The Return of Sparta
The Return of Sparta
"There are some historical events that would be laughable if it didn't actually happen. During the dark days of the 20th Century, there were certain regimes, from the Frankish Empire to the Mad Caesar Evola's Roman Empire, that puts only one question on the head of every single person that reads about them: Why ?"
-Charles Edward Miller, British Historian, 2011
During most of the 19th Century, Greece was just another nation in Europe, a pawn in the grand game of Empires. But ever since the Balkan War, the nation was hit by a fever of Nationalism, with many awaiting a declaration of war against the Ottomans to achieve the "Megali Idea". It was an old Greek idea from the Independence era, seeking to annex a large part of Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire to create a new "Hellenic Empire". But the King's Germanic links prevented Greece from entering the War, what was first a reason to revolt, was revealed to be a wise choice once Napoleon V's head was on a spike and Paris a burning view of hell. Greece went on, but the desire for the Megali would only grow more with the years, as tensions started to rise with the Bulgarian Tsardom during the 1920s, almost provoking a war for Macedonia and Thrace in a border incident in 1926. But the begging of the Great Depression would set the course of the rise of Greek Ultranationalism."There are some historical events that would be laughable if it didn't actually happen. During the dark days of the 20th Century, there were certain regimes, from the Frankish Empire to the Mad Caesar Evola's Roman Empire, that puts only one question on the head of every single person that reads about them: Why ?"
-Charles Edward Miller, British Historian, 2011
((Flag map of "Liberated Greece"))
((King George II))
In the Balkan war, a man called Alexios Drakos was a Sergeant during the battle of Thessaloniki, the most famous Greek battle of the War. During the night, an artillery shell hit a few meters from him and knocked him into the trench, he would be shell shocked for the doctors but received a vision for him. He saw the Greek god Zeus, speaking to him that a time of great despair would come, and that Greece would be punished for straying away from the true gods of Olympus. He would wake up and drown in books about Greek Miths, and in the future, Maurras' book on National Unitarism. He decided he would restore Greece to its roots, restoring the old pagan cult, and achieving Megali Idea by creating a fully militarized Totalitarian society, all he had to see for inspiration was the old city-state of Sparta.
Drakos rejected Democracy, not just due to the failures of the Parliament, but because of History. He took the Peloponesian war as the perfect example on how democracy, even with superior resources, is doomed in a fight against a Militarized Totalitarian society. He would create the "Leonidas Movement" inspired in the legendary Spartan King who died with his 300 warriors in the legendary last stand in Thermopylae. The Movement started in 1921 and saw little support on the beggining, even with Drakos leaving the religious issue vague, only having a spike in 1926-27 when Greece and Bulgaria almost went to war in a border incident, winning an estimated 12% of the electorate in a poll for election that they never ran, since Drakos believed that only a bloody coup could fully enact a revolution with no restrains. Besides, he also believed that the bloodier the better in the case of wars, since it would "purify society of the weaker elements and guarantee that only the strong would survive, an eternal war was necessary to always purify the generation and guarantee a stronger one would grow in its place."
When the crisis stuck in 1930, Drakos was seen as a prophet, he constantly warned of a "Great Calamity that could destroy Greece" and many thought that the depression was it. Adding the publishing of "The Perfect Society" by Drakos, describing his Militarist Autocracy to the desperate citizens of Greece, his popularity skyrocketed. In 1934 his name was put on parliament to vote for Prime minister by an Union of Ultranationalists, even without his consent or even knowing about it, he won 40% of the votes for Prime Minister in a plurality. He refused to hold office and published a manifesto condemning the Parliament as a "Net of Degenerate Pelletists and Boot lickers of the King." Instead he created the "Three Hundreds", a paramilitary group that roamed Grecce in groups of 300 men to fight Pelletists and enemies of the movement.
Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, leader of the Liberal Party, attempted to fight the crisis. But his measures are credited as causing the crisis to go longer by most of the modern Economists. By 1936, when he died, there was a 25% unemployment rate and the economy was no better than in 1930. His death put the country into an State of almost anarchy, with a succession of 6 PMs in 1 year with all of them failing to solve the civil unrest and crisis, dooming their governments. The King made a coup with help of loyalist military officers on the 3rd of October of 1937, hoping to finally end the crisis himself. He put all political parties and movements in illegality, including the Leonidas Movement, closed the Parliament and ruled by decree. George II was a good figurehead but an awful ruler, with his failure to recover the economy mining his popularity and with Civil unrest rising every day, Drakos decided it was time to act, declaring himself "Autokrator of Sparta" in the old city of Sparta by the side of Leonidas' Statue, he would start the Greek civil war on the 10th of September of 1938, the day of the battle of Thermopylae.
((Drakos in the middle dressed in black, and other members of the Leonidas Movement and the "300" Paramilitary militia))
Between 1939 and the early 1940s, the state consolidated itself, purging the opposition and starting the restoration of the economy in a similar fashion to the Franks: Creating a war industry and paying it with war spoils. The Capital was moved to Sparta and slavery was brought back to Grecce, with thousands forced to work for the state. Public works projects in infraestructure and industry would be built by the "Helots" (name inspired in the old slaves of Sparta), while the Greek man was expected to fulfill his duty in the military. Education was turned to military academies and indoctrination (Only a select minority of good students would be chosen to have studies on science and other subjects), with Physical Education being the main course, the ones that failed on it became Helots. The punishment for even the most minor crimes was life as a slave helot, with society divided between "Spartans" and "Helots", the first being indoctrinated to consider the Helots as inferior servants, the latter to see the Spartans as their overlords.
During the late 1940s it started to get more strange, Church propriety was confiscated and more and more restrictions were put on the Orthodox faith. State propaganda machine turned against Christianity as a religion that created weak pacifists, an example was how the Roman Empire lost its warrior spirit and fell downhill after the conversion of Constantine the Great. Instead, it was slowly being replaced by an official cult on the Greek old gods called "Hellenism". The population was slowly indoctrinated on it, starting with the children: Parents would come in shock as their children would stop saying prayers and instead read about Prometheus' tale, that created a cultural shock that would be part of the counter-culture movements in Europe during the 50s, when a generation of children of Totalitarianism would start coming to age and clash with their conservative parents.
And during the Second Great War, Greece would start looking to realize the Megali Idea...
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