ABSTRACT
Following a decade of war, occupation, civil strife and, as will be seen, frustrated irredentist aspirations, the Greeks were left to face the grim reality of a war-ravaged homeland. It was a time when super-power antagonism and the Herculean tasks of reconstruction raised doubts regarding the ability of the nation-state to ensure the security and livelihood of its citizens single-handedly. At that point, the Greek public was treated to generous amounts of a rather defensive nationalist discourse that stressed threats old and new as well as Greece’s civilizing mission and a return to the roots, a certain version of the Orthodox tradition in particular.
