Greece 1947–1967

Greece 1947-1967 brings together contributions by Heinz A. Richter on the history of Greece from the time of the civil war to the coup d'état on April 21, 1967. In the first part, decisive factors of the Greek civil war are presented; the second part analyzes the background of the military coup. The contributions were published a few years ago mainly in German; to make them accessible to a wider range of scholars, they were translated and revised.
Richter analyzes in detail the Varkiza Agreement of 1945 between the then Greek government and the EAM and the violations of this agreement. He can show that it was the violations of the agreement that ultimately triggered the civil war. Furthermore an English document by C.M. Woodhouse is published, which describes the terror situation on the Peloponnese in summer 1945. While the general idea is that the second plenary of the CC of the Greek Communist Party decided to start the civil war, Richter points out that this is a legend. The next article deals with the murder of Georg Polk and shows who the real murderers were. The political background of the attack on Konitsa is analyzed as well as the development of the Communist Party, which became a mass party with 200,000 members during the occupation and after the war shrank back to a cadre party. The second part of the study describes the background to the military coup of April 21, 1967 in three articles that deal with the crisis in Greece that led to the coup, the preparations for the coup, and finally the myth that the U.S. organized the coup. On the contrary, Richter makes it clear that the coup was a genuine Greek enterprise.