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CHAPTER 2 – HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 
62 
heavy fighting, was the second battle of İnönü. This was quite different in scale from 
the first battle of January, involving 44,000 and 33,000 men on the Greek and 
Turkish sides respectively and resulting in heavy losses of around 5,000 killed, 
wounded, captured or missing on each side; the dead on each side were about 700
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. 
This time the nationalists had repelled a full-scale attack by the Greeks; while the 
literal truth of the words which the victor of Anafartalar addressed to İsmet (“Few 
commanders in the whole history of the world have faced a task as difficult as that 
which you undertook in the pitched battles of İnönü.”)
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might be debated by 
military historians, the hyperbole is understandable. 
The reaction to this setback on the Greek side was a redoubling of efforts. 
Venizelists were to claim that the royalists had campaigned for the elections of 
November 1920 on a false prospectus of withdrawal
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. But this, despite vague 
promises of demobilisation made during the campaign, seems to be untrue. Neither 
before nor after the elections did the royalists dare deviate from Venizelos on the 
claims to Smyrna and Thrace
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. While inconsistently blaming him for bequeathing 
the strategic impasse which the former claim, at least, implied, they could not appear 
less nationally minded nor ready to renounce apparent successes in pursuit of 
national aspiration, They had now to listen to exactly the same strictures about the 
impossibility of an Asia Minor adventure from their own political ally Metaxas as he 
had expounded to Venizelos six years before. Yet, they were unwilling to follow his 
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Gawrych, 140-142. Other authors give slightly different numbers for the troops involved. 
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Mango, 311 
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Llewellyn Smith 152-153 
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Llewellyn Smith, 144-145, 153; Ploumidis, 241-243 

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