In Greece, liberation promised rebirth and reconstruction; in Cyprus, it fueled hopes for national restoration. Soon, the ship of history took a different course
On October 18, 1944, six days after German troops withdrew from Athens, Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou delivered a historic speech from a balcony in Syntagma Square before an enthusiastic crowd. The Greek government of national unity had just returned to the capital, accompanied by British troops. Although World War II was still raging and the country’s political future remained uncertain, Greece was celebrating its liberation.
Papandreou began his speech with the moving image of the Greek flag flying once again over the Acropolis. He invoked the glorious centuries of Greek history, presenting the Albanian campaign and the National Resistance as a single continuum of a centuries-long journey of heroism and sacrifice. Absent from this idealized narrative were collaboration, the internal conflicts of the Occupation, and the leading role of the EAM in the Resistance. Instead, the sacrifices of the Athenian people and the contribution of the British were emphasized. This selective invocation of the past served a clear political purpose: to forge national unity and shape a postwar future oriented toward the West. Central to this were the completion of the liberation, the claim to the Dodecanese and possibly Northern Epirus, as well as Greece’s integration into the Allied security system.
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For Cyprus, the liberation of Greece held particular political and symbolic significance. The Greek Cypriots, who had contributed to the Allied effort and continued to live under British colonial rule, saw the Allied victory as a rekindling of their hopes for union. Papandreou’s reference to national integration could—indirectly—have reinforced these expectations; however, he himself did not include Cyprus in the territorial claims he articulated. The liberation was greeted on the island with enthusiasm and an unusual spirit of unity. Following the initial spontaneous reactions, the Church called on the people to attend thanksgiving services on October 20. In Nicosia, representatives of the Cyprus National Party and AKEL met at City Hall, under Mayor Themistoklis Dervis, and agreed to participate in the thanksgiving services, limiting the celebrations to that venue.
Even more remarkable was the consensus reached at the Nicosia City Council. Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot council members jointly expressed their satisfaction with the liberation of Athens. At the “historic” session on October 17, it was decided, among other things, to send a telegram to Prime Minister Papandreou conveying the “warmest congratulations from the first municipality of Cyprus” and to contribute the sum of 1,000 pounds from the Municipality of Nicosia for the aid and relief of the Greek people. (Eleftheria, October 19, 1944).
However, behind the celebratory atmosphere, tensions remained high. In Greece, cooperation between the EAM forces and the pro-government factions supported by the British was extremely fragile. In Cyprus, the shared enthusiasm for liberation did not negate the differing political aspirations of the two communities. At the same time, tensions between the right and the left—which were vying for control over national demands within their respective communities—were simmering.
October 18, 1944, was a fleeting moment of hope and harmony in Greece and Cyprus. In Greece, liberation promised rebirth and reconstruction; in Cyprus, it bolstered hopes for national restoration. Soon, the ship of history set a different course. The December Riots, less than two months later, would shatter the pretense of unity in Greece, ultimately leading to the bloodiest civil war postwar Europe had ever seen. In Cyprus, political and national tensions would gradually intensify, turning the five-year period from 1944–49 into the period of the fiercest confrontation between the right and the left that the island had ever witnessed. Given what followed, it is no coincidence that the anniversary of the liberation was omitted from the commemorative map…
