History of Greece
Under the heading History of Greece , the history of the national territory of the modern Greek state as well as that of the Greeks and the areas populated and ruled by them is dealt with.
According to recently not undisputed research opinion , at the beginning of the last phase of the Early Helladic (FH III = late stage of the early Bronze Age in Greece, approx. 2200/2000–2000 BC) and during this, Indo-Europeans immigrated from the western Balkans to today's Greece (see also Balkan Indo-European ), which mixed with the local pre-Greek, possibly old European inhabitants. At the same time, the world-historically significant Minoan culture (approx. 3300–1100 BC) experienced its first heyday ( Old Palace period ) on Crete . a. created the impressive palace buildings of Knossos and Phaistos .
On the mainland, around 1600 BC. The Mycenaean culture , the first advanced culture of mainland Europe and the earliest culture that left written evidence in the Greek language (see also Linear B script). Important Mycenaean palace centers, which began around 1400 BC. And from which larger regions were administered centrally (see Mycenaean palace period ), were u. a. Mycenae , Thebes , Tiryns and the so-called Palace of Nestor near Pylos . Approx. 1450 BC The mainland Greeks conquered the Minoan Crete and also took power on the Cyclades , the Dodecanese and other Aegean islands as well as over previously Minoan settlements on the coast of Asia Minor such as Miletus . The Mycenaeans cultivated intensive contacts with the states of the eastern Mediterranean, but also with some regions in the west, such as southern Italy, Sardinia and the northern Adriatic region. Around or shortly after 1200 BC Many Mycenaean centers were destroyed. In some regions, such as Messinia , almost all other settlements have also been abandoned, which speaks in favor of a dramatic decrease or a massive emigration of the population. The causes of the decisive events around 1200 BC BC are controversial to this day, but they are probably related to many simultaneous destruction and upheavals in large parts of the Mediterranean, in which the so-called sea peoples seem to play a not insignificant role. Despite the great amount of destruction, especially on the Greek mainland, the Aegean region remained even after 1200 BC. Culturally influenced by the Mycenaean culture for about 150–200 years.
The Dorians immigrated from north-west Greece to the Peloponnese, later also to Crete and Rhodes. When exactly the Dorian migration took place is controversial, but it is very likely that the Dorians took place between the 12th and 10th centuries BC. Massively advanced south. The inhabitants of the mainland, the Hellenes , started arming in the 8th century BC. Extensive sea and military expeditions and explored the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and the Black Sea to the Caucasus . Numerous Greek colonies were founded in the entire Mediterranean region, in Asia Minor and on the North African coast as well as around the Black Sea as a result of trips to develop new markets.
During the classical period (5th century BC) Greece consisted of city-states . The most important was Athens , followed by Sparta and Thebes . The desire for independence and a love of freedom helped the Greeks to defeat the Persians in the Persian Wars . In the second half of the 4th century BC The Greeks, led by Alexander the Great , conquered most of the then known world with the Persian Empire and tried to Hellenize it. As a result of the ensuing battles between the Greek small and medium powers among themselves and with and against Macedonia, the Roman Empire intervened against Philip V of Macedonia .
146 BC BC Greece fell to the Roman Empire. This ended the political history of independent Greece for almost two millennia. However, Greek culture lived on within the framework of the Roman Empire and, since the second century BC, it increasingly shaped Roman civilization. In 330 AD, Emperor Constantine moved his main residence to Constantinople , thereby laying the foundation for the Eastern Roman Empire, which later became known as the Byzantine Empire . Byzantium transformed the cultural heritage of Greece and Rome into a vehicle for a new Christian civilization. The Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottomans in 1453 . The Greeks remained under Ottoman rule for almost 400 years. During this time, however, they retained their language, religion and identity, whereby it should be noted that the Greeks did not see themselves as Hellenes (this was more the name for a pagan ), but as Rhomeans (Byzantines).
On March 25, 1821, the Greeks rose against the Turks and fought for their independence by 1828. During this time, initiated by Germans, English, French and Russians, there was a decisive change in the self-perception of the Greeks that is still felt today: From then on, they increasingly viewed themselves as descendants of the ancient Hellenes and no longer as Byzantines. With the new state only encompassing part of the country, the struggle continued. In 1864 the Ionian Islands fell to Greece, in 1881 parts of Epirus and Thessaly . Crete , the East Aegean and Macedonia were added in 1913 and West Thrace in 1919. After the Second World War , the Dodecanese Islands were also handed over to Greece in 1947.
During the Second World War , Italy attacked Greece in 1940 . The Greek armed forces were able to stop the invading forces. Finally, in April 1941, Germany came to the aid of Italy ( Balkan campaign ), Italy and Germany occupied Greece. Partisans resisted the occupiers. The liberation was followed by a four-year civil war in which British troops openly intervened with the aim of securing Western influence over Greece. The civil war caused further casualties and great devastation.
In 1967 the military seized power; the Greek military dictatorship existed until 1974. Since the abolition of the monarchy in 1975, Greece has been a parliamentary presidential democracy. Greece became a member of NATO in 1952 and of the EEC in 1981 .
Settlement area
The southern Balkan peninsula is geographically strongly divided by rugged mountains. This favored the development of a large number of independent small states. The arteries of traffic were the most east-facing rivers.
The Aegean Sea with its island bridges to Asia Minor and Crete favored economic and cultural exchange to the east. To the west, on the other hand, with the exception of the Gulf of Corinth , the country is far less open. Small expansion of the coherent agriculturally usable land, karstification of the country through early deforestation and forest fires, periods of drought and earthquakes hindered economic development.
Early history
Minoan culture
The first traces of Minoan settlements from the Bronze Age on Crete date back to around 3600 BC. BC back. Crete was at the intersection of the sea connections between Egypt , Asia Minor and today's Greece. This may explain the preferred settlement of the eastern and central parts of the island. Under oriental influence developed here at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. Its own pre-Greek high culture . Their centers were the palaces of Knossos , Phaistos and Malia .
The population of Knossos is estimated at at least 50,000 inhabitants. The unprotected location of the palaces suggests that the royal rule over the whole of Crete was not in danger. A significant fleet dominated the sea and secured the island against external attacks. The representation of folk festivals on the frescoes of the palace walls and the immediate vicinity of the city suggest that court society and the free population were involved in politics. The outstanding role of women in the paintings in connection with the meaning of female deities documents a privileged position of women. One even concluded that there was a matriarchal order.
Extensive storage rooms and workshops also identify the palaces as centers of economic life and handicrafts. Pictures of the delivery of taxes, clay tablets with records of an orderly bookkeeping point to an organized administration. The export of objects of the highly developed Cretan handicrafts to the Middle East , Egypt, the Aegean Islands, Cyprus and the finds of Babylonian goods in the Cretan palaces testify to extensive trade.
The Minoan culture had a great influence on the Aegean Sea and Southwest Asia Minor until it was superseded by the Mycenaean. For a long time, the eruption of the Santorini volcano was considered to be partly responsible for the downfall of the Minoan culture, dating from 1628 to 1520 BC However remains controversial (see Minoan eruption ). After the palaces were destroyed around 1450 BC BC the Mycenaean culture and language became predominant in Crete.
At the same time, the Cycladic culture existed on the islands of the southern Aegean and the Helladic culture on the mainland . Both persisted beyond the end of the Minoans and merged into the Mycenaean culture of the mainland in the late Bronze Age.
Mycenaean culture
At the beginning of the Late Helladic era , under Cretan influence, but emerging from the Middle Helladic traditions, the first high culture developed on the soil of mainland Greece, which is called the Mycenaean culture after one of its centers, Mycenae in Argolis .
City-states emerged around the high castle complexes made of mighty stone walls. These stand in sharp contrast to the unfortified Cretan palaces, but also to the surrounding local culture. This included houses for officials, entourage and bodyguards. Below was the open settlement of the rural population. Buildings like the treasure house of Atreus or the lion gate of Mycenae underline the tendency towards monumentality . The king was a tribal leader who ruled in agreement with the council and the army assembly.
Clay tablet archives in Mycenaean Greek in the Linear B syllabary document an orderly administration. Agriculture and cattle breeding formed the basis of the economy. There was also a specialized trade. Land trade was aided by built roads. Long-distance trade relations existed mainly with the countries of the Near East and Egypt. Associated with this were raids, the success of which can be seen in the treasures in the representative cupola tombs .
Doric migration and ionic colonization
Around 1200 BC A wave of destruction in large parts of the eastern Mediterranean started, probably partly caused by the so-called sea peoples . According to Egyptian sources, foreign peoples threatened Egypt (see inscriptions and representations on the Merenptah stele , in the mortuary temple of Ramses III in Medinet Habu and the Harris I papyrus ). The Hittite empire in Asia Minor collapsed, the important trading center Ugarit in Syria was destroyed, cities in Cyprus and a number of centers in the Syrian-Palestinian area fell into the hands of enemies or were destroyed.
The Mycenaean states lost important trading partners, which weakened the palace economy and contributed to its collapse. At least most of the previously known palace centers of the Mycenaean culture on mainland Greece were destroyed, although the causes are unclear. The organization of the palace economy disappeared. Presumably the written form was lost and many settlements in the dominion of Mycenaean palace centers were given up. Others, however, were further settled and the Mycenaean culture lasted for about 150 years.
It is possible that the Doric migration began towards the end of the late Mycenaean period (approx. 1050/1025 BC) . The Dorians gained dominance in the Peloponnese in a lengthy process . At the same time, Greeks moved into hitherto little Mycenaean landscapes such as Epirus and Aetolia . In future, the Aiolians were mainly restricted to Thessaly and Boeotia , the Ionians to Attica and Evia .
Members of all Greek tribes took part in the colonization of the west coast of Asia Minor. Without evidently encountering significant resistance from the locals, they founded (new) important Greek cities such as Miletus , Ephesus , Smyrna , partly on the soil of older Anatolian, partly also formerly Mycenaean (Miletus, probably also Iasos ) predecessor settlements , which were built in the late 13th century Century came under Hittite rule. The Ionians increased their share through later immigration from their homeland, so that they gained dominance in western Asia Minor.
"Dark Centuries"
Since the time between 1200 BC BC and approx. 750 BC Because of the lack of written sources or archaeological finds, little or no research was done in the past, it is traditionally referred to as the "Dark Ages" of Greece. It is the time between the end of the Mycenaean palace period and the boom at the beginning of the archaic period from around 750 BC. In the meantime, the dark centuries are often narrowed down. Due to numerous new discoveries in the last 50 years, the final phase of the Mycenaean culture (Late Helladic III C) appears in a much brighter light: on destruction and upheavals, such as sometimes strong demographic shifts, which, however, mainly affected the regions with large palace centers, takes place from approx. 1150 BC. BC (beginning of SH III C middle) a certain consolidation, in many regions even a second bloom of the Mycenaean culture. Characteristic for this phase are, among other things, large clay vessels depicting warriors, ships and even sea battles. Grade the regions in which it was in the 14./13. Century BC There were no palace centers (e.g. the northwest of the Peloponnese, the Cyclades , Rhodes ), the turmoil around 1200 BC. Apparently not affected or they recovered quickly from possible destruction. Long-distance trade also continued, as the finds of Eastern Mediterranean and Egyptian objects in the necropolis of Perati , as well as Mycenaean or Mycenaean ceramics from Lower Italy of the 12th century show, which have parallels in western Greece. At the same time, this phase was marked by uncertainties and local destruction. Settlements were often relocated to well-protected locations or newly established there ( Aigeira is an example ). During the 11th century BC In the late Helladic III C late BC and during the sub-Mycenaean phase defined by the ceramics, further destruction occurs, at least in some regions to a decline in population and a cultural decline. Finds from the time thereafter (from approx. 1050/1025 - beginning of the Protogeometric Period -) are rare and come mainly from graves (exceptions are the settlements of Nichoria and Lefkandi ). Since more is known from the time of the early 8th century, the "dark centuries" are now reduced to the period between the late 11th century and the early 8th century.
Antiquity
overview
In the time of ancient Greece, Greek culture developed in a way that has had a formative influence on large parts of the Near East and all of Europe to this day. It is divided into three main sections:
- Archaic period (approx. 750–500 BC), shaped by the formation of the Greek poleis on the Black Sea and in large parts of the Mediterranean
- Greek classic (500–336 BC), shaped by clashes with the Persians, later by battles between the two strongest powers Athens and Sparta for supremacy
- Hellenism (336–146 BC), the time when Greek culture spread throughout the Mediterranean region and far beyond after the conquests of Alexander the Great
Archaic time
In the archaic period (approx. 700–500 BC) there was a great colonization of the Mediterranean area . In addition to overpopulation and securing trade routes, reasons were also internal struggles in Greece. In the 7th and 6th centuries BC The form of government of tyranny flourished. B. in Corinth , where the Kypseliden around 660 BC. Came to power. Around 550 BC BC Sparta founded the Peloponnesian League and thus cemented its claim to rule.
Greek classical
The Ionian uprising (approx. 500–494 BC) then led to the conflict between Greece and the Persian great king Darius I , which marked the beginning of the Greek classical period. Athens first won the marathon 490 BC. BC and used the time for a massive armament. Ten years later there was another campaign under Darius' son Xerxes I. After the defensive battle on Thermopylae , the decisive battle took place near Salamis . The Greeks destroyed the numerically superior Persian fleet (480 BC), and a year later also the Persian land army in the battle of Plataiai . Athens founded 478/477 BC The Attic League . On the basis of the reforms of Solon and Kleisthenes of Athens as well as Athens' maritime rule in the Aegean, the middle of the 5th century BC developed. The Attic democracy with Perikles as leading statesman.
The Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens for supremacy in Greece ended after an eventful course with the defeat of Athens in 404 BC. Sparta could not maintain its hegemony in Greece and was subject to 371 BC. Devastating at the battle of Leuctra ; it was followed by the brief period of the hegemony of Thebes 371–362 BC. Chr. Philip II of Macedonia made from 359 BC In years of fighting he made his country the leading military power in Greece. He was born in 336 BC. Murdered BC.
Hellenism
Philip's son Alexander put his ambitious plans into action, defeated the Persian armies and advanced as far as India . The age of Hellenism began , in which the Greek cities faced the great Hellenistic empires that were established after Alexander's death in 323 BC. Formed, only played a subordinate role politically. However, Greek culture spread to India, especially since the Diadochi , the kings of the successor kingdoms of the Alexander Empire, promoted it. Under the Antigonids , Macedonia remained the predominant power in the Greek motherland, even if most of the poleis remained nominally independent. The Greeks in Asia Minor lived under the control of the Ptolemies , Attalids and Seleucids . The latter in particular also founded many new poleis in their area of dominion in the Near East.
In order to remain able to act in foreign policy under these circumstances, many Greek poles formed federal states ( koina ). As a result of the battles between these Greek small and medium powers among themselves and against Macedonia , the Roman Empire finally intervened against Philip V of Macedonia . In the Second Macedonian-Roman War (200–197 BC) Macedonia was defeated, and shortly afterwards the Romans also suppressed the attempt of the Seleucid king Antiochus III. to succeed Philip as supremacy over Hellas. In the Battle of Pydna in 168 Macedonia was finally defeated and became a Roman province. 146 BC The remaining parts of Greece were incorporated into the Roman Empire ( Achaea province ). 133 BC Western Asia Minor also fell to Rome ( Asia Province ), 64 BC. The Romans made the rest of the Seleucid Empire the province of Syria , and 30 BC. Finally the last major Hellenistic power, the Egypt of the Ptolemies , was annexed by Rome. However, the Hellenistic state was able to maintain itself to a small extent in the form of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom or Indo-Greek Kingdom until shortly before the turn of the century. The independent political history of ancient Greece was thus ended. From then on almost all Greeks lived under Roman rule.
Roman rule
Greek culture lived on in the Roman Empire and increasingly shaped Roman civilization. Until late antiquity , it was almost a matter of course for the elites of Rome to master Latin as well as Greek , and classical Greek education ( paideia ) remained alive long after the victory of Christianity, at least in the eastern half of the empire.
Political became in the year 27 BC The entire province of Macedonia , which encompasses all of Greece, was divided up into the senatorial province of Achaea (Greek Achaia ) with the capital Corinth. In 15 AD, Achaea became an imperial province under Emperor Tiberius , until Emperor Claudius put it back under senatorial control in 44. Finally, under Emperor Vespasian , the imperial province of Epirus was established, which encompassed the ancient landscape of Epeiros and Akarnania to the south . It was also Vespasian who withdrew Nero's decree , who had given Hellas freedom.
The hellenophile Emperor Hadrian tried at a Greece travel 125 to set up a kind of provincial parliament to all semi-autonomous former city states in Greece and Asia Minor to unite. This parliament called “ Panhellenion ” did not work, however, despite its attempts to get the Greeks to cooperate. In return, more and more Greek aristocrats managed to rise into the Roman imperial elite and become senators.
Since 251 there have been repeated invasions by the Goths in neighboring Thrace and Moesia . In 267 several islands and cities like Corinth, Sparta , Argos , Tegea and even Athens were conquered and devastated by the Germanic Heruli . Kaiser Aurelian secured the Balkan Peninsula and Greece in that it beyond the 274 Donau preferred Dakien the barbarians left as tributary subjects. A century of relative calm followed, during which ancient Hellas saw a re-bloom. Towards the end of the 4th century, the Goths, under their leader Alaric I, destroyed large areas of the entire sanctuary of Epidaurus .
Greece was largely Christianized by 400. The old self-naming as Hellene became unusable because it now denoted non-Christians. Rather, the Greeks saw themselves predominantly as Christian Romans ( Rhomeans ). When the Roman Empire was effectively split up in 395 , Greece was assigned to the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire and henceforth belonged to the Diocese of Macedonia . Under Emperor Justinian (527 to 565) or one of his successors, the proconsulate of Achaia was abolished and divided into four strategies (areas of command): Hellas, Peloponnese, Nicopolis and the islands of the Aegean Sea. From about 580 Slavic groups penetrated the eastern Roman Balkan provinces and finally settled there; these events marked the end of antiquity for Greece . But even after that, the Greeks claimed the successor to the Christian Roman Empire for themselves.
middle Ages
Byzantine Empire and Slavic conquest
Around 630, Greek became the sole official language of the Byzantine Empire , which after the Arab and Slavic expansion shrank from a world empire spanning the Mediterranean to a Greek-dominated empire located in the eastern Mediterranean, without ever giving up its claim to the successor to the Roman Empire. Although the focus of this empire was around the capital Constantinople on the Bosphorus and thus outside of today's Greek borders, Thessaloniki, the second most important city of the Middle and Late Byzantine Empire, was located within today's Greek borders.
Around 650 large parts of Greece up to the Peloponnese were ruled by invading Slavic tribes and could only be recaptured for the Byzantine Empire in the following period. Not least because of the settlement of people from Asia Minor , Hellas was re-Graecised in the period that followed. In the inland in particular, various Slavic communities continued to exist alongside the remaining ancient Greek or the new “Rhomean” (Roman, i.e. Byzantine) townships on the coast. Attempts by the Arabs to establish themselves in Greece in the 9th century failed.
In the 10th century invaded Bulgarians plundered and conquered 933 in Greece Nikopolis . In 978 they invaded Thessaly and sacked Larissa . After initially victorious battles with the emperor Basil I (987–989), the Bulgarians appeared for the second time in Thessaly in 995 and then also crossed Boeotia, Attica and part of the Peloponnese. However, when they withdrew, they suffered a decisive defeat.
Towards the end of the 11th century, the Sicilian Normans began to threaten Greece and the Byzantine Empire. Under Robert Guiskard they conquered Durazzo (Dyrrhachium) and Korkyra in 1081 , but in 1083 they were defeated by the army of Alexios I under him and a little later under the leadership of his son Bohemond . At the same time, Thrace was invaded by the Pechenegs .
Time of the crusades
In 1147 the knights of the Second Crusade marched through Byzantine territory while Roger II of Sicily conquered Corfu and sacked both Thebes and Corinth. A few decades later, in 1197, the German King Heinrich VI. of the hostilities against the Byzantine Empire emanating from his father Frederick I and threatened to invade Greece in order to regain his claims to the territory briefly occupied by the Normans. The Comnene Alexios III got rid of this danger . through payments. The taxes levied by him for this purpose, among other things, provoked numerous surveys of his subjects, including uprisings in Greece including the Peloponnese. Regardless, 11th and 12th century Greece was more peaceful and prosperous than the other main part of the empire, Anatolia , in which the Seljuks were fought. Despite the sacking by the Normans in 1185, Thessaloniki probably had around 150,000 inhabitants. Thebes was also an important city at that time with around 30,000 inhabitants. Athens and Corinth probably still had about 10,000 inhabitants. The cities of mainland Greece continued to export grain to the capital, Constantinople, thus helping to compensate for the loss of land caused by the Seljuks.
When the army of the Fourth Crusade conquered Constantinople in 1204 , the Crusaders divided Greece among themselves. Constantinople and Thrace became the core of the so-called Latin Empire , while Greece proper was divided into the Kingdom of Thessaloniki , the Principality of Achaia and the Duchy of Athens . The Aegean Islands became a duchy under Venetian suzerainty. The despotate Epirus came to these states as one of the three states that immediately followed the Byzantine Empire .
In 1261, Michael VIII Palaeologus restored the Byzantine Empire by regaining Constantinople . When he died in 1282, Michael VIII had recaptured the Aegean Islands, Thessaly , Epirus, and most of Achaia . The latter also included the crusader fortress Mystras , which became the seat of a Byzantine despotate .
In contrast, Athens and the northern Peloponnese remained in the hands of the Crusaders. Its leader Karl von Anjou and his successor son raised a claim to the throne of the extinct Latin Empire and threatened Epirus and the rest of Greece, but were unsuccessful. The Duchy of Athens was owned by the Delaroche family until 1308 and then came through the marriage of Isabellas, the daughter of the last duke of this family, with Hugo Count of Brienne, to Walter V of Brienne (1308-1311), the son of this Marriage. His successor Walter II died in 1311 fighting against Catalan mercenaries who appointed one of their leaders, Roger Deslaur, to be duke. When many pretenders rose up after his death in 1312, the Counts of Brienne ceded the duchy to the kings of Sicily , who in 1386 had to cede it to Nerio Acciaiuoli , who came from a Florentine patrician family and who also ruled Corinth. On his death in 1394, Nerio I handed Athens, which had been hard-pressed by the Ottomans, to the Venetians, but his illegitimate son Antonio took it back in 1402. When he died without male descendants, his nephew Nerio II (1435-1453) took control of Athens, while Thebes and the Boeotian possessions of the House of Acciaiuoli were occupied by the Ottomans in 1435.
Modern times
Ottoman rule
After the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453, most of the Greek-speaking area belonged to the Ottoman Empire for four hundred years . It should be noted that there were hardly any Turks in the Greek heartland, rather Greece was predominantly ruled by Greeks who cooperated with the Sultan.
In the Duchy of Athens, Nerio's nephew Franco still ruled as the sultan's vassal, but gave him an excuse to take action against him by murdering the widow of his predecessor Chiara Giorgio. A Turkish army appeared under Omer Pasha in front of Athens and forced the duke to surrender, whereupon the duchy was united with the Ottoman Empire in 1456. In 1467 the Venetians under Victor Capello took Athens in a surprise attack, but after a short time lost it again to the Ottomans. In central Greece, which was ruled by the Ottomans, the economy and population grew in the middle of the 16th century, as Ottoman archivalia testify, so that if not a “golden”, at least a “silver” era can be spoken of.
The ownership of Morea (of the Peloponnese) and some Greek islands, however, changed several times between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire. Most of the possessions in the archipelago, namely the important Negroponte ( Euboea ) in 1470 , were lost to the Venetians, who in the Peace of Constantinople kept only a few places on Morea from their Greek acquisitions. But in 1480 the sultan ceded the islands of Zante and Kephalonia, which had been taken from the despot of Arta, for an annual tribute. A second war (1499–1503) also wrested Lepanto , Koroni , Navarino and Aegina from the Venetians , which they ceded in 1503 in peace with Bayezid II in return for trade benefits. The island of Rhodes was wrested from the Hospitallers in 1522 after a siege , the rest of Morea in 1540 and Cyprus in 1571 by the Venetians, from whom a peace made in 1573 left only a few fortresses on the Albanian coast, Crete and the Ionian Islands.
After another war , from 1686 onwards, the entire Morea was a Venetian province for the first time (see also Turkish Wars ). The Turks recaptured Morea by 1715 and were given it formally in the Peace of Passarowitz in 1718 . Greece was divided into Paschaliks and subordinated to Rumeli-Valessi (the Grand Judge of Rumelia). The 31 islands of the Aegean Sea were left to the Kapudan Pasha and other Turkish officials for administration. The Greek upper class, also known as the Phanariotes , was considered particularly loyal in the Ottoman Empire until the Greek War of Independence and held important positions in the army and government.
A Russian sea expedition to conquer Greece under Fyodor Grigorjewitsch Orlow landed on February 28, 1770 at Mesolongion (then Missolunghi ) and on the Greek islands. Albanian associations recruited by the Ottomans, however, retook Missolunghi and defeated the Russians in Morea. In Navarino, Fyodor Orlov had to embark in great haste with the remnants of his landing forces. Despite the destruction of the Turkish fleet by Alexei Grigorjewitsch Orlow near Çeşme on July 2, 1770, Russia had to renounce Greece in the Treaty of Kütschük Kainardschi in 1774. The Albanian associations, which saw themselves as the masters of the conquered country and devastated it, were almost completely wiped out by Hassan Pascha on June 10, 1779 near Tripolizza .
The fall of power of the Ottoman Empire, the influence of the French Revolution and the emergence of a new educated class of merchants and long-distance traders led to the formation of a national movement in Greece towards the end of the 18th century, which also found support in political circles in Western and Central Europe Time the enthusiasm for classical Greece blossomed. This also influenced Greek intellectuals, who now referred less and less to Christian Byzantium and more and more to pagan antiquity. The poet Rigas Velestinlis from Thessaly was (as the founder of a political hetary ) one of the pioneers of Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire. He was executed on June 24, 1798. In 1814 a new political hetary of the Philics (ikerιλική Εταιρεία, Philiki Etaireia ) arose in Odessa , the aim of which was the independence of Greece and which prepared the struggle for freedom.
Emergence of the nation
Greek independence
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On March 25, 1821, the Greek Revolution began against the Ottoman Empire . The uprising in the Danube principalities led by the Russian general Prince Alexander Ypsilantis ended in a military catastrophe. In contrast, the rebels in Morea were successful, and numerous Greek islands were soon in their possession. Athens was captured on April 7, 1821 .
On December 15, 1821, a national assembly consisting of 67 members met in Epidaurus ; it passed a provisional constitution in January 1822, proclaimed independence and set up a government. Political struggles led to the meeting of a new national assembly in Astros in March 1823 , which modified the constitution.
This was followed by changeable battles, in which the Greeks were supported by Philhellenes who had come from Western Europe . On February 5, 1825 Ibrahim Pascha intervened with the Egyptian fleet on the Turkish side and also achieved some military successes on land. England, France and Russia intervened, the Treaty of London signed on July 6, 1827, demanded the independence of Greece from the Ottoman Empire. The victory of the united fleets of England, France and Russia in the Battle of Navarino on October 20, 1827 was the decisive event with which Greece gained independence from the Ottoman Empire.
A third national assembly met again in Epidaurus in 1826, a fourth because of political differences initially separated in Aegina and Kastri (today Ermioni ), before it united in early April 1827 in Trizina (then still Damalas ). The National Assembly in Trizina adopted a definitive constitution for Greece on the basis of the Constitution of Epidauros and elected Ioannis Kapodistrias as regent (κυβερνητής) and thus the first head of state of liberated Greece. In fact, Kapodistrias governed largely bypassing the constitution; his dictatorial reign was confirmed by the further national assembly in Argos, which met in July 1829, by amending the constitution.
The independence of Greece was mainly guaranteed by Great Britain. Kapodistrias' pro-Russian policy partially opposed the interests of Great Britain. The problem for the more republican-minded Greeks was that the great powers only wanted to recognize Greece as a monarchy. The disputes resulted in Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, initially chosen as King of Greece , renouncing the crown.
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On October 9, 1831, Kapodistrias was murdered by the Mavromichalis family . The new National Assembly, which has been meeting in Argos since September 1831, elected Prince Otto of Bavaria, the second-born son of King Ludwig I of Bavaria , as King Otto I ( Greek Όθων ) as King of Greece by the grace of God on March 17, 1832 . Greece was a monarchy and was to remain so until 1974.
The only 17-year-old king arrived in February 1833 in Nafplio , the capital of the new state. In 1834 the capital was moved to Athens . A regency council ruled for the underage king until his 20th birthday. Otto then took over the business of government himself, which he exercised in the manner of an absolute monarch until a rebellion by the military and the people forced a constitution from him in 1843. Among other things, Otto promoted research into pre-Christian Greek culture, for which he was enthusiastic. In 1862 Otto was overthrown by a bloodless uprising. The following year, Georg I of the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg family was elected king. With the arrival of the new king, Great Britain ceded the Ionian Islands to Greece. In 1864, at the urging of Great Britain, a new constitution was passed, strengthening Parliament as the bearer of popular sovereignty.
"Megali Idea" and enlargement of the national territory
The newly founded state comprised only a small part of today's national territory and only a third of the Greek population of the Ottoman Empire. The followers of the " Megali Idea " ( Greek Μεγάλη Ιδέα , "great idea") strived to unite all parts of the predominantly Greek-inhabited areas and thus saw a large part of the Balkan Peninsula , Thessaloniki , Thrace , Constantinople , Crete , Rhodes , Cyprus and the Aegean Islands as areas to be liberated. The Greater Greek Idea formed the basis of Greek foreign policy from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries. In 1864 the Republic of the Ionian Islands joined Greece. In 1881 Thessaly was annexed to Greece, later the southern part of Macedonia and Crete. The former Ottoman territories turned out to be very backward, so that after the armaments expenditure of the war, high investments had to be made in the infrastructure. Approximately after the annexation of Thessaly in 1881, the 142 km of Thessaly railways were built by 1884 . After a fall in the price of its export products, the Greek state was no longer able to service its loans due to a protectionist policy of the importing countries, so that in 1893 the state went bankrupt . The uprising of the Cretans against the Ottoman occupiers in 1896 forced Greece to go to war again. After a defeat in the Turkish-Greek War of 1896/1897, the island had to be ransomed.
The most important supporter of the “Great Idea” was Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos , who actually managed to expand Greek territory in the Balkan Wars from 1912 to 1913. The aim was to continue annexing all areas with a majority Greek population to Greece. After Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos prevailed against the German-friendly Constantine I and forced him into exile, Greece entered the war against the Central Powers and their allies Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire on June 29, 1917 . After the victory of the Entente in World War I and the Treaty of Sèvres , the realization of the “great idea” seemed to have come a great deal closer: the northern part of Epirus , the islands of Imbros and Tenedos as well as western Thrace (including Adrianople , today Edirne ) and the then predominantly Greek-speaking regions of western Asia Minor - but not Constantinople - were assigned to Greece.
Venizelos and the National Schism
At the same time, the conflict between Eleftherios Venizelos (Prime Minister from 23 August 1915 to 7 October 1915) and the royal family, which had been going on since 1915, intensified and led to a profound division of the country into Venizelists and anti-Venizelists, supporters of the Republic and Monarchists, with an extremely changeable course.
Venizelos had at times formed its own counter-government against the royal government with its own armed forces, which controlled the north of the country, Crete and the East Aegean islands. In 1917 he had helped to drive King Constantine I abroad and to leave the throne to his son Alexander . After his death and the surprising deselection of Venizelos (who then went into exile), Constantine returned in 1920, but had to abdicate in 1922 after the "catastrophe in Asia Minor" (see below) after a coup by Venizelist officers under Nikolaos Plastiras in favor of his son George II . He, in turn, had to leave the country at the end of 1923 and abdicate in 1924.
Asia Minor Catastrophe
In 1919, with the approval of the victorious powers (League of Nations mandate), attempts were made to use the Turkish defeat to bring Eastern Thrace and the area of Smyrna (now İzmir ), then inhabited by Greeks, under Greek control. A Greek army was sent to Asia Minor to pacify the Smyrna area. This penetrated inland and was crushed shortly before Ankara . In 1922 the Greco-Turkish War ended as a result of the Greek defeat in the "Asia Minor Catastrophe". In the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, a radical population exchange was agreed. It was also determined that - contrary to the Treaty of Sèvres - Imbros and Tenedos should in future also belong to Turkey, as well as the area around İzmir (Greek Smyrna ) in Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace; Northern Epirus fell back to Albania .
In the course of the amicable, violent expulsion of the respective national minorities in Greece and Turkey in 1923, the Greek population that had been there for almost three millennia disappeared almost completely from Asia Minor. 1.1 million Christians considered to be Greeks, some of whom did not speak the Greek language, including many Armenians, moved to Greece; in return, 380,000 Muslims were sent to Turkey. The massive influx of refugees changed the ethnic and social composition of Greece. Some of the refugees could be settled in the newly acquired areas. Lands owned by monasteries were dissolved in order to create a livelihood for many with smaller estates. However, many refugees lived miserably in quarters on the outskirts of the big cities and flooded the labor market. Even though there was a lack of funds for social housing, the Venizelos government started a very ambitious hospital and school building program in 1928, with thousands of new buildings in the classic modern style, including the Sotiria sanatorium of Bauhaus graduate Ioannis Despotopoulos . The program was led by the architect Patroklos Karantinos .
The defeat of Greece and the population exchange, after which almost all Greek population groups lived within the borders of the Greek state, finally shattered the "great idea". Only after the Second World War did Greece receive the Greek-inhabited archipelago of the Dodecanese from Italy in 1947 as part of reparation payments for the attack of the dictator Benito Mussolini on Greece.
Second Greek Republic
On March 12, 1924, Alexandros Papanastasiou was elected the first Prime Minister of the Second Hellenic Republic. Then King George II went into exile on March 25th . In a referendum on April 13, 1924, voters then voted for the abolition of the monarchy. Several significant educational reforms were initiated during Papanastasiou's four-month term in office. His also short-term successor in office, the chairman of the Liberal Party Komma Fileleftheron (KF), was Themistoklis Sofoulis , former president of the interim government of Samos .
From October 7, 1924 to June 26, 1925, Andreas Michalakopoulos , who had been a close ally of Eleftherios Venizelos for over twenty years , served as Prime Minister and Foreign Minister from the party of the conservative liberals Syntiritiko Demokratieikon Komma , which was newly founded in 1924 . General Theodoros Pangalos succeeded him in these offices . He was one of the main actors in the military revolt that overthrew King Constantine I in 1922 and supported the republic until 1924. Pangalos seized power in June 1925 and repealed the constitution in January 1926. Even the president of the republic Pavlos Koundouriotis was forced to resign in April 1926 by Pangalos before he himself could be elected president in a sham election. After a transitional government by Athanasios Eftaxias from July 19 to August 23, 1926, General Georgios Kondylis relieved Pangalos of his office in a bloodless coup in August 1926 , founded the “National Republicans” party and held the office of Prime Minister until December 4, 1926. In 1928 Kondylis, who was always on the side of the "Venizelists" , changed and now ran over to the camp of the royalists.
As a moderate conservative, Alexandros Zaimis took over the office of Prime Minister from 1926 to 1928 in a coalition government of the "Venizelists" (KF). He then served as president from 1929 until the reestablishment of the monarchy in 1935. Eleftherios Venizelos, chairman of the Komma Fileleftheron (KF), returned to politics after his time in exile for his last term of office from 1928 to 1933, and played a large part in politics the integration of refugees from Turkey and tried to maintain good relations with all neighbors in terms of foreign policy. In 1933 he resigned because of the poor economic situation and the strong royalist currents. Several attempts to assassinate Venizelos failed. In 1935 he went into exile again in France , where he died a year later.
Panagis Tsaldaris , opponent of Venizelos, entered the referendum of 1924 as a supporter of the return to the monarchy under King George II . During the following dictatorship under General Theodoros Pangalos, he and other politicians were opponents of his military regime. Between 1928 and 1933 he exercised as chairman of the Laikon Komma (LK), the second largest faction in the National Assembly, a radical opposition to the government of Venizelos and its liberal party Fileleftheron Komma . When his LK achieved 95 seats in the parliamentary elections of September 1932 and thus fell just short of the Venizelist's 98 seats, he rejected his offer to form a government of national unity. After the failure of Venizelos as Prime Minister, he formed a coalition government with the parties of Georgios Kondylis and Ioannis Metaxas as his successor on November 3, 1932 . However, he had to resign from his office on January 16, 1933 in favor of Venizelos.
After the parliamentary elections of March 1933, the People's Party was well ahead of the Liberal Party for the first time, so that on March 10, 1933, after a transitional cabinet of Lieutenant General Alexandros Othoneos that had been in office for only four days, Tsaldaris was again Prime Minister as successor to Venizelos. Here he again formed a coalition government with the parties of Kondylis and Metaxas and was able to fall back on 135 of the 248 parliamentary seats. A failed assassination attempt on Venizelos led to a government crisis and internal party disputes after three prominent members of the People's Party had spoken out in favor of the monarchy and a return of King George II, who was in exile . Although Tsaldaris condemned these statements, protests by the Liberal Party and a new military movement broke out. After successfully suppressing this military movement, Tsaldaris dissolved parliament and called early elections for a constituent assembly. The parliamentary elections of June 9, 1935, however, were boycotted by the opposition parties and in particular the Liberal Party because of the electoral law passed by the People's Party and because of the death sentences against the two prominent liberal generals Anastasios Papoulas and Miltiadis Koimisis .
In the election, the People's Party won 254 of the 300 seats in parliament, so that Tsaldaris could form a new government. In the following years, however, the calls for a return of King George II increased in his party. Already during the election campaign, the Alliance of the Union of Kings loyal to Metaxas, Ioannis Rallis and Georgios Stratos , campaigned for a return of the king. Tsaldaris wanted to make the return dependent on a referendum. During his term of office he was also foreign minister for a time and in this function concluded agreements with other Balkan states and Turkey to ease the situation in the Balkans and to recognize the borders. On October 10, 1935 he resigned in favor of Kondylis after pressure from the army leadership around the chief of the general staff, General Alexandros Papagos . Subsequently, the National People's Party (ELK) split off from the People's Party around Ioannis Theotokis .
The royalists got the upper hand again and called back King George II; he returned to the throne on November 3, 1935. After the unstable parliamentary majorities, the king appointed Ioannis Metaxas President of the Council of Ministers in April 1936 . After the bloody crackdown on labor unrest, Metaxas suspended parliament and the constitution and installed an authoritarian regime that lasted until April 1941.
World War II and Civil War
During the Second World War , Greece originally played no role as an occupation target for the German Reich , the country was only interesting as a supplier of raw materials and possibly to secure the southern flank. Greece was therefore granted freedom by Germany subject to strict neutrality. The fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini had already annexed Albania and saw in Greece a worthwhile occupation destination. Even though Greece did not support the Allies militarily, its economic relations were sufficient to assign the country to the opposing camp from the German point of view. Chromium deliveries to Germany were discontinued, which they needed especially for armaments. Greek shipowners leased their ships to the Allies or took on transport orders. Greece accepted a guarantee from Great Britain, the 1929 pact with Italy was not renewed.
The German Reich did not allow the country to trade with the Allies, and from August 1940 at the latest, German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop assigned it to the opposing camp. Prime Minister and dictator Ioannis Metaxas refused an Italian ultimatum to surrender on October 28, 1940 and was able to defeat the attacking Italian troops and push them far beyond the Albanian border. The attack by the German Wehrmacht , which began the Balkan campaign against Greece and Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941 , quickly broke the Greek resistance. On April 18, 1941, the Greek Prime Minister Alexandros Koryzis committed suicide.
Occupation zones of the Axis powers
Greece was divided into zones of occupation in 1941. Italy occupied Athens and most of Greece, as well as the Ionian Islands and the Cyclades . It also received the so-called dominance on the mainland. Bulgaria annexed eastern Macedonia west of the Strymon and western Thrace . The German Empire, which had no long-term plans with Greece, occupied a few but strategically important areas: Thessaloniki and its Macedonian hinterland up to the Yugoslav border, the Thracian border strip with Turkey, Piraeus and the islands of Lemnos , Lesbos and Chios off the Turkish Mediterranean coast. The western part of Crete received a German occupation, the eastern part an Italian one.
After the surrender on April 23, 1941, provisional German occupation authorities were set up. This made it possible to secure the assumption of all decisive positions in the Greek economy by German representatives before large parts of Greece were occupied by Italy and Bulgaria. Nevertheless, the material assets were confiscated by German occupation troops in these areas and brought to Germany; this applied to manufactured goods such as silk or tobacco as well as machines or vehicles. The transport took place, for example, in 111 railway wagons captured on site and two captured ships by the shipping company Schenker , a subsidiary of the Deutsche Reichsbahn , from Saloniki. Schenker received the transport monopoly for Greece. Germany had contractually secured the right to unlimited exploitation of natural resources and to skim off agricultural products from Bulgaria, as well as the economic exploitation of the Italian zone. If the looted property and economic consequences for no occupied country were as high as in Greece, it is noticeable that, in contrast, almost no cultural assets were stolen. The reason was that the "art protection department" u. a. with Wilhelm Kraiker the art theft department of the task force Reichsleiter Rosenberg could drive out.
A separate German military administration was not set up, the local administrations remained in office. All non-military questions were negotiated by the “Plenipotentiary of the Reich for Greece” Günther Altenburg , who was in office in Athens. The military competencies were given to a “Commander Salonika-Aegean” and a “Commander South Greece”, both of which were subordinate to the “ Commander in Chief Southeast”.
At first there was unorganized looting justified as spoils of war; further means were the extreme increase in banknotes in circulation and the payment of soldiers with this money. The withdrawal of economic goods without consideration was more and more systematized and justified. Due to the forced export of almost all Greek production, a positive trade balance with the German Reich of 71 million Reichsmarks was determined, which was then offset against extreme occupation costs ( renamed construction costs at Hitler's request ). Of all the occupied countries, Greece had to pay the highest occupation costs. To ensure this payment, the German-Greek goods compensation company ( DEGRIGES ) was founded, which first deducted the occupation costs from the country's exported goods. DEGRIGES ensured both the cheaper prices of Greek goods for importers and the skimming off of a large part of the remaining value.
The confiscation and removal included not only the goods produced, but also the dismantling of all production facilities. According to a report by Life magazine , all machines and systems across the country in areas that were important at the time, such as the textile sector and the chemical industry, were dismantled and brought to Germany. When there was nothing left to confiscate, the exploitation concentrated on food and raw materials. Representatives of German companies could choose which goods they wanted on site. The lack of food in particular led to famine and an infant mortality rate of 80%. In the winters of 1941-42 and 1942-43 died during the Great Famine 300,000 people mainly in the urban areas to starvation . Of 300 children examined in Athens in October 1944, 290 had tuberculosis.
In the period from 1942 to 1943, attempts were made to recruit foreign workers in Greece. Given the behavior of the occupation authorities, potential applicants feared poor treatment. Of the expected 30,000, just 12,000 applied. For this reason, forced labor was introduced on the German side from 1943 . In Greece, over 100,000 people were committed to work for the armed forces and the occupation authorities.
The withdrawal of the Wehrmacht was accompanied by the destruction of the infrastructure. For example, all bridges over the Corinth Canal were blown up in 1944 and, in order to make a later reconstruction more difficult, locomotives and railway wagons of the OSE were thrown into the canal and mines were placed.
Resistance and Deportation
Against the partisan movement that grew stronger from mid-1943, the LXVIII. Army Corps of the Wehrmacht security battalions from the Greek population. The occupying power tried to enforce brutal retaliatory measures, looting, shooting hostages and cremating entire towns. Tens of thousands of innocent victims were brutally murdered. In the period from June 1943 to June 1944, the occupation forces reportedly killed 20,650 suspected partisans, captured another 25,728 and shot 4,785 hostages. According to estimates, a total of around 70,000 to 80,000 Greeks were killed in partisan war or in retaliatory actions by German, Italian and Bulgarian troops.
The traditional Sephardic Jewish community of Salonikis, around 60,000, was transported to German extermination camps by the occupation forces. Some of them escaped underground or fought on the side of the partisans. The occupation ended in 1944 with the withdrawal of German troops from Greece. Parts of Crete and individual islands in the Aegean Sea remained under German occupation until May 1945. After the end of the war Greece were the Dodecanese Islands awarded , which were until then Italian territory.
Consequences and coping
In addition to the highest occupation costs per capita, the country also suffered “immense losses of occupation in terms of property and life, higher than in any other non-Slavic territory”. Demands for reparations payments by Germany, whether made by Greek-Jewish associations or by Greek governments, should, according to the London Debt Agreement of February 27, 1953, only be examined after a peace agreement. In April 1956, a delegation from the Greek War Crimes Bureau handed 167 files on 641 war criminals to the Foreign Office and the Federal Ministry of Justice. There it was made clear, however, that they had no interest in clarification or prosecution, but only wanted to deposit the material under German jurisdiction. Occasionally, Greek victim information was questioned, especially in relation to the Holocaust, as "in Germany, for example, only 0.01% of the population (ie 8,000 people) were persecuted". Blessin, a representative of the Federal Ministry of Finance, even questioned the existence of “real” concentration camps in Greece. The GDR offered compensation for recognition as a state, but this was ignored due to the political background. The Greek deputy prime minister Panagiotis Kanellopoulos was given “confidential” meaning that Greece's efforts to associate with the EEC “should not be made more difficult by excessive claims for reparation”. Between 1959 and 1964, West Germany concluded so-called “global agreements” with western countries, including Greece, which did not concern reparation payments for war damage, but the reparation of specifically National Socialist persecution. On this basis, 115 million D-Marks were paid to Greece, which Greece was to distribute “in favor of the Greeks who were affected by Nazi persecution for reasons of race, belief or ideology”. In 1958, the Federal Government at the time declared that the German benefits “merely represent a contribution to compensation obligations made by the home countries on a voluntary basis”.
Civil war
With the formation of the Greek security battalions, a latent civil war arose, which intensified in autumn 1943 and broke out for the first time with the Dekemvriana in December 1944 after the liberation of Greece in October 1944 by the predominantly communist resistance organization EAM and its military arm ELAS . Although the EAM and its military arm ELAS could have taken power from October to December 1944 in view of the low British troop strength, such a military undertaking by ELAS did not take place. During the Dekemvriana, the security battalions, which had previously collaborated with the German occupation forces, fought as allies of the British armed forces, which intervened militarily at the behest of British Prime Minister Churchill to prevent a Communist takeover.
The fighting, also known as the “second round of the civil war”, ended with the Varkiza Agreement in February 1945. From February 1945 to March 1946, conservative-monarchist, but also right-wing nationalist-anti-communist circles increasingly gained influence in government, administration and security organs. In some parts of Greece a so-called white terror developed under the tolerance of the republican-moderate forces, which was aimed at the predominantly but not exclusively communist members of the EAM and ELAS. In March 1946 - contrary to the Varkiza Agreement - a parliamentary election was initially held. The referendum on the monarchy, which was actually planned before this election, has been postponed.
The domestic political tensions were also fueled by the fact that the collaborators of the occupying power were held only to a limited extent legally accountable. The length of imprisonment of, among others, Quisling Prime Minister Konstantinos Logothetopoulos (sentenced to life imprisonment in 1945, pardoned in 1951) is an example of this. Membership in the security battalions, which the government-in-exile in Cairo still regarded as a criminal offense during the occupation, was also classified by the courts as not punishable because the security battalions were classified as protecting public order against “criminal elements”.
For this reason, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) decided to boycott the election, which brought a victory for the right-wing conservative and monarchist parties. The KKE took this as an opportunity to begin the armed struggle, the “third” and “hottest phase” of the Greek civil war . This lasted until September 1949. Initially, the predominantly communist partisans of the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) had considerable success with their guerrilla tactics against the regular and irregular Greek troops. The British troops could only provide very limited military and financial aid to the armed forces of the Greek government and ceased them completely at the end of March 1947. As a new financial and military supporter, the United States took over Britain's role in Greece under the Truman Doctrine . Although the Americans did not send combat troops, they did provide massive military aid, including the deployment of military advisers (General James Van Fleet ). The Soviet Union under Stalin, however, did not help the communist opposing side. In a secret agreement on spheres of influence in the Balkans on the fringes of the Yalta Conference in 1945, Churchill and Stalin had agreed an influence ratio of “90% West to 10% East” for Greece; Many Greek communists felt this to be treason, as they were merely a pawn of Stalin.
The assistance from the USA turned the military situation in favor of the government in addition to the loss of Albanian and Yugoslav support in 1948 and 1949. About 100,000 people died in the civil war; it caused a total collapse of the remaining infrastructure of the country after the war. In addition to the loss of human life and infrastructure, military tactics by both parties, such as the forced relocation of villages and / or population groups and the resulting refugee problems, had a very negative impact on the economic and social development of Greece. After the defeat of the People's Liberation Army, over 50,000 of its sympathizers were expelled from the country and sought refuge in countries of the Eastern Bloc . Many of them, including more than 1,100 children , moved to the newly founded GDR after 1949 . Only after the overthrow of the military dictatorship in 1974 were the displaced persons allowed to enter Greece again.
After the civil war
Early phase
The civil war poisoned the political climate for several decades and led to a national split into communists and anti-communists. At the same time there was an economic upswing. In the first democratic elections after the war, right-wing parties emerged as the largest individual parties, but in 1950 and 1951 three bourgeois parties from the center, led by Sophoklis Venizelos , Georgios Papandreou and Nikolaos Plastiras , succeeded in gaining the majority of seats and forming coalition governments . Under the Plastiras government, Greece and Turkey joined NATO on February 18, 1952. In response to open pressure from the USA, which favored the right-wing “Greek Collection” (Ελληνικός Συναγερμ ,ς, Ellinikós Synajermós ) by Marshal Alexandros Papagos , the current proportional representation was replaced by majority voting. As a desired result, Papagos' "Greek Collection" won 82% of the seats in the 1952 parliamentary elections with 49% of the vote. This began the rule of right-wing governments under Papagos and Konstantin Karamanlis , which, with the exception of short-lived transitional governments, lasted until 1963. Domestically, they pursued a sharply repressive course, which was primarily aimed at keeping possible sympathizers of communism under control. However, economic reconstruction made progress with the help of the USA and the help of emigrants - the construction sector in particular took off and changed the face of the cities; the Greek merchant fleet became the largest in the world.
In 1950 the Xenia program was started, which supported the increase in tourism through infrastructure. Although tourism was not a mass phenomenon in the following years, it made a significant contribution to the country's standard of living. The earthquake on Kefalonia and Zakynthos in 1953 caused very large property damage on two wealthy islands.
Under Konstantinos Karamanlis' government, an association agreement with the European Economic Community (EEC) came into force on November 1, 1962. In the elections in 1958, the "Association of the Democratic Left" (Ενιαία Δημοκρατική Αριστερά, Eniea Dimokratiki Aristera , EDA), essentially a cover organization for the banned Communist Party (KKE), received almost a quarter of the vote. However, Georgios Papandreou succeeded in welding the parties in the center together to form the “Center Union” (΄Ενωοση Κέντρου, Enosis Kendrou , EK) and in 1961 overturned the EDA as the largest opposition party. The opposition parties' allegations that manipulation and unfair pressure from the army had falsified the election results, led to political unrest that came to a head, particularly after the murder of the EDA MP Grigoris Lambrakis in the 1963 election campaign. In these elections, after Karamanlis had resigned and gone into exile as a result of the political conflicts and because of a falling out with the royal family, his right-wing “National Radical Union” (Eθνίκη Ριζοσπαστική Ένωσις, Ethniki Rizospastiki Enosis , ERE.) Lost its majority to the ERE and Papandreou could form a government. However, the implementation of his reform program was soon overshadowed by a new Cyprus crisis and by suspicions of conspiracy surrounding his son Andreas Papandreou, whom he had appointed as minister in the government (Aspida affair), and by arguments with the young King Constantine II , who succeeded in removing Papandreou from to oust government power with the help of defectors from the EK (led by Konstantinos Mitsotakis ) in July 1965. This intensified the political disputes. They were accompanied by numerous demonstrations and violent clashes in which the student Sotiris Petroulas was killed. Subsequent right-wing governments failed to find a stable parliamentary majority. The new elections in 1967 should point a way out of this crisis. Surprisingly, however, a group of officers pre-empted Papandreou's feared election victory with a coup known as the Colonel coup .
Rule of the colonels 1967–1974
With the "putsch of the colonels" on April 21, 1967, a junta under Georgios Papadopoulos seized power and established a military regime. With severe repression - mass arrests and internment of opposition members, torture and spying by the secret police, as well as press censorship - the military succeeded in installing and maintaining their regime for seven years, although it met with largely opposition from the population and was isolated in terms of foreign policy.
An amateur counter-coup by the king in December 1967 failed. The king fled into exile and the junta initially replaced him with a regent. From December 1968 Papadopoulos was dictator of Greece, an assassination attempt on him in the same year was unsuccessful. On June 1, 1973, in violation of the constitution, the monarchy was abolished, the republic proclaimed and Papadopoulos president. The republic was sanctioned by a referendum on July 29, 1973.
In 1973, however, when the economic development, which had been successfully driven forward at times, stagnated, there were increasing signs of the regime's decline. After a student revolt at the Athens Law School and a naval mutiny, a student uprising at the Athens Polytechnic was brutally suppressed in November 1973 . In the junta, the hardliners led by the head of the military police Dimitrios Ioannidis replaced Papadopoulos, who had previously initiated an attempt at opening up a controlled democracy, with Phaidon Gizikis . Ioannidis fueled the Cyprus conflict in July 1974 by promoting efforts to join Cyprus to Greece and organized a coup against the Cypriot President Archbishop Makarios III. with which he provoked the intervention of Turkey on the island. When the Greek army refused to obey the junta's order for general mobilization , the military regime collapsed.
Democratic Greece
When the military dictatorship collapsed, its last representatives and representatives of the old political establishment had called Konstantin Karamanlis back from his exile in Paris and handed over power to him. He formed a government of national unity and immediately initiated the "political turnaround" ( Greek μεταπολίτευση metapolitefsi ), the return to democracy. In autumn 1974 he founded the liberal-conservative Nea Dimokratia . Elections were held on November 17, to which the Communist Party was again admitted. The winner was Karamanlis and his party. A referendum on December 8, 1974 on the political status of the country led to the abolition of the constitutional monarchy with almost 70 percent of the vote and in June 1975 to a new constitution . The officers of the junta were arrested and brought to justice.
The conservative Nea Dimokratia (ND) under Karamanlis won the 1974 and 1977 elections and remained in government until 1981. In 1981 Greece became a member of the EEC. Economic growth was promoted by the associated subsidies (including for the agricultural sector), but a certain gap to the more developed countries of the EEC remained. The elections of 1981 won the social democratic PASOK under Andreas Papandreou , they could also win the following elections. A brief all-party government in the 1990s under Konstantinos Mitsotakis was followed by another PASOK government, which ruled until 2004.
The breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s made transit traffic between Greece and Western Europe difficult. The ferry lines to Italy and air traffic were only able to compensate for this situation slowly in the early 1990s. In 1992 there was a name dispute with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia because the name coincides with the Greek region of Macedonia . Although no agreement has been reached to date, both countries maintain good economic relations.
During the last war in Yugoslavia, the Greek people held rallies to protest against the attack by the NATO states on Serbia. Churches and aid organizations in Greece organized aid deliveries for the Serbian population. At the same time, the Greek government made the port in Thessaloniki available to the multinational armed forces so that they could more effectively direct aid supplies to the Serbian province of Kosovo .
Andreas Papandreou , who was in poor health, resigned in 1996 and was replaced by Kostas Simitis , who initiated far-reaching reform processes. a. strong liberalization and an intensive investment policy. This policy was continued in a moderate manner by the conservative government under Kostas Karamanlis, which ruled from 2004 to 2009 .
After the turn of the millennium
Greece joined the euro zone in early 2001 and was one of the twelve countries that abolished their previous currency (Greece: drachma ) at the turn of the year 2001/2002 and also introduced the euro as cash. The 2004 Olympic Games in Athens and the fact that the Greek national team won the European Football Championship came at a time of economic prosperity and euphoria.
The country also benefited from the economic upturn in the neighboring states, as a great deal of investments were made there after the collapse of communism and the bilateral relations between the peoples can be freely developed. The Greek banking sector benefits most from this, and the financial institutions now have over 4,000 foreign branches in neighboring countries, but industrial groups are also represented with large subsidiaries, including Alumil , Mytilineos and Viohalco , the food company Vivartia , the Greek telecommunications company OTE , etc.
Greece, once a country of emigration, became a country of immigration itself in these years . In 2008 over a million foreigners lived there. Many Greeks from Western Europe also returned to their homeland. From Germany alone, where over 700,000 Greeks once lived, about half moved back to their home country.
The general financial crisis hit Greece harder than other countries. The already high national debt grew enormously , at the same time drastic changes were introduced, which also contributed to the impoverishment of parts of the population.
From 2010: sovereign debt crisis
The favorable economic development in the first ten years of the new millennium ended when the actual state of the Greek public finances became known in the spring of 2010. Since then, the Greek sovereign debt crisis has determined the fate of the country.
literature
- Overall representations
- The Edinburgh History of the Greeks. Edited by Thomas W. Gallant. 3 volumes. Edinburgh 2011-2015.
- Prehistory and early history
- John Bintliff : The Complete Archeology of Greece. From Hunter-Gatherers to the 20th Century AD John Wiley & Sons, New York 2012.
- Vangelis Tourloukis: The Early and Middle Pleistocene Archaeological Record of Greece. Current status and future prospects. Leiden University Press 2010.
- Antiquity
- Elke Stein-Hölkeskamp : Archaic Greece. The city and the sea. Beck, Munich 2015.
- Sebastian Schmidt-Hofner : Classical Greece. The war and freedom. Beck, Munich 2016.
- Peter Scholz : Hellenism. The court and the world. Beck, Munich 2015.
- Karl-Wilhelm Welwei : Greek history. Schoeningh, Paderborn 2011.
- middle Ages
- Florin Curta : The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, c. 500 to 1050. The Early Middle Ages. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2011.
- Michael Weithmann: Greece. From the early Middle Ages to the present (Eastern and Southeastern Europe. History of Countries and Peoples; Volume 1). Regensburg 1994, ISBN 3-7917-1425-2 .
- Ottoman period / early independence
- Molly Greene: The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, 1453 to 1768: The Ottoman Empire. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2015, ISBN 978-0-7486-3927-4 .
- Thomas W. Gallant: The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, 1768 to 1913: The Long Nineteenth Century. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2015.
- Recent history
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Richard Clogg : A Concise History of Greece . Cambridge 2002.
- German translation: History of Greece in the 19th and 20th centuries. Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-923889-13-7
- Pavlos Tzermias : Modern Greek History - An Introduction. Francke, Basel 1999, ISBN 3-7720-1792-4 .
- Ioannis Zelepos : Small History of Greece. From the founding of the state until today . CH Beck, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-406-65343-8 .
- From World War II to the present
- Chryssoula Kambas, Marilisa Mitsou: The occupation of Greece in World War II: Greek and German culture of remembrance . Cologne, 2015, ISBN 978-3-412-22467-7
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Mark Mazower : Inside Hitler's Greece. The Experience of Occupation, 1941-1944. Yale University Press, New Haven CT 1993, 1998, ISBN 0-300-06552-3 .
- German translation: Greece under Hitler. Life during the German occupation 1941–1944 , S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt 2016, ISBN 978-3-10-002507-4 .
- Mark Mazower (Ed.): After the war was over. Reconstructing the family, nation and state in Greece, 1943-1960. Princeton University Press, Princeton 2000, ISBN 0-691-05842-3 .
- James Edward Miller: United States and the Making of Modern Greece: History and Power, 1950–1974. The University of North Carolina Press 2009, excerpts online .
- Christopher Montague Woodhouse : The Struggle for Greece, 1941-1949. MacGibbon, Hart-Davis 1976, C. Hurst, London 2002 (repr.), ISBN 1-85065-487-5 .
- John (= Giannis) S. Koliopoulos: Plundered Loyalties. Axis Occupation and Civil Strife in Greek West. Hurst, London 1999, ISBN 1-85065-381-X .
Web links
- Sebastian Zöller: The society of the early "dark centuries" on Crete. An investigation of the archaeological legacies of the population of Crete during the Late Minoan IIIC and Sub-Minoan Periods with regard to their social significance and significance (Daidalos 2). 2005, accessed on December 3, 2014 (PDF file; 1.4 MB).
- Curtis N. Runnels: Environmental Destruction in Ancient Greece. www.spektrum.de, May 1, 1995, accessed on December 3, 2014 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Karl-Wilhelm Welwei : The early Greek period: 2000 to 500 BC Chr. CHBeck, Munich 2002, p 10f.
- ↑ The following mostly after Elke Stein-Hölkeskamp : The archaic Greece. The city and the sea. CH Beck, Munich 2015, Chapter 2: “The post-palatial epoch and the 'dark centuries'”; see. also: Sigrid Deger-Jalkotzy : Mycenaean forms of rule without palaces and the Greek polis. Aegaeum 12-2, 1995, pp. 367-377, especially pp. 375ff .; Peter Blome : The Dark Centuries - Brightened. In Joachim Latacz (ed.): Two hundred years of Homer research. Review and Outlook (= Colloquia Raurica Volume 2). BG Teubner, Stuttgart and Leipzig 1991, pp. 45-60.
- ↑ Klaus Kreiser: The Ottoman State 1300-1922. Munich 2001, ISBN 3-486-53711-3 , p. 84.
- ↑ Wording of the constitution of Epidaurus 1822
- ↑ General world history: with special consideration of the history of the churches and states , Volume 6 (1842), p. 574
- ^ Wording of the Troizen constitution, 1827
- ^ Wording of the constitution of 1864
- ↑ Mark Mazower : Greece under Hitler: Life during the German occupation 1941-1944 , Frankfurt 2016, ISBN 978-3-10-002507-4 , p. 42ff.
- ^ Schenker story , DB Mobility Networks Logistics
- ^ A b c Martin Seckendorf: On the economic policy of the German occupiers in Greece 1941–1944. Exploitation that resulted in disaster. On-line
- ↑ Götz Aly : Hitler's People's State. Robbery, Race War and National Socialism. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-402606-0 , p. 258.
- ↑ Anestis Nessou: Greece 1941-1944: German occupation policy and crimes against the civilian population - an assessment according to international law. 2009, p. 367.
- ^ What the Germans did to Greece. LIFE, November 27, 1944 ( online ).
- ↑ Local Government in occupied Europe (1939–1945), p. 212.
- ↑ Origin and number of foreign civil workers and forced laborers. Retrieved June 11, 2013 .
- ^ German Historical Museum : LeMO - 1939–45 Partisan War in Greece
- ↑ Wolfgang Michalka (Ed. On behalf of MGFA ): The Second World War. Analyzes - Basics - Research Balance . Weyarn 1997, ISBN 3-932131-38-X , p. 545.
- ↑ Hagen Fleischer In: Limits of reparation. Compensation for victims of Nazi persecution in Western and Eastern Europe 1945–2000. P. 382.
- ↑ Mark Spoerer, Jochen Streb: New German Economic History of the 20th Century, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-58392-2 , p. 238
- ↑ Hagen Fleischer In: Limits of reparation. Compensation for victims of Nazi persecution in Western and Eastern Europe 1945–2000. P. 382, p. 388.
- ↑ Hagen Fleischer In: Limits of reparation. Compensation for victims of Nazi persecution in Western and Eastern Europe 1945–2000. P. 398.
- ↑ Hagen Fleischer In: Limits of reparation. Compensation for victims of Nazi persecution in Western and Eastern Europe 1945–2000. P. 404 f.
- ↑ Hagen Fleischer In: Limits of reparation. Compensation for victims of Nazi persecution in Western and Eastern Europe 1945–2000. P. 410.
- ↑ HT 2004: Limits and Spaces of Reparation. Compensation for victims of Nazi persecution in Western and Eastern Europe. Retrieved June 11, 2013 .
- ↑ Federal Ministry of Finance (Ed.): Compensation for Nazi injustice. Reparation regulations , Berlin 2012, p. 8
- ↑ Hagen Fleischer In: Limits of reparation. Compensation for victims of Nazi persecution in Western and Eastern Europe 1945–2000. P. 402.
- ↑ It finally took place on September 1, 1946.
- ↑ Gabriella Etmektsoglou: Criminal states, innocent citizens? Aspects of Greek-German relations during World War II and its aftermath. In: Gerd Bender, Rainer Maria Kiesow, Dieter Simo (ed.): The other side of commercial law. Control in the dictatorships of the 20th century. Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-465-04002-3 , p. 69.
- ^ Mark Mazower: Three Forms of Political Justice. In: Mark Mazower (ed.): After the War was over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation, and State in Greece, 1943-1960. Princeton University Press, Princeton / Oxford 2000, ISBN 0-691-05842-3 , p. 34.
- ^ Rainer Liedtke: History of Europe. From 1815 to the present. Paderborn 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-76579-6 , p. 53.
- ↑ Christos Katsioulis: The Greek foreign policy identity in the name conflict with Macedonia and in the Kosovo war . ( Memento from July 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) In: Studies on German and European foreign policy. Issue 10/2002, p. 33 (PDF; 1.4 MB), accessed on December 24, 2012.
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