Second Hellenic Republic

Second Hellenic Republic 1924–1935
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founding	1924 (replacement of the monarchy)
resolution	1935 (restoration of the monarchy)
Motto
Motto
National anthem
National holiday
Capital	Athens
Official language	Greek
currency	Greek drachma
Forms of government	republic
Constitutions
Forms of government
Heads of state	1924–1926: Pavlos Koundouriotis 1926: Theodoros Pangalos 1926–1929: Pavlos Koundouriotis 1929–1935: Alexandros Zaimis
Heads of government	see list of Greek Prime Ministers
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Residents
Time zone	UTC + 2 EET

The Greek state in the period from 1924 to 1935 is referred to as the Second Hellenic Republic ( Greek Δεύτερη Ελληνική Δημοκρατία Defteri Elliniki Dimokratia ) . It was the second republic in modern Greece after the First Hellenic Republic of 1828-1832. Before (from 1832 to 1924) and after (from 1935 to 1973) Greece was a monarchy of German nobles.

prehistory

In the course of the Greek Revolution against Ottoman oppression in the coastal areas around the Aegean and the southern Black Sea , which have been inhabited by the majority Greek for thousands of years , the people organized their resistance and installed provisional democratic structures from 1821 , up to and including the First Hellenic Democracy of the Modern Age (1827-1832 ). After their elimination, the young state was ruled by German nobles for more than 91 years from 1833, initially in an absolutist way. It was not until 1843 that the people were granted a constitution and the German king also appointed Greeks to the government and the military.

A young Cretan entered the political arena in 1888 at the latest. Eleftherios Venizelos took over political offices in his homeland after gaining autonomy and became Minister of Justice under the German Governor General of Crete, Prince George of Greece . Venizelos proclaimed the annexation of Crete to Greece against the prince's opposition, was elected Greek Prime Minister in Athens in 1909 and was finally able to experience the annexation himself in 1913. Venizelos had managed to expand the Greek national territory many times over during his extremely successful reign ( Treaty of Sèvres ).

In 1914 he fell out with the (German) King Constantine I over the question of a Greek entry into the war against Germany . In the parliamentary elections in 1916, Venizelos was confirmed by the people and then dismissed from office by Constantine, whereupon Venizelos founded a democratic counter-government in Thessaloniki in October 1916 to declare war on the side of the Entente Germany in 1917. Constantine had to abdicate and leave the country together with the heir to the throne Georg, so that he passed the throne to his second son Alexander . He was bitten by a monkey in 1920 and died shortly afterwards of blood poisoning. In the same year, the Venizelos government won an absolute majority of the votes against the newly founded union of all opposition parties, but received only a third of the parliamentary seats because of the majority voting rights of 1864, so that he was in the middle of the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) in Paris Went into exile. In this politically highly unstable time, Constantine returned in 1920 and continued the war without Venizelos, which ended for the Greeks in the Asia Minor catastrophe . The unloved Constantine had to abdicate again in 1922 and his son George II took over. After only one year he left the country voluntarily, so that Greece was finally able to abolish the monarchy after a referendum on March 25, 1924. This symbolic date was chosen because on March 25, 1821 (the official national holiday) the Greek Revolution against the Ottoman monarchy had its hopeful beginning.

Abolition of the monarchy in 1924

Since the removal of the Turkish sultanate, five German kings had ruled in a row in Greece, two of whom had to abdicate, one was shot from behind on the street, one died of blood poisoning and one left voluntarily. For the second time in its modern history, Greece began building a democratic state system in 1924. On June 3, 1927, the constitution of the second Greek republic came into force, and a president was appointed instead of a king of the Hellenes. From 1924 to 1929, Pavlos Koundouriotis held this office with a brief interruption . He was followed by Alexandros Zaimis from 1929 to 1935 . Koundouriotis belonged to the democratic camp and supported Venizelos against the royalists. In contrast, Zaimis was a moderate conservative, who, however, had previously entered into a coalition as Prime Minister with the Venizelos party until 1927. Venizelos was elected Prime Minister for the last time during the 1928–1932 term of office. He was then followed by his rival Panagis Tsaldaris , who formed a coalition with royalists including the leader of a splinter party, General Ioannis Metaxas .

In 1930, Germany was awarded the IOC to host the XI Games. 1936 Olympics in Berlin. After Adolf Hitler's election as Chancellor in 1933, however, v. a. protests in the US because of the obvious racism of his government, so that the rescheduling of the games was considered. Under the then new governments of Tsaldaris and Hitler, an unprecedented propaganda campaign by the NSDAP was started with the active support of royalist, Germany-friendly personalities from politics and culture in Greece. A year-long campaign, as a result of which Olympia , the “immortal Hellas” and its German royal couple were exaggerated, transfigured and instrumentalized in order to construct a close racial relationship between the two peoples in the media.

Restoration of royalism in 1935

Tsaldaris was pushed out of office by his war minister Georgios Kondylis in October 1935 , who promptly brought George II back from exile, only to resign from the office of prime minister after only seven weeks in office. It was followed by Konstantinos Demertzis in 1935–1936 and the dictator Ioannis Metaxas in 1936–1941 . The year 1936 was remarkable in that, in addition to Demertzis, five (5) other former Prime Ministers of Greece died, clearing the political stage. Despite his party's only seven parliamentary seats, Metaxas was given the office of prime minister by the king and extensive powers to establish an authoritarian government.

Metaxas was initially a loyal, Germany-friendly royalist, but saw the emergence of Italian fascism and the newly elected Chancellor Adolf Hitler as a great danger to Europe and changed in the period that followed, despite ongoing reprisals, in the perception of the Greeks. In his estimation, the Axis powers had no prospect of success. An ultimatum from Benito Mussolini , brought by the then ambassador in Athens Emanuele Grazzi , he rejected ( October 28, 1940 , Όχι day) and repulsed the Italian troops attacking via Albania only 3 hours later. Grazzi later quotes in his memoir the course of the conversation after the delivery of the ultimatum as follows: (Ioannis Metaxas, IM :) “ Alors, c'est la guerre. "(Emanuele Grazzi :)" Pas nécessaire, mon excellence "(IM :)" Non , c'est nécessaire. "(" Well, that means war then "" Not necessarily, Your Excellency "" No (but), it is necessary ")

When, after his defeat, Hitler rushed to Mussolini's aid, Metaxas instructed his ambassador in Berlin not to conduct any more negotiations with Hitler and noted in his diary: “ καλύτερα να πεθάνουμε όλοι παρά να υποταχθούμε στεον. “(“ Better we all die than submit to Hitler ”.) Shortly thereafter, General Ioannis Metaxas fell ill and died within a few days, allegedly from the wrong medical treatment for tonsillitis. He was followed by his health and social affairs minister, Alexandros Koryzis , who, however, also rejected Hitler's ultimatum. With the illegal entry of German troops on April 6th, the (German) King Georg, as commander in chief of the Greek army, should have had his compatriots shot. During a scheduled crisis meeting on how to proceed, the King and Prime Minister fell out. Alexandros Koryzis allegedly committed suicide that same evening. Without Metaxas and Koryzis, there were no adequate defensive measures and only a few retreats. With the support of Italian, Bulgarian and voluntary Albanian associations, the German occupation army was able to reach the capital in just 3 weeks. The surrender was on April 23, 1941, and on April 25 the German king left for Egypt via Crete, abandoning his subjects. The uncontrolled confiscation of Greek production and its removal from the country, which began immediately, led to a famine in the following winter of 41/42 , from which several hundred thousand people died in the big cities.

Without exception, all presidents and prime ministers after Eleftherios Venizelo's term of office (from 1933) were graduates of German universities and military academies.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 1821 National Assembly in Epidavros , 1822 first constitution, 1827 first democratic direct election to the national constitution and election of the regent (president)
2. ↑ On May 26, 1916, Constantine handed over military fortifications in northern Greece to Bulgaria, which shortly before had entered the First World War on Germany's side , and which now carried out the long-awaited occupation of northern Greece.
3. ↑ "Swallowed toothpick, ray sting, monkey bite - these deaths really do exist"
4. ↑ The Union of the Opposition was founded in 1920 to overthrow Venizelos with the help of majority voting. Whereupon the Prime Minister even lost his own parliamentary seat. Two years later the union was dissolved again.
5. ↑ Constantine was barely able to support his military during the prevailing economic crisis. Despite this, he pursued the ambitious plan, against the advice and the interests of the guaranteeing powers, to extend his sphere of influence far beyond the Greek-populated areas. So the guarantee powers went over to equipping the Turkish military. Mustafa Kemal took advantage of this fact and used these weapons to force the depopulation of the coastal regions on the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea, which had been inhabited by Greek people for thousands of years. Greece, with only 5 million inhabitants, had to take in 1.5 million refugees.
6. ↑ ^{a b} Σακκέτος Άγγελος
7. ↑ German kings of the Hellenes up to the establishment of the Second Hellenic Republic from the House of Wittelsbach : Otto , and from the House of Glücksburg : Georg I , Konstantin I , Alexander , Georg II.
8. ^ Contributions by Greek politicians to "Immortal Hellas". The book was published in 1938 by the press chief of the Greek embassy in Berlin and the head of the Reich in the Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP in a German publishing house.
9. ^ Georg II of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg and Elisabeth from the house of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen
10. ↑ 1936 Georgios Kondylis , Eleftherios Venizelos , Konstantinos Demertzis , Panagis Tsaldaris and from September Alexandros Zaimis and Alexandros Papanastasiou died
11. ↑ ^{a b} VIADIPLOMACY , 2017: "The sudden death of Ioannis Metaxas and the conspiracy theories"
12. ↑ Alexandros Koryzis was the great-grandson of a freedom fighter from 1821, whose descendants played a decisive role in the politics of the country. For these reasons too, the alleged suicide was questioned. The representation of the (German) Crown Prince Paul that Koryzis shot himself twice in the heart as a right-hander with his left hand remained unchecked.