Jesus, when you put it that way........ (and that's without pointing out the specific details of how much damage the Axis Occupation managed to do to Greece in the span of all of three years, by-the-by).
Although, I have to point out; the "upswing" will end up being but a temporary positive if Greece (as many expect it to) ends up requiring yet-another round of bailouts, which I'm not so sure most of the EU will be very receptive towards providing any more, which will make things even worse if they're ultimately pushed out of the Eurozone and forced to default once the government epically mishandled the transition back to the Drachma.
The Third Greek Republic has had GDP-to-Debt Ratio issues since PASOK first came into power in 1981. The 2004 Olympic Games and all the cash that disappeared as a part of funding them just came along at the wrong moment - or, alternatively, the Global Financial Crisis did, I suppose, since that ultimately forced them to start being honest about the state of the Greek state's books.
Either way, the PASOK-New Democracy standing policy of "spend it and worry about it later" was always going to catch up with Greece at some point, regardless of 2008. Ponzi Schemes always run afoul ultimately by their very nature, and when it's a government running one, you can't exactly escape before people catch on to you - even if you do have the Eurocrats protecting you from prison because you're "their man" and you've brainwashed the entire nation into believing you shouldn't prosecute politicians (true story. In fact, it's one of the many gifts PASOK gave Greece when they set about re-engineering the nation top-to-bottom in order to better suit them between 1981-1989; an absolute allergy to prosecuting politicians, and an ingrained belief that politicians lying and exaggerating in their electoral promises is just "normal").
As for Greek influence throughout the Balkans and Asia Minor; The Greeks and the Serbians did actually have an agreement to split the Balkans between them in 1867 in which Serbia was to take everything up to the Iskar River (upon which the Bulgarian capital city of Sofia sits, yes) and Greece's northern border was to be the Balkan/Thracian Mountains (seriously), though the entire thing was really more of a pipe dream than anything and it seems even they themselves seem to have realised that, as they laid out "minimal goals" in the treaty, as well. Later on (1881-1907) there were also continuous efforts between Hellenophile Albanians and the Kingdom of Greece to form a Greco-Albanian Federation, but that also ultimately fell through.
On the subject of Albania, however, and also because people have brought up the Hellenophile Souliote Albanians: I'd like to point out that after the events of the Treaty of San Stefano in 1878, Greece was originally promised territorial concessions in the forms of both Epirus and Thessaly. However, Epirus ultimately ended up remaining in Ottoman hands because the initially-pro-Ottoman Albanian League of Prizren threatened a violent revolt in the town of Preveza in 1879 if the area were to be ceded to Greece. As a consequence, the Sultan used this as leverage to retain Epirus and Greece ended up receiving only Thessaly, in 1881 (Preveza was later annexed to Greece during the First Balkan War). So, while it's not the finest of examples, it should serve to give people a bit of a mental picture as to how things would've played out had Greece tried to go multi-ethnic and/or multi-religious, even with "just" Albania.
Also, I recommend people refresh themselves on "soft power", I believe it was brought up on page 54 (I finally found it). The short version being, the more money Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia have at their disposal, the more money they have to spend on their respective Churches and thus the more localised "support bases" they have in the Ottoman-controlled Balkans as they plan and prepare to eventually liberate those areas from Ottomans. Russia, for example, was supporting Bulgaria at this time before she switched over to supporting Serbia instead, so if Russia begins to see Greek influence as a threat to her plans for "Greater Bulgaria", she could very well end up attempting to counter the influence of the Church of Greece by furthering Russo-Bulgarian soft power in its place through local Church investments. After all, if the Constantinople Patriarchate took care to shut down Albanian and Italian schools in Epirus in order to further Greek influence at their expenses, what's to stop the Russians from enacting similar initiatives in Slavic Balkan strongholds?
So yeah, all-in-all, "greater Greek wealth and influence won’t change things for passionate nationalists even if it does help sway, say, the Bitola region to the Greeks" is basically the best summary of the situation following the collapse of the Byzantine Empire and 400+ years of Ottoman occupation, no matter how much one butterflies the events of the 19th Century.
Furthermore, in regards to the Megali Idea in Asia Minor; geography works against any occupying force here, because there's no natural frontier until you hit the Taurus Mountains-Euphrates River-Pontus Mountains trifecta, at which point you're occupying millions of Turks who hate every fibre of your being for a variety of reasons, not the least of which include the fact that you're an infidel who just deposed their beloved Sharia Law-supporting Sultan-Caliph in order to impose your ideas of a (by sheer necessity) secular "Aegean Race" which fly right in the face of their own ideologies (footnote: for more on this, see: Hellenoturkism - and no, that's not an endorsement, because I don't believe it's ever liable to happen). And of course, it's also worth keeping in mind that Ottoman attitudes towards the Greeks became insanely negative once they rebelled in 1821, with that particular situation only briefly changing (on the surface) after Ataturk rebuilt relations with Venizelos in the 1930s, until they once again went straight off a cliff after 1955 when Turkish ultra-nationalists incited a violent pogrom against the "Rum" Greeks of Constantinople.
In fact, on this note; the Anatolian geography thing was basically the problem with the Asia Minor Expedition from the get-go in OTL, as well. Ironically, the Pontus, while a distance away, was actually defensible (demographic issues aside), whereas the Smyrna Zone, on the other hand, was not, in large part due to the fact that the non-coastal areas were overwhelmingly dominated by Turks and would eventually have resulted in an endless guerilla-type insurgency against the Greek "occupiers." The same applies to trying to hold on to the Asian half of the Dardanelles; if you've a good enough navy and the Turks don't you can take the European half, but you'd never hold the Asian half without sheer, overwhelming military superiority, or some amazingly good man-made barriers. Of course, the Greeks had to try, but even if they did manage to pull off their insane assault on Ankara, losing Anatolia would always have just been a matter of when, not if.
Oh, and on the subject of self-identification, here's a funny story; Peter Charanis, born on the island of Lemnos in 1908 and later became a professor of Byzantine history at Rutgers University, recounts that when the island was taken from the Ottomans by Greece in 1912, Greek soldiers were sent to each village and stationed themselves in the public squares. Some of the island children ran to see what Greek soldiers looked like. ‘‘What are you looking at?’’ one of the soldiers asked. ‘‘At Hellenes,’’ the children replied. ‘‘Are you not Hellenes yourselves?’’ the soldier retorted. ‘‘No, we are Romans,’’ the children replied. (source see: bottom of page 42)
Lol.....
P.S. Sorry for the wall of text ^^
P.P.S. Since this is the first time I've actually left a message here, thanks for the Leopold, King of Greece idea that I shamelessly ripped from you, Earl Marshal
Initially I just had Kapodistrias and Kolokotronis working together while Otto sat off in a corner either doing nothing or trying to learn from them, but then I came across this, which reminded me of Leopold's near-miss as King of Greece and it ultimately worked out great as it also allowed me to avoid Otto's unpopular wife.
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