Hellenic Electronic Center

Dear Professor Mazower,

In your article "Democracy’s Cradle, Rocking the World", you offer a
number of points that I believe are factually-misrepresentative.

First, the direct involvement of Italians, Poles and Americans in the
War of Greek Independence was minimal. There is no evidence that the
number of Italians, Americans and Poles combined amounted to more than
100. The way you set up and structure this and the succeeding sentence,
to an untrained eye, makes it look as if Greece won its independence
because of direct Polish, Italian and American involvement. The fact is
that it was the Greeks, with the critical involvement of Britain, Russia
and France who realized freedom.

Second, you refer to the population exchanges between Greece and Turkey
which were mandated by the Treaty of Lausanne as "a model that the Nazis
and others (indeed, which others?) would point to later for displacing
peoples in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and India". As you so well
know, especially in your research in your book "Salonica, City of
Ghosts", Hitler referred to the Turks as the inspiration for the
Holocaust. If you have documented evidence that the Lausanne Treaty, and
specifically Venizelos, were his inspiration, please provide. It would
be groundbreaking. Concurrently, evidence that population exchanges in
Eastern Europe, the Middle East and India were inspired by Greece would
be welcome.

Third, the so-called "Greek Civil War" was not a civil war. It was a war
instigated by Josip Broz Tito to expand his vision of Communism and
carried out by Zachariades and his lieutenants. The evidence is
documented in the memoirs of Edvard Kardelj, Tito's foreign minster at
the time, and in Georgi Dimitrov's memoirs as well. And the evidence is
very clear. Indeed, Stalin is on record with his angry demand, through
Dimitrov, to Tito "Svarnut" (roll it up) when he was told that Tito
wanted to expand his influence into Greece using Zachariades and Co.

Last, you create the impression that the EU's objective of shoring up a
fragmented Europe, of consolidating its democratic potential and of
transforming the continent into a force capable of competing on the
global stage, was thrown up because of Greece. Let the data and the
evidence guide you, Professor Mazower. The EU lost the political will
for integration a decade ago. In its place, the competing interests of
France and Germany facilitated a race to acquire, cultivate and
distribute what Warren Buffett called "Fiscal weapons of mass
destruction", i.e. derivatives. It is this competition among France and
Germany in, primarily, the unregulated and untransparent derivatives
markets that began the slide into the current financial crisis. Greece
participated, but surely did not lead. If you are looking to find
ghosts, you will find enough for another 5 books at the ECB, the major
German and French banks and certainly the greedy European hedge funds
who, like those on Wall Street, gambled the EU away, all the while
seducing a Greece that was still in fiscal adolescence to commit to
deviant prostitution.

Thank you for your attention.

Nick Giannoukakis
Pittsburgh