A dark room

The answer lies in the first hours of the “Revolution of April 21 st ,” the coup which brought the colonels to power in 1967. A group of young army officers, captains and majors, had undertaken to stage the coup. The majority were fanatic anticommunists, hated the politicians of the “old guard,” were distrustful of King Constantine, and believers in a rabid extremism they mistook for patriotism. Many of them, like Ioannidis, had served in Cyprus, where they became acquainted with the idea of its union with Greece, and learned to hate Archbishop Makarios. Ioannidis often talked to them about the “Megali Idea,” the idea of a Great Greece, with the annexing of Cyprus, Northern Epirus, and Eastern Rumelia. 1 THE YOUNG “REVOLUTIONARIES” On the day of the coup, 21 April 1967, these young “ultra-revolutionaries” were patrolling the Pentagon’s courtyard armed with machine guns. All of them had participated in the arrests of high-ranking politicians and army officers until the early hours of the morning. When at some point King Constantine arrived, they began chanting slogans about the “Revolution” without trying to hide their anger, since his negotiations with the colonels were stalling. Aristeidis Palainis, who at the time was a captain in the Greek Army, had arrested Panagis Papaligouras, the Minister of Defense, the previous night, and was one of the most fervent conspirators. Later on, along with his brother Charalambos Palainis, they became members of Ioannidis’ inner circle. They were waiting on the steps outside the entrance of the Hellenic Army General Staff, where for the past few hours a crucial meeting was taking place while the outcome of the coup was still uncertain: “Since the first few hours we realized that the leaders of 21 April were looking to cooperate with the King, they were after a political solution authorized by the King, when the aims of the Revolution were anything but that. On the morning of 21 April, because the announcement (for the formation of a government) was late in coming, I went into the office of the commander of the General Staff, where the King was in negotiations with Papadopoulos. I told them that if an announcement wasn’t forthcoming in the next half hour, we would execute everyone in the room. Even from those first few hours there was a difference between the young officers and the leaders of the Revolution.” 2 Charalambos Palainis also recalls the following: “We, the young army officers, hadn’t signed up for this. We watched our leaders hesitate—Papadopoulos, Pattakos, Makarezos, all that lot—entangled in a web of guilt. [...] The King arrived, but there was a delay in the swearing-in of the new government. As a result, and while the king was still inside meeting with the leaders, the officers waiting on the steps outside, commenced shouting, “Is this why we started the Revolution?” […] When they announced the names of certain ministers who were quite well-known and connected with the previous regime, whom we never thought we’d see in this government, we knew that this wasn’t the Revolution we had dreamed of. […] During our discussions, during all the preparations and initiations, our whole idea and desire was to start a new 1909, to bring about a real Revolution in Greece. But we gradually realized that this wasn’t going the way we wanted it to. That was when the seeds of dissent were planted.” 3