Cover photo: Unknown photographer, "The bugle call before the attack on Klisura" (January 1941) — Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Ohi Day, October 28, 1940: The Greek No and the Battle of the Pindus
The night of the ultimatum, the Pindus and the Greek No of 1940: who really said it, and what came next.
About
Ohi Day begins with a sentence in French. Just after three in the morning on October 28, 1940, the Italian ambassador Emmanuele Grazzi rings the doorbell of a house in Kifissia and hands the dictator Ioannis Metaxas an ultimatum with a three-hour deadline. But the war has already been decided, and not in Athens: in Rome, by a Mussolini who refuses to stay in Hitler's shadow.
From the plan the Italians drew up at a careless meeting, to Colonel Davakis's two thousand men facing the Alpini of the Julia Division, from the battle of Kalpaki to the women of the Pindus who carried ammunition on their backs, the story follows a war decided on mountains and footpaths, all the way to the Greek army entering Korçë, twenty-five days after the invasion.
And one question runs through it all: who really said the "no"? The dictator, the streets of Athens, the communist prisoners who were not allowed to fight, or the people climbing the mountains with loads on their backs?
Sources
- Emmanuele Grazzi, "Il principio della fine (L'impresa di Grecia)" (Rome, 1945) — the Italian ambassador's memoir of the night of the ultimatum.
- Wikipedia — "Greco-Italian War" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Italian_War
- Wikipedia — "Battle of Pindus" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pindus
- Wikipedia — "Battle of Elaia–Kalamas" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Elaia%E2%80%93Kalamas
- Wikipedia — "Ohi Day" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohi_Day
- Wikipedia — "Ioannis Metaxas" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ioannis_Metaxas
- Wikipedia — "Konstantinos Davakis" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantinos_Davakis
- Hellenic Navy History (navalhistory.gr) — "Konstantinos Davakis: From the Pindus to the Città di Genova" — https://www.navalhistory.gr/davakis
- Ta Nea — "Greco-Italian War: the Grazzi–Metaxas dialogue" (28 Oct 2022) — https://www.tanea.gr/2022/10/28/istoriko-arxeio/ellinoitalikos-polemos-o-dialogos-gkratsi-metaksa-kai-epistoles-apo-to-metopo/
- Foundation of the Hellenic World — "The women of Pindos" — https://www.fhw.gr/chronos/14/en/1940_1945/war/pigi05.html
- Nikos Zachariadis, "Open letter to the people of Greece" (31 October 1940) — https://www.marxists.org/ellinika/archive/zachariadis/1940/10/31.htm
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