Papandreou's Center Union government enacts a number of far-reaching social and political reforms.

Prominent among them is the release of all political prisoners.

To deal with the economic crises, Papandreou appoints his son Andreas, the former chairman of the Economics Department at the University of California at Berkeley, as minister of the economy.

Many in the Center Union resent this move.

Rising stars in the party such as Konstantinos Mitsotakis feel especially slighted by the appointment.

The younger Papandreou, who holds far more radical views than his father, soon becomes involved with a group of left-leaning military officers known as Aspida.

The right views these developments suspiciously.

Cabals form in the army as once again rightist military men assume the role of "protectors" of the nation.

Georgios Papandreou is favored to win the Greek elections scheduled for April, 1967.

Two days before the elections, a group of colonels—members of the conservative faction about whom Papandreou expressed misgivings two years earlier—stages a coup d’etat and institutes military rule under the claim of protecting Greece from Communism.

The leader of the colonels, Georgios Papadopoulos, has been on the CIA payroll for 15 years.

The dictatorship, allegedly directed by the CIA’s secret Operation Prometheus, imprisons its opponents and imposes rigid contriols on all aspects of Greek life.

The junta briefly jails Georgios Papandreou; his son Andreas goes into exile again.

Constantine II goes into exile after he fails in his December, 1967 attempt to overthrow the military government.

Social conditions have declined in Greece despite economic growth.

Crowding into cities has given rise to renewed demands for social welfare and better income distribution.

The emigration that had commenced in the late 1950s continues into the 1960s (about four hundred and fifty-two thousand three hundred Greeks have left between 1963 and 1967), and labor groups are much more militant than they had been at any other time in the postwar period.

King Constantine II, who has continued to appoint interim premiers, eventually calls for elections in May 1967, and an overwhelming Center Union victory seems certain.

A group of junior officers, fearing a purge of hard-line right-wingers from the military, puts Operation Prometheus into action on April 21, 1967.

The leaders of the self-styled "Glorious Revolution" are two colonels and a brigadier general, whose regime will come to be known simply as "the junta," or "the colonels."

Supporters of the coup are predominantly officers from lower-class backgrounds who have achieved status through career advancement in the armed forces.

Fearful of losing their posts because of their involvement in right-wing conspiracies, they act out of self-preservation, under the flimsy pretense of forestalling a communist takeover and defending Helleno-Christian civilization in general.

The junta succeeds because of the political leadership vacuum at this time and because they are able to strike quickly and effectively.

By seizing the main lines of communication, they present an unsuspecting nation with a fait accompli.

The Greek military junta, led by Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos and Stilianos Pattakos, initially tries to rule through the king and the existing political system, but, gaining the cooperation of very few politicians, soon begins to arrest all those who show signs of resisting the takeover, consolidating as much power as possible in their own hands.

Andreas Papandreou, for example, is arrested for his connection to the Aspida group, as is his father. (Andreas will be released after eight months only under intense international pressure, but the elder Papandreou, nearing eighty, will die soon afterward.)

The methods of the colonels begin to resemble those of the Metaxas dictatorship, and Constantine organizes a countercoup in December 1967 but, having few sympathizers, almost immediately flees to Rome with his family.

The military regime retains control of the monarchy and appoints a regent—Papadopoulos—in Constantine's place, granting the king a free return if he so desires.

Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos has risen to the top of the Greek junta (where he will remain until November 1973).

The regime's aims and policies are a curious mixture of populist reforms and paternalistic authoritarianism backed by propaganda and terror.

The overarching, proclaimed intent of the military government is to purge Greek society of the moral sickness that has developed since the war.

Their more frivolous social policies include the banning of miniskirts and the mandatory short hair for men.

The regime lacks a base of popular support and remains in power through terror.

A formidable secret police apparatus monitors society, using torture and committing other human rights violations that are widely reported by international organizations.

In the first three years, the main targets of this policy are known supporters of the communists, but many centrist figures also are arrested.

The regime's brutality makes it an international pariah.

The only foreign dignitary of note to visit Greece during this period is the Greek-American United States vice president, Spiro Agnew.

Greece withdraws from the EC in 1969 to avoid suspension of its association agreement.

Nevertheless, Greece's NATO allies confine themselves to verbal condemnation because the regime fulfills every geopolitical requirement, anchoring the alliance's defenses in the unstable eastern Mediterranean.

The “Colonels,” as the Greek military junta comes to be known, have misruled the country from 1967, alternating between policies that are heavy-handed and absurd.

The regime, under Georgios Papadopoulos, is notorious for torturing political prisoners, forbidding dissent and free speech, and attempting to control university education and rewrite textbooks; its drastic conservatism leads to bans on miniskirts for women and long hair for men and on the writings of Aristophanes, William Shakespeare, and Anton Chekhov, among others.

As exiled Greek intellectuals and leftists scatter across Europe, the regime is widely condemned by other Western countries, though the U.S. government supports it for its anticommunist stance.

The reign of terror has been effective in Greece; resistance to the colonels has formed mainly abroad.

Prominent among the anti-junta groups is the Panhellenic Liberation Movement led by Andreas Papandreou.

Such organizations have kept international attention focused on the actions of the junta, but it is the regime's own ineptitude and lack of legitimacy that lead eventually to its downfall.

The two immediate causes of the fall of the colonels are the Greek student movement and events in Cyprus.

Royalist Greek navy officers are purportedly plotting a coup, and the junta’s leader, Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos, deposes the king on June 1, declares Greece a republic, and proclaims himself president.

A Greek referendum on July 29 confirms these actions of Papadopoulos.

He then frees political prisoners, promises elections, and lifts martial law ...