47 Facts About Ioannis Metaxas

Ioannis Metaxas was a Greek military officer and politician who served as the Prime Minister of Greece from 1936 until his death in 1941.

On his return, Ioannis Metaxas moved into politics and founded the Freethinkers' Party, but had only limited success under the Second Hellenic Republic.

The Greek monarchy was restored in 1935, and Ioannis Metaxas was appointed Prime Minister in April 1936.

On 4th August 1936, with the support of King George II, Ioannis Metaxas initiated a self-coup and established an authoritarian, nationalist, and anti-communist regime.

Ioannis Metaxas attempted to maintain Greek neutrality early in the Second World War.

On 28th October 1940, Ioannis Metaxas rejected an ultimatum imposed by the Italians to surrender, committing Greece to the Allies and bringing the country into the war.

Ioannis Metaxas died in January 1941, before the German invasion and subsequent fall of Greece.

Ioannis Metaxas's family was inscribed in the Libro d'Oro of the Ionian islands, previously a Venetian possession, while its roots originated in the Byzantine nobility.

The Ioannis Metaxas family were entered into the Libro d'Oro in the 17th century.

Ioannis Metaxas was very proud of his aristocratic family, observing that many ancestors of ordinary Greeks were not notable enough to be included in the Libro d'Oro.

Ioannis Metaxas first saw action in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 attached to the staff of the Greek commander-in-chief, Crown Prince Constantine.

Ioannis Metaxas became a protege of Constantine and much of his rise through the ranks of the Hellenic Army was a consequence of Crown Prince's patronage.

Ioannis Metaxas was very close to Constantine and was personally selected by the Crown Prince to go to Berlin.

Ioannis Metaxas was part of the modernizing process of the Greek Army before the Balkan Wars.

In 1910, Ioannis Metaxas was appointed by Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, who had assumed the post of Minister of Military Affairs, as his adjutant.

In 1912, just before the Balkan Wars, Venizelos appointed Ioannis Metaxas to negotiate the military treaty between Greece and Bulgaria, sending him to Sofia.

Ioannis Metaxas took part in the Second Balkan War when he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.

Ioannis Metaxas judged that even if Bulgaria joined the Entente, it still would not suffice to shift the balance in Central Europe, and recommended the presence of four Allied army corps in Macedonia as the minimum necessary force for any substantial aid to the Greeks and Serbs.

Furthermore, Ioannis Metaxas argued that a Greek entry into the war would expose the Greeks of Asia Minor to Turkish reprisals.

Ioannis Metaxas insisted that the campaign had been mishandled thus far, and that even if the Entente captured Gallipoli, the Turks still fielded 12 divisions in Eastern Thrace.

King Constantine and Ioannis Metaxas were accused as pro-German by their Venizelist opponents.

Ioannis Metaxas was later creator and head of the monarchist paramilitary Epistratoi forces during the Noemvriana events in Athens.

In January 1920, Ioannis Metaxas was sentenced to death in absentia for his role in the Noemvriana.

Ioannis Metaxas returned to Greece in November 1920, after the electoral defeat of Eleftherios Venizelos.

Ioannis Metaxas was reinstated in the army with the rank of Major General, but as he opposed the continued Greek campaign in Asia Minor, he resigned and went into retirement on 28 December 1920.

Ioannis Metaxas moved into politics and founded the Freethinkers' Party on 12 October 1922.

Ioannis Metaxas returned to Greece soon after, publicly stating his acceptance of the Republic regime.

In 1933, there was a failed assassination attempt against Venizelos, which Ioannis Metaxas praised in his newspaper Hellenki, expressing regret only that the attempt failed.

Under pressure from the newly empowered and more extreme Monarchists like Ioannis Metaxas, Tsaldaris announced for the first time his intention to hold a referendum on restoring the monarchy.

From June to October 1935, there was a crisis atmosphere in Greece as the Army was purged of Venizelist officers, rumors swirled of coups being planned, Ioannis Metaxas spoke openly of the possibility of a civil war and most politicians were fearful of being caught on the losing side as alliances were rapidly made and unmade.

In 1936 elections, the Venizelists won 141 seats while the Populists loyal to Tsaldaris won 72 seats, another faction of the Populists loyal to Ioannis Theotokis won 38 seats, the followers of Kondylis won 12 seats and Metaxas's Eleftherophrones party won only 7 seats, making Metaxas in electoral terms the weakest of the right-wing leaders.

The political significance of this appointment was great since Ioannis Metaxas was not only a dedicated Monarchist but one of the few politicians who had supported openly the imposition of an authoritarian, non-parliamentary regime in Greece.

The very first action of Ioannis Metaxas was to announce his opposition to Titulescu's plan, saying he was opposed to Greece being allied with any non-Balkan power, which killed Titulescu's plan which required the unanimous approval of all the Balkan Pact states.

Ioannis Metaxas disliked the old parties of the political landscape, including traditional conservatives.

Ioannis Metaxas himself became Minister of Education in 1938 and had all school texts re-written to fit the regime's ideology.

Unlike Mussolini Ioannis Metaxas lacked the support provided by a mass political party; indeed, he deliberately positioned himself as being above politics.

Ever since the Corfu incident of 1923, the Greeks had regarded Italy as the principal enemy, and as long as Italy and Germany were divided by the Austrian Question, Ioannis Metaxas saw Germany as a counterweight to Italy.

The British historian DC Watt described Ioannis Metaxas as living "in a paranoiac world" and as convinced that Britain was seeking his overthrow and seeing plots against him everywhere.

Ioannis Metaxas himself had a reputation as a Germanophile dating back to his studies in Germany and his role in the National Schism.

In October 1938, Ioannis Metaxas asked Michael Palairet, the British minister in Athens, for an alliance out of the hope that the British would turn him down, as they did, which would justify Greek neutrality if another world war should break out.

Ioannis Metaxas became convinced that an Italian invasion of Greece was imminent.

On 8 April 1939, Ioannis Metaxas summoned Palairet for a meeting at midnight to tell him that Greece would fight to the death if Italy invaded, and he asked for British assistance.

The next day, Ioannis Metaxas called for a private press conference.

Ioannis Metaxas stated to the journalists to be careful about the news during the war, that the Axis powers could not win the war and that Greece would be on the side of the winners.

Ioannis Metaxas said that until then, he followed a policy of neutrality, but after the Italian attack on Greece, he has to follow the policy of Venizelos.

Ioannis Metaxas never saw the joint Fascist-Nazi invasion of Greece during the Battle of Greece because of his death in Athens on 29 January 1941 from what has been described, variously, as throat cancer or an abscess of the throat or a pharyngeal phlegmon which subsequently led to incurable toxaemia.

Some busts of Ioannis Metaxas were put up in small towns and the periphery of Athens, mostly after local initiatives.