Today in History – 27 August

“The Great Offensive is a work of art”

In a television program aired in 1973, İsmet İnönü described the Great Offensive, which resulted in the complete eradication of the Greek army from Anatolia, as a “work of art.” In his last appearance on TV, İnönü explained this definition as follows:

Two equal armies; roughly equal armies, are face to face. I say roughly in terms of numbers. Naturally, the Greek army has extensive and comfortable relations with the rest of the world. It can procure any need, any gun, any training, any means with great ease. We are in dire straits in terms meeting our needs. We have no ties with the world; the entire nation is under military invasion…

The Greek army is a valuable army. And a powerful one… We are to fight a battle with this army. We need a definite conclusion. We are to engage in trench warfare with this army. Trench warfare is a kind of warfare born our of World War I. There is no precedent of a definite conclusion, one army’s annihilation of the other, in this kind of warfare. Great military writers, great commanders spent considerable time studying how the army emerging victoriously from the trench warfare would have to move to annihilate its opponent and how it should hit, until the end of such campaigns. And they could not find any answers. We created this undiscovered magic in Anatolia against the occupying army despite the shortage of reinforcements and supplies…

An army was devastated at the end of this battle. There is no other example of this kind. There is no such example in either one of the world wars. This work is therefore an extremely serious, extremely rare work of martial art.