It is exceedingly rare to run across a major historical event that has no comprehensive English-language history, but such was the case until this volume brought together all the main strands of the story, including the chaotic ending of World War I in Asia Minor and the numerous military fronts on which the Turks defied odds to fight off several armies to create their own state from the defeated ashes of the Ottoman Empire. This important book culminates the author's three-part series on the early 20th-century military history of the Ottomans and Turkey. Making wide use of specialized, hard-to-find Western and Turkish memoirs and military sources, it presents a narrative of the fighting, which eventually brought the Turkish Nationalist armies to victory. Often termed the Greco-Turkish War
, an incomplete description that misses its geographic and multinational scope, this war pitted Greek, Armenian, French, British, Italian, and insurgent forces against the Nationalists; the narrative shows these conflicts to have been distinct and separate to Turkey's opponents, while the Turkish side saw them as an interconnected whole.