The Day the Great War Ended, 24 July 1923: The Civilianization of War

260 Pages·2023·2.837 MB·English

by  Jay Winter

THE GREATER WAR 1912–1923
General Editor
ROBERT GERWARTH

The Day the Great War
Ended, 24 July 1923
The Civilianization of War
JAY WINTER
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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First Edition published in 2022
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2022935371
ISBN 978–0–19–287073–5
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192870735.001.0001
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To the memory of Fritz Stern, my teacher

Acknowledgments
There are many debts I have incurred in the many years it has taken to write this
book. The first is to my students at Jerusalem, Cambridge, and Yale who, unbe-
known to them, were almost always the first to hear my thinking about war and
peace in the twentieth century. Now in retirement I am even more deeply aware
of just how much research depends on teaching, and teaching depends on research.
This is a dialogic book in a host of ways. History, I believe, is a never- ending
conversation, and there are those with whom I have been talking about these
themes for decades. Among them are my colleagues at the Historial de la Grande
Guerre at Péronne, Somme, France, where I have spent so much of my academic
life since it opened in 1992. In particular John Horne has been a kind and courte-
ous companion and colleague. At almost every point in writing this book, I could
hear myself saying ‘would John agree with this?’ Even when the answer was prob-
ably not, his assistance, corrections, and patience with my stubbornness have left
their mark on this book. I hope I have managed to convey even a fraction of the
wisdom and humility he brings to our craft.
Two of my younger colleagues have gone out of their way to bring to this pro-
ject their knowledge of archives and sources I would not have been able to master.
Gurol Baba has mined the Turkish archives; without him, I could not have even
begun to unravel the Turkish story. With wit and patience, Vanda Wilcox has
opened up the Italian story for me; she did so even when moving her family from
Paris to Milan. Both Gurol and Vanda heard me out time and again, and helped
me shape this book in myriad ways. Working with young colleagues is one of the
delights of our profession. I look forward to reading their scholarship in the
future. Any errors that remain in this book are mine alone.
Many colleagues who have published in this field have taken the time to com-
ment on chapters. On Turkey, I have learned much (and deleted much) due to the
comments of Hans- Lukas Kieser. I look forward to reading his account of the
Treaty of Lausanne, and hope that mine reaches his rigorous scholarly standards.
On Geneva, Davide Rodogno has offered shrewd comments and enjoyed several
memorable dinners. Sharing his musical tastes, in particular for the art of Tom
Waits, I found we shared similar views on the League of Nations and the humani-
tarian predicament as well. My student Sara Silverstein helped me see much about
the League I had not understood before. Leonard Smith took time to help me
clean up my treatment of Paris and London, and my understanding of the vexed
problem of sovereignty. Boris Adjemian helped me time and again to navigate the
Armenian story and the wonderful archives in the Nubar Library in Paris. Elli
viii Acknowledgments
Lemonidou helped me smooth out my account of the Greek disaster and recovery.
I have relied on the wisdom of Antoine Prost, as I have done over the 40 years of
our friendship. Kolleen Guy read all the chapters, and unerringly told me when I had
hit the right note and when I didn’t. Harvey Mendelsohn, a master of prose and
much more, and a friend of 60 years, unwrinkled my writing with wit and precision.
Covid made it impossible for me to do what I had become accustomed to do;
that is, to present the arguments in this book in embryo as lectures and seminar
papers in many parts of the world. Before Covid, a period of time as a Visiting
Scholar at the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University
in Canberra helped me begin the writing of this book. Thanks are due to Rae
Frances for making it possible, and for Bruce Scates, Robert Dare, Rai and Yael
Gaita, and Bill and Jan Gammage for making it delightful. The earliest pistes,
pre- Covid, out of which this book emerged took place in other university set-
tings all over the world. I am grateful for the valuable questions and objections
offered by those who heard me speak in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra,
Adelaide, Auckland, Wellington, Singapore, Kunshan, Tokyo, St Petersburg,
Lviv, Vienna, Graz, Berlin, London, Antwerp, Brussels, Edinburgh, Warwick,
Wolverhampton, Dublin, Haifa, Philadelphia, and Chicago. My thanks to you
all; you may not realize how a chance phrase or comment on these occasions
triggered thoughts that wound up in this book.
Students and colleagues make history necessary; archivists make history pos-
sible. My thanks go to the staff of many archives who went out of their way to
help me. Many individuals on the staff of the United Nations Archive in Geneva,
the Nubar Library in Paris, the Archives Nationales in Pierrefitte- sur- Seine, the
Archives of the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs in La Courneuve,
the French military archives in Vincennes, the National Archive in Kew, the
Bodleian Library, Oxford, the British Library in London, and the Churchill
Archives Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge were particularly helpful in
the course of my research for this book. They too were hampered by Covid
restrictions, and I am grateful for their efforts on my behalf.
Seven institutions helped by providing permission to reproduce images.
Thanks are due to the Rare Books and Manuscript Library at Columbia University
for permission to use one image from the William S. Moore Photograph Collection.
I am grateful to Dr Marc Tiefenauer, Conservateur de la Réserve précieuse de la
Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire de Lausanne for permission to reproduce
the caricatures in their possession of Derso and Kelèn on Lausanne. The images
of the Armenian letter and seal of credentials are reproduced through the kind-
ness of the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs. I am grateful to the
Bibliothèque Nubar for permission to cite extensively from their rich archives,
and to use a map of Armenia. Iryna Kotlobulatova, of the Lviv Centre for the
Urban History of East Central Europe, kindly permitted me to use an image of a
synagogue destroyed in Lviv in 1918. A photograph of İsmet and Montagna
Acknowledgments ix
appears by courtesy of the İnönü Foundation. The Bibliothèque Nationale de
France’s Gallica site was the source of a number of photographs that appear in this
book. I thank all these institutions for their assistance.
Thanks are due to the Journal of Modern European History for permission to
publish material that appeared in their journal. In addition, I would like to
acknowledge the generosity of Marilena Papadaki, who sent me a copy of her doc-
toral dissertation on Nikolaos Politis when the library of the Ecole des hautes études
en sciences sociales was closed. I look forward to reading the published version of
her work. Jonathan Conlin was kind enough to introduce me to the Lausanne pro-
ject and to share his own rich collection of materials concerning Lausanne, includ-
ing the marvelous Derso and Kèlen political drawings and sketches.
In the course of writing this book, my first teacher of history and lifelong
friend, Fritz Stern, died. It was in his undergraduate seminar in 1965 at Columbia
University that I began my journey into the history of World War I. What has
followed is all due to him and his exemplary life as a scholar. I dedicate this book
to Fritz Stern, my teacher.