The National Schism (Greek: Εθνικός Διχασμός, romanized: Ethnikós Dichasmós), also sometimes called The Great Division, was a series of disagreements between King Constantine I and Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos over Greece's foreign policy from 1915 to 1922. The central issue was whether Greece should join World War I, with Venizelos advocating for alignment with the Allies, while the king supported neutrality that favored the Central Powers. This personal conflict between the two men had far-reaching consequences, as it raised questions about the king's constitutional role in the state and eventually led to a deep division within Greek society.
After Bulgaria had entered the war against Serbia (already besieged by Germany's and Austria-Hungary's combined attack), in September 1915, Venizelos achieved a vote on October 4 in the parliament for a call to conscription, honoring the alliance treaty between Greece and Serbia. The next day Allied forces landed in Salonika to establish the Macedonian front. The King refused to sign the conscription bill, accusing Venizelos of treason for the 'invasion' in Salonika and forcing him to resign for a second time within that year (1915).
Eight months later, in May and June 1916, the palace counterweighted the grip of the Entente in Salonika with the unconditional surrender of a strong military fort along with half of the eastern part of Macedonia to the German-Bulgarian forces. The disagreements of the two men had now escalated towards a covert civil war. In August 1916, followers of Venizelos set up the Provisional Government of "National Defence", which controlled northern Greece, the Aegean Islands and Crete, and sided with Entente. This act, which effectively split Greece into north and south entities, had the aim of reclaiming the trust of the Entente along with the lost regions of Macedonia, and to regain control over northern Greece, gradually lost after the growing Army of the Orient had landed, one year earlier. After intense diplomatic negotiations, an armed confrontation in Athens between Allied and royalist forces with dozens of casualties, some due to lynching by a royalist paramilitary organization, and a subsequent five-month naval blockade of the (southern part of the) Greek kingdom, King Constantine abdicated on 11 June 1917 (his eldest son George was bypassed, for also being anti-Entente), and was succeeded by his second son Alexander as king. Venizelos returned to Athens on 29 May 1917, and Greece, re-unified but under French armistice, officially joined the war on the side of the Allies.
Although Greece emerged victorious and secured new territory by the Treaty of Sèvres, the bitter effects of this division were the main features of Greek political life until the 1940s, and contributed to Greece's defeat in the Greco-Turkish War, the collapse of the Second Hellenic Republic, the 1925 Coup d'état by Pangalos and the dictatorial Metaxas regime. The National Schism reflected the differences between the "New Greece" formed by territorial gains after the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, consisting of Thrace, Macedonia, Epirus, Crete, and the North Aegean islands, and the "Old Greece" which consisted of the pre-1912 territories. People in "New Greece" were generally pro-Venizelist, while people in "Old Greece" were more pro-royalist.
Source of the conflict
The main cause of the conflict was the dispute between Venizelos and King Constantine over power in Greece, in which the development of true representation had been slow since the creation of the state. Up until the 1870s and the King's acceptance of the principle that the leader of the majority party in Parliament should be given the mandate to form a government, the formation of political groupings around a leader who could govern if this pleased the King meant that the supposedly parliamentary government was actually at the monarch's discretion.
Many reformists and liberals viewed meddling by the monarchy in politics as deleterious. The negative public attitude towards the monarchy was strengthened by the defeat of the Greek army, headed by Constantine (then the Crown Prince), in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897. Many of these hopes for reform were also shared by young officers in the Hellenic Army, who felt humiliated by the defeat, and who were influenced by republicanism.
A "Military League" was formed, and on 15 August 1909, they issued a pronunciamiento at the Goudi barracks in Athens. The movement, which demanded reforms in government and military affairs, was widely supported by the public; King George was forced to give in to the military's demands. He appointed Kyriakoulis Mavromichalis as Prime Minister and accepted the dismissal of the Princes from the military.
However, it soon became apparent that the leadership of the League was not able to govern the country, and they looked for an experienced political leader, who would also preferably be anti-monarchist and not tainted by the "old-partyism" of the old system. The officers found such a man in the person of Eleftherios Venizelos, a prominent Cretan politician, whose clashes with Prince George, the island's regent, seemed to confirm his anti-monarchist and republican credentials.
With Venizelos' arrival, the League was sidelined, and the energetic and relatively young politician soon dominated Greek political life. His government carried out a large number of overdue reforms, including the creation of a revised constitution. However, he also established a close relationship with the King, resisted calls to transform the revisionary assembly into a constitutional one, and even reinstated the Princes in their positions in the army, with Crown Prince Constantine as its Inspector-General. The reestablishment of the Princes in the Army, such as of royalist officers like Metaxas (whom Venizelos appointed as his adjutant) and Dousmanis, caused protests by officers of the Military League (like Zorbas and Zymvrakakis), while the coming of the French military mission to Greece (1911–1914), was not welcomed by the Crown Prince and his German trained circle.
Venizelos's reforms had broken the influence of the House of Glücksburg over the civil service and created a patronage machine loyal to himself. In a society where traditional clan and family loyalties often determined political loyalties, the creation of a patronage machine loyal to the Liberal Party polarized Greek society between those who benefited from the patronage and who did not. Furthermore, those who felt excluded naturally looked towards the traditional dispenser of patronage, the royal family, to counterbalance the Liberals.
Balkan Wars (1912–14)
With the outbreak of the Balkan Wars, Constantine was immediately appointed again as commander-in-chief, and the successes of the army in the field, especially in the Second Balkan War against the Bulgarians, helped many forget his record in 1897. Constantine, now king, was being hailed as "laurel-crowned" and "Bulgar-slayer". It was, however, during this war that the first tension between Constantine and Venizelos surfaced, in a dispute over the army's course following the victory at Sarantaporo. Constantine wanted to march due north, towards Monastir, fearing otherwise that the Greek army could be encircled, while Venizelos was anxious that the army should turn east and capture the strategically important city and harbor of Thessaloniki.
The anxiety of Venizelos was doubled by the fact that the Bulgarians had also set their eyes on Thessaloniki, the most important in Macedonia, and were sending their own troops towards it. Eventually, Venizelos prevailed, and the Greeks captured the city only a few hours before the arrival of the Bulgarians. This episode was not publicised at the time, and in the aftermath of the Wars, the two men, king and prime minister, both wildly popular, were seen as making up a formidable partnership at the helm of the Greek state.
However, the antivenizelist opposition in the parliament gradually began rallying around the King. After the Second Balkan War and during the negotiations of the Treaty of Bucharest, Venizelos was heavily criticised for being too compliant against Bulgaria. Bulgaria finally took the lands of Western Thrace, even though it had been captured by the Greek army during the war. As for the port city of Kavala, the intervention of Kaiser Wilhelm II in favour of Greece was crucial for keeping it. Venizelos in the parliament supported that it wasn't against the Greek interests if Bulgaria secured Thrace, because Greece would gain a "stable spine".
Enver Pasha, the Ottoman minister of war and a member of the triumvirate that ruled the Ottoman Empire decided in January 1914 to "cleanse" the Ionia area of Anatolia of its Greek inhabitants, and in May 1914 unleashed the dreaded "Special Organization" of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) against the Ionian Greeks. The "cleansing" operation caused the deaths of at least 300,000 Ionian Greeks and, as intended, caused thousands more terrified refugees to flee across the Aegean Sea to Greece. In July 1914, the "cleansing operation" was stopped following strong protests from the Russian, French, and British ambassadors to the Sublime Porte, with the French ambassador Maurice Bompard speaking especially strongly in defense of the Ionian Greeks. The increasing intolerance of the CUP regime towards minorities in Anatolia with a new emphasis upon Turkish nationalism in place of Ottomanism, as reflected in the slogan "Turkey for the Turks!" brought the subject of the Anatolian Greeks to the fore in Greece, with two options being available, namely to bring Greece to the Anatolian Greeks by annexing parts of Anatolia or bring the Anatolian Greeks to Greece with a population exchange.
Beginning of the conflict
As the Great War began, the Greek authorities had to choose between neutrality and aligning themselves with the Allied forces. Outright participation in the war on the side of the Central Powers was not an option, both because of Greece's vulnerability to the Royal Navy and because, from early on (October 1914), Greece's traditional enemy, the Ottoman Empire, had joined in on Germany's side. Hence, neutrality was the course favored by most pro-German Greeks, including the senior, German-educated, leadership of the General Staff, who had great influence over the King.
For the first two months of the war, the Ottoman Empire maintained a pro-German neutrality, and the British, French and Russian governments waged a campaign of appeasement to try keep the Ottomans neutral. On 18 August 1914, Venizelos told the British minister in Athens Sir Francis Elliot that he wanted Greece to enter the war on the Allied side, but was curtly refused, saying the Allies preferred to keep the Ottoman Empire neutral. On 29 October 1914, the Ottomans attacked Russia in the Black Sea Raid and on 4 November 1914, Britain, France and Russia all declared war on the Ottomans. After the Ottoman decision to enter the war, the Allies were more open to making promises to Greece about fulfilling the Megali Idea. However, the Allies still wanted to keep Bulgaria neutral, and through King Ferdinand of Bulgaria was an Austrian, he was also known as "Foxy Ferdinand" due to his opportunistic and cunning qualities, leading to hopes that he might be bribed into remaining neutral. Venizelos was greatly disappointed that the Allies preferred to have Bulgaria neutral rather than having Greece fight on their side.
Greece had an ongoing mutual defense pact with Serbia, a member of the Allied forces, who were asking for support after they were invaded by Austria-Hungary, see Serbian Campaign (World War I).
However, Constantine believed it was in the greater interests of Greece to remain neutral. His considerable military experience and knowledge made him especially conscious of the threat to Greece from Bulgaria's powerful military in the event that the Hellenic Army was engaged in a war with Austria-Hungary. Beyond military considerations, there were personal reasons for the split between the king and the prime minister. Constantine had a basically autocratic personality and strongly disliked Venizelos as a person. Moreover, the king was a militaristic Germanophile who admired Prussian militarism and believed that the Reich would not be defeated in the present war. He was also married to Queen Sofia, the sister of the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II. The king had little respect for parliamentary government and preferred to deal with soldiers rather than politicians. Constantine, whose political style was fundamentally authoritarian, had been looking for an occasion to undo the "revolution" of 1909 for some time. His favorite adviser on both political and military affairs was the Germanophile General Ioannis Metaxas.
Knowing of the strong anti-Slavic racism held by Emperor Wilhelm II, Metaxas argued that Germany was the natural defender of "Hellenism against Slavism" and that Germany would not permit Bulgaria to gain territory from a German-friendly Greece. Metaxas argued against a war against the Ottoman Empire on the grounds that Greece did not have the logistical capability to support an army in Anatolia nor the economic resources to win such a war. Only the fear of a British naval blockade led Metaxas to advocate neutrality; otherwise, he was for Greece entering the war on the side of the Central Powers. Additionally, the King was bribed by the Auswaertiges Amt into remaining neutral, secretly taking in 1915 a "loan" of 40 million gold Reichsmark that went into his Swiss bank account. The Greek-Canadian journalist Philippe Gigantès argued that it was royal corruption with the "vast sums [of money] from Germany" that the king took was the most powerful reason for Constantine favoring neutrality, instead of the more altruistic reasons given by his admirers. According to Skouloudis and monarchist writers, the loan of 40 million Reichsmark from Germany was to the Greek government without any term of neutrality, with better interest than the Allied offers.