The Greek Quagmire
The Greek quagmire. Prologue. October, 26 th 1940, Saturday. In the hall of the Italian Embassy in Athens, the Italians and their Greek guests are commenting the performance of Puccini's Madame Butterfly finished recently. Suddenly, in the offices, the teletypes begin to tap. The officials are coming and going. They are trying to remain calm, but more than one of them, pale-faced, troubled and tense, is widening the collar of his shirt. The Italian Plenipotentiary Minister, Emanuele Grazzi, sees all that movement and breaks into a cold sweat. He knows what that movement means, or at least he understands this intuitively: from Rome the ultimatum to Greece is coming. He hopes in some hitch, in some difficulty of deciphering: he does not want to deliver to General Metaxas, Greek Prime Minister, a declaration of war right in the middle of an official reception. It would be extremely embarrassing, anyway. He is lucky, at least about this. It is late, the text is long: time is requested in order to decipher it . The Greek guests leave the Italian Legation; Metaxas is at his residence in Kefissià. He is not yet an enemy. "You are the strongest" He turns into an enemy at three a.m. of Monday, October 28th. The communication has been deciphered and translated. Grazzi accompanied by military attaché Colonel Luigi Mondini and by the interpreter De Salvo, gets into car and heads to the residence of Metaxas. The guard at the door confuses the colours of the flag on the fender of the diplomatic car , he mistakes the green for blue and announces to the Greek Prime Minister the visit of the French ambassador.
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