Italy's invasion of Greece was a failure,

and soon the Greeks were on the offensive in Greece,

the British were on the offensive in Egypt, and it was no longer possible to maintain the polite fiction

that the Axis was a partnership of equals.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

The 20th century.

The Episode 336 O'hee.

The last time we talked about the nation of Greece was all the way back in episode 196.

And the last thing I told you was that in 1922, military supporters of Greek liberal political leader Eleftherios Venizelos overthrew the government in Athens, following the disastrous end of the Greek military campaign in Anatolia.

King Constantine and the royal family were exiled, and the Second Hellenic Republic declared.

But Greece's national schism between monarchists and Republicans still divided Greek society.

I told you about the 1923 Corfu crisis when Mussolini's Italy seized the Greek island of Corfu in episode 254.

Italy was forced to withdraw, leaving Benito Mussolini with a simmering grudge against Greece.

The Corfu crisis was sparked by a border confrontation between Greece and Albania.

The fact was that by 1923, Greece's economy was wrecked following years of war that also

poisoned Greece's relations with its neighbors.

It was time for Greece to give up its expansionary ambitions, the Meghali-Idea.

The country simply didn't have the resources to keep pushing.

The war against Turkey had accomplished nothing other than to drive a large number of ethnic Greeks out of Turkish territory and into Greece,

increasing the population of the small country by 25%.

These refugees tended to be Republican and fed up with the endless wars.

Soon many of them would become communists.

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