Quote:
Originally Posted by Splitter
I do know this....I now need to go research the Greek civil war...I had no idea there was such a thing.
Splitter
|
Just make sure to split your sources so you can come up with your own impartial conclusions
A lot of the memoirs were written by people who fought and they are understandably tainted by their personal experiences...or to put it mildly, there's a lot of biased books on either side.
That war resulted in a series of opposing pendulum swings that still affect the country to an extent. The communist faction dragged the nation into yet another war right after WWII with their refusal to take part in the election and their reluctance to disarm, this resulted in the demonization of all communists regardless of their actions, leading many to exile based only on their political beliefs (even people who didn't fight against the government army), not to mention that the government was initially short on troops (most of the Greek army that managed to evacute after the occupation was still in the Middle East where they had fought against the Axis, we even had a couple Flower class corvettes in the D-Day fleet yet almost nothing back home, truth be told it was mostly the commies that manage to drive wermacht out from most of the rural areas, hence their initial approval ratings by the general populace) and re-instated into active service a minority of people that sided with the Axis occupation forces during the war as a stop-gap measure (the kind of axis-collaborating auxiliary troops found in many parts of occupied Europe), which then resulted in the general public showing resentment towards the ruling elite (the king at the time and the official governments), this led to another flare up of socialist ideologies and instability during the mid-late 60s, which was followed by a coup and a 7 year military junta to crack down on dissent, which ended after the war and partitioning of Cyprus and the student uprisings, giving us the democracy we have today, where politicians behave like they are untouchable because of the collective bad memmory of the junta ( the lesser of two evils mentality) and have made it a business to bestow their position upon their children like they were, well, kings practicing hereditary succesion, but they again have recently been largely devalued on the whole due to their failures and scandals in economy and protecting interests and rights that are ours by treaties and international laws, yet they bow down to foreign centers of power for personal gain. Confusing, eh?
Ok, deep breath
Lot's of dirty back-room deals and secret blows in that story, some coming from those that were expected to act in such a way, yet an alarmingly significant portion coming from allies as well. It should make a good read if you can get a clear idea of the timelines and persons involved.
Wikipedia is your safest bet to get the gist of things, start from 1936 and go from there