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The 1940 plot against Metaxas

One of the few episodes of actual significant opposition to the 4th of August State occured in June 1940, when a number of pro-Axis politicians and officers tried to change Metaxas’ foreign policy orientation and align Greece with Nazi Germany. The core of […]

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900_tsolakoglou

The collaborationist purge of the Metaxas regime

After the Wehrmacht invaded Greece on the spring of 1941, a new quisling Greek government was created in Athens headed by General Georgios Tsolakoglou, the army commander who had signed the armistice with the Germans. Although Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German […]

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metaxas politician mass parade greece

Why did Metaxas not have a mass party?

One of the most remarked features of the Metaxas regime was that the 4th of August state, unlike Nazi Germany or Italian Fascism, Greek fascism did not have a mass party. Indeed, while many interwar authoritarian or totalitarian regimes were supported by strong […]

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nelly-greek-photographer

Was Nelly the Greek Leni Riefenstahl?

Nelly was the 4th of August regime’s favorite photographer, which earned her the epithet of ‘the Greek Leni Riefenstahl’. Nelly (whose real name was Elli Sougioultzoglou-Seraidari, in Greek Έλλη Σουγιουλτζόγλου-Σεραϊδάρη) was born in Aidini, near Smyrna, in Asia Minor. She […]

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greek-german war 1941

The Greco-German War

Despite Metaxas’ strategy of armed neutrality and his wish to stay out of the war unfolding, Greece was forcedly involved in World War II on 28 October 1940, when the Italian Army invaded from Albania, beginning the Greco-Italian War. The […]

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precedents-greek-fascism

The ideological precedents of Greek fascism

During the interwar years fascist tendencies had been manifested in various ways in Greece and admiration had been repeatedly expressed for the Italian and German systems, all the more as these seemed to possess precisely what Greece was most lacking: […]

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