What Was the Importance of World War One to Greece?

 

Greek War Poster

The 1914–1918 period ranks among the most complex, controversial and decisive in the history of the modern Greek state. At the military level, the direct engagement of the Greek army in the hostilities, even if materialized only in the final year of the war, is considered to have offered an important contribution to the final Allied victory on the Macedonian Front. 

In the diplomatic field, in the early years of the war Greece found itself in the focus of the attention of the two rival alliances, as each of them sought in multiple ways to secure Greek support for its own cause. This resulted in multiple violations of the initial neutrality of the country, in continuous threats to its territorial integrity,  as well as to a painful schism on the domestic political scene, where King Constantine was a firm supporter of Greece’s (pro-German) neutrality, while Eleftherios Venizelos, Prime Minister during the first year of the war, adopted an explicit pro-Entente stance. 

At the culmination of the crisis, the situation in the country was pretty much similar to that of a civil war, with many incidents of violence and bloodshed. The most significant and well-known case is the bloody clashes that erupted between Greek soldiers and Allied troops in the centre of Athens on 1 and 2 December 1916,  followed, in the next days, by scenes of extreme violence between supporters of the two rival camps on the Greek political scene.  Last but not least, a further significant aspect of the war lies in the fact that many soldiers from other countries lost their lives in various military or other violent incidents inside the Greek state or in its near periphery. 

The two protagonists of the Greek political scene during
World War I: King Constantine I of Greece (left) and
Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos (right)

A large part of the references concerned the international post-war scene, which was about to take its definitive shape during the peace negotiations in Paris. The Greek claims, predominantly, but also the international dimensions of this process appeared regularly in Greek dailies. The contribution of Greece to the Allied victory was highlighted in many ways, in coordination with the efforts of the country’s leadership to maximize gains in the ongoing diplomatic procedures. In the first months of 1919, articles and various references focused much more on the milestone of 14 July (and not on 11 November). In that year this important date acquired an additional symbolic dimension, as the National Day of France was directly related to the victory in the Great War that had ended a few months earlier. The particularly impressive celebration of 14 July 1919 in Paris, with the Greek Army participating in the great military parade, provided an excellent opportunity to promote the role of Greece as an indispensable member of the Entente alliance, as well as to stress the particular importance and good momentum of Franco-Hellenic relations in that period.

A few years after the end of the hostilities, a new factor began to occupy the public sphere in Greece in relation to the Great War, influencing public opinion and the image Greeks had of this war. It was the issue of paying tribute to the fallen soldiers of the war and building war memorials in Greek territory. This issue concerned not only victims of Greek nationality but also soldiers of other countries who had lost their lives in Greece or in neighbouring geographical areas. It is important to remind that the construction of war memorials became quickly one of the major issues of interest in several ex-belligerent countries during the afterwar years, as the immense human losses suffered during the war required new ways of commemorative expression for the acts of heroism and sacrifice.

The Greek Army Mobilizing in 1915

In this context, the Greek state began efforts to build monuments, tombs or steles, though only after the end of the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, in order to honour the dead not only of the First World War but of all recent wars, including the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, the Great War and the Greco-Turkish War. Thus, after 1922 the bones of the Greek soldiers who had fallen during the Balkan Wars and had been buried in Bulgaria (in Gorna-Dzhumaya) and in Albania were transferred to Greece. A large loan was made available to the Ministry of Military Affairs for the erection of monuments, while it was ordered that each city or community should build, until the end of 1925, their own tombs or monuments at the places where Greek soldiers had fallen. Memorial columns were also erected for the Greek officers and soldiers killed in foreign territories—such as those killed during the Great War in Pirot, Serbia;  lastly, and only in 1932, the Greek monument to the Unknown Soldier was inaugurated in front of the Greek Parliament on Syntagma Square.

Greek Artillery Later in the War

[So why is the Great War Forgotten for the Most Part in Today's Greece?]

a) Greece’s involvement in the First World War—even the long, bloody and traumatic conflicts of the years 1914–1917—constituted, as most historians have pointed out, only part of a series of important events for the Greek history that took place in the frame of a whole decade, from 1912 to 1922. This period was inextricably linked first to the apogee and the glory, then to the tragic failure and collapse of the “Great Idea” for the expansion of the Modern Greek state to all neighbouring territories inhabited mainly by ethnic Greek population. 

b) The role of Greece in the armed conflicts of the First World War was largely and for a long time indirect and distant. This resulted in a rather limited number of heroic or traumatic pages arising from purely military action. The successes of the Greek army on the Macedonian Front did find their place in the pages of Greek military history, but it was clear that they counted much less in the collective memory when compared to the Balkan Wars or the disastrous developments on the Asia Minor Front in 1922

c) Historical events in Greece during the following decades were so forceful and dramatic, that they almost erased remembrance of the Great War. The 1940s, in particular, are dominating until nowadays the field of contemporary Greek history, whether in academic research and historiography, or in terms of public interest and debate. The famine of the winter of 1941/2 and, more generally, the hardships suffered under the German and Italian occupation overshadowed the memories of the corresponding moments of 1916–1917. 

Sources:  Heritage and Memory of the First World War in Greece during the Interwar Period A Historical Perspective,  Elli Lemonidou, University of Patras