Greece´s partition and annexation of Macedonia – The Second Balkan War

In what was to be termed the "Second Balkan War", the Bulgarian army, unprovoked, attacked its former allies on June 30th, 1913, again on Macedonian soil. Preferring the element of surprise, Bulgaria turned on its former allies Greece and Serbia and renewed the conflict, officially turning the Macedonian mission from "liberation" to "occupation".

During this attack there were two things that Bulgaria didn´t count on, Romanian involvement and Austrian treachery. The bloody fight was short lived as Romania, Montenegro and Turkey also joined Greece and Serbia in dealing Bulgaria a retaliatory and catastrophic blow. The promised Austrian support didn´t materialize as the risks for Austrian involvement outweighed any benefits. The real surprise, however, was Romania´s break with neutrality.

Up to now Romania had remained neutral and refused to get involved in the Balkan wars or in the Great Power alliances. No one, not even Bulgaria, anticipated this attack from the north. For Romania however, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to regain lost territories from Bulgaria. Even the Ottomans became involved and managed to re-gain some of what they had recently lost to Bulgaria. Being involved in too many fronts at the same time, Bulgaria was unable to repel Ottoman attacks and prevent them from taking back the Dardanelle region. The biggest winners in this conflict were Greece and Serbia, both of which got exactly what they wanted. (See map)

The Macedonians fared worst in this conflict mainly due to their own enthusiasm. As frontlines shifted positions, Macedonians who were enthusiastic about supporting one side were treated as traitors by the other side as frontiers kept shifting. As a result many Macedonians were butchered by opposing sides for previously showing sympathy to their enemies.

"The Carnegie Relief Commission, dispatched to the Balkans in late 1913, reported the incredible story of human suffering. In Macedonia alone, 160 villages were razed leaving 16,000 homeless, several thousand civilians murdered, and over 100,000 forced to emigrate as refugees." (Page 149, Radin, IMRO and the Macedonian Question) This genocidal tragedy was committed in a relatively short time, by those who marched in and were welcomed as "liberators". Worst and most unexpected was that "Christians" committed this genocide against "Christians", reminiscent of the 1204 tragedy committed by the Western Crusaders in Constantinople.

After a great deal of jockeying for position, deliberating and negotiating, the warring factions agreed to an armistice, and peace between Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia was negotiated in August 1913 in Bucharest. The map of Macedonia was again redrafted and again without Macedonian participation. The new boundaries ignored previously agreed upon considerations such as lines of "ethnicities" (not that any existed), the Macedonian people´s democratic desires, etc., as the Bucharest delegates imposed their artificial sovereignty upon the Macedonian people. With the exception of one minor change in 1920 in Albania´s favour, these dividing lines have remained in place to this day. Of the total Macedonian territory 51% went to Greece, 39% went to Serbia, and 10% went to Bulgaria. August 10th, 1913 became the darkest day in Macedonian history.

Not since Roman times has Macedonia been partitioned in a way where three brothers were forced to assume three different (imposed) identities, speak three different foreign languages in their own homeland and were treated as strangers in their own homes. Half a millennium of Ottoman suppression and a century of forced Hellenization/Bulgarization could not erode the Macedonian consciousness as much as Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian aggression did in less than a decade after Macedonia was occupied.

The once proud Macedonian people, that long ago conquered the world, bridged the gap between east and west, introduced Christianity to Europe, safeguarded all ancient knowledge and protected the west from eastern invaders, had now been beaten and reduced to a shadow of their former selves. The violence of this latest intrusion transformed the Macedonian people into shy creatures, seeking homes in foreign lands and hiding in the twilight while its enemies danced on the heads of their dead and proclaimed to the world that they are the rightful heirs of Macedonia. The proud name "Macedonia" which echoed through the centuries, outlasting time itself, became a "dirty word" never to be spoken.

It was not enough that they consumed the Macedonian lands, these new depraved creatures, spawned by western greed, consumed all Macedonian treasures (culture, religion, literature, folklore, ancient knowledge safeguarded in Mount Athos etc.) as well and regurgitated them as their own. Then without hesitation shame or guilt they lied to the world, even to their own people, proclaiming their deeds were just and honourable. Their powerful propaganda machines soon turned "lies to truths" and "truths to lies" poisoning those subjugated and turning them upside down.

By the invasion, occupation and partition of Macedonia by Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria, the entire Macedonian population was rendered mute as the new masters imposed their languages and forced people to speak languages they could not understand. Silence filled the air and children did not dare cry, for if they uttered a word in Macedonian they would be terribly, terribly punished. The Macedonian language, mother tongue of all Slav languages, "Voice of Eastern Christianity" was "muted", only to be spoken in the shadows and in fear. The great masters have big ears and their ears hurt when they heard Macedonian spoken. In time the Macedonian language became known as "our language", spoken by "our people", a mute language spoken by a nameless people.

In time the Macedonian nation, the Macedonian people and the Macedonian language became "anomalies" on the very land they were born.

This is the fate that awaited the Macedonian people in the 20th century, all with the blessings of the Great Powers (Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy).

The jubilance of liberation died down quickly as the fires of burning villages lit the night skies. Macedonia was in flames again. Liberators turned to occupiers and rained havoc on the Macedonian population. The political, economic and ethnic unity of Macedonia was no more. Greek soldiers who came to liberate their Christian brothers from the oppressive Ottomans and terrible Bulgarians were now burning, torturing and murdering people. In the words of Sir Edmond Grey, "The Balkan war began as a war of liberation, became rapidly a war of annexation, and has ended as a war of extermination." (Page 294,Vasil Bogov, Macedonian Revelation, Historical Documents Rock and Shatter Modern Political Ideology)

The Greek atrocities were revealed to the world when a lost mailbag was discovered containing letters from Greek soldiers in Macedonia to their families in Greece. The mailbag was turned in to the Carnegie Relief Commission and the contents of the letters were made public. Expecting to fight for the glory of the fatherland, the Greek soldiers instead found themselves torturing, murdering, burning houses and evicting women and children from their homes in a most vile way. The letters revealed that the soldiers were acting on direct orders from the Greek authorities and the Greek king himself. Macedonian families of known Exarchists (Macedonians belonging to the Bulgarian Church) were ordered by force to "take with them what they could carry and get out". "This is Greece now and there is no place for Bulgarians here." Those who remained were forced to swear loyalty to the Greek State. Anyone refusing to take the loyalty oath was either executed, as an example of what would happen to those disloyal, or evicted from their home and exiled. To explain the mass evacuations, Greek officials claimed that the inhabitants of Macedonia left by choice or became Greek by choice. The truth is no one was given any choice at all.

"A thousand Greek and Serbian publicists began to fill the world with their shouting about the essentially Greek or Serbian character of the populations of their different spheres. The Serbs gave the unhappy Macedonians twenty four hours to renounce their nationality and proclaim themselves Serbs, and the Greeks did the same. Refusal meant murder or expulsion. Greek and Serbian colonists were poured into the occupied country... The Greek newspapers began to talk about a Macedonia peopled entirely with Greeks-and they explained the fact that no one spoke Greek by calling the people 'Bulgaro-phone Greeks' ... the Greek army entered villages where no one spoke their language. 'What do you mean by speaking Bulgarian?´ cried the officers. 'This is Greece and you must speak Greek.'" (Page 104, John Shea, Macedonia and Greece, The Struggle to define a new Balkan Nation)

In 1913 Professor R.A. Reiss reported to the Greek government: "Those whom you would call Bulgarian speakers I would simply call Macedonians...Macedonian is not the language they speak in Sofia...I repeat the mass of inhabitants there (Macedonia) remain simply Macedonians."

History again turned its eyes away from the Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian atrocities in Macedonia to focus on new events that were about to unfold and engulf the entire world.

After losing Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria in 1908 and the Albanian territories in 1912 (again because of Austria) Serbia became bitter and resentful. "To the nationalist Serbs the Habsburg monarchy (Austria-Hungary) was an old evil monster which prevented their nation from becoming a great and powerful state. On June 28, 1914, a young Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, assassinated the heir of the Habsburg monarchy, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and his wife at Sarjevo." (Page 104, Felix Gilbert, The End of the European Era, 1890 to the Present)

Within two weeks of the assassination the First World War broke out, engulfing all of Europe. It was inevitable and a matter of time before a "world war" would break out in the Balkans. The Great Powers were incapable of exercising diplomacy either between themselves or with the new Balkan States they helped create. Macedonia was sacrificed in order to appease the new Balkan States but that did little to satisfy their ferocious appetites for lands and loot.

While World War I raged on consuming the lives of millions of young men and women, Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia were serving their own brand of chauvinism in Macedonia. For the next five years, with the world busy with its own problems, there was no one to hear the cries of the Macedonian people at the hands of the new tyrants. If the gravestones of the dead Macedonians could speak they would tell tales of torture and executions, deception and lies. They would say, "Our Christian brothers came to liberate us but instead they killed us because we were in their way of achieving greatness. We were labeled 'criminals' because we would not yield to their demands. I ask you is it a crime to want to live as free men? Is it a crime to want to be Macedonian? Is it a crime to want to exercise free will? It is they who are the criminals for befouling everything that is Christian, for their lies and deception, and for murdering us to possess our lands. History will record August 10th, 1913 as the darkest day in Macedonia, the day our future died."

The triple occupation worsened living conditions in Macedonia but the fighting spirit of the Macedonian people continued to live underground and abroad. Three generations of fighting for liberty, freedom and an independent Macedonia came to a close. The Ilinden generation and revolutionaries were defeated, not by the Ottomans or Muslim oppression but by Christian cruelty and deception.

Soon after the occupation, underground societies sprang up everywhere urging the Macedonian people to refuse their new fate and oppose the partition. Accordingly, many Macedonians did so by refusing to obey the new officialdom and by not participating in the new institutions. This, however, did not stop the military regimes occupying Macedonia from systematic denationalization and violent assimilation.

I have often been asked if Macedonia is indeed Greek why then did Greece agree to split it with Serbia and Bulgaria. Why indeed!

Source:

Stefou, Chris. History of the Macedonian People from Ancient times to the Present. Toronto: Risto Stefov Publications, 2005.

You can contact the author at rstefov@hotmail.com