Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Right-wing gangs now roamed the towns and countryside with impunity, and by the
summer of 1946 eighty thousand leftists who had been associated with ELAS had
taken to the mountains.
By 1947 guerrilla activity had again reached the scale of a
full civil war
,
with ELAS
reorganized into the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE). In the interim, King George
had died and been succeeded by his brother Paul, while the Americans had taken over
the British role and began implementing the Cold War
Truman Doctrine
, in which
massive economic and military aid was given to an amenable Greek government. In the
mountains American military advisors trained the initially woeful Greek army for
campaigns against the DSE, while the cities saw mass arrests, courts martial and
imprisonments. From their stronghold on the slopes of Mount Grámmos on the
border of Greece and Albania, the partisans waged a losing guerrilla struggle. At the
start of 1948 Stalin withdrew Soviet support, and in the autumn of 1949, after Tito
closed the Yugoslav border, denying the partisans the last means of outside supplies, the
remnants of the DSE retreated into Albania and the KKE admitted defeat by
proclaiming a supposedly temporary suspension of the civil war.
Reconstruction and dictatorship: 1950-74
After a decade of war that had shattered much of Greece's infrastructure (it is said that
not one bridge was left standing by 1948), and had killed twelve percent of the 1940
population, it was a demoralized, shattered country that emerged into the Western
political orbit of the 1950s. Greece was
American-dominated
, enlisted into the
Korean
War
in 1950 and
NATO
not long after. The US embassy - still giving the orders
- foisted an electoral system on the Greeks that ensured victory for the Right for the
next twelve years. Overt leftist activity was banned (though a “cover” party for
communists was soon founded), and many of those who were not herded into political
“re-education” camps or dispatched by firing squads, legal or vigilante, went into exile
throughout Eastern Europe, to return only after 1974. The 1950s also saw the
wholesale
depopulation of remote villages
as migrants sought work in Australia,
America and Western Europe, or the larger Greek cities.
Constantine Karamanlís and Cyprus
The American-backed right-wing
Greek Rally
party, led by
General Papágos
, won the
first decisive post-civil-war elections in 1952. After the general's death, the party's
leadership was taken over - and to an extent liberalized - by
Constantine Karamanlís
.
Under his rule, stability of a kind was established and some economic advances
registered, particularly after the revival of Greece's traditional German markets.
The main ongoing crisis in foreign policy was
Cyprus
, where Greek Cypriots
demanding
énosis
(union) with Greece waged a long terrorist campaign against the
British. Turkey adamantly opposed
énosis
and said that if Britain left Cyprus it should
revert to Turkish rule. A 1959 compromise granted independence to the island and
protection for its Turkish Cypriot minority but ruled out any union with Greece.
By 1961, unemployment, the Cyprus issue and the presence of US nuclear bases on
Greek soil were changing the political climate, and when Karamanlís was again elected
there was strong suspicion of intimidation and fraud carried out by right-wing
1964
1964
1967
1973
King
Constantine II
succeeds his
father, Paul.
The film of
Zorba the Greek
released, its soundtrack going
on to grace (or blight) every
Greek restaurant ever since.
Colonels' coup marks the start
of seven years of repressive
military rule.
Monarchy
abolished and a
republic declared.
