Word: coups
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Time to Act. The King had chafed for months under Greece's military rulers, led by Colonel George Papadopoulos. He had originally gone along with the coup in hopes that he could exercise a moderating influence on the zealous colonels. But his advice was largely ignored as the junta enacted scores of restrictive laws, banned mini skirts and beatniks' beards, clamped an iron censorship on the press, and sent hundreds of Greeks to prison on such charges as "speaking ill of the authorities" and playing the music of out lawed leftist composers. Constantine waited, hoping for the proper...
...Constantine's coup turned out to be little short of a comedy of errors. A few days before his target date, he ordered Olympic Airways to place two planes at his disposal-a tip-off to the junta's ubiquitous secret police that the King had some travel in mind. His method of heralding the coup was even less auspicious: he simply sat down at his palace desk in the Athens suburb of Tatoi and wrote a letter to Lieut. General Odysseus Anghelis, the army chief of staff and a junta supporter. In it, the King told...
Tipped off about the coup by the King's letter to General Anghelis, the junta reacted swiftly, with military precision. Shoppers in Athens were startled to see armored personnel carriers take up positions around government buildings. Troops appeared on rooftops. Other military units set up a defense line north of Athens in case the King marched south. All telephone and telegraph circuits to the north were cut off. Athens remained totally quiet, and there was no report of any uprising anywhere in the south on behalf of the King. The junta radio boomed out messages for calm and claims...
...Anne-Marie and Queen Mother Frederika kissed the King goodbye and waved him off as he climbed aboard a helicopter for a short flight to the town of Alexandropolis to stir up more support. He returned in midafternoon and took off almost immediately for Salonica, where handbills proclaiming his coup had been dropped from air force planes. While he was in the air, he received the news that Salonica was under junta control. As he turned back to Kavalla, he faced a shattering situation. In its months in power, the junta had carefully placed junior officers loyal...
...swirl of parties and yachting with Athens' small Establishment of shipowners and industrialists-is a source of resentment to the average Greek. Most resented is Queen Mother Frederika, who is regarded by most Greeks as an incurable meddler in the country's politics. Since the April coup, Greeks had rallied to Constantine mainly because the crown was the one legal institution that the junta had not destroyed; Greek politicians looked to Constantine to steer the counry back to representative government. But he did not command the love or devotion that makes men willing to die for a king...