Georgios Papadopoulos Biography

Georgios Papadopoulos

(Eleokhorion, 1919-Athens, 1999) Greek military and politician.Graduated as a second lieutenant from the Military Academy in 1940, that year he fought against the Italian invader in Albania and during the German invasion of 1941 he followed the royal family to Egypt.There he continued his studies at the Middle East Officers Training School and joined the Greek battalions that fought alongside the British on the fronts of the region, including guerrilla warfare in occupied Greece.

In 1943 he reached the rank of lieutenant, in 1944 he joined as an intelligence officer of the General Staff of the Greek Army and in 1946, a year after the end of World War II, he was promoted to captain and commander of an artillery battery.From that moment he fought in the Greek National Democratic Army (EDES), mostly monarchical, against the communists of the National People's Liberation Army (ELAS) until the end of the civil war in 1949, which ended with the rank of major.Throughout the conflict he served as an instructor officer in the Artillery School (1946-1948) and commander of units 131 (1948) and 144 (1948-1949) of the Mountain Artillery.

Without supporters in high places and with only his impeccable record of service, Papadopoulos made a dark and slow military career, until reaching the ranks of lieutenant colonel (1956) and colonel (1960).He regularly followed short courses at the Greek Military Academy and received supplementary special training at academies in the US and the UK.

On April 21, 1967, he held a post on the Integrated General Staff In the NATO forces, he starred with Brigadier General Stylianos Patakos and Colonel Nikolas Mazarekos in a bloodless coup that ended the parliamentary regime and the government of Panayotis Kannelopoulos.A government chaired by the civilian Konstantinos Kollias was constituted in which Papadopoulos appeared as minister without portfolio, but as a result of the thwarted counterattack of December 13, 1967 led by King Constantine II, in which Kollias was involved, he seized the Presidency of the Government and the Ministry of Defense, at the same time that he was promoted to brigadier and immediately afterwards he ceased active military service.

Anti-communist and convinced patriot, and imbued with regenerationist purposes of a marked reactionary nature, Papadopoulos was progressively personalizing the so-called "regime of the colonels", of a strictly military and dictatorial nature.With the consent of the United States, which appreciated the service rendered to contain communist influence in the region, Papadopoulos repealed constitutional guarantees, banned political parties, imposed harsh information and cultural censorship, and established a police state in the region.that thousands of opponents or suspected of being so were arrested, imprisoned or deported, including prestigious politicians and figures from the artistic world.

On September 29, 1968, he approved in a referendum (with 91.8% of the favorable votes) an authoritarian Constitution that legitimized the "Revolution of April 21".On November 29, 1970, elections to a "Legislative Advisory Committee" were held through corporate channels and without a party base.

On the outside, he had to face the harsh opposition from Western Europe in the first years, such that on December 12, 1969 he had to withdraw the country from the Council of Europe to avoid the humiliation of an imminent expulsion.Faithful guarantor of the strategic interests of the US, he applied a flexible and moderately pragmatic diplomacy (as opposed to the ideology that guided his internal management), which went through a prudent stance on the Cyprus question (reception by Archbishop Makarios in January 1970), the rapprochement with the Arab world and the communist countries of the Balkans (resumption of diplomatic relations with Albania on November 13, 1971) and, notably, the recognition of People's China in 1972.

When On August 3, 1971, the US House of Representatives decided to suspend military aid to the Greek regime for its violation of human rights, President Nixon came out in defense of Papadopoulos, and later reached an agreement with him to turn Greek ports into the main bases of the 6th US Fleet in the Mediterranean.

Papadopoulos added to his functions that of Minister of Education in 1969 (until 1970), that of Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1970 and own head of state on March 21, 1972 as regency, a position that General Georgios Zoitakis had held since the king's flight in December 1967.On June 1, 1973 he accused Constantine of having prepared the failed royalist plot "the Armada "dismantled in March and announced a law to abolish the monarchical institution and proclaim the" Parliamentary Presidential Republic ", a project that was effectively approved in a referendum on July 29 with 78.4% affirmative votes.

The entire political arc, from the monarchists to the communists, gathered in a Parliamentary Committee for the Restoration of Democratic Legality, denounced the consultation as "a fraud and a disgrace for the country" and "a maneuver to prolong the dictatorship." Be that as it may, on August 19, 1973, Papadopoulos was sworn in as President of the Republic for a seven-year term.

At his inauguration, he announced the appointment of Spyros Markezinis to preside over a new civilian government., the amnesty for all political prisoners since 1967 (including the man who attacked him in August 1968), the lifting of martial law in Athens and the holding of pluralist legislative elections in 1974.This institutionalization of the regime and its alleged defeat Liberal was understood as an attempt to perpetuate the dictatorship.On November 17, 1973, in the face of serious disturbances caused by students, who had called for a popular uprising, Papadopoulos had to declare martial law in Athens, but the following 25 a group of soldiers commanded by the chief of the military police (ESA ), Dimitri Ioannides, removed Papadopoulos from power and installed Lieutenant-General Phaidon Gizikis as president.

The maneuver saw the alarm of the extreme right sector of the army before the latest normalizing initiatives of Papadopoulos, inclined to a certain legalistic solution to the crisis and reaffirmed in its promise to hold legislative elections in 1974, which, they feared, they could lead to chaos.The new junta accused Papadopoulos of being incapable of containing public disorder, of "betraying the aims of the 1967 movement" and of "obstructing the return to a healthy parliamentarism." However, the disastrous military adventure in Cyprus caused the collapse of the regime in July 1974 and in October Papadopoulos was arrested by the new democratic authorities.

In the process that was opened to the heads of During the dictatorship, in August 1975, Papadopoulos was found guilty of insurrection and high treason and sentenced to death, a sentence that would be commuted to life imprisonment.He was held in Korydallos Prison, where he died in 1999.On January 29, 1984, he launched a far-right party, the Greek National Political Society (EPEN), which did not achieve a major impact.