Ioannis Metaxas

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.

Shortly after 03:00 in the morning of October 28, 1940, the fascist Italian government of Mussolini sent an ultimatum to Greece, through the Italian ambassador in Athens, Emanuele Grazzi, who personally delivered it to Ioannis Metaxas at his home in Kifissia, demanding the free passage of the Italian army from the Greek-Albanian border in order to then occupy some strategic points of the Kingdo

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.

Within the context of the government's aim to defend and uphold the religious rights of all citizens living in Greece, Education Minister Niki Kerameus has told Kathimerini that a law is being drafted regarding the process of establishing and operating places of worship.