At the start of the 20th century Greece was a small, poor kingdom, with half of all Greeks living outside its borders. By the end of the century it was a European democracy and a member of the European Community. In between came seventy very hard years.
- 1909Goudi coup; the Cretan Eleftherios Venizelos comes to power.
- 1912-1913Balkan Wars: Greece annexes Macedonia, Epirus, Crete and the eastern Aegean islands; its territory almost doubles.
- 1915-1917National Schism between Venizelos, pro-Entente, and neutralist King Constantine.
- 1919Greek troops land at Smyrna.
- 1922Defeat in Anatolia, burning of Smyrna: the Asia Minor catastrophe.
- 1923Treaty of Lausanne and population exchange with Turkey.
- 1924-1935Second Republic, unstable, punctuated by coups.
- 1936Dictatorship of General Ioannis Metaxas.
- 28 October 1940Metaxas rejects Mussolini's ultimatum: the Greco-Italian War begins.
- April 1941Germany invades; German, Italian and Bulgarian occupation.
- 1941-1942The great famine kills tens of thousands in Athens and on the islands.
- 1943Deportation of Thessaloniki's Jews; massacre of the Italian Acqui Division on Kefalonia.
- October 1944Liberation of Athens.
- 1946-1949Civil war between the government, backed by Britain and the United States, and the communist army.
- 1952Greece joins NATO; women vote in parliamentary elections for the first time.
- 1955-1963Konstantinos Karamanlis's governments, economic growth and emigration.
- 21 April 1967The colonels' coup.
- 17 November 1973Athens Polytechnic student uprising, crushed by tanks.
- July 1974Coup in Cyprus and Turkish invasion; the dictatorship collapses.
- December 1974Referendum abolishes the monarchy.
- 1981Joins the European Community; Andreas Papandreou becomes prime minister.
The Great Idea and the catastrophe
The towering figure of the first quarter-century was Eleftherios Venizelos. In the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 Greece won Thessaloniki, Epirus, Crete and the Aegean islands. After the First World War the Treaty of Sèvres gave it eastern Thrace and the Smyrna region, seeming to fulfil the Megali Idea. But the advance into Anatolia ended in 1922 with defeat by Mustafa Kemal's forces and the burning of Smyrna. Under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne about 1.2 million Greeks from Turkey arrived as refugees in a country of five million, transforming its society, music and food for ever: their world gave birth to rebetiko.
The No of 1940 and the occupation
At dawn on 28 October 1940 the dictator Metaxas rejected Fascist Italy's ultimatum demanding passage for its troops. Tradition sums up his answer in one word: Ochi, "No". The Greek army drove the Italians back into Albania, the first Allied victory against the Axis. In April 1941 Germany intervened and Greece was occupied by Germans, Italians and Bulgarians. The winter of 1941-1942 brought a terrible famine. A strong Resistance emerged, led mainly by the left-wing EAM front and its army ELAS, while German reprisals destroyed whole villages such as Distomo and Kalavryta. In 1943 almost all of Thessaloniki's roughly 50,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz. After the Italian armistice of 8 September 1943, thousands of Italian soldiers of the Acqui Division were killed by the Germans on Kefalonia.
The civil war
After liberation, tension between the communists and the British-backed government erupted in the fighting in Athens in December 1944 and then the civil war (1946-1949). With US help under the Truman Doctrine, the government army won. The war left tens of thousands dead, villages destroyed, children taken away, political prisoners on exile islands such as Makronisos and a deep rift in society.
From the post-war years to the colonels
The 1950s and 1960s brought reconstruction and growth, but also mass emigration to Germany, Australia and the United States and a limited democracy in which the left was persecuted. On 21 April 1967 a group of colonels led by Georgios Papadopoulos seized power. The colonels' dictatorship banned parties, jailed and tortured opponents and censored culture. On 17 November 1973 students occupied the Athens Polytechnic; the uprising was crushed by tanks. In July 1974 the failed coup against the president of Cyprus and the resulting Turkish invasion of the island brought the regime down.
Metapolitefsi
On 24 July 1974 Konstantinos Karamanlis returned from exile and led the transition to democracy, known as the Metapolitefsi. In December a referendum abolished the monarchy; in 1975 a new Constitution was adopted; in 1981 Greece joined the European Community. 17 November, the anniversary of the Polytechnic, is still a day of commemoration and marches.
See also the history of Greece, politics today and famous Greeks.