On April 21, 1967, a military coup took place in Greece, as a result of which three people came to power, remaining in history as the “junta of black colonels.”
Three nondescript short Napoleons became the main tools of a vast plan called “Prometheus”, designed to stop the danger of a communist takeover in Greece and the spread of communist contagion in the country.
Brigadier General, Head of the Tank Troops Training Center Stylianos Pattakos and Colonels of Artillery Georgios Papadopoulos and Nikolaos Markarezos.
Many years later, leafing through the documents of that time, historians discovered the bitter truth: the coup would have happened anyway. Not by specific colonels, but by others. Greece, one way or another, was doomed to enter once again into the narrow and dark tunnel of civil strife.
To the narrative of the seven-year period of the dictatorship of black colonels in Greece, one can draw on a lot of evidence and memories, but the result will be more emotional than historical. There are very few documents about this period, archives – both Greek and foreign – are just beginning to open.
There is no single view of the events of forty-five years ago and, probably, there cannot be: the heroes of those distant events are still alive and well – both negative and positive. And the very division of them into negative and positive is also very, very conditional. Except, of course, in the unambiguously egregious cases. As, for example, the three “Napoleons” already mentioned above and the well-known stories of their henchmen, who were directly involved in the torture and murder of political prisoners. And the two main characters of those distant events are still doing big politics to this day. Their names and four decades later do not leave the agenda.
This is the former King Constantine, who now and then monopolizes the attention of international and Greek media, and the former head of the New Democracy, the former Prime Minister of the country Konstantinos Mitsotakis, who received the “imperial” nickname “apostate” from historians, whose actions in the period immediately preceding the establishment of the dictatorship, it is quite possible to print with a more severe word than “apostasy”: the word “betrayal”.
Georgios Papandreou Sr. called his Minister of Economy, which was Konstantinos Mitsotakis in the government of the Center Union in 1965, “the think tank of the palace conspiracy that resulted in the overthrow of the legitimate government. Many years later, when Mitsotakis became the head of the New Democracy party, the son of Geogios, Andreas Papandreou, said that Ephialtes was now leading the right, naming his sworn political enemy after the traitor of 300 Spartans killed at Thermopylae. (By the way, in Russian “Ephialtes”, which has become a common noun in Greek, is translated as “nightmare”).
It is impossible to ignore the fact that after forty-five years the very assessment of the role of the junta in Greece is far from unambiguous. The order (albeit reinforced by tank muzzles) that reigned in Greece as dictators is remembered by many with nostalgia. Especially today, during the period of the economic crisis, when it comes to another political scandal, a sharp jump in crime, the insecurity of citizens not only from criminal elements, who, perhaps, are the only ones who live freely, but also from the arbitrariness of the statesmen themselves, ruling on behalf of democracy.
It is impossible not to recall that the coup happened relatively easily. There was no resistance. The rare citizens who found themselves on the streets of Athens in the early morning of Friday, April 21, watched in bewilderment as the tanks moved towards the center, towards the royal palace, towards the central building of the telephone exchange, towards the building of the radio station in Zappion Park. For some reason, the kiosks were closed, and bundles of morning newspapers tied with twine lay around their dark cubes. More precisely, those who managed to get out of the printing house.
Coup tanks near the Greek Parliament
By 2 o’clock, the entire political leadership of the country was arrested. On Xenokratus Street, where the apartment of the country’s Prime Minister Panagiotis Kanellopulos was located, the military was on duty, not letting anyone near the door of the house, even correspondents of central newspapers. When the military entered Kanellopoulos’s apartment to arrest the prime minister, his wife was frightened to death, believing that it was the communists dressed in military uniform who came for her husband’s scalp.
At 02:30, the tanks already controlled the entire center of the capital, after another quarter of an hour the city telephones stopped working, and worried citizens, who tried to get through to newspaper editorial offices to find out what was happening in the city, looked with amazement at the suddenly deafened and numb telephone receivers.
At 3.30 it became clear that Athens was in the hands of the military. The military broke into the house of Manolis Glezos, who at that time was in charge of the left-wing newspaper Avgi. He went out to them in his pajamas and saw one of the midnight guests tearing out the telephone wire with meat. Manolis Glezos was taken away in his pajamas without even being allowed to change. At the same time, Andreas Papandreou and Leonidas Kirkos were arrested in their apartments. One of them will be destined to become the head of the PASOK socialist party he created, the other – to head the Inner Party of Communists (KP Esoteriku, if anyone else remembers that name).
At 5.30 am, the colonels were already going up to the porch of the summer royal palace in Tatoi, where the royal family was resting. They demanded that the 27-year-old then King Constantine II recognize the junta. Constantine compromised, against the advice of the already arrested Panagiotis Kanellopoulos. The colonels did not take the king by surprise. He had not slept since half past three in the morning, when he was awakened by an alarming call from retired Admiral Athanasius Spanidis, who called him from the naval base located on Salamis. He asked the king to give the order to call a military squadron from Crete in order to suppress the military coup and return the legitimate government to parliament. Then came the call of the Minister of Public Order, Georgios Rallis. He called from the police station in Marousi and also insisted on urgently calling the air force from the province, that is, those military units that were not under the influence of the colonels who started the coup.
Why the king listened to Spyros Marquezinis, the head of the conservative party, and agreed to cooperate with the junta, it is difficult to say. Probably Konstantin decided that in this way he chooses the lesser of two evils. It is even said that on that historic morning, the king addressed the dictators with the following words: “I am sure that you did this in order to save the country.” Five days later, on April 26, in his speech in honor of the new regime, Constantine went even further, stating, among other things: “I am sure that with God’s help, with my support and the support of all the people, in the very near future you will create a state of justice, a truly healthy democratic state.”
On the very first day of the creation of the “state of justice”, about 10 thousand people were arrested, who were placed at the hippodrome in Paleo Faliro. And some time later, on the barges of the navy of the new “healthy democratic state”, more than 7.5 thousand people were transported to exile camps on the islands of Yaros and Leros, which again “hospitably” opened their gates.
Golden phoenix, symbol of the Greek junta
The Golden Phoenix bird, which became the emblem of the junta of black colonels, later known as the “bird”, was reborn from the ashes. The gates of the concentration camps, abandoned since the cleansings of the Civil War, were opened to receive new residents, progressive mouths were hermetically shut, and newspapers that smacked of centrism (not to mention leftism) were closed.
Immediately there were also the first killed. The very first, on April 21, was killed by a young Athenian Maria Kalavra, who refused to obey the order of the military. Four days later, the servants of the “state of justice” right on the hippodrome killed Panagiotis Elis, who in historiography became the first sacrificial “lamb” of the new regime. Almost no information has been preserved about Panagiotis Elis. It is only known that he was born in the year of the Asia Minor catastrophe, in 1922, in Komotini, he fought, was captured and exiled to hard labor, first to Bulgaria, and then to Serbia. When he returned to Greece after his release, his grateful homeland exiled him as a communist to an honorary exile on the island of Makronisos. Unaware that the Golden-winged Phoenix bird had returned to Greece, Alice inadvertently protested his forcible detention. One of the “chicks” of the Phoenix, an armed guard of the new order, hit him on the head with a butt, killing him on the spot.
The Phoenix bird could lay down with one blow of its clawed paw, or it could borrow some of its golden sheen. This brilliance blinded a lot of people, and among them, unfortunately, there are enough cultural figures who not only survived the black colonels, but also lived in glory and popular love to a ripe old age. Some of them continue to live to this day, and are popular.
So, in a festive concert dedicated to the anniversary of the “April Revolution”, as the junta called itself, organized on April 28, 1968 at the Panathenaic Stadium, many famous then and later artists took part. Among those who conducted the broadcasting orchestra were, for example, Yorgos Katszaros, Marinella, Rena Vlahopoulou and Grigoris Bitikotis, who was then named “Sir Beaty”, Vicky Mosholyu, Jenny Vanu, Yorgos Zambetas sang for the dictators, funny sketches were performed by the favorite actors of Greek cinema – Dinos Iliopoulos, Kostas Voutsas, Yannis Voyazis and others.
The need for a “cultural revolution” inspired by the “April Revolution” was written and spoken about by Konstantinos Plevris, the ideologist of the Golden Phoenix regime, and now the acting theorist and ideologist of the Popular Orthodox Front, that is, the LAOS party of Yorgos Karadzaferis. And it is here that I would like to repeat what has already been said at the beginning. About what really happened during the dark period that began on April 21, 1967 and ended ingloriously.
On July 24, 1974, with the arrival in Athens from Paris of Konstantinos Karamanlis, who was called to save the nation, there is very, very little reliable information .. And what should she do? If Konstantinos Mitsotakis continues to be considered the “Methuselah” of Greek politics, if the former King Constantine not only comes to Greece, as if to his fiefdom, but also sells its treasures at auctions, if the beloved bard of the Golden Phoenix “Sir Beaty” is honored almost more than persecuted by the junta Mikis Theodorakis? A most interesting testimony was given a year ago by the editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Vima” Stavros Psykharis in his article “The Hole”.
A few years ago, during the tenure of the country’s president, Kostis Stephanopoulos, former King Constantine II visited Greece. Kostis Stephanopoulos gave his consent for Constantine to visit the presidential palace, where he once lived, first as heir to his father, King Paul, and then as king of Greece. Entering the office of the president, the former king sighed: this room was once his office, until the very day when he was forced to leave the country after an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the dictatorial regime.
All the king’s men. King of Hellas Konstantinos ΙΙ / Far left G. Papadopoulos
Then Konstantin’s gaze settled on some point in the wall of the office. “I would like to see if there is still a hole there,” the former king exclaimed, and, catching the president’s surprised look in return, hastened to explain that the hole in the wall led to the palace listening and tape recording system. Palace conversations began to be recorded after the events of July 1965, which ended with the defection of some prominent members of the ruling Union of the Center party, including Konstantinos Mitsotakis.
No tapes, needless to say, were found in the hole, no matter how hard they searched. What does it say? The fact that someone who knew about their existence hastened to get rid of dangerous evidence. Indeed, a hole in the presidential palace could shed much light on the black holes of contemporary Greek history.
Source: greekorbis.gr
More Stories
On April 10, 1821, the Turks hanged Patriarch Gregory V at the Phanar gates
How did married couples divorce in Ancient Greece? Difference with modern divorces
Ancient Greek roots of Christmas traditions