Tsarism with a Red paint job, people do object at the insult to the Tsars, but not in the same sense. When I call the South a bunch of one-party dictatorships and make statements about it being ex-dictatorships, no objections.

But call the Seleucids and Ptolemies and their Hellenic precursors what they actually were and it brings the white knights out of the woodwork.

If you think I'm anti-Greek, you don't know me very well. If you think that I am remotely interested in apologizing one bit for a statement that by my usual rhetoric is rather mild and par for the course in my descriptions of the Hellenistic era, you're never going to get it.

I repeat, what is offensive about calling sister-humping pedophiles who claimed to be living Gods exactly that? Are you seriously claiming that Antiokos IV Epiphanes was somehow not doing this kind of thing? That the Ptolemies weren't inbred? That the Greeks did not in fact worship multiple Gods? Is noting the tendency of Greek monarchs to receive worship as Gods in their own lifetime as exactly that now offensive?

Nobody gives a heck of you being a product of a culture of self-hatred, you just cant insult and degrade whathever you dont like, its a matter of respect.
If you state with education that in ancient greek civilization there were cases of pedophilia and incest nobody would have had anything to be pissed about.
But you put the whole thing in a insulting way, in an insulting phrase and with insulting means. You said it with a tone of contempt, in order to mock an entire civilization pointing out two supposedly bad element of it.
Even admitting that you were able to use such tones regarding the ottoman empire or any muslim society (which is obviously not true) and then showing to be impartial in this tread, its still a grossly rude, violent and useless comment.
And btw i should have reported that post time ago, why didnt moderation even say a word about it?

And by the way, you dont use your ineducated and rude slang offenses to everyone. You just use them against some targets that your self-entitled New And Rightful View of History considers the "bad guys". Basically classical civilization, christianity, germans, the csa, and everyone having a problem with the ottoman empire ruling in the middle east.

 

[Dementor]

They did object to massacres of Christians, as they approved of war with the Ottomans over their massacres but neither intervention, condemnation, nor war with Russia for its massacres. Of course moral equivalency to excuse one version of massacre instead of another has no response from an honest POV. Which is what you're doing. You dismiss out of hand actual statements and realities involving massacres of Muslims and grotesquely exaggerate massacres of Christians, for what's ultimately a moral equivalency game.

Approve of war? The intervention at Navarino was an attempt to enforce an armistice gone wrong. Russia was routinely condemned for its behavior, as was the Ottoman Empire. In either case, the governments rarely did anything, and in the case of the Ottoman Empire, only when it was needed to forestall a Russian intervention. That they didn't intervene against Russia (whose massacres you haven't actually shown to have been worse) is not due to any moral relativism or hatred for Muslims, but the simple fact that stronger states can get away with things that weaker states can't - something you've been having trouble understanding this whole thread.

That statement about exaggerating some massacres and justifying others is rather hypocritical after what you've been doing this whole thread. And no, I'm not exaggerating Ottoman massacres (unlike your exaggeration of Christian massacres) because there is really no need - the historical truth is enough.

 

[Dementor]

Greece expanded through exploiting alliances and wholesale ethnic cleansing and massacre, and this is what's required for Greece to get these borders which curiously omit some of the areas allotted to it in the OTL Treaty of Sevres. The OP asks a question that can only be answered by Greece imitating Generalplan Ost and having magical supermen for armies instead of its OTL forces. Greece does not have the ability to seriously take over Epirus, Constantinople, or the Hellespont, all of which require large-scale massacres which are curiously an acceptable POD here when the victims are Muslims.

You, on the other hand, seem to think that the Turks are the best swimmers in the world to be able to overcome so easily the total naval superiority of the Greeks.
And leaving the supposed wholesale massacres of Muslims by Greeks (which curiously have left a much larger Turkish minority in Greece than a Greek one in Turkey), the Greeks do not need massacres to become a majority in Eastern Thrace - resettling the Greeks expelled by Turkey would be enough.
And again, don't try to think for other users and ascribe to them your opinions. That you think that Greece can't hold any territory without massacring its Muslim population doesn't mean that others also think like that. Or that they consider massacres of some ethnic groups worse than massacres of other ethnic groups as you do.

To repeat this yet again: The Greek Megali Idea was based on claiming territory because a bunch of absolute monarchs who were treated as Gods, worshiped multiple Gods, and engaged in incest as a divine (hurr) perogative lived there. This is no different than the USA's claim to North America or Israel's to Palestine, with the one difference that Greece can't win a war against Turkey on its own so it gaining Constantinople and European Turkey is a preposterous absurdity that displays a complete inability to acknowledge not only that Turkey is rather too strong for Greece to play Hitler in Russia and that the other Balkan states aren't going to magically adhere to Greek interests where these conflict with their own.

You know for someone who claims not to be anti-Greek, you do quite a lot of irrelevant demonization of their culture.
It's strange how this pathetically weak (according to you) Greek were able to almost defeat Turkey in front of their capital. Which is quite lot harder than defending Eastern Thrace against a Turkish invasion would be.
Also, which Balkan states exactly are going to intervene against Greece? Their best ally Yugoslavia? Or Albania which could barely hold it's own territory/

 

[Dementor]

Which ones? Don't say "many of them", name the territory and define majorities. The reality is that the Megali Idea lay claim to territorial boundaries based on Hellas more than Byzantium, and proudly identified with decadent Oriental Hellenismos. If people object to noting what they were identifying with to claim the Megali idea, take it up with the idiots that invented the concept but not me.

I put polytheism, pedophilia, and incest together because a lot of people seem to mistake the Hellenes being the foundation of the West for this meaning they were rather more modern than they actually were.

Much of Eastern Thrace (especially before the Balkan wars), parts of the coast of Asia Minor, the islands of Imbros and Tenedos. Of course not as many as the Megali idea claimed, but it was certainly not only due to claims based on Ancient Greek possessions.

 

[Dementor]

1) The comment about the Megali Idea referred to its absurd premise that long-dead civilizations with ancient moralities to our own entitle modern states to boundaries they don't even have the ability to claim by brute force. The statement in turn referred to the reality that conciliating Turkey benefits the USSR and the West far more than benefiting an overstretched Greece that wants to regain boundaries it hasn't had in some cases since the Macedonian dynasties, such as Epirus, mentioned in the OP, hence the reference to the Hellenistic era.

Not this again! Unlike you, I think the Allies would consider the fact that Turkey has captures Allied land with Nazi help quite a bit more significant than the exact motivations that had led Greece to acquire this land - as OTL clearly showed in similar examples. And no, betraying you ally is generally not a good idea, especially when you're competing with another superpower which can easily take advantage of this.
Also, why exactly would Greece be overstretched? It would have still more than twice the population density of Turkey, which no one is calling overstretched. In fact, considering the problems it had in OTL in resettling the refugees from Asia Minor, it would probably be stronger in this ATL.

 

[Snake Featherston]

Much of Eastern Thrace (especially before the Balkan wars), parts of the coast of Asia Minor, the islands of Imbros and Tenedos. Of course not as many as the Megali idea claimed, but it was certainly not only due to claims based on Ancient Greek possessions.

Um, yes actually, it was all based on this. Especially the claim to Thrace.

Not this again! Unlike you, I think the Allies would consider the fact that Turkey has captures Allied land with Nazi help quite a bit more significant than the exact motivations that had led Greece to acquire this land - as OTL clearly showed in similar examples. And no, betraying you ally is generally not a good idea, especially when you're competing with another superpower which can easily take advantage of this.
Also, why exactly would Greece be overstretched? It would have still more than twice the population density of Turkey, which no one is calling overstretched. In fact, considering the problems it had in OTL in resettling the refugees from Asia Minor, it would probably be stronger in this ATL.

Yes, I know you think the people who sent people to die in the Gulag in Stalin's USSR have some sense of morality you'd approve of involving destroying and screwing the Turkish state in general. That you think so does not mean that they actually do, that you say that you think they would offers no proof that this would actually be so.

 

[Dementor]

Um, yes actually, it was all based on this. Especially the claim to Thrace.

So you think that all these different cartographers are lying?

Yes, I know you think the people who sent people to die in the Gulag in Stalin's USSR have some sense of morality you'd approve of involving destroying and screwing the Turkish state in general. That you think so does not mean that they actually do, that you say that you think they would offers no proof that this would actually be so.

No morality needed, just a correct reading of a very simple situation.
1. In OTL much of the resistance movement in Greece was led by the Greek. Quite likely for this to be the same in this ATL.
2. This movement could easily gain support among the over a million Greek refugees expelled by the Turks if the Allies were actually to betray Greece. So even if the Greek government didn't immediately switch sides to the Soviets, it becomes much easier for the Partisans to win.
3. Greece gives the Soviet Union an outlet to the Aegean, which even without Greece controlling Eastern Thrace is superior to the Turkish outlet. Practically, a Turkey allied with NATO would be in a rather precarious position, with the Soviet Union to the north and west of them.
4. Greece would be much easier to control than Turkey, which would likely be in the Western camp even if the Soviet Union took their side (also, certain intervention of the allies in this scenario in Greece's favor).

Also, I don't think that the Soviet Union not allowing Turkey to retain Nazi assisted gains (as they would be in this scenario) is the same as destroying or screwing up Turkey.
And unlike you I don't base my arguments on my personal feelings of the countries involved. Neither do I think, unlike you, that saying that something will likely happen in an ATL is the same as wanting it to happen.

 

[Snake Featherston]

So you think that all these different cartographers are lying?

Citing Wikipedia, the site that says that this was Armenia?

Do better. Especially since your own goddamn sources show no Greek majority anywhere in those territories, meaning Greece only gets an actual majority by slaughter or expulsion.

No morality needed, just a correct reading of a very simple situation.
1. In OTL much of the resistance movement in Greece was led by the Greek. Quite likely for this to be the same in this ATL.
2. This movement could easily gain support among the over a million Greek refugees expelled by the Turks if the Allies were actually to betray Greece. So even if the Greek government didn't immediately switch sides to the Soviets, it becomes much easier for the Partisans to win.
3. Greece gives the Soviet Union an outlet to the Aegean, which even without Greece controlling Eastern Thrace is superior to the Turkish outlet. Practically, a Turkey allied with NATO would be in a rather precarious position, with the Soviet Union to the north and west of them.
4. Greece would be much easier to control than Turkey, which would likely be in the Western camp even if the Soviet Union took their side (also, certain intervention of the allies in this scenario in Greece's favor).

Also, I don't think that the Soviet Union not allowing Turkey to retain Nazi assisted gains (as they would be in this scenario) is the same as destroying or screwing up Turkey.
And unlike you I don't base my arguments on my personal feelings of the countries involved. Neither do I think, unlike you, that saying that something will likely happen in an ATL is the same as wanting it to happen.

1) Greek Communists, the only ones interested in actually fighting Nazis. And just the kind to be unacceptable to the West, but if it's Commie Greece or the Soviets in the Straits at Greek expense instead of a strong Turkey that would actually have some plausibility at holding off the USSR.....

2) Citation needed, especially if we're again going for the selective butthurt.

3) And Turkey gives NATO a much stronger counterweight, especially if Greece goes Communist and Turkey decides to stay anti-Communist. All kinds of postwar miracles were possible for pro-Nazi thugs if they said "We hate Commies".......

4) No, it's going in the Soviet camp if the Soviets are really hot and bothered to have it there, agreements with the UK be damned.

5) Actually you do advocate the West re-invading Turkey and imposing what would amount to a Super-Sevres and have noted this as a repeatedly likely outcome. Leaving aside that this never happened to say, Franco......

 

[Grimm Reaper]

Are the cartographers lying?

Given five cartographers and five different population breakdowns of the same area at least four of them have to be.

 

[Snake Featherston]

Are the cartographers lying?

Given five cartographers and five different population breakdowns of the same area at least four of them have to be.

Thank you again for bringing the logic and reason.

 

[Spatharios]

A yes, more Greece-bashing, because it is so in vogue, and because Greeks can only get something by cheating or by genocide. I wish people would actually read a few books before coming here with their preconceptions.

First, re the Megali idea: it was no more and no less absurd than other nationalist projects of its time, and certainly not a specifically Greek pecularity. Every people in the world had its similar dreams of imperial revival, and in every case, it had nothing to do with actual demographic realities of its day. The general attitude among Germans, Greeks, Russians, Italians (and later Turks) etc was to first grab the territory, then worry about the population. And for the time it was formulated, the 1840s, the "Megali Idea" was not as absurd as it sounds today, as far as concerns the Orthodox populations of the Ottoman Empire: Bulgarian nationalism only emerged in that decade, Albanian nationalism was still 30 years off, and "Macedonian" nationalism was a distant dream. In the 18th and early 19th-century Balkans, being an educated Christian meant becoming Hellenized, which is why you will find Greek-educated and Greek-speaking Romanians, Albanians, and Slavs among modern Greece's founding fathers. So the "Greek" elites naturally assumed that eventually, the whole Christian millet would become Hellenized. The kind of virulent xenophobic nationalism that became the hallmark of 20th-century Greek nationalism resulted from its confrontation with other competing nationalisms from the 1870s on.

Second, and most importantly, the genocide nonsense: During the Balkan Wars, many Muslims fled from Serbian and Bulgarian-controlled territory into Greek-held territory. Some went on to Anatolia, other stayed. In the 1910s, when there were some 350,000 Muslims living in Greek Macedonia, they were represented in parliament, the mayor of Thessaloniki was a Muslim, and the Ramadan was an official holiday. During the early stages of the war in Anatolia (i.e., while Venizelos was in charge), there were cases when Greek courts martial executed Greek soldiers because of crimes against Turkish civilians. In 1923, when the exchange of populations took place, there were cases when Cretan Muslims begged to be baptized in order to remain on Crete, which were denied for fear of Turkish reactions. Of course there were atrocities, of course there was rape, murder and arson, but I challenge anyone to show me a war where that wasn't the case. The important thing is that the Greek state, when at peace, saw the Muslims as its citizens, not as a minority to be exterminated.

And that is why there are over 100,000 Muslims still living in Greek Thrace. Their life hasn't been easy, but no one killed or expelled them, even during the times when Greece was ruled by fervently nationalistic military regimes, and there haven't been any ethnic riots either (with a single exception in 1991). And from those I know personally, most are not Turkish nationalists who would rise up against the Greek state in the first opportunity.

So yes, with a reasonable civilian leadership (and without the National Schism, which exacerbated political tensions in Greece), I don't see why Muslims couldn't be permanently accomodated within the Greek state. Of course, any annexation of large parts of Anatolia would lead to a massive minority (or even majority), which is why this part would be doomed to failure unless Greece became a super-Israel. But the scenario of Greece getting eastern Thrace, parts of southern Albania (which was essentially in chaos for the first twenty years of its existence), and Cyprus (which was repeatedly promised by the British) with a POD as late as ca. 1912 is possible. If you want more, then you would have to go back all the way to the Greek War of Independence.

 

[Snake Featherston]

The thing is, Spatharios, that everybody expands territorially by bloodshed, bad faith, and expulsion. The USA's no different in this regard. Nobody likes to hear this, necessarily, but this makes it no less truthful.

 

[CalBear]

I was going to issue a general warning to just about everyone who posted in the last five pages of this flame fest.

Instead I am simply going to lock this disaster before it becomes necessary for me to kick a minimum of five posters in this thread.

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