The Carnegie Commission Report 1914

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If anyone want to see from a neutral point of view what happened in the Balkan wars 1912-13 download and read the three reports.
Carnegie Commission Reports

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The entire commission is hosted on this Bulgarian site:

http://knigite.abv.bg/en/carnegie/index.html

Carnegie Endowment for International peace

REPORT OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION
To Inquire into the causes and Conduct OF THE BALKAN WARS, PUBLISHED BY THE ENDOWMENT WASHINGTON, D.C. 1914

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ill just post a few excerpts I found interesting

Our American friends understood this when they asked us to act, and we have not hesitated to respond to their insistence. The Americans, unlike Europe, do not approve of resignation, silence, withdrawal. They are young, and they can not endure an evil which is not proved to them to be absolutely incurable. Not the slightest doubt can be cast upon their impartiality in regard to the belligerents, the United States being the adopted country of important rival colonies, notably of an admirable Greek colony. For my part, I should not have accepted the responsibility of organizing a mission of whose disinterestedness and justice I had not been fully assured.

I love Greece. The breath of her war of independence inspired my youth, I am steeped in the heroic memories that live in the hearts of her children, in her folk songs, in her language, which I used to speak, in the divine air of her plains and mountains. Along her coasts every port, every olive wood or group of laurels, evokes the sacred origin of our civilization. Greece was the starting point of my active life and labor. [See footnote, page 3] She is for the European and the American more than a cradle, a temple or a hearth, which each of us dreams of visiting one day in pilgrimage. I do not confine myself to respecting and cherishing her past. I believe in her future, in her eager, almost excessive, intelligence. But the more I love Greece, the more do I feel it my duty in the crisis of militarism which is menacing her now in her turn, to tell the truth and to serve her by this, as I serve my own country, while so many others injure her by flattery.

from section: 'Why this enquiry?' - Introduction

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Thus did the Servians in Turkey deprive themselves of their own free will of the most effective weapon in the national conflict. From this time on the "exarchist" was exclusively Bulgarian and the Macedonian population, called Boulgari from time immemorial, began to feel itself at once Bulgarian and Slav. Outside the national Bulgarian church, which thus remained the Slav church in Macedonia, there were only "patriarchists" of every kind-Greek, Wallachian or Servian united under one Greek ecclesiastical authority, that of Constantinople.

The second circumstance driving Servia to accentuate its Macedonian pretensions was the "occupation" of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria Hungary. It is now known that at the interview between Emperor Alexander II and Emperor Francis Joseph at Reichstadt on July 8, 1876, it was agreed that in the event of Servia or Montenegro winning independence, Austria Hungary should have the right to "occupy and administer" these provinces. The same terms were repeated in the Berlin treaty. At the same time Austria Hungary emphasized her assertion that she regarded Servia as within her sphere of influence.

At Reichstadt, Russia agreed not to make war on Servian territory, and when General Ignatiev suggested the annexation of Bosnia to the Austrian diplomats as the condition of recognition of the treaty of San Stefano, Count Andrassy replied by a counter proposition, that of leaving Russia full freedom of action in Bulgaria on condition of the proclamation of Macedonia's autonomy under Austro-Hungarian protection.

After the Berlin Congress, Austria Hungary entered into closer relations with King Milan of Servia. He signed the secret treaty of 1881, in which (§7) Austria Hungary formally declared that she "would not oppose, would even support Servia against other powers in the event of the latter's finding a way of extending its southern boundary, exception being made in the case of the Sandjak of Novi Bazar." In 1889, when this treaty was renewed, Austria ^Hungary promised in even clearer terms "to aid in the extension of Servia in the direction of the Vardar valley." Thus at the very moment when Austria Hungary was depriving Servia of any possibility of westward extension, by joining the section of the Servian population inhabiting- Bosnia and Herzegovina to herself, Austrian diplomacy was holding out by way of compensation, the hope of an extension towards the south, in those territories whose population had, up to 1860-1870, been universally recognized as Bulgarian, even by the Servians.

http://knigite.abv.bg/en/carnegie/chapter1_1.html

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Here are the statistics for the Bulgarian-exarchist schools for the same period: there were in Macedonia 1896-97, 843 such schools (against 77 Servian schools), 1,306 teachers (Servian, 118) ; 31,719 scholars (Servian, 2,873); children in the kindergarten, 14,713.

These figures show that at the close of the nineteenth century the overwhelming majority of the Slav population of Macedonia was sending its children to the exarchist Bulgarian school. The school became henceforth an auxiliary of the national movement, and independent of the church


Official Turkish statistics admitted only one principle of discrimination between the ethnic groups dwelling in Macedonia, namely religion. Thus all the Mahomrnedans formed a single group although there might be among them Turks, Albanians, Bulgarian "pomaks," etc.: all the patriarchists in the same way were grouped together as "Greeks," although there might be among them Servians, Wallachians, Bulgarians, etc. Only in the "exarchist" group, did religion coincide, more or less, with Bulgarian nationality.

1.1. The ethnography and national aspirations of the Balkans

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From an ethnographical point of view the population of Macedonia is extremely mixed. The old maps, from that of Ami Bone (1847) down, follow tradition in regarding the Slav population of Macedonia as Bulgarian. Later local charts make the whole country either Servian, or Greek. Any attempt at more exact delineation, based on topical study, is of recent date. There are, for example, Mr. Kantchev's maps, representing Bulgarian opinion, and the better known one of Mr. Tsviyits representing Servian. But Mr. Tsviyits' ethnographic ideas vary also with the development of Servia's political pretensions. In 1909 he gave "Old Servia" a different outline from that he gave in 1911 (see his map published in the "Petermann" series)

http://knigite.abv.bg/en/carnegie/chapter1_1.html - section 30

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It was in Macedonia that the real revolutionary organization, uncompromising and jealous of its independence, was to be found. For the origins of this internal organization we must go back to 1893 when, in the little village of Resna, a small group of young Bulgarian intellectuals founded a secret society with the clearly expressed intention of "preparing the Christian population for armed struggle against the Turkish regime in order to win personal security and guarantees for order and justice in the administration," which may be translated as the political autonomy of Macedonia.

The year 1910 was decisive in the sense of affording definite proof that the regime established in 1908 was not tolerable. The regime had its chance of justifying itself in the eyes of Europe and strengthening its position in relation to its own subjects and to the neighboring Balkan States; it let the chance go. From that time the fate of Turkey in Europe was decided, beyond appeal.

This was also the end of the attempts at autonomy in Macedonia. To realize this autonomy two principal conditions were required: the indivisibility of Turkey and a sincere desire on the part of the Turkish government to introduce radical reforms based on decentralization. No idea was less acceptable to the "Committee of Union and Progress" than this of decentralization, since it was the watchword of the rival political organization. Thenceforward any hope of improving the condition of the Christian populations within the limits of the status quo became illusory. Those limits had to be transcended. Autonomy was no longer possible. Dismemberment and partition had to be faced.

http://knigite.abv.bg/en/carnegie/chapter1_2.html

-CHAPTER I - The Origin of the Two Balkan Wars

2. The struggle for autonomy

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At this moment the Czar of Russia made a final effort. On May 26/June 8, he sent a telegram to the Kings of Servia and Bulgaria in which, while noting the suggested meeting at Salonica and its eventual continuation at St. Petersburg, he reminded them that they were bound to submit their findings to his arbitrament. He stated solemnly that "the State which begins the war will answer for its conduct to Slavdom." He reserved to himself entire freedom to decide what attitude Russia would take up in view of the "possible consequences of this criminal strife." The secret diplomatic correspondence explains this threat. If Servia will not submit to Russian arbitration "it will risk its existence." If it is Bulgaria that resists, "it will be attacked, in the war with the allies, by Roumania and Turkey."

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1.4 - The conflict between the allies

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It gave the opportunity of vengeance to every peasant who cherished a grudge against a harsh landlord or a brutal neighbor. Every Bulgarian village in northern Macedonia had its memory of sufferings and wrongs.

It remains to mention the practice followed by the Bulgarians, over a wide area, of reconverting the pomaks by force to Christianity. The pomaks are Bulgarians by race and language, who at some period of the Turkish conquest were converted by force to Islam. They speak no Turkish, and retain some traditional memory of their Christian past; but circumstances have usually made them fanatical Mohammedans. They number in the newly conquered territories at least 80,000 persons, and are chiefly concentrated to the north and east of Nevrocop. The Bulgarian Holy Synod conceived the design of converting them en masse, and it was frequently able to reckon on the support of the military and civil authorities, not to mention the insurgent bands. It was not usually necessary to employ actual violence; threats, backed by the manifest power to enforce them, commonly sufficed to induce whole villages to submit to the ceremony of baptism. The policy was carried out systematically, and long before the outbreak of the second war, the pomaks in most districts conformed outwardly to the Bulgarian church, and listened with a show of docility to the ministrations of the priests and nuns sent by the Holy Synod to instruct them in the tenets of Christianity. This aberration, in sharp contrast to the toleration which the Bulgarian Kingdom has usually shown to the Moslems within its frontiers, must rank among the least excusable brutalities of the war. The Holy Synod argued that since force had been used to convert the pomaks to Islam, force might fairly be used to reverse the process. The argument is one proof the more that races whose minds have been molded for centuries by the law of reprisal and the practice of vengeance, tend to a common level of degradation.

2.1 - The War and the noncombatant population

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Wow Ive read most of the damn report and still no mention of ethnic macedonians. amazing that despite how "Greece, Bulgaria and Serb divided Macedonia and subjecated the Macedonian majority" that this report only talks about the interactions between the Greek, Bulgarian and Moslem population of Macedonia during the war. Heres another excerpt about South Eastern Macedonia on the eve of the second war, note the demographics mentioned:

In forming an opinion upon the series of excesses which marked the Bulgarian withdrawal from southeastern Macedonia, it is necessary to recall the fact that the Bulgarians were here occupying a country whose population is mainly Greek and Turkish. The Bulgarian garrisons were small, and they found themselves on the outbreak of the second war in a hostile country. The Greek population of these regions is wealthy and intensely patriotic. In several Greek centers insurgent organizations (andartes) existed. Arms had been collected, and some experienced guerrilla chiefs were believed to be in hiding, and ready to lead the local population. All of this in existing conditions was creditable to Greek patriotism; their race was at war with Bulgarians, and the more enterprising and courageous among them intended to take their share as auxiliaries Of the Greek army in driving the Bulgarians from their country. From a nationalist standpoint, this was morally their right and some might even say their duty. But it is equally clear that the Bulgarians, wherever they found themselves opposed by the armed civil population, had also a right to take steps to protect themselves. The steps which they elected to take in some places grossly exceeded the limits of legitimate defense or allowable reprisal.


Doxato was a thriving country town, situated between Drama and Kavala in the center of a rich tobacco growing district. It had a large school, and counted several wealthy and educated families among its 2,700 Greek inhabitants. It was proud of its Hellenic character, and formed with two neighboring villages a compact Greek island in a rural population which was almost exclusively Turkish.

The demographics of Serres are made reference to in this excerpt:

THE MASSACRE AND CONFLAGRATION OF SERRES

Serres is the largest town of the interior of eastern Macedonia. The tobacco trade had brought considerable wealth to its 30,000 inhabitants; and it possessed in its churches, schools and hospitals the outward signs of the public spirit of its Greek community. The villages around it are Bulgarian to the north and west, but a rural Greek population approaches it from the south and east. The town itself is predominantly Greek, with the usual Jewish and Turkish admixture. The Bulgarians formed but a small minority.

2.2 - The conduct of the Bulgarians in the second war

CHAPTER II
The War and the Noncombatant Population