The Valiant Colonel: Fascism and National Sentiment in Postwar Greece
If there is a research field whose study by definition needs to take sentiments into account, this is fascism –a modern political phenomenon that shows clearly the relevance of emotions for history. Antonio Gramsci, one of the first to study fascism, at its birth denounced it as “an unchaining of elemental forces which cannot be restrained under the bourgeois system of economic and political government. Fascism […] has with its promise of impunity enabled a formless multitude to cover over the savage outpouring of passions, hatreds and desires with a varnish of vague and nebulous political ideals”. Indeed, historiography first called for the systematic study of sentiments with the celebrated plea of Lucien Febvre, in 1941, under the direct menace of fascism. Continuing in the same vein, a significant part of modern scholarship views fascism not as an ideology (which remains however a very usual approach in the anglophone ‘Fascist Studies’), but as a form of political behaviour whose guiding ideas are not always explicitly stated, or even clear to the actors themselves: they are “mobilizing passions”, visceral feelings rather than rational propositions. A recent work gives us an extensive catalogue of these mobilizing passions of fascism:
a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions; the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it; the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external; dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences; the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary; the need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s historical destiny; the superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason; the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success; the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restrain from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle.
In this approach, fascism is not identified solely with its most radicalised – and most widely remembered today – version, namely, this of Hitler, that plunged Europe into the Second World War and perpetrated the Holocaust. It is rather understood as something wider,
a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
In interwar Greece efforts were made, both from above and from below, to build fascist parties, but they won limited support. However, during the Occupation many fascist groups sprung up, and after the Liberation fascism, in the sense outlined above, proved an atractive option for many. First, for parts of the traditional elites that continued to rule, as noted by a conservative historian, “without popular support, and even without the ability or the perspicacity that might allow them to face the plight of the country”. Also, for a bourgeoisie compromised by its collaboration with the Axis and for segments of the middle and even the lower strata that had profited from the upheavals of the Occupation. All these people, frightened by the political radicalism that was unleashed by the catastrophic social polarisation of the Occupation years, deplored any possible advance of democracy as threatening their own position. A part preferred the conservative option: demobilisation of the population, betting on a strong monarchy, restricted parliamentarism, if at all, and defeat of the resurgent left through a regular army trained and equipped by the British. Another part opted for mass mobilisation in irregular attack groups, like the italian fasci di combattimento, armed bands drafted locally and coordinated through party and parastatal mechanisms. Their political project included the terrorisation or even extermination of the Left, and an openly antidemocratic regime. The colonel on whom we focus here, Georgios Grivas, the leader of the fascist party “X” -that was its name- and a household name in Greece since then, was an exponent of this second policy.
Ιn fact, both conservatives and fascists drew on a quite extensive body of common symbolic references, also infused with strong political emotions, that crystallized at about the same time in the so called “ethnicophrosyne” or “national-mindedness”. Ethnicophrosyne clearly excluded the left, and even the allegiance of the liberals to it was permanently doubted, notwithstanding their protestations. On the other hand, it equally clearly included the fascist Right. To be precise, it was congenial to the fascist Right, since it was obsessively preoccupied with community decline, humiliation, and victimhood and nurtured compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity. In fact, ethnicophrosyne had made its own all the mobilizing passions of fascism mentioned above. These very passions informed the public pronouncements of practically every speaker of the Right, from the grandiloquent public intellectuals to the venial hacks and illiterate politicians, as the browsing of any newspaper or journal of that period can testify. These passions formed its hard core, and were further developed into colourful mixtures of authoritarianism, racism and nationalism, combined with strong doses of a masculinist cultural conservatism and a spurious religiosity. In this context the so called “national interests” were invoked to trump democratic rights, and political legitimation was sought in grandiose designs for the territorial expansion of the Greek state and the acquisition of colonies if not in Asia, then at least in north Africa.
Ethnicophrosyne was seen as not just a political position but a “phronema”, a heartfelt and active militant nationalism, stemming from a mystical connection with the national substance of hellenism, another strongly sentimentalized notion. Thanks to ethnikophrosyne the Greek Right crystallized into an emotional community that started to dissolve only after its Cyprus folly of 1974. It shut out the leftists, as I have said, but accepted fascists as bona fide constituent parts of the national camp, as the Grivas case clearly showed. If the conservatives tempered their practical politics in order to secure foreign aid, nevertheless logically the mobilizing passions of ethnikophrosyne led to fascism, and actually gave strong rallying points to the Greek fascists. Grivas, in particular, fashioned them eloquently in the language of insticts, exploiting suggestive metaphors drawn from the daily life of peasants and sailors, as well as from the “national” literary resources available to the graduates of the higher schools. We cannot review these sentiment-laden images now, we’ll just allude to one or two of them in a while. Thanks to them, and to actions consonant with them, Grivas was incorporated in the national pantheon after the 1950s and stays enthroned in it till our days.
In fact Grivas, skillfully leading the tenets of ethnicophrosyne to their logical conclusions, would later create unforeseen complications for the dominant conservatives, who tried to use the fascists for the dirty job of breaking the Left in 1945-1946 and then discard them. Having become co-proprietors of ethnikophrosyne, imagining themselves as its real guardians, and being recognised as such by many, the latter would not easily go away. After 1947, when the fascist assault troops could be put aside in favour of the newly organised regular army, they were kept as minor partners of the regime, and this not only because they formed a fall-back option, in case the foreign aid became at some point unavailable, but also because they could and did pose as the authentic champions of ethnikophrosyne, as those who would not only talk its talk but also walk its walk. Exactly for this reason there is great reluctance today, in official circles and among the nationalist historians, to see them as fascists.
Both tendencies, the conservatives and the fascists, needed each other to roll back EAM, the Left-dominated National Liberation Front, but they were divided on how exactly to do that. The years after the Liberation, from 1944 to 1947, may be seen as corresponding to what has been called by Robert Paxton the “third stage” in the development of fascism: traditional parties unable to manage a severe crisis of the system, opening of political space to fascism, and cooperation of established elites with the fascist project. Elements that undermined the fascists’ bid for power were, first, the limited political skill of their leaders, who proved unable to unite or secure the necessary alliances, and, second, the British deus ex machina, who promised all kinds of help for the restoration of the monarchy and the social status quo. Relying on the British, however, had its own disadvantages: frustration of the irredentist claims on Cyprus, which was then a British colony, restrictions on the conduct of the war against the Left reflecting the global policy needs of London, and, ultimately, various kinds of insecurity entailed by dependence. These pressures facilitated the rise of strong political passions, to borrow a metaphor from the so-called hydraulic model of emotions: resentment born out of the traumas hurting the national pride and the realisation that Greece could no more be imagined as the hub of an empire but had inexorably become, in the postwar scheme of things, a third rate power; anger against the sporadic limitation, by the foreign patrons, of anticommunist excesses; fearful contemplation of the limits of the anglosaxon benevolence and of the further designs of the perfidious Albion. Grivas and the other fascists cultivated exactly these sentiments, but we also find them present in very many, if not all, of the Right-wing politicians and writers of that period.
Grivas’ version of ethnicophrosyne led to material political results. Τhe Komma ton Chiton, or “Party X”, created by him during the Occupation and active in the mid and late 1940s, was clearly covered by the definition of fascism mentioned above, not only as regards its mobilizing passions but also in view of its organisation and practice. The name “X” reflected its founder’s ideological aporias and tried to invest with an air of mystery its political whereabouts, but its emblem, consisting by the same letter capped by a royal crown, conveyed its monarchist leanings. The problem was that the extremely unpopular King George had sided with London in the war, whereas Grivas, a Cypriot irredentist deploring the British domination of his island, had stayed in occupied Greece and offered his services to the German Staff. In time, his anticommunism and social conservatism overcame even his hate of the Albion. In late 1943, when it became obvious that the Axis could not keep Greece, he used British help to unite right-wing groups against the leftist National Liberation Front (EAM), that seemed poised to impose a republican regime. Soon “X” incorporated lots of ex-Security Battallion members and other collaborators of the Nazis, and spearheaded the struggle against EAM. By the beginning of 1945, it had become an umbrella organisation of the extreme right. In March 1946 it numbered around 50.000 members, half of them armed: thirteen thousand in Peloponnese, 20.000 in central Greece, 10.000 in Macedonia and Thrace, and the rest elsewhere. While they included many marginal elements and assorted bandits, a significant part of them belonged to the official armed forces, the militia, the gendarmerie and the police, who were at that time reorganizing under British supervision.
If we focus on their political behaviour and mobilizing passions rather than their opaque literary references, the fascist identity of the Chites becomes clear. As to the way of defeating the Left, their recipe was straightforward, and expressed succinctly by Grivas: “Things are not difficult, they are simple. The more you ponder them, the more you get lost in the sea […] Smash anarchist communism everywhere […] TOTAL WAR. Don’t take temporary measures. Have vision, and hit hard. So that they will not rise again their head, not only tomorrow or after one, five, ten years, but never in our generation and even in the generation of our children’s children”. These were not idle threats, but were put into action with gusto. Naturally “X” was accused by the Left and liberals as fascist, and a knowledgeable British observer – a conservative, Chris Woodhouse- noted at the time that it resembed in its mode of action the Ku Klux Klan, arguably the first fascist organisation in the world. Like many other fascists, for public relations reasons the Chites did not describe themselves publicly as such -this would be too crass in 1946- but Grivas’ fuhrer like poses, with Hitler moustache and all, were probably the next best thing.
Eventually “X” proved instrumental in the White Terror through which the state and a constellation of fascist groups decimated the Left. It built solid links to conservatives and especially to the Popular Party, through which also it was funded. However Grivas, in one of his trademark miscalculations, refused the Populars’ offer of twenty parliamentary seats at the March 1946 elections, and led the National Party of the Chites to electoral disaster. Left without political backers and lenders, the Chites who were not coopted into the governing coalition took up the role of an extreme Right opposition to the mainly conservative governments that conducted the Civil War against the Left from 1946 to 1949. Their party was kept alive till the next elections of 1950, in which it was battered again, and a little later it was dissolved. Embarking on a new project, its leader would soon be sent by the more sober Right, in a fashion reminiscent of Franco’s dispatch of the Spanish fascists to the Eastern Front during the Second World War, to challenge the British domination of Cyprus. Neither he nor his backers could imagine the resulting catastrophes, but they should. In securing backing for his cypriot adventure Grivas exploited
The end of the Civil War marked the preponderance of conservatives over fascists in Greece. The fascists lose their bid for power. In the late 1940s bourgeois Greece, with some arm-twisting from Britain and the USA, chose regular warfare and conservative stabilisation instead of the mass mobilisation, the politicide of the Left and the fascist regime that Grivas proposed. This was a tactical choice of means, not entailing any break with the spirit of extreme ethnicophrosyne or any clear repudiation of the fascist option. Even so, the Civil War was fought in a relatively restricted fashion, dictated by the Cold War necessity to limit the scope of the international propaganda of the Left. This was deplored by the Greek fascists, but also many conservatives, as an irresponsible form of self-restraint and a demonstration of servility towards the ‘foreigner’. In fact, Grivas articulated better than the conservative Right of that period certain political feelings that became the mainstay of official national discourse till our days. We’ll just overview a few of them, in the short time that we have left. First of all, while the conservatives boasted of their international connections, the editorials of Grivas’ weekly Ephemeris ton Chiton expressed superbly the feelings of victimisation and of the extraordinary crisis that engulfed the country during and after the Occupation. As he put it,
Greece today is a victorious country, but also a hostage to the victors. The tiny Greek boat, after having followed the victors in all high seas during the tempest of the last war, seeks now a safe haven. But the victors won’t allow this and, brandishing Poseidon’s trident, they create new storms every time that our boat tries to find anchorage, and then angry waves throw us again into the open sea. In vain our captain shouts to them: ‘I’m in danger! What bad have I done to you? Hasn’t my ship fought by your side, hasn’t it faced all dangers together with your ships?’ The victors have no ears for such protests. And the Slavic loudspeaker answers: ‘Give us your ship, or we sink it to the bottom of the sea’. And the Anglosaxons radio from afar: ‘We cannot help you. Have courage! Don’t make them angry, perhaps we’ll prevail’.
In this vision racialized national communities are likened to ships, small or great, strong or weak, guided by piratical, cowardly or victimised captains, but always having their own separate fortunes. The captain of the Greek ship –i.e. King George- tries to save it from the callous and rapacious big bullies, the “Slavs” and the “Anglosaxons”. These both pursue the same world domination schemes that they hypocritically ascribed to the fascists. The proper Greek answer to them should be a neptunian version of Gotterdamerung. “Shout then to these foreigners”, Grivas orders the government,
“Halt! Enough!” Let’s answer valiantly the beatings of their trident! Let’s grasp ourselves the helm and try, braving the storm, to lead our ship to a safe place. But if you don’t manage to do this, then don’t give our ship to their foreign hands nor let it sink without glory. Open the floodgates and let the sea in, and so, under the sounds of our National Hymn, drive the ship gloriously to the bottom. […] Wake up the nation, turn it into a fighting army, and yell to the foreigners: “Let us alone, for we have decided to die together with you!”
The political sentiments expressed here are contingent on certain basic terms and images –leaders, races, boats, struggles with natural forces– bearing consonances very different from those of the left-wing mental landscape, defined mainly by terms of class and also referring to democracy, internationalism and womens’ rights. Grivas used many interesting metaphors in the same vein, trying to suggest the victimisation of fatherland: “Greece has already suffered a holocaust [ΟλοκαÏτωμα] for the Allied cause; if now the Great Powers want also to sacrifice its life on the altar of humanity and make it altogether disappear from the map of Europe, then they will hear out third ‘OCHI!’ Enough!”. The government in general was berated for its total lack of “virile, Greek behaviour towards our big ‘friends’”.
Let us just close with the point that Grivas’ isolation in the late 1940s was due not to the political passions that he articulated through his rousing imagery, and which were generally shared by the Right, but to specific political choices that stemmed from his reluctance to come to terms with the new international context of the Civil War –i.e. the Cold War- and also with the dominant British influence. The political sentiments that he articulated exploited the huge fear of any possible advances of democracy that was felt by a ruling elite thriving on authoritarian government. Grivas based his appeal on the extreme nationalism that remained the official ideology of conservative Greece throughout the period, and which was thought to be compromised by the governing faction of the Right in its search for international backers. Breaking with the more realistic conservative politicians, he could not reconcile the direct control of the Greek government by the British between 1944 and 1947 with his volontaristic recipes for national regeneration. His assault troops and fascist political program became superfluous when the conservatives, with British and later American support, managed to organise efficiently the war against the Left. The mobilizing passions that he invoked so eloquently were used to build not irregular bands of Chites but an efficient regular army that integrated readily into NATO and became the paragon of the anticommunist regime till 1974. We should note, though, that till our days they have not been officially discouraged or repudiated, and even if they have subsided, periodically they return to the fore.
Antonio Gramsci, “Elemental Forces”, Ordine Nuovo, 26 April 1921, as reprinted in Quintin Hoare (ed.), Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, translated by Quintin Hoare, Lawrence and Wishart, London 1978, p. , also available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/1921/04/elemental_forces.htm
Cf. Barbara H. Rosenwein, «Worrying about Emotions in History», The American Historical Review 107.3. Of course, certain intellectuals of the Left had much earlier given preponderance to the importance of sentiments in the analysis of fascism: see especially Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Penguin, Harmondsworth 1975 [1933], and Theodor Adorno, The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2000 [1943].
Whatever this contested term might mean. For an accessible overview of the relevant discussions see the introductory chapter to Andrew Heywood, Political Ideologies. An Introduction, Macmillan, London 2 1998.
An approach that, beyond trivializing fascism, led to several impasses. Thus, insistence on ideological purity leads Roger Eatwell A general overview of the development of ‘fascist studies’ see in R. J. B. Bosworth, The Italian Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism, Arnold 1998.
Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 2005, p. 219-220.
Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 2005, p. 218.
On this period see ΣπÏρος ΜαρκÎτος, ΠÏŽς φίλησα τον Μουσσολίνι. Τα πρÏŽτα βήματα του ελληνικοÏ φασισμοÏ, ΒιβλιÏŒραμα, Αθήνα 2006.
Γιάννης Ο. Ιατρίδης, «Εισαγωγή» στο Γιάννης Ο. Ιατρίδης (επιμ.), Η Ελλάδα στη δεκαετία 1940-1950. Ένα Îθνος σε κρίση, μετάφραση Μαργαρίτα Δρίτσα – Αμαλία ΛυκιαρδοποÏλου, ΘεμÎλιο, Αθήνα 1984, σ. 15.
This articulation of sentiments in terms of insticts was usually the case in the WWI european soldiers, while the use of terms borrowed from psychoanalysis had become more prevalent in WWII. Cf. Joanna Bourke, «Fear and Anxiety: Writing about Emotion in Modern History», History Workshop Journal 55 (2003), σ. 121.
Only a few weeks ago the Archbishop of Athens visited officially his grave, in Cyprus, to leave a wreath. The inclusion of fascists in the national pantheon should not surprise us. In fact, mainstream narratives of Greek history tend to negate such people’s fascist identity, and to underestimate the impact of homegrown fascist movements that, of course, used the vocabulary and exploited the political sentiments of the dominant nationalism. The dominant national history typically accentuates the so called “resisting virtue of hellenism” and airbrushes facts that discredit this view. Especially, irredentist struggles are hailed as “national” and therefore seen as free of social content: their criticism is seen as beyond legitimate politics. See, for example, ΚολιÏŒπουλος – ΒερÎμης, · Ιστορία του ελληνικοÏ Îθνους, τ. *, Εκδοτική ΑθηνÏŽν, Αθήνα *· See also ΔÎσποινα Παπαδημητρίου, ΑπÏŒ τον λαÏŒ των νομιμοφρÏŒνων στο Îθνος των εθνικοφρÏŒνων. Η συντηρητική σκÎψη στην Ελλάδα 1922-1967, Σαββάλας, Αθήνα 2006. Εspecially on the extreme right in occupied Greece see also ΔÎσποινα Παπαδημητρίου, “Το ακροδεξιÏŒ κίνημα στην Ελλάδα, 1936-1949 – ΚαταβολÎς, συνÎχειες και ασυνÎχειες”, in Χάγκεν Φλάισερ (επιμ.), Η Ελλάδα ’36-49. ΑπÏŒ τη Δικτατορία στον ΕμφÏλιο. ΤομÎς και συνÎχειες, ΚαστανιÏŽτης, Αθήνα 2003, p. 138-149. One might note here that the basic analytical category of the approach of this author, namely that of “national populism”, an ascriptive but not self-descriptive term, fails to account for the emotional content and reverberations of fascism, and also to locate this current in its historical context.
Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 2005, p. 75.
See e.g. Περικλής Ιακ. ΑργυρÏŒπουλος, Αι αξιÏŽσεις της Ελλάδος. Εσωτερικαί και εξωτερικαί κατευθÏνσεις, Ιωάννης ΣιδÎρης, Αθήναι 1945.
They refused, stressing that they did not need the collaboration of a bandit, who was, furthermore, entirely insignificant -an estimation that did not change throughout the Occupation. See Hagen Fleischer, “EπαφÎς μεταξÏ των γερμανικÏŽν αρχÏŽν κατοχής και των κυριÏŒτερων οργανÏŽσεων της ελληνικής αντίστασης. ΕλιγμÏŒς ή συνεργασία;”, in Τζων Ιατρίδης (επιμ.), Η Ελλάδα στη δεκαετία 1940-1950. Ένα Îθνος σε κρίση, Αθήνα 1984, p. 92.
In 1944, after the Liberation, Grivas’ life was saved by British forces in the Battle of Athens, but even this did not mollify his sentiments towards them (see Μακάριος ΔρουσιÏŽτης, ΕΟΚΑ. Η σκοτεινή ÏŒψη, Στάχυ, Αθήνα 1998, σ. 30-31). He was also supported by them in many other ways. Ten years later they would feel the blowback.
According to the contemporary calculations of the British Military Secret Service M13: see Μακάριος ΔρουσιÏŽτης, ΕΟΚΑ. Η σκοτεινή ÏŒψη, Στάχυ, Αθήνα 1998, σ. 34.
Γ. Γρίβας, «Το αμείλικτον κατηγορÏŽ», Εφημερίς των ΧιτÏŽν, issue of August 25th, 1947, in Γ. Γρίβας, Πολιτικαί προβλÎψεις, op.cit., p. 83. This was a constant theme of his exhortations.
Αccording to Chris M. Woodhouse, Apple of Discord, London 1948, p. 31.
According to EAM data, in the year between the Varkiza Agreement of 1945 and the 1946 elections the White Terror cost the left 1.289 dead, 6.681 wounded, 667 destroyed offices of the EAM and 18.767 acts of arson and destruction of property. The government data show that more than 80.000 ‘communists’ faced military tribunals at the same time. See David H. Close (ed.), Ο ΕλληνικÏŒς ΕμφÏλιος ΠÏŒλεμος, 1943-1950, Φιλίστωρ, Αθήνα 1996, p. 208-222. There is no doubt that these data reflect only partially the White Terror campaign; see, for example, the estimates of the conservative political scientist George Mavrogordatos at Γ.Θ. Μαυρογορδάτος, “Οι εκλογÎς και το δημοψήφισμα του 1946 προοίμιο του ΕμφÏλιου ΠολÎμου”, in Τζων Ιατρίδης (επιμ.), Η Ελλάδα στη δεκαετία 1940-1950. Ένα Îθνος σε κρίση, Αθήνα 1984, p. 331.
Θανάσης Δ. Σφήκας, Οι άγγλοι Εργατικοί και ο ΕμφÏλιος ΠÏŒλεμος στην Ελλάδα, Φιλίστωρ, Αθήνα 1997, p. 90. See also David H. Close, “The Changing Structure of the Right”, in John O. Iatrides, Linda Wrigley, Greece at the Crossroads. The Civil War and its Legacy, The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park 1995, p. 122-156.
“X” received 0,08% of the vote, while the block of the Right took 55% (the Left and the liberal Centre abstained): Θανάσης Δ. Σφήκας, Οι άγγλοι Εργατικοί και ο ΕμφÏλιος ΠÏŒλεμος στην Ελλάδα, Φιλίστωρ, Αθήνα 1997, p. 181.
ΓεÏŽργιος Γρίβας, «Scapa Flow», Εφημερίς των ΧιτÏŽν, issue of February 3rd, 1947, as reprinted in ΓεÏŽργιος Γρίβας, ΑρχηγÏŒς ΕθνικοÏ ΚÏŒμματος ΧιτÏŽν, Πολιτικαί προβλÎψεις, ΕθνικÏŒν ΚÏŒμμα ΧιτÏŽν, Αθήναι 1947, p. 99-100.
ΓεÏŽργιος Γρίβας, «Scapa Flow», Εφημερίς των ΧιτÏŽν, issue of February 3rd, 1947, as reprinted in ΓεÏŽργιος Γρίβας, ΑρχηγÏŒς ΕθνικοÏ ΚÏŒμματος ΧιτÏŽν, Πολιτικαί προβλÎψεις, ΕθνικÏŒν ΚÏŒμμα ΧιτÏŽν, Αθήναι 1947, p. 101.
Γ. Γρίβας, «Εν ÏŒσω είναι καιρÏŒς…», Εφημερίς των ΧιτÏŽν, issue of June 3rd, 1946, in Γ. Γρίβας, Πολιτικαί προβλÎψεις, op.cit., p. 9.
ΓεÏŽργιος Γρίβας, «ΚυβÎρνησις-Διμοιρία, Κράτος Δικαίου κλπ.», Εφημερίς των ΧιτÏŽν, issue of February 3rd, 1947, as reprinted in ΓεÏŽργιος Γρίβας, ΑρχηγÏŒς ΕθνικοÏ ΚÏŒμματος ΧιτÏŽν, Πολιτικαί προβλÎψεις, ΕθνικÏŒν ΚÏŒμμα ΧιτÏŽν, Αθήναι 1947, p. 104.
After the war London needed Greece for strategic reasons –the protection of its formal empire- while local elites needed British support in order to safeguard their privileged position. In the words of a conservative historian, “the dependence of Greece on its powerful Western allies, Britain and then the USA, was probably more intense between 1936 and 1949 than in any other period in the twentieth century”: Κωνσταντίνος ΣβολÏŒπουλος, «ΚαθοριστικÎς παράμετροι στη διαμÏŒρφωση της ελληνικής εξωτερικής πολιτικής, 1936-1949 – ΓενικÎς διαπιστÏŽσεις και υποθÎσεις”, in Χάγκεν Φλάισερ (επιμ.), Η Ελλάδα ’36-49. ΑπÏŒ τη Δικτατορία στον ΕμφÏλιο. ΤομÎς και συνÎχειες, ΚαστανιÏŽτης, Αθήνα 2003, p. 39.
The editorial of a ‘serious’ right-wing daily put things clearly: “Self-sufficiency! Independence! These are barracks-words. There is no question of independence. There is only one question: who the Boss will be. Our Boss is one, or rather two: the USA and England”: H Καθημερινή, φ. της 16ης Μαρτίου 1947. Plenty of similar statements can be found in the pubilc discourse of that time.
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