A Southern European Dictatorship with Western Backing

On 23 July 1974 at 19:03, Greek state radio announced that the ruling military junta, also known as the Regime of the Colonels, had decided to hand power to a civilian government. That night, the streets of Athens were filled with a spontaneous popular celebration and the largest mass demonstrations since the withdrawal of the German occupying forces in October 1944.

Fifty years later, Greek’s seven years of dictatorship seem like an anachronism. But they transpired in the context of Greek post-war history — and testify to the authoritarian nature of Cold War anti-communism.

Seven Years of Dictatorship and Resistance

Weeks before the critical parliamentary elections of 1967, on 21 April, a military coup in Athens established a dictatorship that — to the surprise of many — lasted seven years. Within hours, the coup managed to take control of the Greek capital, occupying all strategic sites and arresting thousands of citizens, including the leadership of the existing party system. The King of Greece, Constantine, was reluctant to challenge the Colonels and gave them time to prevent a response from the royalist segments of the military.

The Colonels justified their coup, which they framed as a “revolution”, by invoking an alleged Communist conspiracy and denouncing the political system as failed. Fierce anti-communism, national chauvinism, and anti-parliamentarism were the core features of the regime’s ideological profile. Civil liberties were suppressed, the press was subjected to rigid censorship, and propaganda was extensive. Moreover, a wave of arrests, exiles, torture, and surveillance targeted the junta’s opponents, particularly the Left.

The Greek junta was the last of the Southern European dictatorships after Francoist Spain (1936–75) and the Portuguese Estado Novo (1926–74), and the only one to emerge after World War II. Coming about at a point when Greek society had recovered from the Civil War (1946–9) and was modernizing apace, it appeared as an anachronism in many respects — anti-communism simply felt out of place.

Nevertheless, resistance was not far behind. In August 1968, the first armed action against the Colonels took place with the attempted assassination of junta leader Georgios Papadopoulos. The attempt was unsuccessful and the would-be shooter, Alecos Panagoulis, was arrested and tortured. The funeral of former Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou in November 1968 became a mass demonstration against the regime. Oppositional groupings began to develop as early as 1968, but their visibility was extremely limited until 1971. Student mobilizations reflected the growth and the radicalization of the anti-junta organizations.

The Polytechnic uprising in November 1973 represented a milestone in the history of the Greek junta and resistance to it.

Despite differences in the Greek political and social context, the Greek youth was in many respects radicalized like its Western counterparts, “between Marx and Coca-Cola”. They strongly opposed “US imperialism”, which they blamed for supporting the junta, while at the same time absorbing many cultural impulses from the contemporary US protest culture.

The Polytechnic uprising in November 1973 represented a milestone in the history of the Greek junta and resistance to it. The uprising was a catalyst in bringing pre-existing tensions to the fore and precipitating the overthrow of Papadopoulos by hardliner Dimitrios Ioannidis. The suppression of the uprising was decisive in eroding the toleration and somewhat passive acceptance of the regime by Greek society. The brutality of the regime’s response to the student uprising brought an end to any lingering illusions about the dictatorship’s character and prospects for self-reform.

Ioannidis’s rule (November 1973–July 1974) marked the final phase of the dictatorship. In mid-July 1974, Ioannidis orchestrated a coup against the President of the Republic of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, thus giving Turkey a pretext to invade the island. Greece’s unreadiness to effectively respond to the Turkish invasion provoked the collapse of the Junta. On 24 July 1974, former Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis returned to Athens and presided over a national unity government tasked with restoring democratic institutions in the country. The national unity government immediately restored civil liberties and released all political prisoners, and repealed the ban on the Communist Party in September 1974. 

Greece on the Frontlines of the Cold War

The rise of the Greek junta is inextricably linked to the Cold War. Greece had traditionally been under the British sphere of influence given its location in a region crucial to the strategic and economic interests of the British Empire. Britain had also played a decisive role in expelling the German occupiers in December 1944.

When the Greek Civil War broke out in 1946, Britain provided economic and military assistance to the Greek government. However, Britain informed the White House by late 1946 that it was unable to continue with military and economic assistance, and urged US intervention. The Greek Civil War was subsequently acknowledged as one of the “hot” fronts of the emerging Cold War.

US intervention in the Civil War was inaugurated by the Truman Doctrine in March 1947. Apart from military aid, the Truman administration provided a significant amount of economic aid to the Greek government, signalling a new phase in US foreign policy. Thus, Greece became a kind of test case for US leadership of the so-called “Free World” in its confrontation with what it portrayed as Soviet totalitarianism. Moreover, Greece was perceived to be the “birthplace” of democracy and thus had great symbolic importance.

Soon after the military coup in Athens, US foreign policy elites acknowledged the need for a normalization of relations with the junta, although they managed to avoid officially recognizing the new regime. This choice was precipitated by the eruption of the Arab-Israeli War in June 1967, which underlined Greece’s geostrategic importance for US officials.

Many European governments, including West Germany and the United Kingdom, were not prepared to jeopardize economic and diplomatic relations with the Colonels’ regime and rejected any idea of Greece leaving or being expelled from NATO.

Normalizing relations with the Colonels was considered necessary in order for the US to secure unrestricted access to Greek airspace and the use of US military, intelligence and communication facilities based in Greece. This choice seemed all the more reasonable as the Colonels seemed not to face any considerable domestic challenge to their power. Nevertheless, US officials realized that the junta would be a short-lived regime and they were concerned with the damage to the US’s and NATO’s image this association could do.

US President Richard Nixon (1969–74), whose foreign policy was largely shaped by Henry Kissinger, appeared to be indifferent to the moral implications of his association with the Greek dictatorship. In 1969, the administration decided to lift the (partial and poorly enforced) embargo on arms sales to the junta imposed by the Johnson administration.

European states also changed their policy towards the junta over the years. The regime’s extensive human rights violations sparked outrage. As early as September 1967, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark filed a complaint against the Greek regime with the Council of Europe, while Amnesty International began systematically investigating the junta’s human rights violations. By 1969, Greece was effectively expelled from the Council of Europe, the junta having — technically speaking — withdrawn itself. The European Community suspended accession negotiations with Greece, which had been ongoing since 1961, and only resumed them after the departure of the Colonels in 1974.

However, many European governments, including West Germany and the United Kingdom, were not prepared to jeopardize economic and diplomatic relations with the Colonels’ regime and rejected any idea of Greece leaving or being expelled from NATO. Germany even took the view that isolating the junta would make attempts at liberalization on the ground more difficult.

The Junta’s Troubled Legacy

The dictatorship has played a central, albeit ambiguous role in the political culture and the memorial practices of post-authoritarian Greece since its overthrow some 50 years ago.

Particularly noteworthy are public perceptions of resistance centred around the Polytechnic uprising, an integral part of the national myths of the Third Hellenic Republic, the parliamentary democracy that emerged in the junta’s wake. Regime change after the fall of the dictatorship necessitated a reinterpretation of the national past and national identity. A basic aspect of this process was the question of guilt or innocence in Greek society with regard to the establishment of the military junta, the Cyprus tragedy, and dealing with foreign opponents.

Anti-Americanism emerged as a powerful framework not only for explaining away the military dictatorship, but also the entire post-war period and what has been called Greece’s “sickly democracy”. An underlying metaphor in the anti-American discourse that sought to interpret Greece’s post-war history was that of occupation. Occupation provided a degree of continuity between Nazi occupation and US influence on post-war Greece, which was perceived as a kind of limited sovereignty. In this context, the Polytechnic uprising was framed as a link in the chain of resistance that constituted the history of the Greek people since the War of Independence in the 1820s.

The first parliamentary elections of the post-authoritarian period were held on 18 November 1974, one year after the uprising, on the decision of Konstantinos Karamanlis. A march to the US Embassy was organized one week after the election, setting the pattern for the ritual of the commemoration in the following years. Roughly 1 million people are estimated to have participated. Anti-American slogans such as “Out with the Americans” and “Murderers of the peoples” dominated the march, mirroring the blame attribution process in Greek society post-1974.

Despite the significant progress researchers have made in undermining some of the poisonous myths fostered by sympathizers of the junta, post-1974 governments only partially confronted its legacy in the state.

The commemoration of the uprising can be seen as a means of institutionalizing the memory of the dictatorship and its anti-American implications. The Greek Left and centre-left converged in framing the uprising as a “national symbol” and legitimizing narrative. The Left emphasized the anti-American and anti-imperialist aspects of the uprising, while the centre-left emphasized resistance as an attribute of the Greek people.

The experience of the dictatorship also had a decisive influence on the pro-European orientation of Greek society. Europeanization was perceived not only as a means of achieving economic growth, but, perhaps more importantly, as a route to stabilizing democratic institutions and balancing the geopolitical influence of Greece’s strong ally during the post-war period, the United States.

During the recent Greek financial crisis, the anniversary of the uprising was re-politicized as society grew divided between those who supported the memorandum and those who opposed it. Within the anti-memorandum camp, the uprising emerged as a point of reference for the limitations to democracy set by the austerity policies and their implications. The slogan “The junta did not end in 1973”, which could be heard at the big demonstrations, captured this mood.

The memory of the uprising remains heavily contested on the far-right end of the political spectrum, which denies the killing of civilians during the suppression of the uprising and insists that it remained a “bloodless” episode.

Despite the significant progress researchers have made in undermining some of the poisonous myths fostered by sympathizers of the junta, post-1974 governments only partially confronted its legacy in the state. As a result, the dictatorship enjoyed a favourable image among military and police personnel for decades after its collapse. Even among average Greeks, the widespread but unsubstantiated myth persists that the junta made a positive contribution to Greece’s economic development.

Recently, a number of opinion polls have confirmed that the overwhelming majority of Greeks reject the dictatorship as a “dark period” in Greek history and cherish democracy. Nevertheless, 32 percent of Greeks still appear to believe that the dictatorship was “a good period for the country’s economy”, 37 percent believe that “farmers benefited” from the dictatorship, while 56 percent share the view that the junta carried out major infrastructure works in the country’s road network.

Although these are just indices, they show that Greece’s authoritarian period continues to resonate with segments of Greek society even today. Fifty years on, we must continue to work against the far right’s mythmaking, honour the junta’s victims, and fight against the renewed growth of the far right.