The Greek government-in-exile was formed in 1941, in the aftermath of the Battle of Greece and the subsequent occupation of Greece by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The government-in-exile was based first in South Africa, then London, then, finally, from mid-1943, in Cairo, Egypt. There it came to be referred to as the "Cairo Government" (). It was the internationally recognised government during the years of the Axis occupation of Greece.
It was headed by King George II, who evacuated Athens in April 1941 after the German invasion of the country, first to the island of Crete and then to Cairo, then to South Africa and London before returning to Cairo. He remained there until the German occupying forces withdrew from the country on 17 October 1944.
The British wielded a significant amount of influence over the government-in-exile. Until 1944 it was also recognized as the legal Greek government by all Greek Resistance forces. In the occupied Greece, alongside the Axis-controlled collaborationist governments, a vigorous resistance movement developed. Its major force was the communist-controlled EAM/ELAS. During 1944, EAM/ELAS established a de facto separate administration, formalised in March 1944 after elections in both occupied and liberated territories, as the Political Committee of National Liberation (PEEA).
History
As Athens was about to fall, the Greek prime minister, Alexandros Koryzis, shot himself in his office, and King George II offered the premiership to Alexandros Mazarakis – who declined the offer, for the King was unwilling to dismiss Konstantinos Maniadakis, the much-hated minister of public order under the 4th of August Regime. Under strong pressure from Sir Michael Palairet, the British minister in Athens, who wanted a more representative government than the 4th of August Regime, the King named Emmanouil Tsouderos prime minister on 21 April 1941. Tsouderos, a former governor of the Central Bank of Greece, was not a professional politician, being appointed only because he had been exiled under the Metaxas regime, which therefore allowed the King to claim to Palairet that he was broadening the cabinet. However, Tsouderos as prime minister proved reluctant to disassociate the government-in-exile from the 4th of August Regime legacy, moving very slowly and cautiously. On 25 April 1941, with the onset of the Battle of Greece, King George II and his government left the Greek mainland for Crete, which was attacked by Nazi forces on 20 May 1941. The Germans employed parachute forces in a massive airborne invasion and attacked the three main airfields of the island. After seven days of fighting and tough resistance, Allied commanders decided that the cause was hopeless and ordered a withdrawal from Sfakia.
During the night of May 24, King George II and his government were evacuated from Crete to Cairo. The government remained in Egypt until the withdrawal of German forces from Greece on October 17, 1944. The government had wanted to relocate to Cyprus, but following objections from the British Colonial Office, who complained that the majority of the Greek Cypriots would give their loyalty to the government-in-exile, Egypt was offered up as an alternative venue. In Egypt, there were considerable communities of ethnic Greeks living in Cairo and Alexandria, who tended to be Venizelist in their political sympathies and objected to the Metaxist ministers in the cabinet who however had the support of the King. The Greek communities in Egypt tended to very successful in businesses, playing an over-sized role in the Egyptian economy, and the government-in-exile was very much dependent on their financial support. On 2 June 1941, the King reluctantly dismissed Maniadakis as it became clear that the Greek communities in Egypt were unwilling to have anything to do with the government-in-exile as long as Maniadakis remained. One of the Venizelist leaders, Vyron Karapanagiotis, in a letter to Sofoklis Venizelos, complained that Maniadakis was "travelling with the luxurious entourage of an Indian potentate in South America". In exchange for dismissing Maniadakis, the King demanded in exchange that the British expel 6 leading Venizelist politicians who had escaped to Egypt, and inconveniently were all working closely with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in organising resistance in Greece. As the Venizelist leaders all had "impeccable records of pro-British sympathies", the King's charge that they were pro-German was laughably absurd, and the six men were not expelled from Egypt.
E. G. Sebastian, the Foreign Office official in charge of dealing with the government-in-exile, reported on 23 September 1941: "Greeks of all shades of opinion are agreed upon the necessity of Greek government to make categorical statement without delay reinstating Constitution concerning freedom of the press and individual rights, abolished by Metaxas' regime. Majority of Greeks fail to understand why dictatorial methods of Metaxas have not been repudiated and fear their continuance after the war unless abolished now". The King moved slowly towards abolishing the 4th of August Regime; its end was proclaimed on 28 October 1941, and only in February 1942 did the King agree to restore articles 5, 6, 10, 12, 14, 20 and 95 of the 1911 constitution which had been suspended indefinitely on 4 August 1936. In May 1942, Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, the leader of the Ethnikon Enotikon Komma (Unity Party), escaped from Greece and upon his arrival was appointed war minister. As Kanellopoulos had been an opponent of the 4th of August Regime, his appointment as war minister was seen as a break with the past.
The government-in-exile relocated In July 1941 to Pretoria, South Africa, and in September 1941 to London. The ministry of war remained in Cairo throughout the war as the bulk of the Greek armed forces were in Egypt. In March 1943, the government-in-exile returned to Cairo. British officials assumed a dismissive attitude towards the Greek government-in-exile, with one Foreign Office civil servant writing that Greece was "an Egypt without a Cromer". The ambassador, Sir Reginald "Rex" Leeper spoke of Britain having the right of "friendly intervention" in Greek politics. Edward Warner of the Southern Department of the Foreign Office in a letter to Leeper wrote that "most of the upper class Greeks" were "self-seeking Levantines...quite unworthy of the rank and file". Harold Macmillan wrote in his diary on 21 August 1944 that the government-in-exile should move to Italy to escape "the poisonous atmosphere of intrigue which reigns at Cairo. All previous Greek Governments in exile have been broken in the bar of Shepheard's Hotel". In 1952 in his memoir of his war experiences Closing the Ring, Winston Churchill wrote that the Greeks were like the Jews in being the "most politically-minded race in the world who no matter how forlorn their circumstances or how grave the peril to their country are always divided into many parties, with many leaders who fight among themselves with desperate vigor".
As Greece had one of the world's largest merchant marines, and Britain was faced with the threat of starvation if the Kriegsmarine'''s U-boats could sink enough British shipping, the Greek merchant marine provided the government-in-exile with an asset to bargain with in its dealings with the British. A Foreign Official memorandum described keeping the Greek merchant marine in being engaged in bringing food to Britain as the most important issue in Anglo-Greek relations, and advised that when King George II visited London that he being treated as a major leader of the Allies. The memo noted that some Greek shipping tycoons were trying to keep their ships from being used on the dangerous North Atlantic run to bring food to Britain, and advised pressure to be applied on the government-in-exile to ensure that all of the Greek merchant marine be engaged in the war effort.
Throughout the occupation, a steady number of Greek politicians escaped to Egypt to serve in the government-in-exile, and the majority of these men were republican Venizelists. The SOE agent C.M. Woodhouse wrote: "The kind of Greeks who found it easiest to get on with the Germans were the kind of Greeks who found it easiest to get on with the old regime and therefore with the monarchy".
The SOE maintained a "black propaganda" radio station in Jerusalem, the "Free Voice of Greece", which pretended to be broadcasting from Greece itself. To maintain this facade, the "Free Voice of Greece" radio station expressed feelings that ordinary Greeks felt and violently attacked the government-in-exile, saying in one broadcast "the Greek Government continues the Metaxas dictatorship in London. It continues as a travesty of Italian and German fascism in London...while they [ie, those fighting on the Albanian front] died, the 4th of August continued in London with Dimitratos, and Nikoloudis the right hand man of Metaxas...Papadakis of the fascist Neolaia [youth movement] and Maniadakis, murderer of A. Michalakopoulos and thousands of others...". This experiment in "black propaganda" turned out to be too "black" for the Foreign Office, as the government-in-exile objected vehemently to the SOE attacking it on the "Free Voice of Greece" radio station, and Sebastian, who was sympathetic towards the republican Venizelists, was replaced with Edward Warner, who was far more sympathetic towards the King.
Throughout the war, Tsouderos and the rest of the government-in-exile strongly pressed Britain for an enosis (union) with Cyprus, arguing that the majority of the Cypriots were ethnic Greeks and wanted to join Greece. After the Battle of Crete, the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, was afraid that the Germans might follow up seizing Crete with Cyprus and would offer the sovereignty over Cyprus to the puppet Hellenic State, and to forestall this wanted to issue a declaration promising an enosis between Greece and Cyprus after the war. However, the Colonial Office was fearful that such a declaration could not be enforced and would only result in increased diplomatic tensions, and as such no declaration was issued. Besides Cyprus, Tsouderos also wanted the Dodecanese islands off the coast of Turkey, whose people were mostly ethnically Greek, which belonged to Italy together with southern Albania and Yugoslav Macedonia.The claim to southern Albania was made on religious, not ethnic grounds as Tsouderos maintained that the majority of people in southern Albania were members of the Orthodox Church, and would therefore be happier living in Orthodox Greece rather than in Muslim majority Albania. Tsouderos's also wanted Greece after the war to annex the Eastern Thrace region of Turkey and for Istanbul to be turned into an international "Free City" with Greece to play a special role in its administration, demands that the Greek historian Procopis Papastratis called "completely unrealistic". Tsouderos's ambitions to annex Yugoslav Macedonia caused much tension with the Yugoslav government-in-exile and in December 1941 the Foreign Office submitted a note to Tsouderos stating "in regard to Macedonia it would be most undesirable that any question of territorial adjustment should be raised at this stage with the Yugoslav government. In regard to the Dodecanese, Southern Albania and Cyprus, they must make it plain that in their view it is premature to raise at this stage questions of future territorial adjustments after the war". When Eden announced in the House of Commons in December 1942 that the British government favored restoring Albanian independence within its pre-war frontiers, Tsouderos objected in a diplomatic note, claiming that southern Albania or "Northern Epirus" as he called it was rightfully part of Greece.