Greek history since World War I

From the National Schism to dictatorship

The dynamism and sense of national unity that had characterized the early Venizélos years gave way to rancour and vengefulness that were to poison the country’s political life throughout World War I and the interwar period. Greece was torn apart by the “National Schism,” a division of the country into irreconcilable camps supporting either King Constantine I or his prime minister, Venizélos. The immediate grounds for tension were differences between the king and the prime minister as to Greece’s alignment during World War I, although there were deeper causes underlying the split. The king advocated neutrality, while Venizélos was an enthusiastic supporter of the Triple Entente—Britain, France, and Russia—which he regarded as the alliance most likely to favour the implementation of Greece’s remaining irredentist ambitions. The entente had, in an effort to lure Greece into the war, held out the luring prospect of territorial gain for Greece at the expense of Turkey, which had aligned itself with the Central Powers. Increasingly bitter disagreements between king and prime minister resulted in the latter twice resigning in 1915, despite a convincing electoral victory.

The breach between the two became irrevocable when Venizélos in October 1916 established a rival government in Thessaloníki, which, like most of “New Greece,” was passionately loyal to Venizélos. In June 1917 the entente allies ousted King Constantine and installed Venizélos as prime minister of a formally united but bitterly divided Greece. Venizélos duly brought Greece, which was up to that time neutral, into the war on the side of the entente. Naturally, he expected to reap the rewards for his loyalty at the Paris Peace Conference. In May of 1919 Greece was permitted to land troops in İzmir (Smyrna), the major port city in Asia Minor, with a large Greek population. Greece also was a major beneficiary of the Treaty of Sèvres of August 1920, the peace treaty with the defeated Ottoman Empire. However, for the Turkish nationalists, incited by the leadership of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), the treaty was from the outset a dead letter and the Greek landings a challenge they were prepared to meet.

In November 1920 Venizélos was somewhat surprisingly defeated in elections, and the exiled King Constantine I was restored to his throne after a fraudulent plebiscite—to the obvious displeasure of Britain and France. Meanwhile, the military situation in Asia Minor steadily deteriorated; a Turkish nationalist offensive in August–September 1922 resulted in a dramatic rout of the Greek armies in Asia Minor. Much of İzmir was burned, and many Greeks and Armenians were killed. Tens of thousands of destitute Greek refugees fled to the kingdom of Greece, thus ending a 2,500-year Greek presence in Asia Minor and with it the elusive vision of the Great Idea.

A military junta seized power in 1922 as King Constantine abdicated, and five royalist politicians and the commander of the Asia Minor forces were tried and executed on a charge of high treason, although there was no evidence of deliberate treachery. The “Trial of the Six” was to poison the climate of interwar politics, exacerbating the already bitter feud between the supporters of Venizélos and of the monarchy.

At a peace conference in Lausanne, Greece and the newly established Turkish Republic agreed on an exchange of populations between the two countries. Religion was the criterion for the project, which resulted in the exchange of thousands of Turkish-speaking Orthodox Christians for Greek-speaking Muslims. The ecumenical patriarchate was allowed to remain in Constantinople, as were the Greek inhabitants of that city and of two islands, Imbros (now Gökçe) and Tenedos (Turkish: Bozcaada), which straddled the entrance to the strategically sensitive Dardanelles. In return, the Muslims of Greek Thrace were allowed to remain. An influx of some 1.3 million refugees—including significant numbers from Russia and Bulgaria—strongly tested the social fabric of a country exhausted by some 10 years of intermittent war. Leaving aside the prejudice that they encountered on the part of the indigenous population, the process of their integration into Greek society was remarkably successful. The economy, benefiting from the entrepreneurial skills of the refugees, underwent a significant degree of industrialization during the interwar period. The remaining large estates were broken up to provide smallholdings for the newcomers, and rural Greece became a society of peasant smallholders, which made for social stability rather than for economic efficiency. The majority of the refugees were settled in the territories of “New Greece,” thereby consolidating the area’s “Greekness.” Although refugees were disproportionately represented in the leadership of the newly founded Communist Party of Greece (KKE), they largely remained intensely loyal to Venizélos. Their vote was clearly instrumental in the formal establishment of a republic in 1923, shortly after the departure of King George II, who had briefly succeeded to the throne following his father’s abdication in 1922. The refugees and the army acted as the arbiters of political life during the interwar period.

In 1928 Venizélos made a political comeback, two years after the downfall of the short-lived military dictatorship headed by Gen. Theodoros Pangalos in 1925–26. Although Venizélos initiated a good-neighbour policy with Italy and Greece’s Balkan neighbours and brought about a remarkable rapprochement with Turkey, his government felt the repercussions of the Wall Street stock market crash of 1929. Because Greece was dependent on the export of agricultural products such as olive oil, tobacco, and currants and on migrant remittances, it was severely affected by the decline in world trade.

After four years of relative stability, politics reverted to the chaos of the early 1920s. When the anti-Venizélists won the 1933 elections, Col. Nikólaos Plastíras, a staunch supporter of Venizélos and the mastermind behind the 1922 coup, sought to restore Venizélos to power by force. His coup was unsuccessful and was subsequently followed by an assassination attempt on Venizélos. The political arena was once again split between supporters of Venizélos and of the monarchy. Fear of a royalist restoration lay behind another attempted coup by Venizélist officers in March 1935. His proven involvement on this occasion forced Venizélos into exile in France, where he died shortly afterward, but not before he urged his supporters to reconcile with the king.

The royalists were the main beneficiaries of the abortive 1935 coup, in the aftermath of which King George II had been restored to his throne, following another dubious plebiscite. Like Venizélos in exile, the king on his return to Greece was in a conciliatory mood. However, elections held under a system of proportional representation in January 1936 produced a deadlock between the two main parliamentary blocs, the Venizélists and the royalists. Both blocs engaged in secret negotiations with the communists, who up to that time had been an insignificant force, but now, with 15 seats in the 300-seat parliament, held the balance of power.