4th of August Regime

At 3 a.m. on the morning of October 28th, 1940, Emanuele Grazzi, the Italian ambassador to Greece, delivered an ultimatum from Benito Mussolini to Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas. “Il Duce” demanded that Metaxas allow the Italian army free passage to enter and occupy strategic sites in Greece unopposed.

The history of the secret services is, by its very nature, a fascinating subject. In the "civilized" world, their archives are declassified and turned over to researchers, offering crucial missing historical puzzle pieces. Our country, unfortunately, lags on this issue and we often learn our history from foreign archives.

He was killed on April 6th 1941 - The "Metaxas Line" legacy

A network of thousands of underground spaces are scattered beneath Athens. Pedestrians hurry past them, not suspecting that the metal lid of a manhole they have just stepped on is one of the gates to a vast web of spaces, which for decades has been sealed in silence and oblivion.

General Ioannis Metaxas' regime (1936-41) built some 400 bomb shelters in Athens, while it imposed by law the creation of a shelter in every new building, raising the number to 5,500 from 1936 to 1940, author and researcher Konstantinos Kyrimis, who has been recording them for over a decade, tells Kathimerini, citing an official Hellenic Army report.

In April of 1947, in the midst of the civil war, the leader of the Nationalist Party (renamed People's Party in 1920), Theodoros Tourkovasilis, while speaking to the Greek Parliament, mentioned Switzerland in passing: "I was recently given the chance to admire this people and to see the fine organization of this state up close. Switzerland is indeed a masterpiece of a state.

By George Gilson

"Until now we used to say that the Greeks fight like heroes. Now we shall say: Heroes fight like Greeks," Winston Churchill famously said, regarding tiny Greece's heroic battle against the forces of fascist leader Benito Mussolini and its refusal to surrender on 28 October, 1940.

The micro-exhibition "Roupel 1941. The battle for Greece's defence", organized on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Marita Operation, will be open, as of Friday, April 9, until Saturday, May 9, at the National Museum of Romanian History (MNIR). "Roupel 1941.

In early 1941, Adolf Hitler could look at a map of Eastern Europe and think that his plans were progressing nicely. The invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, was coming in a few short months, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria had joined the Tripartite Pact, and Yugoslavia’s government signed on to the same on March 25th, 1941.

“No” (Ochi) day commemorates the events of October 28,1940, when Emanele Grazzi, the Italian ambassador, delivered an ultimatum to Greek Dictator Ioannis Metaxas at 3 a.m. in the morning. The message from Benito Mussolini demanded that Metaxas allow the Italian army free passage to enter and occupy strategic sites in Greece.