Greece in the interwar years. It was the time
of the Second Hellenic Republic. The time Greece had no king.
But... how did that take place? In this video you are gonna learn about interwar Greece.
How the king dissapeared and how the king returned, interwar Greece coming up!
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For Greece war violence didn't end in 1918
with the end of the First World War. What followed was the Greco-Turkish War which ended in 1922
and where the Greeks suffered a defeat, known as the 'Catatrophe'. They pulled
back from Anatolia and in the ensuing Treaty of Lausanne there was to be a population transfer.
Turks in Greece were deported to Anatolia and Greeks living there were deported to Greece.
“The political foundations of the state had been all but broken. The
economy was in ruins. Economically and socially, Greece was a poorer,
more backward country during the interwar period than it had been before the decade of upheavals.”
The resettlement of Greek refugees from Turkey imposed a major challenge for the Greek
government. The were aided by an international relief organization led by Henry Morgenthau.
It took them seven years to house the 1.3 to 1.4 million refugees. But it was done. The economy was
repaired. Young artists and intellectuals formed a new creative generation in literature and in arts.
In interwar Greece Greek cultural and intellectual life was infused with an abundance of youthful
energy. This couldn't be said for the ageing political class. Here is how things played out.
In 1922 after the defeat in Anatolia the military took charge in Greece. This government executed
six officials they held responsible for the defeat in Asia Minor. In October 1923 a counter-
revolutionary coup by officers loyal to King George II failed. It discredited the monarchy and
political instability remained. In March 1924 the monarchy was abolished by a vote of a Constituent
Assembly and thus: the Second Hellenic Republic was born.The first one existed one century
earlier when Greece fought itself free from the Ottomans. In 1925 General Theodoros Pangalos
abolished the Constituent Assembly and became President. He was soon ousted by a rival general.
In 1927 the political factions tried to set aside their differences but nothing
worked. Then the elderly retired Eleftherios Venizelos returned from Crete to unite the
Greek people. He had played a major role before and during the First World War. Now he was back
and during the 1928 elections together with smaller splinter groups, the Venizelists
had captured 223 seats out of 250. A writer described Venizelos's return to parliament:
“[He was] tall, straight, robust and slim, his cheeks glowing, in the pink of health,
smiling in all directions an enigmatic smile that combined fatherly tenderness,
womanly vanity and superior irony; autocratic and affable, easy-going, open-hearted, intimate and
fearsomely strong-willed, effortlessly master of himself and all around him, a hard man but one of
uncommon grace, exquisite cunning and flexibility: this was Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos,
son of Odysseus, full of sinew, passion, strength, spirit and above all artistry.”
Venizelos's new political period begun well: economic and social reforms were carried out.
Looking at foreign policy Venizelos accepted the geopolitical realities of the new Greece. He
created regional alliences with Albania and Yugoslavia. His biggest diplomatic achievement
was a pact with Turkey signed in October 1930, the so-called ‘Pact of Friendship, Neutrality, Conciliation and Judicial
Statement’. Many Greeks came to
terms with the fact that the lost territories of Anatolia were lost for good. Only Bulgaria didn't sign
this so-called Balkan Entente but relations were better than before. Venizelos also made
visits to Paris and London for economic deals. Speaking of economy, initially Greece didn't
suffer that bad as a consequence from the Great Depression. However when in 1931 Britain left the gold standard the Greek
currency: the drachma came under immense pressure. Combined with a series of bad
harvests the economic crisis in Greece worsened. This did damage Venizelos’s electoral chances.
The economic crisis brought back the old political divisions that were simmering under the surface:
“Far from dampening down the old divisions, or trying to bridge them, politicians and their
supporters in the military, on both sides, now began to vie with one another to rekindle the
hatreds of almost twenty years before. It made matters worse that all the political leaders of
any consequence were of an age to have been shaped by the polarization of that time.”
In 1933 new elections gave a majority to the ring-wing People’s Party, the main rival of
Venizelos's Liberal Party. Military supporters of the latter, led by General Nikolaos Plastiras,
staged a military coup which failed. Two years of political instability followed in which
Venizelos was almost assassinated. In 1935 another coup was staged by Plastiras with the full support
of Venizelos himself. This resulted in faillure. Both he and Venizelos fled the country.
Venizelos left for France and would pass away the following year.
In the same year another coup d'état followed, this time led by General Kondylis.
This meant the end of the Second Hellenic Republic
and the restoration of King George II to the throne, according to a referendum:
the result was an implausible 97.87 per cent of votes cast in favour of the king’s return.
“Nobody necessarily thought that restoration of the monarchy would heal the divisions, or bring
any more stable government. On the contrary, it was to be the proof of who was in charge now,
one in the eye for the hated Venizelists. The old ‘Schism’ was back in strength.”
And if that wasn't enough coup d'états, in 1936 there was another one; perpetrated by General Ioannis Metaxas who established
the 4th of August Regime. A semi totalitarian state. Metaxas had fascist tendencies. Took inspiration from Fascist Italy.
It was ironically Italy that invaded his country. On 28 October 1940 the Greco-Italian War started. And so Greece got sucked into WW2.
How that all unfolded you'll learn right here. If you like to learn about other short-lived states, click right here.
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