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Who fought the first victorious battle against European fascism?

Let's start at the beginning, that is, with the march of Mussolini's Black Shirts on Rome in October 1922: The Italian fascists managed to take control of the Italian state at the stroke of a hand, the fearful King Vittorio Emanuele appointed the "Duce" head of government.

Eleven years later, Hitler came to power in Germany - without the unions calling for a general strike, without resistance from the bourgeoisie.

In 1935 Italian troops invaded Ethiopia, incinerated entire villages, bombed the civilian population with mustard gas, and targeted military hospitals;

the League of Nations was silent.

In 1934, the right-wing home guard associations in Austria took the Social Democratic Schutzbund by surprise, Engelbert Dollfuss established a clerical-fascist dictatorship;

In March 1938 came the “Anschluss”, the invasion of German troops, which many Austrians greeted with jubilation.

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In 1936 General Francisco Franco attempted a coup in Spain that failed;

therefore a cruel civil war broke out there, which raged for three years.

Anti-fascists from all over the world came to the aid of the Spanish Republic, but Franco won anyway.

The Soviet Union allied itself with the Nazis in 1939, and Stalin and his friend from Braunau divided Poland among themselves.

He called himself "father of the nation"

In April 1940 German troops overran Denmark and Norway;

in May they defeated Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands;

France collapsed on its knees in June.

The encircled British and French soldiers in Dunkirk had to be brought to safety by ships from the Wehrmacht;

On July 3, 1940, British planes bombed the French Navy - an act of desperation so that it would not fall into the hands of the Germans.

Anti-fascism in the 20th century was a long series of bankruptcies, mishaps and devastating (also moral) defeats.

No one would have given a chanter in the summer of 1940 that Britain - the only bulwark still standing - would not give way soon.

This is how it looked until the Greeks got up in the fall of 1940 and said “No”: Ochi!

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The irony of history, however, is that the Greeks did so under a fascist dictator.

In 1936 Ioannis Metaxas came to power in Athens, a Greek general who once fought in the Balkan Wars and who basically always remained a loyal monarchist.

Weathered film images show how his followers honored him with an outstretched right arm - this is the "Greek greeting", said Metaxas in all seriousness, and the Romans only took it over.

Metaxas wanted the Greek civilization to arise for the third time (after antiquity and the Byzantine Empire) in new, radiant glory.

The ideological foundation was firm anti-communism, Metaxas was celebrated as the “first worker”, “first farmer” and “father of the nation”.

There were book burnings to which not only the works of Goethe fell victim, but also, funnily enough, Plato's classic “The State”.

A fascist youth organization was founded called "Ethnikí Organósis Neoléas" - a kind of "Metaxas youth".

So far, so unoriginal.

Protector of the Jews

However, the fascism of Ioannis Metaxas differed greatly from that of his colleagues in a few essential points.

First, he persistently refused to join the fascist "axis".

He wanted to keep Greece independent;

and he always kept at least one back door open through which to communicate with the British.

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Second, Ioannis Metaxas was not an anti-Semite, on the contrary.

He even took action against the EEE ("Ethnikí Enósis Elládos"), a nationalist, anti-Jewish fighting organization that had been founded in Thessaloniki in 1927 - mainly because he believed its members to be radical brothers.

That is why the Greek Jews always loved Metaxas.

He was their protector, their ally, their benefactor.

The third peculiarity: Metaxas was never particularly popular.

Most Italians honestly loved their "Duce", the Germans - even those who were not Nazis - supported the National Socialist regime as long as it brought them economic benefits.

The Greeks, on the other hand, were never particularly enthusiastic about their regime.

Metaxas, who always looks like a friendly older uncle with a mustache in photos, just had little charisma.

But that changed in one fell swoop on the night of October 27-28, 1940.

It was four o'clock in the morning when Emmanuele Grazzi, the Italian envoy to Greece, presented the Greek dictator with an ultimatum.

A party in the German embassy had just ended - Grazzi now demanded from Ioannis Metaxas that he should allow the Italians and Germans to set up military bases in his country, i.e. to de facto give up sovereignty over Greece.

"Alors, monsieur, c'est la guerre!"

According to legend, Ioannis Metaxas answered with a single word, he said: "Ochi!" In truth, of course, in the most beautiful diplomatic French, his answer was: "Alors, Monsieur, c'est la guerre!"

A contemporary report describes what happened next: “All of Athens was on its feet, screaming and cheering ... Thousands ran to the Foreign Ministry premises and surrounded Metaxas' car.

Metaxas appeared at the gate to get into his car.

When the crowd saw him, they went mad.

I stood behind the dictator and saw how he was enjoying the most beautiful moment of his life.

He ordered his bodyguards to step aside and surrendered to the crowd, who took him on their shoulders, sang the national anthem and carried him to the army headquarters ... You got the impression that all of Greece was a tank in which it had been boiling for months, and suddenly the hatch cover flew open with a bang that could be heard until the end of the world. "

When Emmanuele Grazzi presented his ultimatum, Italian troops had long since crossed the border with Albania.

But the Greeks were not intimidated.

For at least two glorious months, Greece was the war - and the war was Greece.

Not only did the defenders succeed in pushing the Italians back into Albania, which they had previously occupied, they even captured the cities of Koritsa and Argyrocastro in what they called northern Epirus.

At that time Greece was the only nation that dared to stand on the side of beleaguered Great Britain - and at the beginning of the Greco-Italian war there was not even an agreement between the two countries.

The Greeks celebrate "Ochi Day"

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One of the greatest heroes of the Greek army was an officer named Mordechai Frizis, a Romaniotic Jew.

(The Romaniots were Jews who had lived in Greece since ancient times.) In December 1940, he rode ahead of his soldiers on horseback - with the battle cry "Take heart!" And refused to dismount even though he was fatally wounded.

Both the Greek dictator and the king publicly paid tribute to him posthumously.

It probably couldn't go well in the long term.

In January 1941, Ioannis Metaxas did the worst thing he had ever done as a dictator: he died, leaving a power vacuum.

The humiliated Mussolini called his friend Hitler to help, in April 1941 German troops invaded Greece via southern Yugoslavia and Bulgaria.

The German (and long Italian) occupation of Greece that followed and lasted until 1944 was particularly cruel.

The Wehrmacht carried out numerous massacres among the civilian population, thousands of Greek children starved to death because of and under this occupation.

The Jews of Thessaloniki were deported to Auschwitz from February 1943 onwards;

almost none survived.

But Greek partisans fought tough battles with the Germans from the start.

Experts say that Hitler had to postpone his planned attack on the Soviet Union again and again because of this, so that in the end the Wehrmacht was forced to wage a winter war.

In other words: the defeat of Stalingrad was also prepared in Greece.

In any case, the Greeks celebrate the "Epeteious tou Ochi", the anniversary of the "No" every October 28th.

And they are right because the world owes a lot to these brave little people.

It owes it to him that at the decisive moment the course of world history was turned around.

This article was first published in 2013.