Κυριακή 24 Νοεμβρίου 2024

Dimitris Papamichael

Dimitris Papamichael ΔΗΜΗΤΡΗΣ ΠΑΠΑΜΙΧΑΗΛ

Born August 1934 Died August 2004

Section 4, Number 467

The name Dimitris Papamichael may not fire up the neurons in foreign lovers of cinema but it can still short circuit the synapses of any Greek fan, - even 50 years after his last appearance in a Finos Film blockbuster.

He was astoundingly handsome as a young man and as famous for his 10 year marriage to Greece’s favourite cinema heroine Aliki Vougiouklaki as for any role he played. In their films together he was the ‘teacher’, the ‘shepherd’ the ‘poor fisherman’, the ‘industrialist’, the ‘worker’, the ‘sailor’, the ‘soldier’ or whoever was required to be the foil and love interest of Aliki. Theirs was a winning combination that may have lasted even longer if their marriage had not self destructed.

The ‘Aliki years’ were a strange interlude for someone who would rather have been remembered for his serious roles in drama, whether ancient or modern. That was the career path he had been on before he became Greece’s cinema heartthrob and one he would continue to pursue in later life. In spite of that, much of his fame and popularity was based on the public’s affection for him as Aliki’s prince charming. Their relationship in films defined an entire era of Greek culture – for better or worse.

Who was he really? It is hard to know. People like Papamichael live in a cultural milieu where public and personal personas fuse, partly by their own design and partly because the public sees what it wants to see. He lived long enough to become an icon and for interviewers to treat him like a ‘grand old man’ and not probe too deeply. Fair enough. That he was complicated there is no doubt, and he was truly talented. It is impossible to say what trajectory his career might have taken had he not met Aliki Vougiouklaki.

His Life

Papamichael was the third child of Ioannis Papamichael and the first of his second wife Eleni. His parents had a coffee shop in the heart of the Piraeus peninsula in an area called Hatzikyriakeio (Χατζηκυριάκειο).(1) His childhood was marred by the Second World War and especially by the 1941 bombing of the city. His parents sent him to Kranidi on the Peloponnese for the last two years of the war to keep him safe. He never forgot those war years and, like many children traumatized by the German occupation, vowed to become a pilot and bomb Germans when he grew up. His family were not well off and, as a student, he helped out in the café. Their hopes for him were modest. The Greek textile firm Piraeus Patraiki was expanding after the Greek civil war and offering scholarships to students willing to study in England. Dimitris was one of these students, so his decision in 1952 to enrol in the Drama School of the National Theatre instead did not sit well with his parents. His determination to attend finally persuaded his father to relent. Apparently he and Aliki Vougiouklaki auditioned on the same day and were accepted but their relationship, other than the usual jostling of students to be noticed, did not develop at this point.

He graduated from the drama school with a grade of ‘excellent’ (‘aριστα’) and was almost immediately taken under the wing of actor Despo Diamantidou who was already a star in the National Theatre and, according to some articles, one of his teachers at the Drama School. It was a relationship that would last a decade in spite of the difference in their ages. He was 21; she was 39.

A Word About Despo

Despo Diamantidou is perhaps best known today as the closest friend of Melina Mercouri and a feisty prostitute in Never on Sunday. But she too had started out in serious theatre, playing in National Theatre productions as well as roles in the Art Theatre of Karolos Koun (Θέατρο Τέχνης «Κάρολος Κουν). Her first role in the National Theatre had been in Medea in 1942. She returned to the National Theatre between the years 1954 and 1963. Dynamic, well read, and independent, she was in a perfect position to mentor the young actor and help his career choices.

The Beginning

His first significant role was in Chekov’s The Seagull. He played the ghost of Polydoros in Euripedes’ Hecuba (Εκάβη) in 1955, in the first year of the now famous Epidauros Festival. With Despo, he worked in the Art Theatre of Karolos Koun and independently in other productions involving Greek stars such as Givelli, Katina Paxinou and Alexis Minotis. He was on the fast track to theatrical success and living in Kolonaki in the same building as Despo. By all accounts, it was an affectionate and happy relationship.

1957 saw him awarded the prestigious Kotopouli award (2) (Βραβείο Κοτοπούλη) and, in the same year he played the god Apollo in the Oresteia of Aeschylus while Despo played the prophetess Pythia:

Papamichael on the left and Despo dressed as Pythia

The Middle

Then, Dimitris got a part in the 1959 Finos Film Το ξύλο βγήκε από τον παράδεισο,(3) a title almost impossible to translate and a plot even harder to fit into the norms of 2024. He played Panos Floras, a serious minded teacher in a private girl’s school full of exceptionally nubile and spoiled young women more interested in humiliating him than learning. Aliki Vougiouklaki was the leader of the spoiled girls. There is quite a lot of cheek slapping and melodrama but, of course they fall in love and all ends well. It was voted the best film between the years 1955-60 at the Thessaloniki Film Festival. You can form your own opinion of that assessment either with excerpts on youtube or by waiting to catch it on one of its many reruns on Greek television. (4)

Their charisma and chemistry on screen took Greece by storm. They would make more than a dozen films together, mostly comedies, and mostly involving songs that are still popular today. (5) They did not fall in love immediately.

Note who gets top billing, an issue that irritated Papamichael from the get go.

Despo’s influence no doubt got him a role in Jules Dassin’s Never on Sunday (Ποτέ την Κυριακή) in 1960. (6)

And, in 1963 he appeared in the star studded film The Red Lanterns (Τα κόκκινα φανάρια) in which he plays Petros, the innocent love interest; Despo is the madam of a brothel. This film was billed as a serious film, but I will leave it to you to be the judge of that. It can be watched on youtube in its entirety.

Despo’s friends were already telling her to keep her partner away from Aliki. But that would not likely have been in her character or her power.

The fact that Papamichael proposed to Aliki on stage during a theatrical performance in 1964 before telling Despo does not do him much credit. That is how she learned their affair was over. (7)

She sent them flowers…

Aliki and Papamichael married in Delphi on January 18, 1965 and had a son, Ioannis, in 1969.

It was not only a cinematic partnership; they played together in theatre as well. One of their most popular productions was Shaw’s My Fair Lady.

It was a stormy marriage from the beginning, involving arguments and physical violence. Playing second fiddle to Aliki in life or on film could not have been easy and, although Papamichael had no problem holding his own in the films and, in fact, was often very, very good, he was not the star. She knew it and so did Filopoimin Finos, their producer, who would side with Aliki when an argument about precedence or favour broke out.

Everyone has a favourite Aliki-Papamichael film. Mine was 1968’s Τhe Lady and the Tramp (Η αρχόντισσα κι ο αλήτης) in which a wealthy Aliki masquerades as a boy in order to escape an unsuitable marriage and Dimitris, a poor, honest lad (of course) helps her, unaware that she is a woman until quite a way through the film!

Aliki as a boy

It is a variation on a well worn theme and kitsch to boot, but they both did it well and it was good fun.

By 1968, it was not even necessary to name the stars in an advertisement. They were that famous:

In 1971, Papamichael branched out without Aliki, to star in Pappaflessas, a film about one of the great heroes of the Greek revolution.

Where he did get top billing

It was an expensive blockbuster by Greek standards and won acclaim at the 12^th annual Thessaloniki Film Festival where many hailed it as the greatest moment in his career thus far. In later interviews, he would agree.

July 20^th 1974 saw the police called to their home where Papamichael was beating his wife. Only the fact that it was the same day Turkey invaded Cyprus and that all Greek men of military age, including him, had been called up to active duty, stopped the police from arresting him. It was the beginning of an end that many had been predicting for years. They divorced in 1975. He remarried in the same year to Nana Elikrini (Νανά Ειλικρινή).

The Rest

Papamichael returned to playing the serious roles and the ancient dramas of his early career. In 1978, He played an actor playing Jason in the Jules Dassin film A Dream of Passion (Κραυγή Γυναικών) about a production of Medea. In it, Papamichael is reunited with, not just Melina Mercouri, but also with his former lover Despo who plays Melina’s best friend. (I get the oddest feeling the actors were simply playing themselves.) You can see it in its entirety on youtube. Dassin considered it his best film.

In 1981, Papamichael played Macbeth in a National Theatre production.

And yet…

Unfinished Business…

Aliki’s influence in his life never really faded, nor did her stellar career. She continued to wow audiences at her theatre night after night. He did choose to play opposite her again in the theatre productions of Educating Rita in 1984 and Filumena in 1986. The public still wanted to see them together but his reason for reuniting with Aliki are probably very complicated indeed. During a television talk show when both were present, she maintained perfect control of her image, but Papamichael’s body language exuded discomfort. Aliki complimented his then wife saying that she had had the ‘code’ for Dimitris but that she herself could never find the right ‘button’. She is smiling about something in her past; he is not smiling at all. (8)

In 1988, Papamichael appeared once more in Epidauros, this time in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus.

He also played in the Britannia Theatre of Mimi Denissis (Μιμή Ντενίση)(9) in lighter fare. By the early 90s he had become so obese that he was scarcely recognizable when he came on stage; the crowd didn’t care. They gave him a standing ovation. I know because I was there.

Papamichael with Mimi Denissis

Aliki’s sudden death from cancer in 1996 was a blow. And, like thousands of others, he attended her funeral and mourned.

His final years were full of health issues. He last appeared on stage in 2004, two years before his death from a heart attack.

Afterword

In one of his last interviews he said the role he would have liked to play but never did was as King Lear. Did he feel some empathy for a man who had alienated himself from his family and was lost on a storm of his own making? I wonder…

In a deliberate snub to his son, he disinherited him in what can only be described as a very nastily worded clause in his will. Many have tried to figure out why. His own son believed that it was a kind of transference onto him after his mother died – that he then became the target of his father’s complicated feelings. Still, it is a rather sad coda to a long and successful career.

The Grave

He is all alone here. Most theatre and film stars, including Aliki, are in the Plaza or gathered all together in Section 14.

Section 4, Number 467

Footnotes

(1) In homage to his city of birth, he became a city council member for Piraeus between 1986 and 1990.

(2) This theatrical award was named in honour of Marika Kotopouli. Receiving it was a great honour. Melina Mercouri won it in 1953.

(3) Χylo apo Paradisos literally means Beating comes from Paradise. To ‘eat wood’(xylo) in Greece is to be beaten. It suggests that getting slapped, as so many do in the film, was god given! Well! It was a striking title that got changed to Maidens Cheek in English.

(4) Finos film digitized its productions and rents them out – hence, no free look on youtube,

(5) Both were good singers and excellent composers would be hired to write songs for their films. Aliki is more well known for this talent but if you google the songs of Dimitris Papamichael, a list of his hits comes up.

(6) This was not a Finos Film production. Finos passed it up. He did not think Melina could ever be a star. Her mouth was too big.

(7) Despo seems to have been very forgiving and, in old age, she and Dimitris were friends, each praising the other publically.

(8) See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=T4xqjr76aaA&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2F35.210.164.199%2F&feature=emb_imp_woyt

(9) Mimi Denissi was something of a rival of Aliki although much younger. She had her own theatre near Syntagma Square and tells the story of how insecure Dimitris was as an actor. She had a tough time talking him out of leaving a few days before an opening. His image always mattered to him.

Sources

Sources: https://www.pontosnews.gr/737595/ellada/dimitris-papamichail-synarpastiki-zoi-kai-kariera-gia-ton-aionio-magka/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=T4xqjr76aaA&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2F35.210.164.199%2F&feature=emb_imp_woyt

And innumerable sites, even in English. I do not list all of his appearances in films and theatre because this information is easily available on the internet and it would be a very long list.

Τρίτη 8 Οκτωβρίου 2024

Georgios Tsolakoglou, Quisling

Georgios Tsolakoglou ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΤΣΟΛΑΚΟΓΛΟΥ

Born April 1886 in Thessaly Died May 1948 in Athens

Section 14, Number 196

When including quisling Prime Minister Georgios Tsolakoglou in our examination of the people buried in the First Cemetery, it seemed like a slam dunk in terms of assessing responsibility. He was a career military officer with no political experience who not only surrendered to the Germans in 1941 but at the same time offered to become Greece’s Prime Minister under Nazi occupation. It was an unexpected offer that surprised even Hitler. Under Tsolakoglou’s 19 month watch, the Germans and Italians began their systematic rape of the country which resulted in one of the worst famines in Greek history - the terrible winter of 1942. At the end of that year, the Germans who considered Greece something of a side show on their way to world domination, simply replaced him with someone even more biddable.

Why did he do it and why did he never recant ?

To comprehend that, you have to understand something of the European situation in the 30s, the temper of the country in 1940, and the mindset of army men like Tsolakoglou. Add Germany’s territorial ambitions, the voracious appetite of Mussolini’s Italy, the nature of the Metaxas dictatorship itself, and the underlying geopolitical aims of Greece’s allies during that period. Stir in a disgruntled Greek king with mixed feelings about his subjects along with a newly appointed Prime Minister who apparently committed suicide rather than face a German occupation – and you have the toxic mess that led Georgios Tsolakoglou to put himself forward as a leader of the nation in April of 1941.

On the day of the capitulation

His Life

Georgios was born in 1886 in Rentini, a town in Thessaly near Karditsa. He had the correct antecedents – a grandfather who had been a member of the Filiki Etaireia and who had subsequently been hanged in Larissa on the order of a Turkish Pasha in 1822. Thessaly had only joined the Greek state 5 years before he was born and the usual route to success for many young men from Thessaly with no important Athenian connections was to join the military.

He excelled at the Petty Officers School from where he graduated in 1912 with the rank of lieutenant and was placed in the 4th Infantry Regiment in Larissa. He was 26 and at the beginning of a 28 year military career during which he served in both Balkan wars, the First World War, and the Greco-Turkish war in Asia Minor (1919-1922)(1). In Asia Minor he experienced, first the fighting, then the humiliating defeat of the Greek army, which ended in the burning of Smyrna.

This 1922 defeat would leave indelible marks on the psyche of the Greek population and none more searing than on the Greek military men who had been fighting almost continuously since 1912 and saw themselves betrayed, not only by their own politicians, but by their allies, the British, French, and Italians who had decided that abandoning the Greek side and backing the Turkish nationalists was a better geopolitical bet. No wonder that in 1922 Lieutenant General Nicolaos Plastiras, another soldier from Thessaly, headed a coup against the Greek government leaders he regarded as responsible for the debacle.

During Tsolakoglou’s military career there were several coups and counter coups, a somewhat shaky Second Hellenic Republic spanning the years from 1924 to 1935, and the return of an unpopular king in November of 1935. It would be surprising if a military man like Tsolakoglou had not succumbed to some degree to a disdain for chaotic civilian rule.

During these upheavals, a career officer had to keep his head down or be lucky enough to have backed a winner if he wanted to keep his position. It would seem that Tsolakoglou did a bit of both. In 1923 he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in 1923, became a Colonel in 1925, and commander of Greece’s premier army training school, Evelpidon, in 1935.

1936 saw the beginning of the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas, yet another military career officer who had turned politician in the belief he could solve the country’s problems. Metaxas had gained almost none of the popular vote in the elections of 1936 and only 7 parliamentary seats but King George II used his royal prerogative to make him prime minister anyway.

Metaxas on the left and George II on the right

Metaxas, as ardent a royalist as the king could wish for, proceeded to disband parliament all together. To keep an exhausted and restless population under his thumb, Metaxas had a new internal enemy to create, enlarge, and then conquer: the communists. A good deal of his regime was focused on arresting leftists and creating his own brand of fascism in Greece.

In the 1930s, Greece had no overt expansionist policies having enough domestic problems dealing with the influx of Greek refugees brought about by the population exchange after the Treaty of Lausanne. But as Greece’s expansionist star had waned, Italy’s was in the ascendant.

The Roman Empire Restored: Italian Expansionist Dreams

The German desire for ‘lebensraum’, the expansion of German territory to provide land and resources for the German people, is better known today than Italy’s own effort to conquer the Balkan states and Turkey, and thus make their proposed empire stretch from Albania to the Persian Gulf. Mussolini had a bone to pick with Greece because it had been promised a piece of the Ottoman Empire when the Greeks had invaded Asia Minor in 1919 – a promise Greece could not keep after Smyrna. Italy already held the Dodecanese since 1912 and had officially annexed them in 1923 and invaded and conquered Albania in April of 1939 – both handy stepping stones for their proposed empire.

Mussolini’s plan was to annex the Ionian Islands, the Cycladic islands, and the Sporades, all to be directly administered by Italy. His ‘legal’ claim was that they had once been Venetian. Epirus and Acarnania were to be separated from the rest of Greek territory and administered by Italy, and the new Italian 'Kingdom of Albania' would annex territory between the Greek north-western frontier and a line from Florina to Pindus, Arta and Preveza. The rest along with other Balkan areas would become pliable client states. (2)

This all seems breathtakingly grandiose today, but it was a crowd pleaser back then and fuelled Mussolini’s ambition to match German expansionism.

When Germany pushed east in September 1940 to ‘protect’ the oil fields of Romania, Mussolini decided that he needed to show Hitler that Italy could successfully ‘blitzkrieg’ too. He believed that the Greek state would be easy pickings and his campaign over in a matter of days.

He could not have been more wrong.

When Italy delivered its ultimatum to Metaxas on October 28, 1940, demanding to enter Greece and take over certain unspecified ‘strategic areas’, Metaxas refused and the entire country rose en-mass to defend the homeland. Overnight, Metaxas became a hero. Even leftist leaders (communist and liberal and some of them from their prison cells or from exile) asked to join in the fight. General Alexandros Papagos was put in charge of the army.

Giorgios Tsolakoglou, now a Lieutenant General, became commander of the General Army Corps in Western Macedonia and was charged with repelling the Italians. Tsolakolgou did drive them back into Albania. It was a heroic 6 month effort that impressed the entire world, as well as the German high command.

Meanwhile…

Metaxas had died on January 29, 1941 and been replaced by Alexandros Koryzis, a banker loyal to the king. The British, taking notice of Italian expansionism and fearful of a German response, diverted 58000 British, New Zealand, and Australian troops from North Africa on March 7, 1941 in order to fortify the Olympus-Vermion line in Greece.

It was too little too late. The Germans were compelled to invade Greece and bail out Mussolini. An invasion had not been on the German agenda until Mussolini’s miscalculations and bumbling forced their hand.

Germany entered Greece from the north and east on April 6, 1941 and quickly overran its defences. They had a green light from the Bulgarians who had just joined the Axis 31 days earlier in the hopes of expanding their territory at the expense of Greece. The Germans took Thessaloniki on the third day. That left the Eastern branch of the Greek army of Eastern Macedonia trapped between Bulgaria and Thessaloniki. On April 9, The Greek general of the eastern army surrendered.

By April 10, the King had already decided to abandon Athens for Crete and the entire Greek leadership realized that the Greek position was hopeless. But the king was advised by the British to delay a Greek surrender of Tsolakoglou’s army so that Britain would have time to evacuate their troops before the Germans pushed farther south.

New Zealand troops waiting for evacuation at Nauplio

It would be safe to say that King George II had no deep love for or feeling of affinity with his Greek subjects. He had been exiled twice and, in one famous letter, referred to them as ‘Orientals’ – and not in a complimentary way. He considered them ungovernable enough that he was content to condone the Metaxas dictatorship and the end of parliamentary rule. There was very little chance that he would have done what the kings of Denmark and Sweden did during the same war – stay and become a beacon of hope for his occupied people. Tsolakoglou considered the king’s decision to depart as criminal.

That and the future of his own men were the reasons for Tsolakoglou’s fateful decision. He was faced with the possibility of all fourteen divisions under his command being captured and made prisoners of war by the Italians whom he had just defeated. He had no love for the British who had abandoned the Greeks in Smyrna and who were advising the king to escape. The suicide of the Greek Prime Minister on April 18 left no one at the helm.(3) With the Bulgarians (Axis members since march 1941) hungry for territory on one side and Italy ready to break the country into pieces on the other, he came to the conclusion that an immediate surrender was best and that a Greek leader, even under German occupation, could prevent the country from being dismembered altogether.

On April 20 he sent an emissary to the German general Sepp Dietrich to capitulate to the Germans and only to the Germans, insisting that the defeated Italians be left out of the equation entirely, that his officers be allowed to keep their weapons, and that the army under his leadership be disbanded and the men allowed to make their way home as civilians.

Panagiotis Kanellopoulos (later a Greek prime minister), his corporal and legal advisor, was aghast, telling him: You are trifling with your military honour and your life with what you are doing. Tsolakoglou replied: And who cares? Our entire nation is at risk. In such moments the life and honour of any one individual is of no value.(4)

The Germans considered Tsolakoglou’s offer a ‘gift from heaven’ and agreed to leave out the Italians on April 21, but things fell apart almost immediately when Italy objected. Therefore another capitulation that included Italy had to be staged all over again two days later in Salonika on April 23, the same day, King George11 left for Crete.

On April 29, Tsolakoglou was sworn in as Greece’s prime minister in Athens.

He started out hopefully. He addressed his soldiers and praised the ‘magnanimous gesture’ of the Fuhrer who had freed all military officers and soldiers. He went on to say “the German army has not come here as an enemy but as a friend in order to expel the British who had been invited in by a ‘criminal government’”. (5)

The German occupiers must have been delighted by that speech. Did he hope by praising Hitler to gain an easier occupation? There was a certain admiration for Germany in many circles in Greece. Many had been educated there, and Germany had certainly been their friend in the 19^th century. The most likely reason was his hope to be able to influence the Germans in order to curb the territorial ambitions of Italy and Bulgaria.

In late May, the king was evacuated from Crete, the last Greek stronghold, as the Germans invaded the island. He headed a government in exile in Cairo supported by the British, some of the old Greek political elite, and one or two members of Metaxas’ inner circle.

The Rest

Tsolakoglou’s soldiers did get to go home. But the Germans did not turn out to be the ‘friends’ that Tsolakoglou first called them when he became prime Minister. In spite of a professed admiration for Greece, they were ruthless conquerors and bled Greece dry.

Greece was divided into three occupation zones by Germany. They kept Thessaloniki, the border with Turkey, the Athens area, a couple of Islands, and western Crete for themselves, giving Bulgaria Thrace, and the rest to the Italians.

This tri-part arrangement did nothing for the country’s people – in fact, the Axis’ own rivalries and squabbles over jurisdiction made matters even worse.

Any hopes of helping his own people that Tsolakoglou would have had disappeared quickly. His government proved to be incompetent and worse, completely unable to influence the occupiers. Shockingly, his government, turned over the communist and leftist prisoners languishing in Greek jails under the Metaxas regime. Many died in German concentration camps or at home in Greek prisons. Nor was he able to prevent the famine of 1942.

The only positive thing Tsolakoglou managed while in office was sign into law in 1941 the creation of N.I.M.T.S, an army hospital in Athens for the Greek veterans who had suffered so much for so long for so little. He contributed his own wealth to this endeavour and the hospital opened in 1942.

He was replaced in December 1942 by Constantinos Logothetopoulos, but not before he again, at least publically, reiterated his appreciation to the Axis government.

When the war ended and the Greek government in exile was back in place, he was sentenced to death but, because of his previous service to the country, his sentence was commuted to Life in Prison. He had been suffering from leukemia since 1940 and spent the last year of his life in N.I.M.T.S, the hospital he had signed into being.

He died in 1948 and was buried in the First Cemetery but under the same rules as a prisoner who had been sentenced to death (probably only one priest and family member in attendance). In 1960, the mayor of Athens had his bones exhumed and reburied in Section 14, Number 196 - although his name is not engraved on the monument.

Afterword

In his memoirs, Tsolakoglou wrote that he was faced with a dilemma in 1941 and had decided on capitulation. Not only did he not regret his decision, he expressed pride in it.

Opinions differ. I am reminded of a famous article written by Greek Prime Minister Charilaos Trikoupis on June 29, 1874 in an Athens daily entitled "Who's to blame?" He blamed the king in that article and, it seems to me, that might be as good a place as any to start. The king’s power to create prime ministers has created havoc more than once in Greece. George II’s withdrawal along with many of the old political elite left the ordinary Greek people helpless, made the communists the only effective resistance organization in the country, and created a lot of contempt on the part of many Greeks for a post war government that had waited out the war in relative comfort before coming back to pick up where they had left off.

The Metaxas dictatorship, which ended parliamentary rule and raised the communist threat to the heights of paranoia, is also to blame as are Greece’s allies who historically have remained allies only so long as it suited their own geopolitical goals. Greek dependence on one great power or another is a lietmotif running all through its modern history. Did Tsolakoglou really believe that Germans were a better bet? If he did, he could not have been more wrong.

Tsolakoglou did save a lot of people. By capitulating in 1941, he prevented an estimated 220,000 Greeks from becoming prisoners of war, or worse. His professed aims in his memoirs were to avoid a dissolution of the state, uphold the national dignity, and preserve Hellenism.

Perhaps more time has to pass before any final judgment can be made.

Footnotes

(1) He was commander of the 1/39 Evzones Battalion. The Evzones were a type of light infantry in the Hellenic Army before they became window dressing in front of the Greek Parliament buildings.

(2) The Italians intended to compensate what was left of the Greek state for its territorial losses by allowing it to annex the British Crown Colony od Cyprus after the war. The latter offer was on the assumption of victory over Great Britain.

(3) Koryzis was found to have been killed by, not one, but two bullets to the heart, a fact that has lead to a great deal of speculation as to his suicide. See:

(4) Παίζετε την στρατιωτική σας τιμή και την ζωή σας με αυτό που κάνετε.

- Και ποιος νοιάζεται; Βρίσκεται σε κίνδυνο τώρα ολόκληρο το έθνος. Η ζωή και η τιμή του καθ’ ενός ατόμου δεν έχει αξία τέτοιες στιγμές.

(5)See https://metaxas-project.com/metaxas-tsolakoglou-dictatorship-to-collaborationism/ One wonders if this speech and other speeches were written for him to recite. I find it hard to believe he was not under some form of coercion, even if it was just his own desire to preserve the nation under the occupation.

Sources