There were apocalyptic scenes that took place in Smyrna on September 13, 1922.

Corpses floated in the docks, the smell of burned human flesh was in the air, and beyond that a fire was spreading that burned three quarters of a city that had been among the richest and most magnificent of its time.

100,000 people were killed, another 160,000 deported to Anatolia.

Rainer Herman

Editor in Politics.

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The destruction of Smyrna was the beginning of an exodus of biblical proportions.

Those who were Greek Orthodox Christians had to leave Smyrna, Asia Minor and new Turkey, and in Greece Muslims were forced to go to Turkey in turn.

1.6 million people were resettled.

In cosmopolitan Smyrna, many minorities had long coexisted.

From then on it was Turkish and was called Izmir.

British historian Giles Milton illustrates how much the Inferno of Smyrna was the result of narrow-minded political calculations, particularly by the British government, and over-the-top politicians, particularly from Greece.

Milton confidently combines reports from contemporary witnesses with major political events.

He evaluated letters and diaries from eyewitnesses and called them "the people of the plot".

They are Greeks, Armenians and Turks, but mostly European Levantines from France and England, and citizens of the United States.

The descriptions illustrate what a privilege it must have been to live in such a wealthy and enlightened city - and how this dream caught fire.

The conditions for genocide are met

The Inferno of Smyrna stands for the transition from the old empires, it belonged to the multi-ethnic state of the Ottoman Empire, to the "modern" nation states.

The First World War had already begun for Turkey before the assassination of the Habsburg heir to the throne in Sarajevo.

Because after the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, tens of thousands of Muslim people fled from there.

Many settled on the Aegean coast and took revenge on the Greek population there.

When war broke out, Greeks were considered "enemies within".

For the Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos sensed an opportunity for the creation of a Greater Greek Empire with a center in Smyrna, which, however, presupposed the destruction of the Ottoman Empire.

He was helped by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George's enthusiasm for Greece.

Without his support for the Greater Greek cause, Smyrna would not have steered towards its fate.

Much of what Milton writes is familiar, albeit not in this level of detail.

During his research, he came across a previously unknown document in the British State Archives, which proves that the systematic murder of the Armenians was planned by the Young Turkish government.

The document is the record of a secret meeting between Interior Minister Talat Pasha and four of his senior officials in the winter of 1914. Ten points contain all the steps and measures implemented from April 24, 1915 onwards.

They meet the conditions for genocide.

And then the city descended into anarchy

The policies of the Turkish governor Rahmi Bey spared Smyrna from the First World War, and the city's Armenians also remained unmolested.

It was only when English warships entered the port of Smyrna on May 14, 1919 and Greek soldiers went ashore the following day that a "chain of events that led straight to catastrophe" was set in motion.

The orgies of violence by the Greek soldiers ended peaceful coexistence in Smyrna.

Lloyd George now encouraged the Greek army to push deep into Anatolia, where they met resistance.

In August 1921 they suffered their first major defeat.

A year later, the new Turkish national army under Mustafa Kemal, later Atatürk, struck a decisive blow against the invaders near Afyon.

One of the few weaknesses of the book is that it almost completely ignores this one year from August 1921 to August 1922.

The catastrophe was now taking its course.

Beginning September 6, Milton devotes a chapter to each day.

The Greek administration withdrew and public order collapsed.

On September 9, after the last Greek soldiers had left the city, the first Turkish troops arrived, followed by gangs whose first target was the Armenian quarter, where they raped and murdered.

On September 12, the city descended into anarchy, Milton writes.

He lets British soldiers have their say, who observed war crimes from their ships in the harbor.

What the Greeks had previously committed in excessive force, the new Turkish rulers now surpassed in their acts of revenge.

Milton shows that they burned Smyrna on purpose - and invalidates official Turkish historiography that the fire was an act of Greek and Armenian sabotage.

The book ends with a description of one of the most extraordinary rescue operations of the twentieth century.

From September 19th, the American missionary Asa Jennings, who had been inconspicuous until then, almost single-handedly steered several dozen ships that were anchored off Lesbos to Smyrna and thus saved almost half a million people in one week who were dying in the harbor had feared.

Smyrna was now "cleansed" of all troublesome minorities.

Today there is little left of the multi-ethnic city that went under in the sea of ​​flames.

Giles Milton: "The Inferno of Smyrna".

How the dream of a multiethnic city went up in flames.

Translated from English by Tobias Gabel.

wbg/Theiss, Darmstadt 2022. 464 p., ill., hardcover, €38.