Athens First Cemetery in English: 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.

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