Georgios Papandreou Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Athens, 1944: Some Lighter Moments in a Serious Situation

8 October 2020 Comments 1 Comment

“There’s a lot of ruin in any nation…”

The Greeks are still not laughing about their mid-1940s civil war, so levity may be inappropriate. Nor was at the time was Winston Churchill. “There is a lot of ruin in any nation,” he once mused. In Athens, 1944, Britain was “responsible for building up the nest of cockatrices for EAM [communist partisans] in Greece.” (His vocabulary was broad: A cockatrice is a mythical, two-legged dragon or serpent-like creature with a cock’s head.)

Nevertheless, the peace deal Churchill brokered between warring Greeks in 1944 had so many hilarious moments that, 75 years later, we may be permitted to indulge in lighter aspects.…

“Antithesis of Democracy” (Or: Winston Churchill & Portland)

5 October 2020 Comments 0 Comments

Churchill’s stunning relevancy

It is remarkable how we still encounter in Churchill words of astounding currency. A friend in Portland, Oregon asked for verification of a Churchill quotation: “A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril….” (“The Tasks which Lie Before Us,” House of Commons, 29 November 1944.) A good, solid maxim, but not out of the ordinary.

AND THEN my eye fell across what Churchill said a week later. Its current application, to Portland among other places, is remarkable. December 1944 Only two months after Greece had been liberated from German occupation, leftist elements of the government resigned and began an armed rebellion.…