Report of the International Commission on the Balkan Wars

The Report of the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars is a document published in Washington D.C. in 1914 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Report of the International Commission on the Balkan Wars

The International Commission consisted of university professors and other prominent individuals from France, Great Britain, United States, Germany, Austria and Russia. Among the members of the Commission there were three Nobel Prize winners.[1] According to valid data, mr Godart was nominated for Nobel prize in 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, but never won it; mr Walter Shucking was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 10 times (in 1918, 1919, 1920, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933 and 1934), but he also never won it; mr Dutton was nominator for Nobel Peace prize in 1908 (for Andrew Carnegie and for Albert Keith Smiley), in 1913 (for both Edwin Doak Mead, Lucia True Ames Mead), and in 1916 (for Jane Addams), but he was never nominated himself. Baron d'Estournelles was the only person who really won a Nobel Peace prize between the typically members of that Commission (he won the 1909 Nobel Peace Prize along with Auguste Beernaert), and was nominated for it other 5 times (1904, 1905, 1906, 1907 and 1908).[2]

The Commission went to the participating countries at the beginning of August 1913 and remained until the end of September. After returning to Paris all the material was processed and released in the form of a detailed report. The report speaks of the numerous violations of international conventions and war crimes committed during the Balkan Wars. The information collected was published by the Endowment in the early summer of 1914, but was soon overshadowed by the beginning of the First World War.[3]

According to Mark Levene in 2020, the report is "thoroughly documented and still highly regarded".[4]

Though, there are also some extent of critic about the objectivity of this report ever since it was published. For example, we have such a statement from some contemporary authoritative writers in

1918:

"Report of the Internationsl Commission to inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars (Washington, Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 1914). The record of the commission sent out by the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. Their Work was accurately and carefully done, although the pro-Bulgarian bias of one member, M. Miliukov, probably affected the report to some extent".

("Handbook for the Diplomatic History of Europe, Asia and Africa", Frank Maloy Anderson (Professor of History, Darmouth College) and Amos Shartle Hershey (Professor of Political Science and International Law) with the assistance of 50 contributors, prepared for the National Board for Historical Service, Washington Government Printing Office, 1918, p. 438).

The report hails the Great San-Stefano Bulgaria (as a norm), and condemns the decisions of the Berlin Congress of 1878 (calling it "a mistake of Berlin", on p. 40, just because it "divided the undividable Bulgaria in three parts", one which was Macedonia), which from its own is a sign of its non-objective (pro-Bulgarian) political views (because there are not only the Bulgarian, non only Slavic "rights" on the lands of Macedonia and Thrace; also, in Macedonia lived, along with Slavs, many Greeks, Muslims, Serbians and even Vlachs and Jews populations). Also, the Report is almost completely silent about the massacres made by Muslims in Epirus, Albania, Thrace, Macedonia and Thrace (for example, Turkish army during its retreat after its loss in the battle of Sarandaporo executed about 117 local Greeks from the town of Servia and the nearby villages, whom it took before the battle as hostages; around 10 of October 1912 the retreating Turkish army burned down in Thrace the villages Goryagonjica, Vekenero, Krana etc.; on 10 October 1912 there were the massacre by the Turkish army of the 25 Christian hostages, taken in the village Kumutzades (Southern Epirus); the Turkish army burning the Greek and Bulgarian villages in the Turkish controlled part of Thrace, especially the Gallipoli peninsula; such actions by Turks and Albanians continued till the end of war, from time to time - even during the Second Balkan War Muslim population took place in Christian massacres, for example the one which happened in the village Doxato, near Drama). Such actions against the Christian population started by Muslims (equally the Turkish Army and the local population) and took place even before the war, on eve of it, especially in Macedonia (for example, in Mokrinia, in the kaza of Veles (Kioprulu)) and Kosovo. The Report omits to mentions such actions made by Turks, preferring to refer to the massacres made by Serbians and Greeks, and, much more seldom, by Bulgarians (almost exclusively, when the Report refer to massacres, made by Bulgarians, such massacres was made against the Turkish population and prisoners of War, like the one in Adrianople).

In many cases the Report mentions facts that is not true (for example, it say that a member of Commission saw a Greek director of the Orient Bank in Serres, which everybody said was dead, as a living person, even came to his home; but it do not say, that it was a new director of Bank (mr Ghinis), the previous (mr Stamoulis) being really killed, his body being found near Livounovo). The Commission charge Greeks as burning themselves the Greek city of Serres, to "hide" their own crimes, using the Bulgarins testaments to proof it. The "Greek letters from front" is most probably also a Bulgarian made falsification, with many unsustainable statements, made to accuse Greeks for burning the Greek populated Nigrita village around 21 of June, and killing there more than a thousand Bulgarian prisoners of war (although in reality the village was burned down in 19 and 20 of June 1913, during the Bulgarian occupation of it).