Ok, here is an elaboration on my made up North Korea analogue in my Soviet Wank timeline. The Everyman's Spartan Republic of Thrace is a terrifying nation to say the least.
The story is, in the light of a larger, more outward looking Soviet Union with no purges, communist parties in Europe were significantly stronger than OTL, leading to stronger reactionary movements. With a Finnish SSR bordering it, the Swedish turned fascist in the late 30s, joining the Axis during WW2. TTL's equivalent of Molotov Ribbentrop involved the Soviets annexing East Poland, Bessarabia and the Kars region from Turkey, as well as small portions of Turkish Kurdistan. This caused Sweden and Turkey to become Axis members, leading to many minor butterflies. Without having to occupy Norway, the Nazis had more power initially in Western Europe, but when they invaded a more powerful Russia, they had to invade their ally Sweden due to it's incompetence. Greece was decimated, facing joint German-Italian occupation, as well as a new Turkish group taking previous core regions like Thrace. The Turks were particularly harsh on the Greeks, leading to major antagonism.
As the Axis War Machine started losing and falling apart, dissidence began in Greece. As the Soviets reached Bucharest and approached Bulgaria, while the British invaded the South of Greece to liberate, the Greek Communist party lead an uprising against the oppression. During the occupation, many leaders were killed, but a ruthless, somewhat disturbed officer by the name of Alexandro Lykos ascended the ranks with his charisma, brutality and yet a strange charm to him. Rumoured to have been a womaniser like Rasputin, his popularity did not take away his fierce anti-Fascist streak. The government had failed him, and now the Axis were threatening to wipe his people out, so he made a last resort he believed and began the liberation of Greece in 2nd of October 1944, developing as a major figurehead, eventually becoming sole leader of the Greek communist party3 months later. The rebellion kicked the over-extended Axis out, with only limited Soviet aid from across the border. Lykos got the nickname Kratos, given both his fanatical behaviour in the field, and his megalomaniacal aims to reunite Greece. Turkey got kicked out of the war, forced to cede Greater Armenia and Kurdistan to the Soviets, and pre 1913 Thrace to Greece.
Although officially a united country after the liberation, it was immensely politically divided, and almost immediately broke out in a Civil War, with the Allies who were still finishing off Germany backing the government in Athens, while the Soviets backed Lykos's forces. Fighting went on for a long time, with the country ravaged further still from the war. Eventually, a cease fire was signed on the 27th of February 1948, leading the country to be divided across a North-South border. In the South, the Kingdom of Greece was re-established, with many years of instability and multiple coups and military dictatorships taking place (by 2014 it is a republic, but by future 2040 it is a kingdom again). Kratos's fascination with Ancient Sparta helped him forge his regime, wanting to work upon the flaws of his northern neighbours, while still vaguely allied to them. He transformed his nation into a totalitarian state, with a vicious secret police designed to root out enemies of the state. He became paranoid, and started purging many of the generals who had worked with him, including his friends who he considered 'weak.' He even went as far as sending their extended families to camps as it was thought that only the strongest in society should prevail due to the need to militarise against enemies. The Nazi oppression had definitely took its toll. He issued decrees throughout the 50s and 60s informing that sick infants and people over the age of 75 should not be given any form of healthcare whatsoever, even going as far as abandoning them to die. The nation made sure it was self-sufficient, and not relying on dangerous foreigners for imports, leading to mass starvations and famines across the nation, with the weak and disabled being killed deliberately. Anyone who did not do this would be sent to one of the Labour Camps to die of exhaustion. After oppression by the Turks, the regime became very xenophobic and anti-Western, launching ethnic cleansings and mass deportations against its native Turks, Albanians, Bulgarians and foreigners. Culture of any western or non-Thracian value was brutally suppressed, with films, media, art and literature being banned in absolution.The military was set into a state of eternal mobilisation, where even in school, they were given training to fight unarmed and with guns, and eventually all healthy males over the age of 14 were conscripted into the Army. Kratos named his ideology ‘Spartanism’, wanting to relate to the power the Spartans had over their neighbours as a symbol to how the people of Thrace should be do the rest of the world. He wrote a manifesto about his beliefs, distributing them all around the country lwith similar regard to the Bible. Any home found without a copy of this book could be sentenced to years in the prison camps, and defacing any copies would mean death.
The military became by far the ruling aspect of Thracian society, still aiming for the reunification of the peninsula and the wishes against its enemies. Kratos even became his only name, as people gradually forgot about his original title in his propaganda, before his death in 1973 lead to all figures with the name 'alexandro lykos' being destroyed and replaced with the ‘Great Generalissimo, Chief Philosopher, Almighty Warrior, Universal Father and Master in Perpetuality Kratos the Great.’ His sons took up the role of leadership after him, in a chain of succession much like a royal family. In 2014, his grandson Constantine was ruler of the pariah nation, and by 2040 it is Demi-kratos, a crazed individual wishing to reclaim Greece and Constantinople under their flag. Overall, the regime is like a cross between the worst elements of OTLs DPRK and Ancient Sparta, with hints of Khmer Rouge and Nazi Germany in there as well. Easily the worst nation in Southern Europe, though the National Socialist Kingdom of Prussia in Northern Europe is just as bad, if not worse.