Greece History: Twentieth century
Greece Twentieth Century
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The Cretan lawyer Eleutherios Venizelos became prime minister. He was the most influential Greek politician of the first half of the twentieth century. He worked hard for the
reunification of Crete with Greece in the 1890s and was chosen in 1909 to direct a new civilian government, after the Goudi coup of the military officers.Eleufterios Venizelos became leader of the Liberal Party, supported by the workers, merchants. The Liberal Party won the elections of 1910 and 1912 and brought Venizelos to the post of Prime Minister. He mostly worked on constitutional amendments, established social laws to ameliorate the worker’s rights, and expanded and reequipped the army.
Venizelos managed to stabilize the country.
The next major event of the period is the Balkans Wars of 1912. There were 3 huge political problems in this War: the Problem of Crete, the liberation of countries like Albania, still under the rule of Ottomans, and, finally, the disposition of Macedonia. Some Macedonians wanted their country to be united with Greece while others wanted an independent autonomous state. Other also wanted Macedonia to be united with Albania, Albania or Bulgaria. Athens actively supported Macedonia for its re-unification to Greece. The city of Thessaloniki had also developed a deep nationalist feeling. A pact between Serbia and Bulgaria was signed. Athens signed bilateral pacts with both neighbours and the three powers decided to cooperate military. They declared war to the Turks and in few weeks, the army took Thessaloniki and Ioannina.
In 1913, the Ottoman Empire, after the Treaty of London, ceded all its European possessions to the Balkans except from Albania and Trace which accessed later to independence.
Greece and Serbia, in a bilateral agreement, divided the Macedonian territory between themselves. For that reason, a Second Balkan War was declared by Bulgaria to both of the forces. Bulgaria was defeated and the major territorial gains were divided at the Treaty of Bucharest in August 1913.
After the Balkan Wars, the territory of Greece was expanded of 68 percent but more than 3 millions Greeks still remained in Ottoman territory.
The new king Constantine was crowned in 1913.
During that time, Europe was divided in two parts: the Triple Entente (Britain, France, and Russia) and the Triple Alliance or Central Powers (Germany, Austria, Italy, and eventually the Ottoman Empire). For diplomatic reasons, the choice of Greece as for taking parts was really difficult, even when the World War I erupted in the summer of 1914.
The Central powers included Bulgaria in their alliance who was still a rival of Greece for territorial reasons, and also wanted to include Turkey, Greece’s worst enemy. On the other hand, the Entente had supported the national cause during the war of independence but Queen Sofia of Greece was the sister of the Kaiser Wilhelm.
When the World War I erupted, King Constantine believed in maintaining a neutral position but the Prime Minister Venizelos was strictly pro-Entente. The Entente reinforced his position by promising to award Asia Minor (including all of modern Turkey) to Greece.
Eleutherios Venizelos set up an allied revolutionary government in Thessaloniki and invaded the city of Smyrna, which had a large Greek population. He resigned as Prime Minister when Constantine opposed the Alliance to the Entente. That brought a constitutional crisis called Ethnikos Dikhasmos, or the National Schism.
The treaty that followed provoked a population exchange. 400.000 Turkish Muslims were traded against one million Orthodox Greeks. A new wave of economical difficulties followed.
The next decade was filled with internal political agitations. Greece endured a succession of monarchies, a military rule and brief democracies.
In 1936, General Metaxas was appointed Prime Minister by the King George II and inaugurated an oppressive fascist dictatorship. Metaxas was opposed to German and Italian domination and refused Mussolini’s demand to occupy the country during World War II.
Greece fell to Germany in 1941, which resulted to the mass destruction of ancient sites,
large scale executions and the extermination of the largest part of the Jewish community by the Nazis. Resistance movements sprang up and were divided between a royalist and communist movement. A civil war started between the royalist and communists. The royalist had a great finance help from America in order to prevent a communist Greece. The American implemented the “Certificate of Political Reliability”. This document declared that the holder didn’t have left-wing sympathies. It was somehow obligatory to have this certificate otherwise Greek people could not find any type of work. The war lasted until 1949 when the royalists claimed victory.The right-wing Greek Rally party was elected with Konstantinos Karamanlis as head of it. Karamanlis, after the assassination of a communist official, resigned 10 years later. Then, the left-wing Georges Papandreou came to power. A group of army colonels staged a coup d’etat on April 21, 1967 that resulted to a Junta which was characterized by repression, brutality upon the people, censorship and political incompetence. The Junta enjoyed US support and investment.
The Junta fell in 1974 after the government killed 20 protestant students and after attempted to assassinate Cyprus’ leader, Archbishop Makarios, in order to unite Cyprus with Greece, which led to the Turkey's invasion and occupation of Northern Cyprus.
Konstantinos Karamanlis came back to power organising parliamentary elections and a referendum the fate of the future government. The monarchy was defeated by a two-third vote and a new constitution was established the 11th June of 1975. A parliamentary republic was organised, with a president at the head of the state, appointed by the legislature.
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In 1981, Greece became a member of the European Community and Andreas Papadreou and his socialist party (PASOK) won the elections. His government was then replaced by a coalition of conservatives and communists. Elections in 1990 brought the conservatives to power and in 1993, a general election brought Papadreou to power.
Kostas Simitis was appointed Prime Minister in 1996 and again in April 2000. In 2004, it was the turn of the right wing Kostas Karamanlis to be elected.
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