ABSTRACT
Besides triggering a multifaceted domestic crisis which culminated in a bloody, protracted civil conflict, the bitter experience of World War II gave rise to a resurgence of irredentism. Tsouderos, the head of the government in exile, spelled out the nation’s post-war claims shortly after the fall of Greece to the Axis powers. Their territorial component included the annexation of south-western Bulgaria, the ‘rectification’ of the Greek-Yugoslav border, the southern part of Albania or Northern Epirus, the Dodecanese, Cyprus and the right of Greeks to emigrate to the Italian colonies in North Africa.1 Clearly, some of these claims were dictated by strategic and even demographic arguments, whereas in the cases of the Dodecanese, Cyprus and, less confidently, Northern Epirus a transfer to Greek sovereignty could be justified on grounds of national self-determination. By the time of liberation, however, territorial claims no longer united the nation which had already descended into a bitter civil strife.
