ABSTRACT
This chapter positions the Greek experience in the international setting of its era. In 1967, when the military seized power in Greece, the Cold War had reached a critical juncture with Latin America still reeling from the Cuban Revolution of 1959, America becoming ever more deeply embroiled in Vietnam, and China already one year into its ‘Cultural Revolution’ that would last for several more years. Meanwhile, in Europe, the political ice was beginning to break and would soon crack completely with a series of ‘events’ in 1968 stretching from America to Western Europe which, according to historian David Caute, amounted to something close to a near insurrection. Only by understanding the turbulent character of world politics in the second half of the 1960s – a period characterized by youth rebellion and a profound cultural challenge to established norms – can we really begin to explain what happened in Greece, the policies of the military junta and why the US and its Western allies responded in the way in which they did.
