Konstantinos Dovas

Konstantinos Dovas ( Greek Κωνσταντίνος Δόβας , born December 20, 1898 in Konitsa ; † July 24, 1973 in Athens ) was a Greek general and prime minister of a transitional government.

Military career

Dovas graduated from the military academies of Athens and Paris. He then served in the Greek army. In the late 1940s he was involved in several clashes during the Greek Civil War between the communist DSE under General Markos Vafiadis and the government; around 1947 while defending his hometown Konitsa. In 1951 he was promoted to lieutenant general and served as coordinator between the Greek military and NATO until 1952. From 1954 to 1959 he was Chief of Staff for National Defense. During this period of office, on the national holiday of March 25, 1955, a contract was signed between the army and the CIA to set up a special force "Sheepskin" (sheepskin), from which a Greek stay-behind organization developed in the following years . The aim of this secret organization was to fight communist rebels and organizations. After his departure from the army, from 1960, apart from his short term as prime minister, he was first chairman of the royal military cabinet of King Paul and later of his son Constantine II. After the military coup in 1967 , Dovas accompanied the king into exile in Rome but return to Greece in 1968. He lived in seclusion in Athens, where he died on July 24, 1973 after a long illness. Dovas was buried in the First Athens Cemetery.

prime minister

After Karamanlis planned new elections for autumn 1961, he presented a new electoral law with increased proportional representation to the Greek parliament in May. After his resignation and the dissolution of parliament by the king, a parliamentary election was scheduled for October 29, 1961 . Konstantinos Dovas was acting Prime Minister for the period from September 20 to November 4, 1961. Although the Greek constitution of 1952 forbade the court from interfering in daily politics, Queen Friederike worked with Dovas as her close confidante on a plan to lead Karamanlis' right-wing conservative party ERE to an election victory in the upcoming parliamentary election. Repressions against the political opponent and forgeries reached an unprecedented level in a parliamentary election. Karamanlis' ERE achieved an absolute majority with almost 51% of the vote, while the opposition EK party under Georgios Papandreou declared that it did not recognize the government.

literature

• Jannis Valasidis: Biographies of leading personalities from the political life of Greece. In: Klaus-Detlev Grothusen (Hrsg.): Südosteuropa-Handbuch. Volume III: Greece. Verlag Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1980, ISBN 3-525-36202-1 , p. 688.
• Harris M. Lentz: Heads of States and Governments Since 1945. Routledge, 2013, ISBN 978-1-134-26490-2 , p. 332.
• Heinz A. Richter : 1939-2004. In: Reinhard Stupperich , Heinz A. Richter (ed.): History of Greece in the 20th century. (=  Peleus: Studies on the archeology and history of Greece and Cyprus. 67.2). Verlag Franz Philipp Rutzen , Ruhpolding 2015, ISBN 978-3-447-10398-5 , pp. 359-361.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Former Chiefs of Defense
2. ↑ Richter 2015, p. 360 .; Secret services. Spider under the sheepskin. In: Der Spiegel. Number 48, November 26, 1990, pp. 173-176.
3. ↑ Ἀπεβίωσεν ὁ Στρατηγός Δόβας. PDF Online, Makedonia July 25, 1973, p. 4. (Greek)
4. ↑ Richter 2015, p. 359.
5. ↑ Konstantinos Dova's cabinet (Greek)
6. ↑ Greece. Government Crisis: Shield and Sons. The mirror. Number 30, July 21, 1965, p. 58.
7. ↑ Richter 2015, p. 360 f.

predecessor	Office	successor
Konstantinos Karamanlis	Prime Minister of Greece 1961	Konstantinos Karamanlis