A classical calculator
C. M. Woodhouse
POPULAR AUTOCRACY IN GREECE, 1936-41: A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF GENERAL IOANNIS METAXAS by P. J. Vatikiotis Frank Cass, £35, pp. 232 Professor Vatikiotis, who died while this book was in the press, will be sadly missed in academic circles, equally in Greece, in the Near East, in the USA, and in this country. He was an original, perceptive, witty and often unorthodox interpreter of the political history of modem Greece. This last work on Greece as a 'popular autocracy' under Metaxas is no exception.
His title is an ingenious and challenging oxymoron. The dates attached to it merely define the years of Metaxas' dictatorship, and they are exceeded at both ends: Metaxas' career before 1936 occupies well over half the book. But it is still hard to see how an autocracy can be popular. Metaxas was scarcely loved until his funeral, which was a moving occasion, coming between Greece's conquest of Mussolini and defeat by Hitler. But he was never popular as a `man of the people', nor did he want to be: he believed (though Vatikiotis does not) that he was an aristocrat by descent.
Throughout most of his life he was self-conscious, unsophisticated and ner- vous, but also ambitious, boastful and con- scious of his superiority, as a military commander, over all his contemporaries. In his youth he had an avid taste for prostitutes, but after marriage he became a devoted paterfamilias. All of this is recorded in his diaries. Although frequent- ly interrupted, these are Vatikiotis' main psychological source, and it is not surpris- ing that his favourite diagnosis of Metaxas' psychology is 'paranoia'. The diaries, with other personal sources, provide the main background from his birth in 1871 to his seizure of power in 1936. Until the latter date, he was primarily an army officer (although already briefly prime minister), and unquestionably a very able soldier, but still unsure of himself at the age of 65. The early entries are often infantile, but the mature ones are not much better. In 1897 he was absurdly longing for a 'European world war' because he was upset over a minor defeat by the Turks. When he was training in Berlin with the German army in 1899, he recorded that German women were greatly to be pre- ferred to the 'wild, primitive Athenians'. In 1900 he expressed his regret that there was `no monarchist party in Parliament' inA- thens. In 1910, when serving as ADC to the Liberal prime minister, Eleftherios Venize- los, he convinced himself that he had been appointed only 'in order to throw dust in the eyes of the king' (because he was a monarchist, and Venizelos was not). Most of this was very childish.
A recurrent example of his paranoia was the conviction, in mid-career, that he must resign from the army, although he was the ablest officer among his contemporaries and had no qualifications for any other career. But more than once, like other army officers with strong political views, he was sent into exile. (One lucky result was that he became familiar with other foreign lands, besides Germany.) His political out- look was basically simple: he was loyal to the monarchy, but embarrassed as kings came and went; Constantine I, for example, came and went again and again. The only civilian antagonist who was his intellectual superior was Venizelos, who had the advantage over him of being an older man, and of having been prime minister when Metaxas was no more than a lieutenant- colonel.
Venizelos was a romantic gambler in matters of policy, but Metaxas was a classical calculator. Only once did Metaxas miscalculate, when Venizelos guessed right: their disagreement in this case was on the outcome of the first world war, when Metaxas was misled by his own Ger- man training to believe that Germany could not be defeated. There were, of course, subjective features in his miscalcu- lation. Although by then he had visited many of the combatant capitals besides Berlin (including London, Paris and Rome), he had never visited the USA, whose entry into the war tipped the scales against his reasoning. But this was his only strategic miscalculation. In Europe, he was now sure of his ground. He warned against the fatal expedition of the British to the Dardanelles in 1915; he opposed the suici- dal Greek expedition into Anatolia in 1920; and he famously predicted the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1940, less than six months after Dunkirk and less than three months before his own death.
The last five years of his life were a total reversal of all that had gone before. They began with the restoration of the monarchy under George II, who had left Greece (but not renounced the throne) in 1923. He was restored by a plebiscite in 1935, and took advantage of the deaths of a series of major figures (including Venizelos early in 1936), who might have stood in the way of Metaxas' leadership. During the general election of 1935, the king made Metaxas minister of war and acting prime minister, following his own final restoration to the throne. The result of the election was a deadlock between the constitutional parties, while the Communists held the bal- ance of power with 15 seats. The king therefore confirmed Metaxas as prime minister (arguably contrary to the constitu- tion), although he led only a very small party. Metaxas confirmed his own status ruthlessly on 4 August 1936 by dissolving the elected parliament and establishing himself as the 'Great Dictator'. Thus was inaugurated Professor Vatikiotis' popular autocracy'.
Metaxas' good luck continued when the second world war led Mussolini to invade Greece from Albania, which he had already occupied. Thanks to the foresight and strategic planning of Metaxas, the Italian invasion was defeated and the Greeks entered Albania. This was the first Allied victory on land in Europe during the war. No one seriously imagined that Hitler could be defeated in the same way when he invaded Greece in April 1941, but by then Metaxas was dead — felix opportunitate mortis. In the long run, he had unquestion- ably chosen the right side, and his people revered his memory for it.
Vatikiotis' thinking on Metaxas' popular autocracy' is more respectful than most Greek historians would allow. He was Greece's Oliver Cromwell, but that is a condition which cannot last. He left no identifiable successor: his immediate, long- forgotten successor committed suicide, and then came Hitler's puppets, while the legit- imate government escaped first to Crete and then to Egypt. British help to Greece in the second world war was no more than a token, which became effective only when reinforced by the USA. But Vatikiotis' view of the prospect then is still pessimistic. He quotes, and endorses, the opinion he expressed 20 years earlier, that 'the most pernicious legacy of the Metaxas dictator- ship was that of political atrophy and its by- product, political irresponsibility'. He supports it by reference to the Communist rebellion (1944-49), the Colonels' dictator- ship (1967-74), and the 'pretentious but quite anachronistic crusade for change' of Andreas Papandreou (1981-95). These are severe judgments, and valid as far as they go; but they disregard the masterful premiership and presidency of Constantine Karamanlis (1955-63, 1974-85, 1990-95).
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