Britain and the Greek Colonels: Accommodating the Junta in the Cold War

摘要

Liberal democracy in Greece had a troubled history during the twentieth century, compromised by authoritarian prime ministers, activist royals and military and outside intervention. It was also interrupted by several periods of outright dictatorship, with the latest occurring between 1967 and 1974. The result of a coup d'etat by mid-ranking military officers, that last spell of dictatorship was run by a junta led by Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos, with a coup against the coupists taking place in 1973 and elevating to power the head of the Greek Military Police, Dimitrios Ioannidis. Deeply nationalist and fiercely anti-communist, each of the junta's two configurations kept Greece within the Western orbit and firmly in NATO. The book by Alexandras Nafpliotis, as its title suggests, investigates how successive UK governments developed working relations with the Greek dictators.