Here is another something that actually happened. There was a man named Metaxas. He was the dictator of Greece right around the time of the beginning of the Second World War. This man was a pilot as well as being a general in the army. He piloted his own plane.

One day somebody asked him if he would like to go out in one of the latest hydroplanes that had been developed. A hydroplane is a plane that takes off on water and lands on water. He said, “Yes, I would like to do that.” So the fellow took him out to the plane. They went up in the plane, and while they were up in the plane the fellow asked the general if he would like to pilot the plane. “Yes,” said the general. “I would like to do that.” And so they flew around for a little while, and then the fellow said, “Would you like to land the plane?” The general said, “Yes. I would like to do that.”

The first mistake Metaxas made was that he headed for the city airport. Here is this fellow thinking, “How do you say to the dictator, without getting your head shot off, that he was making a mistake here?” But he got his courage together, and he told the man, “I think it would be good if you took the plane over to the bay and land it there because we have to land on water.” “Oh, oh, yeah,” replied the dictator. So he took the plane to the bay and made a beautiful landing. He taxied up to the dock, got out of his seat, and the fellow said, “General, that was really a very good landing that you made.” Metaxas said, “Thank you,” turned around, and stepped out into the bay. That really happened. He forgot where he was. He was so obsessed on the immediate.

“Metaxas? They make good brandy,” Joel (who lived for six months in Greece) jokes, when I tell him one of my co-bloggers has asked what Greeks today think of Metaxas, the dictator who ruled Greece during the late 30s.

In fact, I’m hard pressed to say what Greeks think of Metaxas now. I never see the Metaxas years referenced in Greek papers. I’ve read Greeks harking back to the German occupation, or the long shadow of the civil war that followed, and certainly to the junta that ruled Greece when I was a child, but not to Metaxas. Nor does his name come up in conversations with my cousins. Just one act of Metaxas is celebrated to this day, the day in which he refused Mussolini’s ultimatum, still celebrated every October 28 as Ochi Day, “No Day.”

Still, there’s one Greek whose memories of the Metaxas years I did hear, and, if I can’t speak for Greeks in general, I can relate what Dad told me of those years. Dad was born in 1930, and died in 2004. When Ioannis Metaxas suspended the Greek constitution, on August 1935, Dad was not quite six. The first government Dad knew was Greece’s version of 1930s fascism. So, here are the things that I remember Dad telling me, about those days.

Greece, at the time of Metaxas, was deeply divided by the rift between royalists and Venizelists, and it’s that rift that colors the politics of Dad’s earliest childhood stories. My grandmother, Dad told me, was a staunch royalist, who named her first three sons after the first three kings of Greece (not counting King Otto, whose house did not last). Conveniently, the first two of those names were also the names, respectively, of Dad’s paternal and maternal grandfathers, so that Dad and his older brother George also got named, as Greek custom would have it, for their two grandfathers.

Dad told me that my grandfather, an army officer, welcomed Metaxas’ rule, having mistrusted the political strife that preceded it. If you shake your head at my grandfather, the fascist, you should remember that he was also my grandfather, the brilliant army civil engineer, and my grandfather, the war hero who died fighting the Axis. Some things simply looked different, in Europe in the 1930s, than they do now, in the twenty-first century.
Metaxas’ rule was brutal to Communists, but to a young child in a royalist army family, this repression didn’t hit home. And Dad’s accounts of life in Greece at that time included no official anti-Semitism in Greece’s version of authoritarian rule. In saying this, I don’t deny that Greece, like other countries, had its own degree of popular anti-Semitism, only that, to the best of my knowledge, Metaxas’ rule did not include repression of Jews, as it did of Communists.

Given what followed when the Nazis came to Greece, I questioned Dad about what life was like for Jews in Greece before the war. Dad’s mother had grown up in Thessaloniki, where Dad himself was born. Dad described Thessaloniki as “like New York,” with a large and thriving Jewish community.

He insisted, though, that my grandmother, with the Jewish sounding surname of Veniamin (Benjamin), the fluent command of Ladino (a variant of Spanish that is to Sephardic Jews what Yiddish is to Ashkenazi Jews), and the childhood in a largely Jewish city, could not have come from a Jewish family. Jews, Dad said, did not marry Christians, in the Greece of his childhood.

I have never been entirely sure whether to believe him, about the Veniamins, partly because my sense of the world is to doubt the efficacy of such barriers. I expect people to intermarry other people every which way, no matter what the barrier. For the same reason, it would surprise me not a whit if the WASP lineage on my mother’s side included, somewhere along the line, a black person or two who had passed. Still, he may have been right about our particular Veniamins, for they bear Christian rather than Jewish first names, and their civil records, microfilmed by the Mormons, describe them all as Christian, including a baptismal record for one uncle. In addition, all of my Veniamin relatives seem to have survived the war without incident (or at least, without incident beyond what Greeks in general suffered under occupation). At the very least, Greece at that time was not a place where Jew and Christian intermarried as readily as they did in the New York of my own childhood.

Dad did, though, attend school with Jewish, as well as Christian, children. He recalled envying his Jewish classmates when it came time for religion class, for they, unlike the Christians, were excused. Greece was not, Dad said, a secular country. Once I asked him how the Nazis determined who was Jewish. Everyone, Dad said, knew who was Jewish.

Dad himself spent the war in Volos, which turns out to be one of the few places in Greece where most Jews managed, with the help of their Gentile neighbors, to escape the Nazis. Dad told me he later encountered one of his classmates, who had been rescued in this way, both of them as adults living in the United States.

If Dad’s account of Metaxas’ rule didn’t include any official anti-Semitism within Greece, it also didn’t include any particular sensitivity to anti-Semitism in other authoritarian regimes of Europe. By Dad’s account (admittedly the memory of a child), the news from Germany was sunny enough that even intelligent adults might know little of the fate of the Jews under Hitler; the first sign of trouble from within Greece was not Krystallnacht, but the invasion of Poland.

One of the features of Metaxas’ rule was that he organized a mass youth movement. Dad, though, spoke only of being in what he described as a Greek version of the Boy Scouts. He told a story of being taken somewhere and asked to point out which direction was north. He pointed, correctly, north. On being asked how he had known, he said, “I looked at how the moss grows on the trees,” but really he had looked around till he spotted a church, which by Greek custom faced east. I’m not sure whether this Greek version of the Boy Scouts was or wasn’t the same thing as Metaxas’ National Youth Organization (EON); I’ve read that was the only mass organization allowed under Metaxas, so it seems likely that it would be the only version of the Boy Scouts that Dad could have joined. Dad’s account of it, though, involved more scouting type activities than political indoctrination.

The decision of Metaxas that had the biggest influence on Dad’s life, pre-war, though, was the construction of the Metaxas line. This was a line of fortifications, similar to the Maginot Line, built between Greece and Bulgaria. It failed in the same way as the Maginot Line, being outflanked when Germany invaded Greece through Yugoslavia. As far as I know, though, the fortifications themselves were sound. My grandfather, as an officer in the Greek Army Corps of Engineers, supervised their construction. My father’s family moved from one town to another along the northern border of Greece as construction proceeded.

If Dad’s memories of life under Metaxas were relatively benign, you should not assume, for that reason, that Dad himself had any sympathy for fascism or authoritarian rule. Dad was a Republican whose hero was Reagan, and whose strongest political beliefs involved support for free trade, supply side economics, and low taxes. I can’t recall him ever defending the junta that ruled Greece when I was young, or the military coup that deposed Allende in Chile (I’m sure his opinion of Allende would have been low, but that doesn’t mean that his opinion of Pinochet would have been high). One of Dad’s first jobs, while still in Greece, involved writing for a paper run by a man who proved to be quite right wing, and Dad told me he got in trouble, at that job, for writing that fascism and Communism were equally bad (his boss insisted that Communism was far worse).

Still, Dad’s early childhood under Metaxas gave way to a later childhood of German occupation followed by bitter civil war. And, compared with either Nazi occupation or civil war, homegrown fascism must have seemed, to a child, almost benign.

[Source]

At the same time, Carabott shows that in Metaxas’ regime the utopian dream of the ‘Third Hellenic Civilization’ was firmly based on notions from the past, notably classical antiquity and Byzantium. The glorification of ancient Greece recalls nineteenth-century processes of self-fashioning which cast the new Greek state as the modem heir to ancient glory, and in which Byzantium served as a vital bridge between ancient past and modern present to support claims to continuity. But Metaxas’ notion of history was highly selective: ancient Sparta was favored over Athens because of its perceived disciplined political organization, and ancient military events and virtues were favored over perceived intellectual or artistic achievements. His ideological construction thus contradicted certain cherished images of classical Greece, especially those held elsewhere in Europe, and reminds us of the diversity inherent in the idea of antiquity.

Download Monumental Visions – The Past in Metaxas Weltanschauung here.

Πρόκειται για μελέτη των απεικονίσεων της μεταξικής νεολαίας, με απώτερο στόχο να μελετηθεί μέσω των απεικονίσεων αυτών η αισθητική του καθεστώτος της 4ης Αυγούστου. Όμως η αισθητική ενός καθεστώτος είναι η καταγραφή της λογικής του, και για το λόγο αυτό γίνεται αναφορά στους βασικούς ιδεολογικούς άξονες σύμφωνα με τους οποίους «σχεδιάστηκαν» και παράχθηκαν τα μέσα προπαγάνδας του μεταξικού καθεστώτος. Διατυπώνονται μερικές πρώτες σκέψεις για τις απεικονίσεις της Ε.Ο.Ν., έπειτα γενικότερες σκέψεις γύρω από αυτές, και στη συνέχεια οι απεικονίσεις ταξινομούνται δίπλα στα κείμενα κατά τέτοιον τρόπο, ώστε από μόνες τους, μέσα από μια σύνθεση μικρών σεναρίων, να αποτελούν ένα συγγενικό λόγο, να συνθέτουν μια επιχειρηματολογία που δεν έχει ανάγκη τη διαμεσολάβηση μιας επεξήγησης «τεχνικής» φύσεως. …

Here’s the book’s abstract in French language:

L’ instauration de la dictature de Métaxas a été préparée par la restauration monarchique et opérée par en haut. Ce qui a joué un rôle très important pour son instauration c’était le contexte international et la situation politique économique et sociale de la Grèce, influencée par la crise mondiale et surtout par: la destruction de l’ Asie Mineure, due à la défaite politique du parti de Vénizélos, la crise intérieure des autres partis et la mobilisation des couches populaires.

En ce qui concerne l’organisation et le fonctionnement de l’Etat métaxiste il y a eu des changements par rapport à la période vénizelo-républicaine.

Il y a eu de nouveaux organes politiques, de nouveaux mécanismes de «consensus» et, en particulier, la définition d’une organisation de l’idéologie et de la culture au plus vaste sens du mot, celle de la Jeunesse. En plus, l’Etat, le «Nouvel Etat» a eu un projet totalitaire, défini par le contrôle absolu de l’Etat sur la société civile et retrouvé dans le slogan «Rien hors l’Etat, tout pour l’Etat».

Ce qui est important dans le cas de la Grèce sous la dictature de Métaxas c’est que l’idéologie et la culture sont symboliquement et seulement symboliquement le lieu d’«accomplissement» du projet totalitaire, puisqu’il y a eu une absence de tout projet consciemment totalitaire. Ce travail, ayant comme support les images de la jeunesse métaxiste, essaie de découvrir et de déployer l’idéologie qui les a fabriquées pour qu’elles deviennent, par la répétition, elles-mêmes une sorte de système idéologique.

C’ est alors à travers l’«image» de l’organisation Nationale de la Jeunesse Grecque que j’essaie de clarifier, jusqu’à un certain point, l’utilisation des notions de: patrie, religion, famille qui, à leur tour, s’appuient sur les mythes du groupe, de la race et du Chef charismatique.

This book was released by the Historical Archive of the Youth IAEN under a Creative Commons license that allows the free circulation of the book as long as it has a non-profit character, the source is mentioned, and it’s made available under the same conditions.

You can either download it at IAEN’s website or you can buy a print book at Pelekys.com, the publishing house that has printed several copies on a non-profit basis (thus fully adhering to the Creative Commons license).

A great contribution to this interesting debate can be found in Aristotle Kallis’ paper “Neither Fascist nor Authoritarian: The 4th of August Regime in Greece (1936-1941) and the Dynamics of Fascistisation in 1930s Europe”. In it, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History Aristotle Kallis argues that the regime had enough signals to consider it fascist, or at least study it within the larger fascist experience in Europe. Here’s the paper’s abstract:

The 4th of August regime in Greece under Ioannis Metaxas has long been treated by theories of ‘generic fascism’ as a minor example of authoritarianism or at most a case of failed fascism. This derives from the ideas that the Metaxas dictatorship did not originate from any original mass ‘fascist’ movement, lacked a genuinely fascist revolutionary ideological core and its figurehead came from a deeply conservative-military background. In addition, the regime balanced the introduction ‘from above’ of certain ‘fascist’ elements (inspired by the regimes in Germany, Italy and Portugal) with a pro-British foreign policy and a strong deference to both the Crown and the church/religion. Nevertheless, in this chapter, I argue that the 4th of August regime should be relocated firmly within the terrain of fascism studies. The establishment and consolidation of the regime in Greece reflected a much wider process of political and ideological convergence and hybridisation between anti-democratic/anti-liberal/anti-socialist conservative forces, on the one hand, and radical rightwing/fascist politics, on the other. It proved highly receptive to specific fascist themes and experiments (such as the single youth organisation, called EON), which it transplanted enthusiastically into its own hybrid of ‘radicalised’ conservatism. Although far less ideologically ‘revolutionary’ compared to Italian Fascism or German National Socialism, the 4th of August regime’s radicalisation between 1936 and 1941 marked a fundamental departure from conventional conservative-authoritarian politics in a direction charted by the broader fascist experience in Europe.

Since World War II began 14 months ago the Balkan Peninsula has run a temperature. Periodic scares have sent it to fever pitch, then dropped it as, one way or another, neighboring powers got their way without bloodshed. Rumania is partitioned and overrun by the German Army. Bulgaria takes orders from the Axis. Even Yugoslavia, which has a relatively large, well- trained Army, has taken the path of appeasement. This week war came at last to the Balkans, to the weakest country, but to the one country determined enough to stand up to Axis threats — to Greece.

Hellas has always been invaded. Since the barbarians carried the centre of power from southern to northern Europe she has been a pawn in all great struggles for power. Salonika is a back door to Central Europe, a jumping-off place to the Dardanelles and the Black Sea. Rocky Greek islands straggle across the Aegean to the shores of Turkey. The Peloponnesian Peninsula lies close to Italy; Crete, halfway to Africa. In this war Greece’s fate was settled at Brennero on Oct. 4, when Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini planned their drive to the east. For Greece is the key to control of two of the three routes to the east : by land and sea through Turkey, by sea via the Mediterranean. Even the third route is controlled in part by Greece : the capture of Crete would help to safe guard Italy’s Libyan route into Egypt.

Only strategic reasons could justify wasting military effort, however small, on Greece. The country is rocky, arid, grows little food. Greece’s occasional prosperity has been based on maritime trade, and with the bulk of Greek shipping chartered to Britain, Italy will not get that.

As he defiantly rejected Italy’s three-hour ultimatum, Premier “Little John” Metaxas addressed himself to the Greek people in words reminiscent of the days of Byron. As Greece’s poorly equipped, indifferently trained Army fought 200,000 Italian regulars in the mountains of Epirus and Macedonia Little John, who had once been thought an Axis stooge, called for aid from Britain and Turkey. Turkey’s President Ismet Inönü had one ear cocked toward the Kremlin, and since his other ear is stone deaf, he did not immediately hear the call. Britain, expecting an attack on Gibraltar any day, sent her Mediterranean Fleet steaming toward the danger area. If Britain lost in the Eastern Mediterranean, and lost Gibraltar too, her goose was much closer to being cooked.

The Mind of Metaxas

Little John Metaxas, who was pro-German in World War I, changed from a waverer to a stiff-backed defier of the Axis after several months of intrigue in that most intriguing country, Greece. Six months ago he was thought ready to sell out to Mussolini. Then Britain, having relearned a lesson in Norway and Belgium that she knew well in World War I, began to put pressure on Little John through the man everybody considers his puppet—Greece’s King George II. Britain made it clear that unless Greece agreed to secret staff talks and precise plans for military cooperation, Britain would seize whatever bases she needed. Metaxas agreed, and the Axis turned its attention to another choice for Puppet of Greece: King George’s ten-inch-taller brother, Prince Paul, who is married to a German princess. So Greece’s George II had his throne at stake when he exhorted his people this week: “At this great moment I feel sure that every Greek man and woman will do his duty to the end and show himself worthy of our glorious history.”

George’s father lost his throne in the last war because he was thought to be pro-German. So was George. But George got on his throne in 1935 only because he was Britain’s man, so he would have been less than grateful if he had failed to pay his debt. This week’s events had a strangely familiar look to the Greek people. In the last war the roles of the great powers were reversed, but the Greeks and their rulers were on the same, receiving end of the trouble.

Kings and Strong Men.

Almost from the day World War I began Greece was a centre of intrigue. King Constantine, his eldest son George and his Chief of Staff John Metaxas were accused by the Allies of being pro-German. In point of fact, the King at least was scrupulously neutral. In 1915 the Allies landed troops at Salonika in an ill- starred attempt to save Serbia; in 1916 they shelled Athens to make the Greeks give up their arms; in 1917 they almost starved Greece to force her into the war. Against this pressure and against the quisling tactics of Eleutherios Venizelos (whom the King had deposed as Premier for conniving with the Allies in the Salonika adventure) Constantine could not hold out. In June 1917 he fled the country with his Queen and Crown Prince George. Venizelos returned from exile and declared Greece in the war.

The Allies set up Constantine’s second son, Alexander, as a puppet King, with Venizelos as the country’s strong man. This arrangement worked well until Alexander happened to be bitten on the ankle by a monkey, ending his career in October 1920, just 20 years ago last week. The next month Greeks went to the polls, expressed three years of resentment against Venizelos by overthrowing the Government. In a plebiscite on Constantine’s return, huge and genial “Tino” got 150% of the eligible votes. He returned to Athens at the end of 1920, inheriting a war against the Turks.

He stayed less than two years. France and Great Britain refused to recognize him, he was blamed for the debacle at Smyrna, and after a demonstration led by Colonel Nicholas Plastiras he abdicated again. He was succeeded by Son George, who lasted just 15 months. Venizelos, recalled to salvage at Lausanne what he could from the Turkish imbroglio, could not get along with him; the country soon split into two camps, Venizelists (i.e., republicans) and Monarchists. In December 1923, after a Venizelist victory at the polls, George and his Queen, Elizabeth of Rumania, were asked to leave the country while Parliament decided on the future form of government. On March 25, 1924, 103rd anniversary of the Greek declaration of independence, Parliament proclaimed a republic.

Altogether, between 1923 and 1935, there were 25 Greek administrations plus two dictatorships (one for 14 months under General Pangalos, the other for 14 hours under General Plastiras). In October 1935 an Army coup established General George (The Thunderbolt) Kondylis as Premier and Regent; the republican Constitution was abolished and monarchy restored. After much international political finagling Georgios II was invited to replace his British bowler with the diadem of his forefathers.

Gorgeous Georgios

This twice-enthroned son of a twice-abdicated father had been bored by his twelve years of exile. In London, where he lived most of the time, he liked nothing so much as strolling along through the streets at night —and once he had the distinction of being the first King known to have been solicited by a prostitute. George’s preference was for noble ladies, a preference which had caused him to be divorced by his Queen just before his return from exile.

He had been accustomed to the privileged but democratic life of small-time royalty. The Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg family, which ascended the Greek throne in 1863, had the easygoing habits of all Danes. George grew up at Tatoï Castle, 15 miles from Athens, whence came the family eggs-&-butter; at Mon Repos on the island of Corfu, where his grandfather always spent the month of April because Kaiser Wilhelm II used to go there in April and Georgios I said: “If I don’t, he’ll think he’s King of Greece”; and in the Athens Royal Palace, a gaunt structure of stuccoed white marble. George II’s Uncle Christopher had a sense of humor, wrote of the Palace: “It was hideous—like a huge cardboard box. . . . There was only one bathroom in the whole place and no one had ever been known to take a bath in it. … The taps would scarcely ever run and emitted a thin trickle of water in which the corpses of defunct roaches and other strange animals floated dismally. . . . The Palace in itself would have been a joy to any child. The long, dim galleries and unused rooms made endless appeal to the imagination. The vast entrance hall and the grand staircase were ideal for hide-&-seek. Then the delight of bicycling on wet afternoons through the enormous ballrooms. . . ”

Georgios I used to lead the bicycle procession, his children and grandchildren following in order of age. Uncle Christopher, Constantine’s younger brother, was only two years older than Grandson Georgios and was his playmate. When they were 21 and 19 they paid a giddy three-weeks visit to Buckingham Palace and were trotted around by Uncle Edward of Saxe Coburg-Gotha. George served in Uncle William Hohenzollern’s Prussian Guards for a time, fought in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13. In 1913 Grandfather Georgios was assassinated and Father Constantine became King. By 1917 George was a Major of infantry and Commander in the Greek Navy, but his father’s abdication kept him from doing anything in the last war. George drove off in one of the fleeing cars, lying on the floor with his legs waving out of the open door. For the next 18 years (except for his brief puppet reign in 1922-23) he was out of a job. He once described himself as “one of the unemployed who hopes to get his job back.”

But in 1935 George suddenly found himself internationally important. Italy’s man in Greece was the old Thunderer, George Kondylis, who was serving as War Minister. George became Britain’s man. Premier at that time was Panagiotis Tsaldaris. George’s family gave a banquet at Bled, Yugoslavia, for Premier Tsaldaris, who went into dinner a republican, came out a royalist. That put the squeeze on Kondylis, who helped to rig the plebiscite that recalled George by a 98% vote. The Royal Family and Michael Arlen saw him off from London. He set foot on Greek soil on Nov. 25, 1935. Athens was decorated with arches on which republican youths spattered ink. Royalist youths chipped in to buy the King a Royal Bed.

Rise of Little John

When the shouting was over Greece was in just as bad a political mess as ever. Kondylis wanted to be a Duce; George wantedto be a real King. He dismissed Kondylis (who shortly died), called for free elections. The elections only made things worse. Venizelists and anti-Venizelists were almost evenly divided and the balance of power in the new Parliament was held by 15 Communists. Venizelos and Tsaldaris, who might have helped the King to maintain constitutional government, died. Thereupon George called on War Minister John Metaxas (whose party held seven seats) to form a Government. Metaxas did. To avoid a test vote he persuaded the King to dissolve Parliament. Next day Metaxas reorganized his Cabinet, abolished political parties, imposed a ferocious censorship. In 1938 he made himself Premier for life.

Little John has not been popular in Greece. His Government is neither a constitutional monarchy nor a corporative State, but it has those fascist elements of regimentation, government by decree, secret police and a youth movement. There are no civil liberties, but cigarets are cheap and every man can afford a string of beads to twiddle in his idle fingers. Metaxas is Premier, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Cults and National Education, Minister of War, Minister of Marine, Air Minister. His chief hold on the King is a little secret between them: the King, who is always hard up, signed a decree paying himself his salary for the years of his exile, and the King knows that if Little John gets mad he will spill the story to the country.

Bone and Gristle

Fifty-year-old George is childless, disinclined to marry again. Once he was reported engaged to the Countess of Craven. The Countess’ mother denied the rumor, but added: “I may state, however, that my daughter and the King of Greece have been close friends for about 15 years.” A year before that, while Edward VIII was cruising in the Adriatic, King George invited him to dine with him—”alone.” Cousin Edward arrived with Mrs. Simpson. A few days later Edward invited Cousin George to dine with him alone. George arrived with his friend. Neither family life nor intellectual pursuits interest the King of Greece. He loves circuses, once rode in one as a boy. He likes to drive a car fast, to shoot big game, to dance, go to first nights, wear snappy clothes—stripes and braided uniforms.

This week modern Greece had, for better or worse, stepped out of her comic- opera role. Greece was full in the path of huge events. In a debate at the Oxford Union during his exile George once said: “Instinctively I distrust the professor and the pedant. Give me a burly man of bone and gristle.” This week the men of bone were on the way.

Until we secure mothers of conscience for Greece, we must emphasise the family order . . . . As the family is the basic cell of every society, mothers also constitute the primary foundation of society. (Neolaia, July 1937)

The compounded impact of the economic and political crises of the interwar period undermined in a fundamental way the legitimacy of the liberal bourgeois order that was epitomised by Venizelos. The protracted and bitter Venizelist-Royalist conflict made the 1930s, especially the period between 1932 and 1936, one of extreme political instability marked by several regime shifts, unsuccessful broad coalition governments, and three different coups, each one launched from a different point on the political spectrum. The restoration of the monarchy in 1935, and the serious political vacuum which followed, left the door ajar for the imposition of more authoritative solutions. The dictatorship of General Ioannis Metaxas came to power on 4 August 1936, and lasted until his death in 1941, shortly before the invasion of the German army. The fascist credentials of the Metaxas regime have been the subject of significant debate amongst historians of the period, many of whom strongly contend that the Metaxas state was not fascist but authoritarian with fascist leanings, more comparable to Spain’s Franco than the fascist regimes of Germany and Italy. The most notable differences between them were the Metaxas state’s relative non-violence; it did not pursue an expansionist agenda or institute anti-Semitic programs, and it lacked a mass political movement. But like Mussolini and Hitler, Metaxas rose to power on the wave of political and social instability of the 1920s and early 1930s, and his regime was characterised by two negative attributes: anti-communism and anti-parliamentarism, ‘evils’ which he regarded as being perilous to the integrity of the Greek nation. The regime had two positive objectives that were linked with its extreme nationalism: the much touted Regeneration and National Unity, which in conjunction would bring into being the ‘Third Civilisation’. This new civilisation combined the finest elements of the ancient classical (Spartan) and Byzantine traditions, although the content of the Third Civilisation was never sufficiently developed—a vague dream comprised of generalities. Metaxas’s regeneration promoted an inward-looking celebration of ‘Greekness’, with explicit references to the ‘Greek race’, whose destiny was to civilise the world that was characteristic of the populist, anti-Venizelist right. Sarandis (1993) has argued that the combined qualities of the Metaxas state point far less to fascism than to ‘paternalistic’ benevolent dictatorship of the New Right.

The intensification of labour unrest engendered by the Depression had reached a climax after the passing of legislation that enforced Compulsory Arbitration and Social Security Payments. This culminated in the trade-union decision to wage a 24-hour general strike. On 4 August 1936, the threat of the somewhat mythical ‘communist’ strike legitimised Metaxas’s move to suspend the constitution, with the full support of the monarchy, and declare his absolute rule over the land. The following day, Metaxas’s address to the nation declared (a) the ‘restoration’ of order across the country; (b) the ‘relief’ of the Greek people who had been awaiting such a political shift; and (c) new government policies directed at the moral and material support of the working class and of the disenfranchised, generally.  Metaxas was simultaneously reviled for his dictatorial state and admired for the policies he introduced to socialise the Greek economy: the introduction of a minimum wage; unemployment insurance; a five-day, forty-hour working week; a guaranteed two-week vacation; stricter occupational safety; and maternity leave. At the same time there were extensive arrests of trades unionists and communists, the establishment of concentration camps on remote islands, the creation of a secret police force, and the institutionalised use of torture, although the regime did not commit political murders or instate the death penalty.

Metaxas’s repugnance for parliamentary government—and his contempt for the misguided, alien, and utopian ideologies of individualism, liberalism, and historical materialism which had conflict between state and society at their core—would be replaced by a militant commitment to order, discipline, and work. His motto of a disciplined freedom, in combination with a collectivistic nationalism, would merge the individual with the whole and forge a sense of national unity, pride, and glory which Greece had lacked for so long.

Individualism was viewed as fundamentally incompatible with the social nature of humankind; liberalism as a misguided and utopian understanding of freedom; historical materialism as equally incompatible with human nature, for its theory of value ignored the spiritual and focused exclusively on the material dimensions of human existence. Giorgios A. Madzoufas, an official of the regime, argued that the combined influence of these two philosophical schools of thought ultimately endangered the existence of the Greek nation, because ‘. . . each individual had become incapable of seeing beyond his own narrow egocentric concerns; he considered himself free to do as he pleased, a condition which can only lead to anarchy; and he suffered a regression in each and every attempt at spiritual progress’ (Neolaia, September 1937).

While Metaxas abolished the civil rights of men and women, as in German National Socialism and Italian fascism, Metaxas’s  rhetoric bestowed upon the nation’s subjects—the working masses and women in particular—an unprecedented level of political and national significance. This was rather striking for Greek women, who unlike men had never enjoyed full citizenship status, but had been excluded from the public domain. Metaxas brought women into the centre-stage of political life and national discourse by creating a cult of Mother Worship, in which the nation’s mothers and all women, as potential mothers, were not just valued members of the national family but were also integral to the national destiny. It parallels both Koonz’s (1987) and De Grazia’s (1992) observations of the extreme maternalism of German and Italian fascism respectively, as a means of co-opting women, who were unlikely supporters, into the regime. Moreover, Metaxas’s ‘Mother Worship’, like the German and Italian manifestations, had unforeseen consequences for the history and development of the Greek welfare state, especially regarding mothers and children.

The regime’s obsession with the ‘demographic problem’ inspired novel strategies designed to boost the birth rate and to reinforce traditional family values, which combined to bring ironic outcomes. The drive to bring the so-called Third Civilisation into being, guided by the Spartan style values of country, religion, and family, led to a heavy investment in the welfare infrastructure. The ‘battle for births’ in Metaxas’s Greece, as De Grazia (1992) argues in the case of Italian fascism, established the new rather than restored the old. It established unprecedented levels of pre-natal and infant care for children up to three years of age, provided by ‘Consultation Centres for Expectant Mothers’ (established in Athens and across rural Greece). Kindergartens for 3-to-6-year-old children were set up and catered to the needs of the poor and of  ‘working mothers . . . who can hand over their children to the protective care of Society . . . rather than abandon them to the squalor of the street’ (Neolaia, August 1939). The National Child Care Centres were expanded for the aid of children of working mothers and of widows in particular. These centres, operated by professional teachers, were open throughout the working week, and accepted children in the early morning until the early evening when they returned the children to their mothers. In addition, Children’s Seaside and Mountain Recreational Resorts were established, which aimed to take in ‘approximately 5,000 children each summer with special health needs, preferably from poor homes, and typically from urban industrial centres’. They were designed to boost national health and thus assist ‘in the production of healthy future citizens and a reduction in the number of patients in the nation’s hospitals’ (Neolaia, August 1939).

As in Italy, the Greek fascist regime’s treatment of women demonstrated the incoherence of its vision, or what De Grazia (1992: 2) refers to, in the Italian case, as the ‘deep conflict within the [fascist] state between the demands of modernity and the desire to reimpose traditional authority’. In Greece, feminist organisations such as the League for Women’s Rights were amongst the first casualties of the Metaxas state, not just because the regime condemned the goals of feminism (the vote, workforce participation, for example) but also because feminism was a product of liberalism and, as such, the cult of the individual lay at its centre. For Metaxas, women intellectuals were ‘natural enemies of the New State’, they were social outcasts, products of ‘boulevard feminism’, despised for their perceived hostility to women’s natural and national destiny—motherhood—and, by extension, the sabotage of the ‘national family’. For instance, Sitsa Karaiskakis, a prominent propagandist for women of the Metaxas regime, preached relentlessly from the pages of the youth journal, Neolaia, about the importance of awakening in women ‘. . . the desire for family, as this is the holy source of the National Renaissance . . . . The pseudo-philanthropy of liberals in their disdain for traditional values which they believe reduce women to child-bearing machines, is nothing less than a criminal act. Woman’s so-called liberal and communist protectors fed her soul poison and allowed her to forget her great vocation. A nation without youth is a nation condemned to death’ (Neolaia, August 1937).

The National Council, by virtue of its links with conservative political elites, continued to operate until the outbreak of the Second World War, but its scope was dramatically reduced in line with the demands of the regime. When Metaxas banned all left or liberal-leaning political activity in 1936, the National Council, unlike the League, was permitted to continue operating, as was Parren’s Lyceum. By 1940 the National Council had effectively become a philanthropic organisation, and one-third of its executive council was to be appointed by the Ministry of National Welfare (Hellinis, 1940, vol. 11).

Metaxas’s references to a glorious past lost in the mire of the liberal experiment resuscitated images of Spartan and Byzantine glories as well as images of the more recent glory of the Revolution, incorporating into inspirational narratives the heroic women warriors who had been recast as feminist icons by Parren some decades earlier. Metaxas drew on these images, not to promote the advancement of women in education and the workplace but as symbols of their tradition, sacrifice, and commitment to the nation.

Matawan’s youth organization, EON, was central to the Third Civilisation he envisaged. Its journal, Neolaia, used many of these images alongside others of uniformed child-soldiers of different ranks (scouts to phalangists) lined up in military fashion at the numerous events staged across the country by the organization. The emphasis was on ‘physical and spiritual training’ as a means of reinforcing loyalty to the regime and to embed within the young the ‘ideals of the nation’, for they were its ultimate inheritors and guardians. EON was conceived as the ‘spinal cord’ of the national project, for ‘. . . if the individual does not subordinate himself to the interests of the whole, and does not consider his individual interests as inferior to those, then the State cannot exist and nor can its institutions’ (Neolaia, September 1937).

EON established sex-segregated schooling and activities which aimed to create ‘. . . men out of boys, with a keen sense of their responsibility to the nation’s whole and to themselves, either as leaders of Society, or as humble workers . . . and mothers of the young girls, guardians of tradition, transmitters of national ideals to subsequent generations’ (Neolaia, September 1938). As discussed earlier, Metaxas’s hyper-maternalist conceptions of women’s citizenship role, while narrowly inscribed, elevated motherhood to a national priority and, by extension, boosted their cultural status and the standards of health care. In a sense, this overblown maternalism offered more to women than its understated liberal counterpart, whereby men inhabited and defined public life and women were the unsung heroes of a femininised private sphere, conceived of as apolitical.

The Metaxas state trained girls in ‘Home Economics, which comprised three main areas of learning modelled vaguely on the education systems of Spartan military society. The curriculum concentrated on Nourishment, Attire and Spiritual Housekeeping, with a strong physical education component to nurture strong women who would, in turn, produce citizen-soldiers with healthy bodies and minds’ (Neolaia, September 1938). The induction of girls into EON would ‘. . . put an end to red nails and perfume brands as the central concern of young girls, and instead inspire them as true Mothers of the Race’. In the special pages for girls inNeolaia, Sitsa Karaiskakis transmitted the feminine ideal promoted by the Metaxas state: ‘The girl who previously called for rights and emancipation, will realise that deep inside her lies the truth of her existence as the biological foundation of the Greek social whole’ (in Mahaira, 1987: 78). The specific educational program for girls in EON would facilitate this ‘awakening’.

The ‘Fourth of August’ regime collapsed in April 1941, few months after Metaxas’s death in January 1941. Soon after, the large-scale German invasion of Greece followed by the Axis occupation made way for the installation of a fascist puppet government under Giorgos Tsolakoglou.

This article is part of a paper examining the interplay between archaeology and dictatorship in the context of the Greek experience. This particular part is related to the period of fascism in Greece (1936-1941).

The picture of Greece in the inter-war years was one of military movements, successive general elections, economic strains and social anxiety, which eventually led to the downfall of constitutional government. The elections of 9 January 1936 produced a hung parliament with the communists, who had received only a minimal portion of the national vote, holding the crucial balance between the royalists and the repubUcans. The political deadlock that ensued wasfinally resolved on 13 April by King Georgios II, who, without consulting party leaders, designated as prime minister loannis Metaxas, a marginal far right figure in the parliament. The General had already had a long military and political career, always a devoted royalist. Soon after his appointment as premier, he proceeded to abolish democracy, under the pretext of constraining trade union demonstrations that were taking place in several cities against the rising cost of living and the threat of incoming dictatorship. When a general strike was called for 5 August, Metaxas took the ultimate step by persuading the king to declare martial law. The king accepted the installation of a dictatorship, with Metaxas at its head, to forestall a “communist uprising” and a “repetition of events in Spain” (cited in Andricopoulos, 1980:577, 583, n. 46). A number of key articles regarding civil rights in the constitution were suspended and parliament was formally dissolved. Unsurprisingly, Metaxas claimed that these were merely temporary measures until the communist menace was driven off. In reality, however, parliament was not to reconvene until 1946, after ten of the most tragic years in Greece’s modern history. Since the dictator had seized power on the pretence that the country was threatened by the communists, the latter were by far the greatest victims among his political opponents. Imprisonment, torture and concentration camps on remote islands were the most popular “corrective” methods employed by the regime.

Backed by the army and police and tolerated by the king, Metaxas met with Uttle opposition but equally with little support; the reaction of the majority of Greek people was one of resignation occasioned by the inability of the politicians to reconcile their differences. In ironic contrast to his Germanophile pronouncements, Metaxas’ foreign policy remained friendly to Britain, in harmony with the king’s wishes. Indeed, he caught the popular mood, the politicians’ and even the Communist Party’s approval when he gave his famous, one-word negative answer (“Ohi!”, i.e. “No!”) to a humiliating ultimatum posed by the Italian government on 28 October 1940, thus leading Greece to war against the Axis forces as the only then-active ally of the British.

Ideological Contours

Metaxas’ doctrine, an amalgam of anti-communism, racism, nationalism (albeit of the non-expansionist variety) and populism, was developed along with the personal history of the man. Bom on the Ionian island of Ithaca (never occupied by the Turks) to an old aristocratic family, which traced its roots back to late Byzantine times, he considered the Byzantium as his ultimate homeland. Devotion to the king (the alleged successor of the Byzantine emperors) was for him an unquestionable duty of his nobility, and he looked down upon the nouveau riche bourgeoisie of politicians. These ideas took root during his study at the prestigious military academy of Berlin early in the twentieth century, under the patronage of the Crown Prince of Greece Konstantinos.

Indeed, Metaxas perceived it as his prophetic mission to reconstitute the “old glory” for his now “humble” country His paternalistic style was signalled by the adoption of titles such as “Great Hellene,” “National Father,” “First Peasant,” and “First Worker,” and he shared the loathing of parliamentary democracy and communism, characteristic of German Nazism and Italian fascism, although his regime altogether lacked their dynamism. He envisaged a “New State” as a means of deactivating communist conspiracies, intervening “in all branches of social and economic life, in order to reconcile capital and labour and to meet the growing grievances of the industrial proletariat” (cited in Kofas, 1983:66,219 n. 61). His admiration for the “serious German spirit” was in contrast with what he saw as his compatriots’ lack of sense of corporate loyalty In pursuit of his objective to recast the Greek character in a more disciplined mode, he adopted many of the practices of fascism. He placed great emphasis on the youth’s national indoctrination, which would accomplish his vision of regenerating Hellenism and secure the continuation of his “ideals” after his death. To this effect, he founded the National Organization of Youth (EON), modelled after the German and Italian youth bodies, to serve as his Praetorian Guard.

In Metaxas’ ideological construct, the immediate past—the period from independence to the institution of his dictatorship—is denounced as a period of degradation, which justifies disciplinary measures. It is always contrasted with the present, the quintessence of “national greatness.” Greek history is seen as having experienced three landmarks of “glory,” all three under authoritarian regimes. The “First Hellenic Civilization” was the “Golden Age” of Athens, when Pericles ruled as a virtual dictator behind a democratic fagade. The “Second Hellenic Civilization” was the Byzantium, when Christianity spread among millions and the Greek spirit flourished for a millennium under an imperial autocracy. In conscious imitation of Hitler’s Third Reich, the “Third Hellenic Civilization” was to be Metaxas’ own regime.

The era of the “Third Hellenic Civilization” saw repeated book burnings in well-publicised gatherings. Among the classic works that were destroyed were those of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Bernard Shaw, Johann Goethe, Johann Fichte, Heinrich Heine, Anatole France, Fiodor Dostojevski, Maxim Gorki, Leo Tolstoy, Stefan Zweig, the Greek novelist Alexandros Papadiamantis, and others whose ideas were believed to be “anti-national.” Even the staging of Sophocles’ Antigone and the teaching of Pericles’ funeral oration in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War were banned. Thus, we read the following provincial order, which was made general for all of the country on orders from Athens:

… In the teaching of ancient Greek in the 6th High School Grade, omit the funeral oration of Pericles, substituting some Platonic dialogue, because the funeral oration, extolling democratic ideas, may be misunderstood by the students as indirect criticism of the vigorous government policy and, in general, of the trend of the present State. We say misunderstood because the National Government in reality is furthering democratic ideas and properly conceived liberty by striking at demagogic tendencies and sources of decay Because, however, adolescence does not have the ability for induction and for the tiresome search for truth, and is prone to the formation of beliefs based only upon emotions, it is advisable that the brilliant pages of Thucydides be left for those years when the Greek youth, sufficiently mature, may hear from university professors an analysis of the beauty of the ancient texts. Otherwise, there exists the probability that these pages will produce the same ruinous disintegrating results that they did during the period of the Peloponnesian War, when they were recited to the unstable populace of Athens by the great Pericles, who presented so brilliantly the victories of democracy to the intellectually unprepared Athenian rabble, that it overestimated its strength and destroyed with anarchist arrogance the wonderful works which democratic ideas had created in a more suitable period… (cited in Stavrianos, 2000:673)

The above excerpt illustrates eloquently the selective use of the distant past in the service of Metaxas’ propaganda. On the one hand, ancient Athens is celebrated as a cultural archetype and, on the other, Athenian democracy, which produced the very intellectual achievements so admired by the regime, is criticized as a mob rule responsible for the Peloponnesian War. It should come as no surprise that Metaxas felt more comfortable with Sparta, because its citizens were blindly devoted to the state. The Spartan model of self-discipline, prowess and obedience became the principal model for the “New State;” and the promise “we shall surpass you,” which young Spartans gave their fathers before the latter went to war, was used to reinforce the youth’s belief in the country’s progress.

In ironic contrast to the status of ancient Spartan women, the morals of the regime demanded that their contemporary counterparts remain low-key and domestic. Only the motherly role was highlighted with powerful images of the motherland and women-as-mothers-of-heroes—again vahdated through glorious examples of the past, such as the Spartans. Motherhood has traditionally been a sacred notion in Greek society, politically manipulated within a heroic and thus male-centered context. On the contrary, motherhood as an essentially female quality, divorced from the heroic spirit, tends to acquire ambiguous, if not negative, connotations. Loukia Metaxa, the dictator’s daughter and a leader in EON, remarks:

Greeks have always known to show a virile ethos, low in numbers, frugal, poor, victorious over theflaccid matriarchal materialism and its infidel and barbarous hordes. (Metaxa and Govostis, 1977:269)

Prehistoric matriarchy had been a hotly debated issue for several decades. Bronze Age Crete, in particular, had been considered as a prime example of matrifocal goddess-centered societies. During these very years the father of Minoan archaeology, the celebrated Sir Arthur Evans, sought (late in his life) the roots of Christianity in the matriarchal (as he believed) cults of Crete, thus creating an image of a “Minoan Madonna”:

[Minoan] Religion itself belonged fundamentally to Western Asia. It is not strange, therefore, that the form of Christian belief that we still see to-day throughout the Mediterranean area shouldfind some interesting anticipations in that of Minoan Crete. The root idea was matriarchal and the Mother Goddess presides. The adoration of Mother and Child on a Minoan signet-ring, with the Magi in the shape of warriors bringing gifts, is almost a replica of a Christian ring-stone of the Sixth Century of our era. The mother here with the Child on her lap is a true Madonna, (cited in MacGillivray, 2000:302)

Evans was a principal honoree at the 30th anniversary of the British School at Athens. During the celebrations held in London in the fall of 1936, the Greek government representative aptly captured the publics (partially informed) perception of archaeological achievement by stating that:

… Sir Arthur Evans had the unique distinction of turning into authentic history what had previously been considered as mythology (cited in MacGillivray, 2000:301)

Olympic Festivals

Nazi abuse of the past manifested itself in international exaggeration of Germanic influences and idealization of classical antiquity (Arnold, 1990; Fleischer, 2000; loannidis, 1988). Sparta was admired for its “pioneering eugenic” policies and Athens for its artistic and intellectual perfection. Hider contributed his own views on the subject referring to the Greeks as Germans who had survived a northern catastrophe and evolved a highly developed culture in southern contexts. By contrast, Byzantium and contemporary Greece were seen as having been “contaminated” by “inferior human material.”

Among the loci of ancient Greek civilization, the sanctuary at Olympia had always held particular significance for the Germans, who had been conducting excavations there since 1897. Hitler himself saw to the renewal of the Olympic games on the occasion of the Berlin Olympics in 1936, and the torch relay was then introduced after a German proposal to promote an upgraded (as much as distorted) image of ancient Greece (Mackenzie, 2003).

In the same year Athens celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the revival of the Olympic Games, and splendid ceremonies were organized by the International and Greek Olympic Committees (Yalouri, 2001:39-40). It was during the Berlin Olympics that Metaxas overthrew democracy. The Nazis naturally welcomed his regime, although they did not acknowledge it as purely fascist since the king, the second member of the dictatorial duo, was attached to the British (Fleisher, 2000:36-37).

The Archaeological Protagonists

Despite an inevitable difference owing to time, modem Greek civilization is in many aspects connected to the historical core of integral Greece and represents its moral, spiritual and psychical continuation. (Oikonomos, cited in Petrakos, 1987b: 168)

Thus spoke Georgios Oikonomos, Secretary of the Athens Archaeological Society, in his ceremonial address on the Society’s centenary. The celebration took place at the Parthenon on 23 October 1938 and was attended by the royal family (Petrakos, 1987b: 168-170, 1987c: 207-208, figs. 2-3). Oikonomos, professor at Athens University, director of the Archaeological Service and a declared friend of the palace, was indifferent, if not hostile, to any effort for improvement of the archaeological situation (Petrakos, 1995:35).

At the same time some young archaeologists were promoting within the Service the new ideas that had had a profound impact upon Greek society in the first thirty years of the 20th century: liberalism, Marxism, educational transformation and the acceptance of spoken Greek (demotic) instead of an artificial archaist Greek (katharevousd), theretofore used by the establishment.^ The principal advocates of innovation in archaeology were Christos Karouzos, his wife Semni Papaspyridi-Karouzou, and Yannis Miliadis. Humanists of erudition and uncompromising integrity, they had been militant defenders of the archaeological profession and mission. Their commitment, courageously expressed under adverse circumstances, cost them repeated conflicts with the establishment throughout their careers.

In 1935 Karouzos was transferred unfavorably from Thebes to Volos; his archaeological guide to the Museum of Thebes, written in lively and pioneering demotic was ignored by the government publishing services. In a letter to Oikonomos (15 June 1935), he protests unfair dealings and conservative prejudices, also referring to rumors that the prime minister’s wife Lina Tsaldari had spoken of him as “the worst archaeologist in the Service” (cited in Petrakos, 1995:36-38).

Interestingly, however, Oikonomos voted for Karouzos’ doctoral dissertation, which was successfully defended in 1939 against other conservative examiners. In a letter to Oikonomos (3 May 1939), Karouzos properly acknowledged this support (cited in Petrakos, 1995:51). He had first submitted his dissertation in 1929, but it was then rejected by the principal examiner Apostolos Arvanitopoulos, another conservative academic with a controversial role (Petrakos, 1995:39-42). The main defender of Karouzos in the first examination was Antonios Keramopoulos, under whom he had served as a young curator at the Acropolis (Petrakos, 1995:23, 51-52,81).

This innovative spirit was met with a strong reaction from Spyridon Marinatos and his court, which prevailed in archaeological affairs up to 1974. The rivalry between Marinatos and Karouzos dates back to their undergraduate years at Athens University as competitors for a scholarship (1916), which was eventually awarded to Karouzos (Petrakos, 1995:21). A recognized specialist in Aegean prehistory, Marinatos was also known for his view of Greek archaeologists of his generation as “Bolsheviks or social reformers of no international recognition” (letter to Professor Georgios Sotiriou, 8 June 1928; cited in Trimis et al., 1995:42). Soon after his appointment as professor at Athens University by Metaxas, Marinatos succeeded Oikonomos in the directorship of the Archaeological Service when the latter chose to move to the more prestigious position of the Director General of Antiquities, Letters and Arts in 1937 (Petrakos, 1995:46).

Following his crushing of the Cretan Revolt in July 1938, Metaxas proclaimed himself dictator for life; then, he tightened his repressive policies, which transformed his regime into an extreme authoritarian (quasi-fascist) state. While purges in the academy affected most of the School of Philosophy of the newly-founded University of Thessaloniki (1925), owing to its innovative character (Hasiotis, 2000:22; Tiverios, 2000a: 115), the Athens academic establishment enjoyed the regime’s support. On 13 March 1940 Metaxas attended a public lecture by Marinatos. The latter, in return, paid tribute to the “Deceased” (the dictator) and the “Absent” (King Georgios II), in his ceremonial speech at Athens University on the first national celebration of 28 October 1940. This speech, delivered and broadcast on radio on the eve of the civil war (27 October 1945), inevitably caused reactions (Petrakos, 1995:201, n. 52).

Although the majority of Service staff hoped that Marinatos could play a positive role, Miliadis sketches the real character of the man as follows:

Marinatos has certainly better intentions than the other one [G. Oikonomos], but it is the other one who governs behind the scenes. Besides, Marinatos has good intentions up to the point that they are confronted with his personal interests… It seems, however, that he is beginning to feel—as all of those who made it and established themselves—that he belongs to the cast of the establishment rather than to the ranks offighters, (letter to Karouzos, 4 December 1937, cited in Petrakos, 1995:47)

Marinatos was soon to show his old hostility against Karouzos, sabotaging applications of the latter for study leaves and reprimanding him for his refusal to publish in Greek archaeological journals.^ Semni Karouzou, one of two female, married archaeologists out of four total at that time, was not spared either; she became the principal target of Marinatos’ legislation of 1939 (Petrakos, 1995:50) as part of wider gender discriminations introduced into the public sector (Avdela, 1990:149), to ensure that women were confined to their “natural” roles as wives and mothers. The new act established that:

Only male graduates of Philology are appointed as curators on the grade and salary offirst class Secretary…

The female component already on staff shall continue in service but shall not under any circumstances be permitted to undertake the directions of museums or regional offices, in accordance with the provision of article 17, paragraph 7 of the present Law. Should female members of the academic staff happen to be married, they must take obligatory retirement after completing 25 years of public service.^ (cited in Petrakos, 1982: 52)

The law in question was abolished in 1942 (Petrakos, 1995:50, 202 n. 57).

——–——– 2007 UPDATES ——–——–

March 25th, 2007

An article from Time magazine, John Metaxas: bone and gristle, has been added. Also an article in Greek called “1940: ΤΟ ΟΧΙ ΤΟ ΕΙΠΕ Ο ΦΑΣΙΣΤΑΣ ΜΕΤΑΞΑΣ!”. Also links to 3 new Metaxas-related videos hosted at Youtube.com have been added.

——–——– 2006 UPDATES ——–——–

August 21st, 2006

I’ve been pretty busy with the final steps on my book “La Grecia Fascista” (which will be available for purchase in a few weeks) so I haven’t had much time to update the Metaxas Project’s website. However I have just added 3 new articles ( Η 68Η ΕΠΕΤΕΙΟΣ ΤΗΣ 4Ης ΑΥΓΟΥΣΤΟΥ, Greece and Romania in 1939 and 4η Αυγούστου 1936 – 4η Αυγούστου 2006) and the original text of the proclamation of Metaxas’ government in 1936 at the Resources.

May 16th, 2006

At the Resources section a new quote from Metaxas about the Greek race. Also at the Resources section a large quote by Metaxas about democracy has been added. Finally an article about Metaxas’ affinity towards the Greek folkish dialect dimotiko has been submitted to the Articles section.

April 2nd, 2006

A new audio file has been added. In this occasion it is the EON hymn “Giati Xairetai O Kosmos”.

March 14th, 2006

Most of the remaining untranslated sections (Galerie, Le Projet) of the French version at the Metaxas Project and Greek fascism website have been translated to French and have been posted. The French version of the site is thus nearly finished in its entirety.

March 6th, 2006

Finally the French version of the Metaxas Project website is near completion, at least when it comes to the Articles and Features sections. Two new articles (Bref récit de l’épopée grecque de 1940 and La «Ligne Metaxas» oubliée) in French have been translated.

March 4th, 2006

The French version of the Metaxas Project continues under way: I have added 2 more articles and I have created the French version of the Resources page, featuring 6 files. More coming soon!

March 1st, 2006

The building of the French version of the Metaxas Project continues under way: I have added 5 more articles in Français.

February 28th, 2006

I have begun building the French version of the Metaxas Project. 13 articles have been completely translated from either Grek or English into French. I am very excited by the support the Metaxas Project has obtained from France.

February 27th, 2006

Thanks to some French friends, I am very proud to announce that the Metaxas Project will soon have its French version available.

February 14th, 2006

I have created a new section for the Gallery section with new pictures from the Metaxas regime.

February 9th, 2006

3 new articles in Greek: Η 4η Αυγούστου στο διεθνή χώρο, Ηταν φασιστας ο Μεταξας; and Iωάννης Μεταξάς. And one new article (“Tο διαγγελμα του Πρωθυπουργου Ιωαννη Μεταξα”) for the Metaxas speeches part of the Resources section has been added.

January 29th, 2006

Today I am very proud to announce that my book on the period of Greek fascism (1936-1941) will be available for online purchase on August 4th, 2006. The English translation will follow some months later. If you would like to be e-mailed when the book is out, please visit pelekys.com.

January 26th, 2006

A very minor update. The forum has been cleansed of spammers, there is a new icon for this project (the labrys or pelekys) and one new article has been added, John Metaxas. Also the Metaxas articles section has been re-organized sorted by language. The most important notice, however, is that the Metaxas Project will proudly announce on the special date of January 29th (the 65 anniversary of Metaxas’ death) a very special project. Stay tuned.

——–——– 2005 UPDATES ——–——–

December 14th, 2005

Two new generic articles in Greek about Metaxas and his regime have been added: Βιογραφια του Ιωάννη Μεταξά and Ιωάννης Μεταξάς.

December 14th, 2005

The Gallery has been updated with three brand new sections called Portraits, Medals, and Documents which contain 30 new pictures of items from the Metaxas period.

October 28th, 2005

Coinciding with one of the two largest national holidays in Greece (Ochi Mera), which celebrates the day Metaxas and Greece as a whole said “No!” to the Italian aims to conquer Greece, three new articles about this issue have been published: Lest we forget the 28th October 1940 in English and 1940: ΤΟ ΟΧΙ ΤΟ ΕΙΠΕ Ο “ΦΑΣΙΣΤΑΣ” ΜΕΤΑΞΑΣ (“1940: The “No” was said by ‘fascist’ Metaxas”) and Αποσπάσματα και περιλήψεις από τον ιταλικό τύπο του 1940 in Greek.

October 25th, 2005

Yet again our contributor Miltiadis has translated another article from Greek to French, “Que fut la réalité sur les événements le soir du 4 août 1936″. Also a banner has been posted to announce a memorial to be held honouring Ioannis Metaxas, the man who said the “No!” that is celebrated in “Ochi Mera” (Day of the No”).

September 17th, 2005

Contributor Miltiadis has done an excllent work translating into French three articles written in Hellenic language. The articles may help French-speaking visitors to learn more easily about Metaxas. The articles are L’épopée d’une jeunesse, Régime de Metaxas: œuvres et caractéristiques de sa politique and Fascisme en Grèce.

August 30th, 2005

A very interesting article on the labrys or pelekys has been posted. The labrys was the ancient Greek (Minoan) symbol which Metaxas adopted for his regime, and especially for his National Youth Organization (EON).

July 1st, 2005

An adjust has been done to the website. The indepth articles which so far were available at the Special Feature section, now are located at the more proper Download area. Also, a special feature has been released today: a visually rich exploration of the Greek Italian 1940-1941 winter war, at the Special Features section.

May 1st, 2005

As you surely have noticed, the website has been completely revamped. This new template-based design loads faster, and improves usability and legibillity. Usability has also been given a boost. Along with the new interface, new stuff has been added; for instance, over 20 new pictures have been posted. Check all sections, additions have a NEW icon byside. Some new, well-worthvisiting parts have also been created from scratch. There is a new forum too. Some stuff has also been re-collocated for a more coherent and consistent navegability. I hope you’ll enjoy the new Metaxas Project website. Last but not least, the Fourth of August project has officially changed its name to the more simple (and catchy) name “Metaxas Project”. According to this, the project has also now its own domain, www.metaxas-project.com.

——–——– 2004 UPDATES ——–——–

November 16th, 2004

Just a little update to post one new article on the foundations of Greek Fascism and how it affected Metaxas’ regime.

October 28th, 2004

Today is a day of national celebration: Ochi Mera, the day o Arxigos Ioannis Metaxas pronounced his historic “Ochi” (Greek for “No!”). At the Fourth of August project we celebrate it with yet another update. It includes 3 new articles (2 in Hellenic, one in English), a whole chapter from a book on Metaxas (in English) at the Features section and we have also inaugurated the fourth part of the Gallery section with 6 new pictures.

September 11th, 2004

A major update: 4 new articles on several aspects of the Metaxas regime (which can be found at the Articles section) and 2 indepth studies, one in German about the E.O.N and the other one in Dutch about Metaxas’ historic context. Both can be found at the “Features” section.

August 4th, 2004

In the last weeks I have been working on an indepth study on the Metaxas years. Now the abstract is online at the Features section. This 12-pages study shall give an insight into the Fourth of August regime.

May 8th, 2004

After quite much time there is a new update on the project. 13 new pictures which are available at the Gallery section part III.

——–——– 2003 UPDATES ——–——–

October 28th, 2003

Today is Ochi Mera and at the FOURTH OF AUGUST project we celebrate it with a large update hich includes besides minor changes: 4 new wallpapers, 9 new pictures, 2 new articles and at last the propaganda section has been inaugurated with a flyer.

August 4th, 2003

Ok, the day has come.

Today the FOURTH OF AUGUST project honours the 4th of August date with a groundbreaking update, including:

• Brand new design
• 4 new complete areas (Archive, Downloads, Propaganda and Special Features)
• 7 new articles (“What the enemy says”, “The forgotten Metaxas line”, “The Nature of the 4th of August Regime”, “Death of Metaxas”, “Metaxas’ episode in  few lines”, “Praises to Metaxas” and “How others saw Metaxas regime”)
• 6 new documents (“Proclamation of the Fourth of August régime”, “I do not allow any simmering opposition to my will”, “A letter from Metaxas’ wife”, “The Ministers under Metaxas’ rule”, “Metaxas’ political testament” and “Speech to EON’s parents and teachers”)
• 15 new pictures
• The Speeches section largely expanded with many new quotes
• New .mp3 files with speeches from Ioannis Metaxas (accounting over 30 MB of sound files)
• 1 wholly-operative new mailing-list

July 4th, 2003

This update is not really an update but just an announcement: Next August 4th, coinciding with Metaxas’ glorious day and the Third Anniversary of this website, there will be a groundbreaking update which will leave the current website miles away.

April 22nd, 2003

Some minor changes have been applied, regarding the HTML encodings and some other graphic-related updates. The main thing is that the introductory text has been changed for a larger, deeper one.

——–——– 2002 UPDATES ——–——–

October 30th, 2002

Greek National Socialist party HRYSI AVGI honoured Metaxas’ memory last Oxi Mera 28th of October. Click here to see the pictures:

PICTURE #1 and PICTURE #2

October 28th, 2002

Today Greeks from all over the world celebrate the National Day of Oxi Mera, “the Day of the No”, remembering the sharpening short answer our National hero Ioannis Metaxas told to Italy’s expansionist dreams over Greece. That day, 1940, Hellas stood strong and united as a fist to fight for freedom and sovereignity. Every 28th of October military and school parades are exhibited all over the country to show respect for the National values and the National independence of mighty Hellas.

October 23rd, 2002 

This time a really interesting update, as it encompasses both articles and pictures: first of all three new articles have been added at the Articles section, both written in Hellenic. Also 4 new full-coloured pictures have been uploaded onto the Pictures section Part II. Don’t miss them. See you soon!

October 15th, 2002

I have added a goodie which was pending for too long now: The Fourth of August project’s official wallpaper.

September 26th, 2002

I have done some minor changes on the website (links, architecture…) and also fixed up the bugs regarding the guestbook and the discussion forum. Both now work out ok. Besides two new deluxe articles have been added to the Articles section. One deals with the controversy over 1940′s war and the other one on the workers-friendly Metaxian policy. Both are in Hellenic language.

March 28th, 2002

I have added some new excerpts from speeches and scripts by Ioannis Metaxas to the Resources section. See the new line under the title Selected speeches from Ioannis Metaxas.

March 25st, 2002

To commemorate the rising of the Greek Revolution, I have added a new article. It’s called “O Krisimos Ianouarios  tou 1941″. Read it at the articles section.

February 25th, 2002 

I have done a new website design, which I hope to be better and more user-friendly. But the best new is that I have moved the website onto a new server, in which there are no advs, no popup banners and is extremely faster than the ones on which this page was previously allocated.

February 24th, 2002 

Two new articles added. The first is about the fact that many scholars and free-minded people in Greece think suspicious the lack of information and indepth, non-partisan study information on Metaxas and his regime (and that is precisely one of the main reasons why for this website to be launched and kept). Even if the author does not provide reasons for this phenomenon, at least he denounces a fact that is as much discouraging as suspicious, and therefore making Metaxas even more attractive for syudy.

The second article is a large and indepth text on the EON, an article worth reading.

February 5th, 2002

Many new pictures added. The new pictures appear on the second gallery in the Pictures section.

January 14th, 2002

The Fourth Of August website has just launched the version of this page for WAP-enabled phones. This way Ioannis Metaxas’ website will also be available wireless.

The wapsite features an article (“Symbology of the Third Hellenic Civilization”) which does not appear on the website, making thus the visit to the wapsite more attractive.

The ADDRESS of the wapsite is different from that via web. Type-in the following URL:

http://www.wapdrive.com/andmark/metaxas/

(default page should be http://www.wapdrive.com/andmark/metaxas/index.wml)

(Notice that this is the only URL suitable to be connected by WAP phones, so exclude the index.html, the index.htm or the go.to/4thAugust addresses because they DON’T WORK on wireless platforms).

——–——– 2001 UPDATES ——–——–

December 13th, 2001

Another article, refering once again to the EON (Greek fascist youth organization). On the Links section you’ll find an outlet to Enotita, one of the best Greek/Byzantine nationalist sites out there.

October 28th, 2001 – OXI MERA – METAXAS NATIONAL DAY

As you may have noticed we’ve been removed from our previous host www.freespeech.org due to unknown reasons. Until now I wasn’t able to re-load the whole site unto another server, but here it is again now online. Many news should be noticed: The first thing is that we have a new e-mail account. Our previous e-mail metaxas@lettera.net IS NO LONGER FUNCTIONAL SINCE JUNE 2001. All messages sent unto that address should be re-sent again unto the new e-mail account, which is as follows: ioannismetaxas@mail.gr. So besides a new URL we also have a new e-mail. Second is that a serie of updated have occured coinciding with our re-appearance on the WWW: we now have a message board, the guestbook is also new, an article (article #14) has been added onto the Articles section. The Speeches section has also been updated, so have a look at it.

April 29, 2001 

Our site has been praised and recommended by the Greek Nationalist paper XRUSH AUGH. Click here to see the article.

March 25th, 2001 – INDEPENDENCE DAY

Coinciding with Independence Day (the day commemorating the day the Greek Revolution of 1821 started), you’ll find a little update in quantity yet an important one in terms of quality, as it provides a speech by Metaxas addressed to the Greek workers. It remarks the deep concern of Metaxas in the social and labour welfare at the Greece of his time, something that contributed to the spectacular highlights and main goals of Metaxas’ acclaimed and succesful economic policy.

February 24th, 2001

An update consisting of two new arcticles plus a TRUE HISTORICAL JEWEL: the words Metaxas addressed the chief editors of the Greek newspapers in the outbreak of war with Italy. The two articles (“Short account of the Greek Epopee of 1940″ and “To Kathestos Ths 4is Avgoustou Kai O Ioannis Metaxas”) are to be found on the Articles section, while the third document is available at the Resources section.

——–——– 2000 UPDATES ——–——–

November 11th, 2000 

Another update following last fortnight’s. This time another article, this time written in English. Taken from the U.S. Library Congress, it provides a short, schematic yet clear overview for beginners on the Metaxas era. Access the Articles section to read it.

October 28th, 2000

A new update coinciding with our National Hellenic Oxi Mera day.Oxi Mera means “day of the No” and refers to Metaxas’ replial – a passionate, yet short and freezing “No” – to Mussolini’s plans to enter Greece via Albania. This time a very lyrical update, since it provides three hymns from the Metaxian age. Check the “Resources” section, and then choose “Hymns”. Prepare to be seized by immortal words!!

October 10th, 2000

Many new pictures added! To check them out, just visit the “pictures” section. They appear below the word “NEW!”. Most of them are taken from Kostas Plevris’ masterwork “Ioannis Metaxas: Biografia”. We strongly encourage Greek-reading enabled people to purchase this real masterpiece. And from here we wish to thank Mr. Plevris for having signed our guestbook! It makes us honour. Of course if you any of you have more pictures about Metaxianism which are suitable to appear on this website, just send them to me. You’ll be thanked and credited accordingly for your help.

February 12th, 2000 

As promised on the 4th of February, here is this big update, providing over 10 new pictures from Metaxianism. Just go at the Resources sub-menu and there you will find a section called “Pictures section”. The next update will provide a new large article by me called “The National Socialist régime of Metaxas”, which is the English translation of the article that already appears at this website written in Spanish. This will be in a very few days, so keep an eye on this. All by now, take all care.

February 4th, 2000 

Another interesting update coming after two weeks. You just can’t complain about the activity of this website. Every bunch of days you get cool updates regarding Metaxas and Metaxianism. This update provides however only one new article, but a very interesting one, since it refers to the mysterious death of Ioannis Metaxas. I must say that the next update will be within the next week and will provide LOTS of pictures from the Fourth of August regime, thanks to Michalis Gekas. Stay tuned!

January 20th, 2000

A week has passed since the last update, and here is a nother one. You just can’t complain: weekly updates!! This time is only about graphism. I have added 4 new pictures kindly given my comrade Michalis Gekas. Learn!

January 14th, 2000

Two new articles added (article 8 and 9) and two new pictures added as well.
Till the next!

January 1st, 2000 

Finally our website is ready online!

After some time of obscure work, the first and only website on the Net entirely dedicated to the Fourth of August regime has appeared, and has appeared in the dawn of a Millennium that will surely need people like Metaxas.

Yet being ready and online, this website, however, lacks many improvements. I want to make it really killer, and I expect people to help us. If you have written any article concerning the 4th of August regime or Ioannis Metaxas himself -or are willing to do so- then please let us know so that we can add it at this website. Also if you happen to have pictures or know where to find them, also let us know.

All help is thanked. Help us and become part of the staff.

Until the next update (hopefully soon), my best regards.

For nearly 12 years now, it’s been bringing light to one of the most obscure periods of modern Greek history. Throughout these years, some have said it’s an apologetical website – it might be, as well as critical website too. If you read carefully, you’ll notice that there are as many negative accounts of the Metaxas era as positive ones. The truth might be somewhere in-between.

Here are some screenshots from the website’s historical past since year 2000:

Website between 2000-2003

Website between 2003-2006

Website between 2006-2008

Website between 2008-Today