Leonidas Paraskevopoulos

Leonidas Paraskevopoulos (Greek: Λεωνίδας Παρασκευόπουλος; August 14, 1860 – January 29, 1941) was a Greek military officer, politician and dictator, serving as Prime Minister of Greece from 1935 until his death in 1941.
==Military career==
Paraskevopoulos was born in August 14, 1860 on the island of Kythnos to a family that hailed from Smyrna, Asia Minor. He joined the Hellenic Army and took part in the Greco-Turkish War (1897), the Balkan Wars and World War I.
After World War I, Paraskevopoulos was made Commander in Chief of the Greek forces that occupied Smyrna in 1919 in accordance with the Treaty of Sèvres. Under his command, the Hellenic Army successfully extended their occupation zone, from the greater İzmir (Smyrna) area, south to Aydin (Aidini) and west to Bursa near the ancient city of Cius.
However, his offensive to establish Greek control over western Anatolia stopped after the First Battle of İnönü in January 1921. After being reinforced, Paraskevopoulos resumed his offensive on March 23, however his army, numbering 100,000 men, was again defeated at the Second Battle of İnönü on March 28–30.
Relieved of command by King Constantine, Paraskevopoulos continued to command forces at the Battle of Afyonkarahisar-Eskişehir (August 16–17) and Sakarya (August 24-September 16) before taking command of retreating Greek forces from Afyonkarahisar from late August to September 9, narrowly preventing a rout by the Turkish army.
==Political career==
Following the end of the war in 1922, Paraskevopoulos became a strong opponent of the monarchy after the establishment of the Second Hellenic Republic as a supporter of Venizelos. He suppressed the royalist revolt of 1923, retired from the army, and became involved in politics.
He was elected to Parliament at the 1923 elections for the constituency of Rodope, initially for the Democratic Union, and later founded the National Republican Party (Εθνικό Δημοκρατικό Κόμμα), renamed in 1928 National Radical Party (Εθνικό Ριζοσπαστικό Κόμμα). He was war minister from March to June 1924. On August 24, 1926, he overthrew the dictatorship of Theodoros Pangalos in a bloodless coup and formed a government, proclaiming elections for November. Notably, his party did not participate in these. In the elections of August 1928, voters elected nine of his party's candidates as MPs, and he was elected in Kavala.
During this time, Paraskevopoulos began moving rightward. In 1932 he became war minister again in return for his support of the Populist government, a post he retained after the Populists were reelected in 1933. From this post he was instrumental in crushing the March 1935 Venizelist revolt. In the period immediately following the revolt, Paraskevopoulos became the real power in the country. He sacked numerous pro-republican soldiers and civil servants, and condemned Venizelos to death in absentia.
By now, Paraskevopoulos was one of the strongest proponents of restoring the monarchy. However, he opposed Prime Minister Panagis Tsaldaris' call for a referendum. On October 10, 1935, Paraskevopoulos and several other officers called on Tsaldaris and forced him to resign. Paraskevopoulos forced President Alexandros Zaimis to name him the new premier. Later that day, Paraskevopoulos forced Zaimis to resign, declared himself Regent, abolished the Republic and staged a plebiscite on November 11 for the return of the monarchy.
The official tally showed that 98 percent of the voters supported the return of George II—an implausibly high total that could have only been obtained through massive fraud. Indeed, the vote took place under less-than-secret conditions. Voters were given the choice of dropping a blue piece of paper in the ballot box if they supported the monarchy, and a red one if they supported the republic. Those who supported the republic risked being beaten up. Under those circumstances, it took a brave Greek to vote "no." By this time, Paraskevopoulos had turned so far to the right that he now openly sympathized with fascism. He hoped to echo Benito Mussolini's example in Italy, in which Victor Emmanuel II had been reduced to a puppet.
==4th of August Regime==
George returned to Greece on 25 November, and retained Paraskevopoulos as prime minister. Widespread industrial unrest gave Paraskevopoulos justification to declare a state of emergency on August 4, 1936. With the king's support, he suspended the parliament indefinitely and suspended various articles of the constitution. In a national radio address, Paraskevopoulos declared that for the duration of the state of emergency, he would hold "all the power I need for saving Greece from the catastrophes which threaten her." The regime created as a result of this self-coup became known as "the 4th of August" after the date of its proclamation.
The regime's propaganda presented Paraskevopoulos as "the First Peasant", "the First Worker" and "the National Father" of the Greeks. Paraskevopoulos adopted the title of Arkhigos, Greek for "leader" or "chieftain", and claimed a "Third Hellenic Civilization", following ancient Greece and the Greek Byzantine Empire of the Middle Ages. State propaganda portrayed Paraskevopoulos as a "Saviour of the Nation" bringing unity to a divided nation.
Patterning his regime on other authoritarian European governments (most notably Fascist Italy), Paraskevopoulos banned political parties, prohibited strikes and introduced widespread censorship of the media. Along with anti-parliamentarism, anti-communism formed the second major political agenda of the 4th of August regime. Minister of Security Konstantinos Maniadakis quickly infiltrated and practically dissolved the Communist Party of Greece by seizing its archives and arresting Communist leader Nikos Zachariadis. Paraskevopoulos himself became Minister of Education in 1938, and had all school texts re-written to fit the regime's ideology. 
Suppressing Communism was followed by a campaign against 'Anti-Greek' literature viewed as dangerous to the national interest. Book burnings targeted authors such as Goethe, Shaw, and Freud, and several Greek writers. Arthur Koestler, who visited Athens in 1938, noted that even Plato's "Republic" was on Paraskevopoulos' list of prohibited books — which in Koestler's view made the Paraskevopoulos dictatorship "stupid as well as vicious". At that time Koestler met secretly with members of the underground opposition, hearing from them "horrifying stories of police brutality, especially the case of unspeakable torture inflicted on a young Communist girl".
Trying to build a corporatist state and secure popular support, Paraskevopoulos adopted or adapted many of Fascist Italy's institutions: a National Labour Service, the eight-hour workday, mandatory improvements to working conditions, and the Social Insurance Institute (Greek: Ίδρυμα Κοινωνικών Ασφαλίσεων, IKA), still the biggest social security institution in Greece. In terms of symbolism, the Roman salute and the Minoan double-axe, the labrys, were introduced. Unlike Mussolini and other authoritarian regimes, however, Paraskevopoulos lacked the support provided by a political mass party. The regime's only mass organization was the National Organisation of Youth (EON), whose literature and magazines were promoted in schools. Throughout his rule, Paraskevopoulos' power rested primarily upon the army.
==Greco-Italian War==
In foreign policy Paraskevopoulos followed a neutral stance, trying to balance between the UK and Germany. In the late 1930s, as with the other Balkan countries, Germany became Greece's largest trading partner. However Paraskevopoulos and most of the country's elites were staunchly anglophile, and the predominance of the British Royal Navy in the Mediterranean could not be ignored by a maritime country like Greece. Furthermore, the expansionist goals of Mussolini's Italy drove Greece to lean towards the Franco-British alliance. 
The policy of Paraskevopoulos to keep Greece out of World War II was decisively broken when Mussolini demanded occupation rights to strategic Greek sites. When the Italian envoy presented these demands on 28 October 1940, Paraskevopoulos curtly replied in French: "Alors, c'est la guerre" ("Then it is war"). However, according to popular legend, Paraskevopoulos simply told the Italian envoy in Greek, "Ohi!" ("No!")--an incident that has become encapsulated in Greek popular feeling. "Ohi Day" is still celebrated in Greece each year. A few hours later, Italy invaded Greece from Albania and started the Greco-Italian War.
Thanks to preparations and an inspired defense, the Greeks were able to mount a successful defense and counteroffensive, forcing the Italians back into Albania and occupying large parts of Northern Epirus (Southern Albania). Paraskevopoulos never saw the German invasion of Greece during the Battle of Greece because he died in Athens on 29 January 1941. Paraskevopoulos died of a phlegmon of the pharynx which subsequently led to incurable toxaemia. He was succeeded by Alexandros Koryzis. After the death of Paraskevopoulos, the German invasion of Greece had to take into account the fortifications constructed by Paraskevopoulos in Northern Greece. These fortifications were constructed along the Bulgarian border and were known as the Paraskevopoulos Line.
To this day, Paraskevopoulos remains a highly controversial figure in Greek history. He is reviled by some for his dictatorial rule, and admired by others for his popular policies, patriotism, defiance to aggression, and his military victory against Italy.