Greek diplomacy and the Spanish Civil War

Barely two weeks after the military revolt against the Second Republic, Ioannis Metaxas proclaimed the "dictatorship of 4 August", a poster for which is shown here. Although the regime sympathized with the rebels, its actions were shaped by strategic and economic considerations which presented Greek diplomacy with the challenge of correlating the foreign policies of the Great Powers in the western Mediterranean with their policies in its eastern half.

The conflict weakened Britain and France in the eyes of both friends and enemies whilst strengthening Italy and Germany. Moreover, since the Ethiopian Crisis had turned the Mediterranean into a likely battleground between Britain and Italy, the link between the two halves of the region, especially during the Spanish Civil War, was clear: most of the countries of the eastern Mediterranean perceived Italy as a threat to their national security and Germany as the economic overlord of the Balkan Peninsula, and they relied on Britain and France for their security.

Upon the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Greek diplomacy focused on Italian intervention. Whereas Metaxas avoided any comment, Greek diplomats appeared complacent and unable to interpret the motives of Italian foreign policy. In August 1936 the Greek Chargé d’Affaires in Rome was certain that Italy wished to defuse any international complications arising from Spain so that the Fascist regime could direct its attention to more vital issues. In November 1936, his counterpart in Paris claimed that the real stakes in Spain were whether the Soviet Union would succeed in setting up a communist state in the western Mediterranean or whether German and Italian policy would prevent an ‘adventure jeopardizing the civilization of the West’.             

Haralambos Simopoulos, the Greek ambassador in London, was content to take his lead from the British. In October 1936, commenting on the Italian threat in the Mediterranean, he assured Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas that the Duce was exaggerating ‘for domestic reasons’. Simopoulos even argued that ‘Greece is minimally interested, if at all, in this whole Spanish business’; at the same time he recognized Spain’s ‘crucial importance for European peace’ and urged Metaxas to ‘assist the work of the Great Powers and especially that of Britain’. 

Much closer to understanding some of the implications of Italian intervention in Spain came Nikolaos Politis. In March 1937 the Greek ambassador in Paris warned Metaxas of the dangers stemming from the irrationality of Italian foreign policy and Mussolini’s ‘obsession to dominate the Mediterranean’. 

Complacency, gullibility and reliance on Britain prevented most Greek diplomats from grasping the links between Italian foreign policy at both ends of the Mediterranean. In November 1937 the Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano noted that ‘the line of advance drawn by destiny is Salonika for the Serbs, Tirana and Corfu for us. The Greeks know this and are frightened’. 

TDS