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

measure, Greek-Orthodox citizens of Turkey, with the exception of those living in Constantinople, lost the right of citizenship and residence in that state. So did Muslim citizens of Greece, except for residents of Western Thrace. This exchange of nearly two million people, introduced to the peace conference by Nobel Prize winner and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen, provided a solution to the immense refugee problem arising out of the Greek-Turkish war. At the same time, it introduced into international law a definition of citizenship defined not by language or history or ethnicity, but solely by religion. This set a precedent for ethnic cleansing followed time and again later in the century and beyond.The second price of peace was the burial of commitments to the Armenian people that they would have a homeland in the lands from which they had been expelled, tortured and murdered in the genocide of 1915. This book tells the story of the peace conference, and its outcome. It shows how peace came before justice, and how it set in motion forces leading to the global war that followed in 1939.