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Greek Civil War Research Paper

Decent Essays
The Kingdom of Greece

Following the Second World War, Greece was plunged into decades of strife and political turmoil. The Kingdom of Greece falls somewhere in the middle of the superpower confrontation during the Cold War. Originally, Stalin and Churchill had agreed to let Britain run a non-communist Greece, yet the nation struggled between the Western and Eastern blocs and their respective superpowers’ influence [1]. This struggle originates from the German and Italian occupation of the Kingdom of Greece during the Second World War. During this occupation, many resistance groups of different ideologies began to emerge. Following the war, while the Greek government was still taking refuge in Egypt, the occupational government dissolved, leaving
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The Greek Civil War, initially labelled as “communist insurgency,” began in 1946 between the Kingdom of Greece and the Communist-run Provisional Democratic Government. The Kingdom of Greece and the Hellenic Army were supported by the British Empire (until 1947) and the United States (after 1947). Conversely, the Provisional Democratic Government and the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE), its military branch, were supported by the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Albania [4]. The Greek Civil War marks one of the first major events of the Cold War, and its outcome produced a victory for the Hellenic Army and its Western Bloc allies. Following the Greek Civil War, the Kingdom of Greece aligned itself with the United States and the Western Bloc by joining NATO in 1952 and the European Communities in 1981…show more content…
More people died in the Civil War than in the occupation of the Second World War [1]. Consequently, the nation became extremely polarized, and with the Kingdom’s victory in the Civil War, many Greeks sought refuge in communist countries. The Kingdom of Greece experienced a coup d’état in the following years, by a group of rightist and non-communist officials in 1977 [2]. The latter coup was led by George Papadopoulos, who installed a military regime in the Kingdom of Greece. When this fell apart, a conservative government led by Constantine Karamanlis dissolve the monarchy and legalize the KKE. Later, in 1981, the center-left government of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement allowed former DSE to return to Greece after taking refuge in other communist nations [3].

Although Greece officially aligned itself with the United States and its Western Bloc allies, the nation was tremendously split between the influences of the Soviet Union and the United States. The lack of a stable government in the immediate aftermath of the war led to a brutal Civil War. Furthermore, decades of political strife between the leftist and rightist wings of society led to an increasingly unstable nation. Greece truly was caught between the two superpowers’ spheres of
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