1945-1967
Post-war Greece and the Greek Civil War
The first Greek elections after the war were held in March 1946 and resulted in a victory for the royalist right. The elections, however, were marked by electoral fraud. In October 1946 a communist-controlled army was established, and the year after the communists established a provisional government. With the support of the newly established communist regimes to the north they controlled a part of northern Greece for a time. United States intervened with military equipment and advice and in the summer of 1949 the communist guerrillas were defeated.
During the 1950s Greece underwent a rapid but unevenly distributed economic and social development. Urbanization progressed quickly and living standards rose. Georgios Papandreou and his Centre Union Party won the election in 1964 and was expected to win again in 1967. But groups within the army conspired to subvert the democratic institutions. In April 1967 officers led by Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos launched a coup. The dictatorship of the “Colonels,” or the military junta lasted from 1967 to 1974.
Life on Crete in the period
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Sights from the period in modern Crete
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