Georgios Papadopoulos, Dictator

 

 

 

Georgios Papadopoulos                      ΓΕΩΓΙΟΣ ΠΑΠΑΔΟΠΟΥΛΟΣ

Born 5 May 1919 in Achaia                Died 27 June 1999 in Athens

 

 

 

Section Five, Number 435

Georgios Papadopoulos was a Greek military officer who, on April 21, 1967, led a bloodless coup in Greece. He swiftly named himself the country's Prime Minister, a post held until 1973 when, after a rigged plebiscite, he abolished the Greek monarchy and declared himself President of the Greek Republic.  That was a few short months before the infamous November 17 Polytechnic student uprising which gave his co-conspirator, hardliner Dimitrios Ioannides, the opportunity to oust him and place him under house arrest where he remained until the junta’s botched attempt to back a coup d'état in Cyprus caused the whole house of cards to collapse. Democracy was miraculously restored when a deus ex machina in the person of former Prime Minister Constantinos Karamanlis returned from exile on July 24, 1974 to lead the country.

How a rather ordinary group of middle echelon army officers led by colonel Giorgios Papadopoulos managed to take centre stage and oust democratically elected officials, get the king on board, anesthetize the misgivings of the majority of the population while ruthlessly suppressing dissent, is a cautionary tale. This drama unfolded in a country with a rich history of coups, a monarchy that often miss-stepped or overstepped, and where concepts of loyalty to the ‘nation’ did not necessarily mean loyalty to the state.

 

His Life

Georgios began life in the small village of Eliochoro, Achaia.  He was the eldest son of the local school master, Christos and his wife Chrysoula. When he completed high school in Patras in 1937, he enrolled in the Hellenic Military Academy (Σχολή Ευελπίδων) and graduated in the summer of 1940, in time to defend the country in the Italo-Greek war of 1941. He was 22 years old.

 

The young soldier

As a second lieutenant of the artillery, he fought against the Italians and against the Germans when they invaded the country in April 1941. The king, many politicians, and a tiny fraction of the army (1) immediately fled into exile. Since there was no longer a Greek army to belong to, Papadopoulos enrolled in the university to study civil engineering. He never did complete his studies nor did he join any of the many resistance groups that formed during the occupation. Instead he sat out much of the occupation working for the ‘Patras Food Supply Office’ which was under the aegis of the Greek puppet administration.

While in Patras, it is believed he joined the notorious Greek Security Battalions (2) which had been formed in 1943 by quisling prime minister Ioannis Rallis. The aim was to counter the rising power of leftist and communist guerrillas fighting under the banner of EAM-ELAS.

 

Rallis (on the right) had made the formation of these battalions a condition of accepting office.

 

In early 1944, with the help of the British, Papadopoulos went to Egypt and joined the Greek army in exile as a lieutenant. That same year he helped in the formation of IDEA, The Sacred Association of Nationalist Officers, an anti communist group within the army who were well disposed towards those officers who had joined the Security Battalions in occupied Greece. IDEA promoted their being integrated into the nationalist army after the liberation, glossing over the fact they were working directly under the command of the Nazis because they regarded them as the likeliest group able to counter the communist threat that EAM-ELAS posed to the pre war status quo. (3)

Middle Echelon Army Officers, Loyalties, and the ‘Communist Threat’

There are explanations for the mindset of men like Papadopoulos and his 16 co-conspirators. The milieu they grew up in was an era of army coups. Between 1922 and 1935 there had been 7 coups or coup attempts; 5 had been spearheaded by the army. This chaos was followed by the Metaxas dictatorship with its emphasis on law and order, rigid anticommunism, and anti-political bias, all ideas that went down better in conservative rural communities than in the more socially diverse cities. Almost all of the future conspirators did come from poor rural families. One of them, Ioannis Ladas, said: We were all so poor that we called Papadopoulos the rich man because his father was a school teacher. (4).

For men of their social class without the political ties that might have secured them advancement in civil life, a military career offered the best chance for upward mobility. Once enlisted, these middle echelon officers became part of a remarkably cohesive social group.(5)  That they had a ‘sacred’ duty to defend the nation was instilled in all officers during training. That ‘nation’ did not always mean the Greek state with its volatile and often warring politicians.(6)   To them, the possibility of a future coup to ‘save the nation’ would not have seemed like much of a stretch.(7)

The Return (October 18, 1944)

Papadopoulos was promoted to captain in 1946, fought during the civil war and was decorated twice for his effort.  He became a major in 1949.  His already visceral anti-communism would have been reinforced and vindicated in his own mind by the anti-communist stance of the Greek government during the nineteen fifties.

 

Papadopoulos during the civil war

Papadopoulos from 1950 to 1967

In 1951 Papadopoulos participated in the now notorious court-martial of communist leader Nikos Beloyannis. At the time, the Communist Party of Greece was a banned organization and anti-communist feelings ran high.(8)  

 

Papadopoulos (under the arrow) with the military tribunal prosecuting Beloyannis.

During the 1950s, he underwent military training in the United States which has given rise to theory that he was, in fact, a CIA agent. Greece had been under American influence since 1947. He certainly would have fit right into the 1950’s CIA mindset.  In 1959, he was appointed to the KYP Intelligence Service, the CIA’s Greek equivalent and acted as its liaison with the CIA’s John Fatseas.  

 

Papadopoulos (left) with CIA operatives John Fatseas (third from left) and George Stevens (third from right) on a wild boar hunt.

 

1963 - 1967: Politics Gets Complicated – Again

If the politics in the country had remained stable in the 1960s, Papadopoulos  might have served his time, retired, and been grumbling about wrong-headed politicians in his local coffee shop. Greece had been stable under the conservative government of Constantinos Karamanlis.(9)

 

Karamanlis in 1963

His ERE (National Radical Union) party governed from 1955 to 1963. But then Karamanlis resigned in 1963, forcing early elections in November of the same year.  In that election, social democrat Georgios Papandreau’s Center Union party won 138 seats to Karamanlis’ 132.  That meant that the 28 seat EDA (Union of the Democratic Left), the socialist party perceived to be a communist front, would have a swing vote in the new parliament.  Papandreau called for new elections in February 1964 and won his majority but the political pot continued to boil: the Cyprus issue, communist fears, concerns as to whether Greece’s alignment towards Europe was a good or bad move, all simmered in the background.

 

Georgios Papandreau

Georgios Papandreau had already been leery enough of Papadopoulos to post him to Thrace, far away from any army plots brewing in the capital. While there, Papadopoulos arrested two soldiers under his command along with some local leftists, claiming that they had conspired to sabotage army vehicles by putting sugar into their gas tanks.

 

An Athens Newspaper with the story of Sabotage on June 13, 1965

The suspects were arrested and tortured until it was discovered that it had been Papadopoulos himself who sabotaged the tanks in an effort to prove that communists were infiltrating the army.

In a twist that could only happen in Greece where loyalties and patronage ties can be very complicated indeed, Georgios Papandreau forgave him because their fathers had been school mates in Achaia!(10)

 

 The Colonels Begin to Gather in Athens…

Papadopoulos was recalled, first to Larissa and then to the Army General Staff in Athens. Several of his future co-conspirators would also be favoured by appointments in Athens. Then Papadopoulos was promoted to the rank of colonel - just in time for his coup. The coup was triggered by the prospect of yet another election in 1967, but the ‘finger’ had been hovering over the trigger for some time.  

 The Coup: April 21, 1967

The coup, when it came, was bloodless and the king was persuaded to go along with it at first.

 

King Constantine in the midst of the conspirators, Papadopoulos is on the left.

If he and his co-conspirators could only be blamed for bad prose and simplistic ideas it might have been farcical. But they were in earnest; house arrests of politicians, banishments of leftists or supposed leftists to islands or abroad, the torture of dissidents, and ridiculous restrictions on long hair and long skirts began immediately. Nor did they fail to play the religious card. The Orthodox Church was promised the biggest church in the Balkans under the junta slogan: Greece for Greek Christians. (11)  The king had second thoughts almost eight months later, made a belated effort to overthrow the regime, failed, and went into exile.

As Western democracies waffled trying to figure out how Greece’s fate affected their own geopolitical aims, Papadopoulos did his best to convince Greeks that the country was sick and that therefore ‘shackling the patient to the operating table for his own good’  was just common sense.  Early on he had erased farmers’ debts, which went a long way to creating support in rural communities. He touted a rise in prosperity as a junta achievement. The symbol of his ‘make Greece great again’ was one Trump might envy: a phoenix rising from the ashes – fronted by a soldier. It wasn’t subtle but it was ubiquitous.

 

Every town Square in Greece quickly became April 21^st Square.

Why did people stand for it? Inertia, fatigue, the hope for a respite from political infighting, self interest (especially among the wealthy), business fears - all played their part and maybe just the feeling that the army somehow had the right to interfere every now and then. After all, democracy had always bounced back before. Roads were being built and villages electrified for the first time.

It did not take the United States long under Richard Nixon to decide that the Papadopoulos’ government was one they could ‘do business with’. Meanwhile, the co-conspirators did very well for themselves. Papadopoulos took up residence in a rather grand estate in Lagonissi with his former lover Despina Gaspari whom he married in 1970.

 

Georgios ,Despina, and friends

There was resistance both in and outside of Greece.(12)  In 1968 Alexandros Panagoulis attempted to blow him up as his limo made its way into Athens from Lagonissi.

.

Panagoulis under arrest. He suffered torture and humiliation.  See.

https://athensfirstcemeteryinenglish.blogspot.com/2023/01/alexandros-alekos-panagoulis.html

 

The Beginning of the End

Papadopoulos, under pressure, began to make a few moves to loosen the reins. But the reforms he attempted were blocked by his co conspirators, Dimitrios Ioannidis in particular. His decision, the same year, to make Greece a republic with himself as the figure at the helm was resented both by his co-conspirators and by his ‘base’ in the army.

Meanwhile, abroad, resistance or sympathy for resistance was rising.  (The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark had been anti-junta from the get go). Local resistance among young people culminated in the Student uprising of November 17, 1973 which was quashed violently with tanks. Hardliner Demitrios Ioannidis took over the reins and put Papadopoulos under house arrest.

 

Tanks arriving at the Polytechnic University

Ioannides initiated even more oppression and it is hard to know how it all would have ended if the Junta had not supported a coup in Cyprus which led to Turkey’s invasion of the island. The Junta’s effort to call up civilians and prepare for war was so chaotic that even they realized they were in trouble. (13)  They were persuaded to disband themselves and invite Constantinos Karamanlis to return and lead the nation out of chaos.

The Return

 

The Aftermath

The monarchy was abolished by a referendum in December 1974, democracy was reinstated, and all the conspirators arrested and tried for high treason. In August 1975, Papadopoulos and others were sentenced to death (later commuted to life in prison) but he never recanted; he even rejected an amnesty offer that would have required him to recant. He was a true believer. He remained in prison until a cancer diagnosis caused his transfer to an Athens hospital where he died three years later on June 1999.

He was buried in the First Cemetery under the following epitaph: 

 

GEORGIOS PAPADOPOULOS, PRESIDENT OF THE GREEK DEMOCRACY

 

Well!

 

An  Afterword

Collaboration is not an aberration; it’s the resisters who are exceptional. (14)

Not many people alive today who lived through the dictatorship will claim they were pro junta or acquiescent, and yet many were. That urge to ‘go with the flow’ and make do or self-censure oneself when dictators take over is frightening to behold in retrospect and hard to watch when it is actually happening. Whether or not America was behind the coup is an issue for many who blame the United States for the entire mess. November 17, the anniversary of the student uprising, is a national holiday and always ends with a march to the U.S. embassy.

Today, hardly anyone makes a trek, annual or otherwise to Papadopoulos’ grave.

The Grave

 

Section Five, Number 436

The Map

 

Footnotes

(1)  The vast majority of the mainland troops were cornered, surrendered, or simply demobilized and sent home.

(2)  Papadopoulos’ boss in Patras had been responsible for forming the Security Battalions in Achaia. 

(3)  The fact that so many members of the Security Battalions were, in fact, integrated into the army after liberation is still a contentious issue in Greece.

(4)  The fathers of seven of the co-conspirators were farmers, two were school masters; only one had been previously in the military. Ioannidis may be the exception because his family was relatively wealthy. The army attracted far more rural recruits than the navy.

(5)   Four of the future co conspirators graduated in 1940, eight in 1943 and most were of field grade rank.

(6) For an excellent explanation of the difference between the perception of  nation and the state, see The Nation, the State and the International System, the Case of Modern Greece by Andreas Psomas, Athens 1978.

 (7) There is a very extensive website listing all of the coups, counter coups and failed coups in modern Greece. It is a long read.

 (8)  Beloyannis was sentenced to death but the sentence was not carried out until a second trial in 1952 where he was declared guilty and, immediately after the verdict, shot. Papadopoulos was not involved in this second trial.

(9) Under Karamanlis, many laws suppressing communists and left wing views had remained on the books. In the eyes of conservatives, the communist threat was always there.

(10) Some have gone as far as to say that Georgios Papadopoulos was a god son of Papandreau – not completely implausible since Greek politicians frequently acted as god fathers for constituents in order to ensure their votes.

 (11) The mega church promised by Georgios Papadopoulos was a colossal, never-built monument known as the Tama tou Ethnous (Vow of the Nation). Designed to sit atop the Tourkovounia hills in Athens, the junta government collected millions in public funds for this massive project, but it was ultimately abandoned and never built.

 (12) The resistance of Melina Mercouri, Andreas Papandreau, and Mikis Theodorakis makes inspiring reading.

(13) Ioannidis named Greek general Phaidon Gizikis president and it was this general who would gather together various political figures after the Turkish invasion who would invite Karamanlis to return.

(14) Collaboration is not an aberration; it’s the resisters who are exceptional Alice Jolly

Sun 16 Nov 2025 13.00 CET

 

Sources

http://www.protagon.gr/apopseis/editorial/i-mnimi-o-mythos-i-lithi-44341396292  

http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2017/04/21/the-economic-scandals-of-the-greek-military-junta-21-april-1967/

The Military and Society in Greece by  James Brown

The Nation, the State and the International System, the Case of Modern Greece by Andreas Psomas, Athens 1978,

https://www.thenationalherald.com/the-greek-junta-and-the-other-americans/

https://www.kathimerini.gr/culture/books/928267/i-galanoleyki-sti-skia-tis-asteroessas/

https://stratistoria.wordpress.com/1944/07/18/19440718-picme-greek-security-battalions/

The Rise and Fall of the Greek Colonels by C.M. Woodhouse, Franklin Watts, 1985

The Greece of Karamanlis, by Maurice Genevoix,  Doric Publications, 1972

 

Nikolaos Plastiras

 

Nikolaos Plastiras                                 ΝΙΚΟΛΑΟΣ ΠΛΑΣΤΗΡΑΣ

Born 1883 in Karditsa                                        Died 1953 in Athens

 

Plaza, Number BB

The more you read Greek history, the harder it gets to make simple judgements.  Soldier Nikolaos Plastiras was known as the  Dark Rider because of his bravery on the battlefield. Politically, he became an avid Venizelist, and was deeply involved in 5 military coups (3 successful, 2 not) between 1909 and 1935. In 1922, he was complicit in the execution of six men who would later be exonerated and later in one who perhaps did not deserve to die. To make his own story more complicated, he was himself sentenced to death by the Greek government 1935. He spent the next decade in exile in France,  but was still popular enough at home to be named the titular head of EDES a resistance group formed during the Second World War which was in need of a respectable figurehead. Towards the end of his life he was drafted into a brief premiership in 1945 because an acceptable centrist leader needed to be found and he became Prime Minister again in 1950 and 1951. By that time, he seems less of a dark rider and more of an aged war horse being paraded in a political arena where he looks just a tad out of place.

 

Plastiras in 1924

I started out thinking of him as just another of those military men who gallop through the pages of modern Greek history, either saving the nation or wreaking havoc, depending on your point of view. But, against my own prejudices (5 coups!), I have found myself admiring Nikolaos Plastiras who was certainly a better soldier than a politician, but was a man who had integrity and who tried to do the right thing during an era when keeping one's ethical balance was indeed a challenge.

 

Riding into history in Karditsa

 

His Life

Nikolaos was born in 1883 in the area of Karditsa in Thessaly which had only recently become part of the Greek nation. His father, Christos, was a tailor and his mother, Stergianos, a weaver. The grandfather after whom he was named had fought with Georgios Karaiskakis during the battle for Independence, but Thessaly had remained in the Ottoman sphere when Greece gained its freedom.

  

                                             Thessaly was acquired in 1881

He began his schooling in Vounesi (today’s Morfovouni) and went on to High School in Karditsa. His family were not wealthy and, since the only sure way of advancement for a likely lad of his class was the army, it is not surprising that he joined as volunteer in 1903 and officially in 1904 becoming a sergeant, then a sergeant major.  This was during the period of the undeclared war to wrest Macedonia from the Ottomans. Contributing to the struggle there was his first baptism into active duty.

1909: The Goudi Coup

Five years passed and Nikolaos found himself as one of the many non-commissioned officers unhappy with the army's slow rate of advancement, its failure to modernize, and the lack of meritocracy in the ranks. It was especially galling to have crown prince Constantine still in command after the debacle of the 1897 war between Greece and the Ottomans in which Greece had suffered an ignominious defeat.  He joined the newly formed Military League, an organization begun by a group of frustrated NCOs. The government tried various ways to suppress them and matters came to a head in August 1909 when they arrested two of its leaders. The League then marched from their Goudi barracks on the outskirts of Athens to the city centre and staged their coup.

 

The Goudi Coup: the people praise the army while Greece herself tramples on the old order – a dragon of course.

It turned out to be a months-long confrontation during which the soldiers tried to rally the populace to their cause and the government tried various devices (including changing prime ministers) to stall their momentum. In October of the same year, the League took a new tack. A delegation headed to Crete to meet with Eleftherios Venizelos, then Prime Minister of the semi-autonomous island and no great friend of the Greek monarchy. Venizelos, already a consummate politician and negotiator, saw an opportunity but one that had to be handled carefully.  He advised the League members to return to Athens. He would arrive on his own in December - to mediate.

Both sides welcomed him. Changes were promised, new elections were to be held, and Venizelos was able to persuade the League to dissolve before he returned to Crete. However, he did allow allies to place his name on the Greek electoral candidate list in spite of the fact that he was not technically a Greek citizen. He not only got elected but so did a majority of his Greek political admirers. And that is how Venizelos became prime Minister of Greece in October 1910.

 

Venizelos starting a new era of reform in 1910

By any definition, the 1909 Goudi coup, the first of many in the twentieth century, was a huge success for Venizelos personally and for the army which would have perceived it as a potential blueprint for the future. The enthusiasm of soldiers like Plastiras must have been dampened slightly by the fact that Venizelos, ever the pragmatist, soon reinstated the Greek princes (Constantine and Andrew) into the army: he needed the king’s support for his reforms. (1)

 Between 1910 and 1919

Plastiras then attended  the Corfu School for non-commissioned Officers and graduated  as a second lieutenant. He fought in both Balkan Wars where he distinguished himself in many battles and won the soubriquet of Dark Rider. When these wars ended, Plastiras, now a captain, was stationed in Chios which had been ceded to Greece in 1913.

The 1916 Coup

In 1916, as the First World War raged, Venizelos staged his own coup, forming a government in opposition to the King who wanted to remain neutral. Plastiras and many others in the military joined him in Thessaloniki. When Venizelos prevailed, with a little help from the British, he exiled King Constantine (whom we have met earlier as the crown prince) and his soldier brother Andrew, but allowed Constantine’s son, prince Alexander, to remain as a kind of puppet king, very much under the government’s thumb. Plastiras continued his career fighting on the side of the Entente and taking part in many battles. Because of his competence and bravery, he was promoted to Major and then to Lieutenant-Colonel.

It was at this point that Plastiras adopted his first war orphan, a child whose entire family had been wiped out by the Bulgarians and who was wandering the streets of a small town in northern Greece.  He was touched by the youngster’s tragedy and asked the child if he would like to be adopted. He then sent him to his mother and sister in Karditsa . As time passed, he would adopt more children (three boys and three girls) and was instrumental in founding orphanages for many more whose lives had been fragmented by the war. Plastiras never married. When, in the 1920s, the wealthy Benakis family offered to shoulder the financial burden of raising his adopted children, Plastiras refused, saying that they were ‘the happiness of his family’s home’. (He did later accept a loan from Venizelos for a dowry for one of the girls.)

 

Plastiras with members of his adopted family

In 1919, Plastiras returned to Chios as governor of the island. He was so popular that they declared him an honorary citizen.

When part of the Asia Minor coast was placed under Greek military control in June of that year, Plastiras and his battalion arrived in Smyrna. This would mark both the beginning of a three year war with Turkey and the year he achieved the rank of colonel. During the three year struggle he gained another soubriquet: Black Pepper and his battalion were called the Devil’s army.

 

A map showing the Smyna zone

Just when Greece seemed poised to gain the Asia Minor coast and more, Venizelos lost the 1920 elections and went into a self imposed exile in France. It was a tremendous upset, possibly a result of war weariness. Royalist opposition leader Demetrios Gounaris had promised to bring the boys home. As a result, Greece lost not only her most accomplished politician but also the critical support of the British who were furious when Gounaris’ government brought back King Constantine from exile (King Alexander had died of a monkey bite in 1920). Britain regarded King Constantine as hostile to their interests. 

Inexplicably, in spite of their election promise the new government decided to continue the struggle, this time, with Prince Andrew and other military leaders in charge. The upshot: a chaotic retreat, the burning of Smyrna, many thousands dead, and the end of the Great Idea of Greek expansionism.

Plastiras, true to form, had fought bravely and engineered his soldiers’ retreat in good order while also caring for civilians in the path of his retreat to the sea at Tseme. 

 

Plastiras in Asia Minor

The 1922 Coup

Greeks were devastated and angry at the enormity of their defeat. The search for those responsible began almost immediately and fell squarely on the royalist government and some members of the Greek high command.  Plastiras, from Chios where he and his army had been evacuated, along with Colonel Stykianos Gonatas on Lesvos and navy Commander Dimitrios Fokas. formed a Revolutionary Commitee that September which spearheaded the coup. This led to the government’s resignation, King Constantine’s abdication, the ascension to the throne of his son George, and the return of Venizelos at Plastiras’request to negotiate (from the difficult position of a the losing side)  what would become the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. It was a treaty that only someone with Venizelos’ diplomatic skills could have brokered.

 

Plastiras and other coup leaders being welcomed in Athens after the 1922 coup

No one, except some members of the international community, complained when several politicians and military leaders were court martialed by an extraordinary military tribunal especially created by the Revolutionary Committee . Six (5 politicians and one general) (2) were sentenced to death for treason. Venizelos did not interfere. He later claimed that he would have asked for clemency after the verdict, but the six were executed within hours of their conviction – possibly to prevent just that. Only Prince Andrew escaped a trial at the insistence of Britain. He was evacuated with his family (including the future Prince Phillip of England) and spent the rest of his life in exile. Professional soldiers like Plastiras no doubt felt that their fate was richly deserved.

 

The six during their trial

Between 1922 and 1924, Plastiras had done his best to take care of the needs of the Asia Minor refugees in Greece. He would come to be idolized by many who named their children after him and hung his picture in their makeshift homes. The Coup leaders relinquished their hold in 1924, just in time for the civilian government to create the Second Hellenic Republic. By then Plastiras had retired with the rank of Lieutenant General and in gratitude was awarded the title "Worthy of the Fatherland” (Άξιος της Πατρίδος) by the nation. He was in his forty first year.

In the following years, Plastiras dealt with a bout of tuberculosis and divided his time between Italy and Greece. Politicians, meanwhile, had to deal with a changed Greece whose population had swollen by close to one and a half million refugees and whose needs would be a destabilizing force for many years.  A coup and counter coup in 1925-6 did not help and, when in 1928 Venizelos again entered the political arena and gained 223 seats out of 250, Venizelists like Plastiras had high hopes for a reprise of the successful decade after his first election to parliament in 1910.

It was not to be.

The Wall Street crash of 1929, a host of other economic woes, and the slow rise of the communist party (3) in the 20’s offered much more radical solutions than the Liberal Party.  Even Venizelos’ friendship pact with Turkey in 1930, a tremendous diplomatic accomplishment, had alienated many refugees because it included a clause disallowing them from seeking compensation for property lost in Turkey.  All this contributed to Venizelos losing in 1933 to Tsaldaris, the royalist leader of the conservative People’s Party. 

A disappointed Plastiras initiated an unsuccessful coup that even Venizelos could not support and he fled to France to avoid repercussions (4). He tried another unsuccessful coup in March 1935, this time with Venezelos’ blessing. But these were not the heady days of the 1909 and 1916 coups. Venizelos fled to France where he died a year later. Both he and Plastiras were tried in absentia and sentenced to death.

 

Venizelos in 1935

After a plebiscite that no one believed reflected public opinion, King George was brought back in Triumph in 1935 and in 1936, he named future dictator Ioannis Metaxas as his prime minister.  Plastiras stayed in exile in France during the Metaxas dictatorship and during the Italian campaign and German occupation. He might have been confined to the dust heap of history were he not still popular enough to be persuaded to become titular head of EDES, a resistance movement meant to counter the left wing EAM_ELAS because its leader on the ground, Napoleon Zerva did, not have a sterling reputation.(5)

The Centre Could not Hold...

This same reputation for integrity came into play after 1944 when the newly returned from exile Greek government, backed by British troops arrived in Athens and almost immediately became embroiled in pitched battles in Athens between EAM-ELAS and their own forces which led to bloodshed in December 1944 (the so called Dekemvriana (Δεκεμβριανά).

 

The government needed to restore trust so they invited Plastiras to take on the premiership because he was the most acceptable figure to both sides. Plastiras’attempt at finding a middle ground in 1945 was doomed from the start. There was too much distrust and political ambition on both sides. Still, during his tenure, the Varkiza Agreement (6) was signed, possibly the last real attempt on anyone’s part to avert the coming civil war.

Plastiras quickly disappointed the government and the British who felt he was too soft on EAM-ELAS. He was dismissed after only three months in office, ostensibly after a letter was leaked to the press suggesting that he had flirted with the Nazis while in exile in an effort to mediate in the Greco-Italian war. (7)

Undaunted, Plastiras founded a new party in 1949 after the civil war: the National Progressive Centre Union (EPEK). The multi-worded name itself suggests an attempt to coalesce the varied middle ground of liberals and left leaning democrats into a force able to counter the conservative political climate of the time. In 1950 he was part of a short lived liberal coalition and in 1951 in a longer one in partnership with Venizelos’son, Sophocles.  He was unwell and in hospital for much of a tenure concerned with economic recovery and reconstruction. The most famous result of that effort was the damming of the Tavropos River west of Karditsa which created the Lake that now bears his name.

 

Lake Plastiras today

On the downside, his government was in power during the conviction and execution of returned communist leader Nikos Belogiannis in March 1952, despite international protest. There were other efforts on the part of his government to quell fears of a futher civil war but Plastiras also incurred the wrath of his own partners when he wanted to release 130 communist prisoners in detention on Makronissos. It is ironic that this small step for reconciliation caused the New York Times to call him a communist!  Greeks would not be in the mood for reconciliation for another thirty years. Some are still not.

Plastiras lost the elections of November 1952 and died shortly after in Athens.  He had never acquired wealth. In his will he left 216 drachmas and a 10 dollar bill to his adopted daughter Kyriakoula. At his own request his doctor, Antonios Papaioannou, surgically removed his heart which lay in a casket in the National Bank for 27 years until, draped in the Greek flag, it was placed in the folk museum of Karditsa, his home town.  Echoing the placing of Byron’s heart in Messolonghi, Kanaris’ heart in the Historical Museum of Athens, and many other hearts of Greek heroes preserved over the years suggests that he saw himself in the same heroic mode.

 

 The Grave 

 

Plaza, Number B

The Map

 

Footnotes

(1)  Eleftherios Venezelos perhaps the most astute politician Greece has ever had. He understood power and expedience and could charm the birds out of the trees.

(2) Dimitrios Gounaris, Georgios Baltatzis , Nikolaos Stratos, Nikolaos Theotokis and Petros Protopapadakis and General Georgios Hatzianestis who was the last commander-in-chief of the Asia Minor campaign. Dora Stratou, the subject of one of our biographies was Nikolaos Stratos’ daughter.

 

(3). The Communist Party (first called the Socialist Labour Party) was founded in 1918. Although never a large percentage of any election, it had disturbed Venizelos’ Liberal Party enough for them to ban communists from civil service positions such as teachers. It was banned outright by the Metaxas dictatorship in 1936 and became for that government, the cause of all social evils. The rest is history...

(4). Apparently Plastiras was smuggled out of the country in a barrel

 

(5) For the checkered career of Napoleon Zervas, see http://athensfirstcemeteryinenglish.blogspot.com/2020/08/naopoleon-zervas.html

(6)  on February 12, 1945 The Treaty of Varkiza was signed calling for a plebiscite to be held within the year to resolve constitutional issues. both signatories agreed that members of the EAM-ELAS would be permitted to participate in political activities if they surrendered their weapons. Moreover, all civil and political liberties would be guaranteed and the army would be established as a non political organization.

(7)  Apparently the Nazis had approached Plastiras. They considered him a prime taget, SS Gruppenfurhrer  Nosek was sent to sound him out. Plastiras would have been delighted if he could have brokered some sort of deal between Italy and Greece. It would be a stretch to say that made him a Nazi-sympathiser. Of course many important Greek figures were also attempting to reach out to Germany before their invasion of Greece.

 

 

 

Sources

 

https://www.sansimera.gr/biographies/184