Georgios Papadopoulos

Geórgios Papadopoulos (; el, Γεώργιος Παπαδόπουλος ; 5 May 1919 – 27 June 1999) was a Greek military officer and political leader who ruled Greece as a military dictator from 1967 to 1973. He joined the Royal Hellenic Army during the Second World War and resisted the 1940 Italian invasion. Later on, he allegedly became an active Axis collaborator with the Security Battalions, although this claim has been disputed by historians. He remained in the army after the war and rose to the rank of colonel. In April 1967, Papadopoulos and a group of other mid-level army officers overthrew the democratic government and established a military junta that lasted until 1974. Assuming dictatorial powers, he led an authoritarian, anti-communist and ultranationalist regime which eventually ended the Greek monarchy and established a republic, with himself as president. In 1973, he was overthrown and arrested by his co-conspirator, Brigadier General Dimitrios Ioannidis. After the ''Metapolitefsi'' which restored democracy in 1974, Papadopoulos was tried for his part in the crimes of the junta, and spent the remainder of his life in prison.

Early life and military career

Papadopoulos was born in Elaiohori, a small village in the Prefecture of Achaea in Peloponnese to local schoolteacher Christos Papadopoulos and his wife Chrysoula. He was the eldest son and had two brothers, Konstantinos and Haralambos. After finishing high school in 1937, he enrolled in the Royal Hellenic Military Academy, completing its three-year programme in 1940.

His biographical notes, published as a booklet by his supporters in 1980, mention that he took a civil engineering course at the Polytechneion but did not graduate.Georgios Papadopoulos: Report to the Court and Declaration to the Greek People. (Αναφορά προς το Δικαστήριον και Δήλωσις προς τον Ελληνικόν λαόν). Greek Canadian Patriotic League. Horizons Press, Toronto, Ontario 1980, (Ελληνικός Πατριωτικός Σύνδεσμος. Τυπογραφείον Ορίζοντες Τορόντο, Οντάριο).

Resistance and acquiescence

During the Second World War, Papadopoulos saw field action as an artillery second lieutenant against both Italian and Nazi German forces which attacked Greece on 6 April 1941.

It has been argued by various authors, without providing solid evidence, that Papadopoulos was a member of the Security Battalions under the command of Colonel Kourkoulakos, who was responsible for the formation of the "Security Battalions" in Patras which "hunted down" Greek resistance fighters. However, Evanthis Hatzivassiliou and Leonidas F. Kallivretakis disagree with this claim. It has also been argued that Papadopoulos, at the end of the Axis occupation of Greece, entered the Organisation X, but Calivratakis considers that this information has not been proven.Χατζηβασιλείου Ευάνθης, ''Απαρχές και χαρακτήρας της δικτατορίας των Συνταγματαρχών'', από τον τόμο των πρακτικών του συνεδρίου "Η δικτατορία των Συνταγματαρχών & η αποκατάσταση της δημοκρατίας", Ίδρυμα της Βουλής των Ελλήνων, Αθήνα 2014, σελ. 23 According to Kallivretakis and Grigoriadis, during the Axis occupation of Greece, Papadopoulos worked in the Greek administration’s Patras.

Along with other right-wing military officers, he participated in the creation of the nationalist right-wing secret IDEA organisation in the autumn of 1944, shortly after the country's liberation. Those 1940 officers who took refuge in the Kingdom of Egypt along with King Geórgios II immediately after the German invasion, had become generals when their still-colonel former classmates undertook the coup of 1967.

Post-Second World War career

He was promoted to captain in 1946; and in 1949, during the Greek Civil War, to major. (See also Greek military ranks.) He served in the KYP Intelligence Service from 1959 to 1964 as the main contact between the KYP and the top CIA operative in Greece, John Fatseas, after training at the CIA in 1953.TV documentary by Stelios Kouloglu via Internet Archive

Trials and tribulations: The Beloyannis affair

Major Papadopoulos, as he then was, was also a member of the court-martial in the first trial of the well-known Greek communist leader Nikos Beloyannis, in 1951. At that trial, Beloyannis was sentenced to death for the crime of being a member of the Communist Party of Greece (''KKE''), which was banned at that time in Greece following the Greek Civil War. The death sentence pronounced after this trial was not carried out, but Beloyannis was put on trial again in early 1952, this time for alleged espionage, following the discovery of radio transmitters used by undercover Greek communists to communicate with the exiled leadership of the Party in the Soviet Union. At the end of this trial, he was sentenced to death and immediately taken out and shot. Papadopoulos was not involved in this second trial. The Beloyannis trials were highly controversial in Greece, and many Greeks consider that, like many Greek communists at the time, Beloyannis was shot for his political beliefs, rather than any real crimes. The trial was by military court-martial under Greek anti-insurgency legislation enacted at the time of the Greek Civil War, which remained in force even though the war had ended.

Rise to colonel in the 1960s

In 1956, Papadopoulos took part in a failed coup attempt against King Pávlos. In 1958, he helped create the Office of Military Studies, a surveillance authority, under General Gogousis. It was from this same office that the subsequently successful coup of 21 April 1967 emanated.

In 1964, Papadopoulos was transferred to an artillery division in Western Thrace by a decree of Defense Minister Garoufalias, a member of the Centre Union (''EK'').28 June 1999 obituary
of Papadopoulos, published the day after his death in newspaper Eleftherotypia In June 1965, days before the onset of the major political turmoil known as '' Apostasia'', he made national headlines after arresting two soldiers under his command and eight leftist civilians from settlements near his military camp, on charges that they had conspired to sabotage army vehicles by pouring sugar into the vehicles' petrol tanks. The ten were imprisoned and tortured, but it was eventually proven that Papadopoulos himself had sabotaged the vehicles. Andreas Papandreou wrote in his memoirs that Papadopoulos wanted to prove that under the Centre Union (''EK'') government, the Communists had been left free to undermine national security. Even after this scandal, Papadopoulos was not discharged from the army since the Prime Minister, Geórgios Papandreou, forgave him as a compatriot of his father.
In 1967, Papadopoulos was promoted to colonel.

21 April 1967: ''Coup d'état''

That same year, on 21 April, a month before the general elections, Colonel Papadopoulos, along with fellow middle-ranking Army officers, led a successful coup, taking advantage of the volatile political situation that had arisen from a conflict between the young King Constantine II and the popular former Prime Minister, Geórgios Papandreou. Papadopoulos used his power gained from the coup to try to place Papandreou under house arrest and re-engineer the Greek political landscape rightward. Papadopoulos, along with the other junta members, are known in Greece by the term ''Aprilianoi'' ('Aprilians'), denoting the month of the coup. The term ''Aprilianoi'' has become synonymous with the term "dictators of 1967 – 1974".

Regime of the Colonels

King Constantine appointed a new government nominally headed by Konstantinos Kollias. However, from the early stages, Papadopoulos was the strongman of the new regime. He was appointed Minister of National Defense and Minister of the Presidency in the Kollias government, and his position was further enhanced after the King's abortive counter-coup on 13 December, when Papadopoulos replaced Kollias as Prime Minister. Not content with that, on 21 March 1972, he nominated himself Regent of Greece, succeeding General Geórgios Zoitakis.

Torture of political prisoners in general, and communists in particular, was not out of the question. Examples included severe beatings, isolation and, according to some sources, pulling out fingernails.

"Patient in a cast" and other metaphors

Throughout his tenure as the junta strongman, Papadopoulos often employed what have been described by the BBC
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