We Can Be Immortals

Otto's reign would prove troubled, but he managed to hang on for 30 years before he and his wife, Queen Amalia, left the same way they came, aboard a British warship. During the early years of his reign, a group of Bavarian Regents ruled in his name, and they made themselves very unpopular by trying to impose German ideas of rigid hierarchical government on the Greeks, while keeping most significant state offices away from them. Nevertheless, they laid the foundations of a Greek administration, army, justice system and education system. Otto was sincere in his desire to give Greece good government, but he suffered from two great handicaps: his Roman Catholic faith and his childless marriage to Queen Amalia. This meant he could neither be crowned as King of Greece under the Orthodox rite nor establish a dynasty.

The Bavarian Regents ruled until 1837, when they were recalled at the insistence of Britain and France. Otto thereafter appointed Greek ministers, although Bavarian officials still ran most of the administration and the army. At this time, Greece still had no legislature and no constitution. Discontent grew until the 3 September 1843 Revolution broke out in Athens. Otto agreed to grant a constitution and convened a National Assembly that met in November of the same year. The Greek Constitution of 1844 then created a bicameral parliament consisting of an Assembly (Vouli) and a Senate (Gerousia). Power then passed into the hands of a group of Greek politicians, most of whom who had been commanders in the War of Independence against the Ottomans.

Greek politics in the 19th century was dominated by the "national question." The majority of Greeks continued to live under Ottoman rule, and Greeks dreamed of liberating them all and reconstituting a state embracing all the Greek lands, with Constantinople as its capital. This was called the Great Idea (Megali Idea), and it was sustained by almost continuous rebellions against Ottoman rule in Greek-speaking territories, particularly Crete, Thessaly and Macedonia.

When the Crimean War broke out in 1854, Greece saw an opportunity to gain Ottoman-controlled territory that had large Greek populations. Greece, an Orthodox nation, had considerable support in Russia, but the Russian government decided it was too dangerous to help Greece expand its holdings. When the Russians attacked the Ottoman forces, Greece invaded Thessaly and Epirus. To block further Greek moves, the British and French occupied the main Greek port at Piraeus from April 1854 to February 1857. The Greeks, gambling on a Russian victory, incited the large-scale Epirus Revolt of 1854 as well as uprisings in Crete. The revolts failed and Greece made no gains during the Crimean War, which Russia lost.

A new generation of Greek politicians was growing increasingly intolerant of King Otto's continuing interference in government. In 1862, the King dismissed his Prime Minister, the former admiral Constantine Kanaris, the most prominent politician of the period. This provoked a military rebellion, forcing Otto to accept the inevitable and leave the country.

The Greeks then asked Britain to send Queen Victoria's son Prince Alfred as their new king, but this was vetoed by the other Powers. Instead, a young Danish Prince became King George I. George was a very popular choice as a constitutional monarch, and he agreed that his sons would be raised in the Greek Orthodox faith. As a reward to the Greeks for adopting a pro-British King, Britain ceded the Ionian Islands to Greece.

When World War I broke out in 1914, the King and his Prime Minister Venizelos both preferred to maintain a neutral stance, in spite of Greece's treaty of alliance with Serbia, which had been attacked by Austria-Hungary as the first belligerent action of the conflict. But when the Allies asked for Greek help in the Dardanelles campaign of 1915, offering Cyprus in exchange, their diverging views became apparent: Constantine had been educated in Germany, was married to Sophia of Prussia, sister of Kaiser Wilhelm, and was convinced of the Central Powers' victory. Venizelos, on the other hand, was an ardent anglophile, and believed in an Allied victory.

Since Greece, a maritime country, could not oppose the mighty British navy, and citing the need for a respite after two wars, King Constantine favored continued neutrality, while Venizelos actively sought Greek entry in the war on the Allied side. Venizelos resigned, but won the Greek elections of 1915 and again formed the government. When Bulgaria entered the war as a German ally in October 1915, Venizelos invited Allied forces into Greece (the Salonika Front), for which he was again dismissed by Constantine.

In August 1916, after several incidents in which both sides in the war had encroached upon the still theoretically neutral Greek territory, Venizelist officers rose up in Allied-controlled Thessaloniki and Venizelos established a separate government there known as the result of a so-called Movement of National Defence. Constantine was now ruling only in what was Greece before the Balkan Wars ("Old Greece"), and his government was subject to repeated humiliations from the Allies. In November 1916 the French occupied Piraeus, bombarded Athens and forced the Greek fleet to surrender. The royalist troops fired at them, leading to a battle between French and Greek royalist troops. There were also riots against supporters of Venizelos in Athens (the Noemvriana).

Following the February Revolution in Russia in 1917, the Tsar's support for his cousin Constantine was eliminated, and he was forced to leave the country, without actually abdicating, in June 1917. His second son Alexander became King, while the remaining royal family and the most prominent royalists followed him into exile. Venizelos now led a superficially united Greece into the war on the Allied side, but underneath the surface, the division of Greek society into Venizelists and anti-Venizelists, the so-called National Schism, became more entrenched.

Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922)

With the end of the war in November 1918, the moribund Ottoman Empire was ready to be carved up among the victors, and Greece now expected the Allies to deliver on their promises. In no small measure through the diplomatic efforts of Venizelos, Greece secured Western Thrace in the Treaty of Neuilly in November 1919 and Eastern Thrace and a zone around Smyrna in western Anatolia (already under Greek administration as the Occupation of İzmir since May 1919) in the Treaty of Sèvres of August 1920. The future of Constantinople was left to be determined. But at the same time, a Turkish National Movement rose in Turkey led by Mustafa Kemal (later Kemal Atatürk), who set up a rival government in Ankara and was engaged in fighting the Greek army.


At this point, the fulfillment of the Megali Idea seemed near. Yet so deep was the rift in Greek society that on his return to Greece, an assassination attempt was made on Venizelos by two royalist former officers. Even more surprisingly, Venizelos' Liberal Party lost the Greek elections of November 1920, and in the Greek plebescite of 1920, the Greek people voted for the return of King Constantine from exile after the sudden death of King Alexander.

The United Opposition, which had campaigned on the slogan of an end to the Asia Minor Campaign in Anatolia, instead intensified it. But the royalist restoration had dire consequences: many veteran Venizelist officers were dismissed or left the army, while Italy and France found the return of the hated Constantine a useful pretext for switching their support to Kemal. Finally, in August 1922, the Turkish army shattered the Greek front, and took Smyrna in an operation that led to the disastrous Great Fire of Smyrna.

The Greek army evacuated not only Anatolia, but also Eastern Thrace and the islands of Imbros and Tenedos in accordance with the terms of the (Treaty of Lausanne). A population exchange between Greece and Turkey was agreed between the two countries, with over 1.5 million Christians and almost half a million Muslims being uprooted. This catastrophe marked the end of the Megali Idea, and left Greece financially exhausted, demoralized, and having to house and feed a proportionately huge number of Greek refugees.

Despite this declared neutrality, Greece became a target for Mussolini's expansionist policies. Provocations against Greece included the sinking of the Greek cruiser Elli on 15 August 1940. Italian troops crossed the border on 28 October 1940, beginning the Greco-Italian War, but were stopped by a determined Greek defence that ultimately drove them back into Albania.

Metaxas died suddenly in January 1941. His death raised hopes for a liberalization of his regime and the restoration of parliamentary rule, but King George quashed these hopes when he retained the regime's machinery in place. In the meantime, Adolf Hitler was reluctantly forced to divert German troops to rescue Mussolini from defeat, and attacked Greece through Yugoslavia and Bulgaria on 6 April 1941. Despite British assistance, the Germans overran most of the country by the end of May. The King and the government escaped to Crete, where they stayed until the end of the Battle of Crete. They then transferred to Egypt, where a Greek government in exile was established.

The occupied country of Greece was divided in three zones (German, Italian and Bulgarian) and in Athens, a puppet regime was established. The members were either conservatives or nationalists with fascist leanings. The three quisling prime ministers were Georgios Tsolakoglou, the general who had signed the armistice with the Wehrmacht, Konstantinos Logothetopoulos, and Ioannis Rallis, who took office when the German defeat was inevitable and aimed primarily at combating the left-wing Resistance movement. To this end, he created the collaborationist Security Battalions.

Greece suffered terrible privations during World War II as the Germans appropriated most of the country's agricultural production and prevented its fishing fleets from operating. As a result, and because a British blockade initially hindered foreign relief efforts, the Great Greek Famine resulted. Hundreds of thousands of Greeks perished, especially in the winter of 1941–1942. In the mountains of the Greek mainland, in the meantime, several Greek resistance movements sprang up, and by mid-1943, the Axis forces controlled only the main towns and the connecting roads, while a "Free Greece" was set up in the mountains.

The largest resistance group, the National Liberation Front (EAM), was controlled by the Communist Party of Greece, as was the Greek People's Liberation Army (Elas), led by Aris Velouchiotis, and a civil war soon broke out between it and non-Communist groups such as the National Republican Greek League (EDES) in those areas liberated from the Germans. The exiled government in Cairo was only intermittently in touch with the resistance movement and exercised virtually no influence in the occupied country. Part of this was due to the unpopularity of King George II in Greece itself, but despite efforts by Greek politicians, British support ensured his retention at the head of the Cairo government.

As the German defeat drew nearer, the various Greek political factions convened in Lebanon in May 1944 under British auspices and formed a government of national unity under George Papandreou, in which EAM was represented by six ministers.