This Is Hellas

The Greek Military is a part of NATO military structure. They also have a military tradition dating back to ancient times, which seen its share of decline and rebirth.

In more recent times, Greek guerrillas had initiated their war of independence against the Turks in 1820s, culminating in their independence in 1829. The guerrillas, as well as Greek soldiers in the Turkish army, form the nucleus of the modern Greek forces. It had took a beating against the Turks in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, when Greece tried to reclaim Crete.

It later joined the Balkan League in the First Balkan War in 1912, gaining some historical Greek territory. It later found itself fighting alongside the Turks in the Second Balkan War of 1913, mainly to stop Bulgaria from conquering Serbian and Greek gains.

In World War I, the Greek government was undecided in whether to remain neutral, join the Central Powers, or the Allies. The King is pro-German; he's the brother-in-law of Kaiser Wilhelm and partly of German ethnicity as well. This didn't sit well with the Prime Minister, Venizelos, who is pro-Allied. The King booted him out of office in 1915, only to return a year later. Later in 1917, the Allies supported a coup by people loyal to Venizelos, and King Constantine gave up his throne to his son Alexander I. Greece declared war on the Central Powers in the second of July, 1917, and participated in the Balkan Front.

Greece, unsatisfied with gains from Bulgaria, decided that they should put the Ottoman Empire into the trash bin of history by attacking Anatolia, and revive the Byzantine Empire. They had the Allies' blessing; unfortunately, this didn't sit well with the Turks, of course, and so, General Mustafa Kemal Ataturk inflicted serious defeats on the Greeks that the Hellenes are forced to give up Anatolia, and had a population exchange that made matters worse for Greece.

The Greeks in World War II whacked Benito Mussolini's New Roman Legions invading their country from Albania at the start of World War II. Hitler, embarrassed by his ally's humiliation, attacked Greece and was definitely more successful. The remnant of Greek Army later resorted to guerrilla warfare, and communists {ELAS-EAM} and rightists {EDES} later joined the guerrilla war. However, it looks like the ELAS and the EDES are interested in fighting each other than fighting the Germans, and when Greece was finally liberated in 1944, the setting was open for the Greek Civil War of 1946 to 1949, where the communists, backed by Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Russia, were defeated by the Greek Military. Later on, the Greeks sent an expedition to Korea.

Greek politics is unstable by the 1960s, and by 1967, some Army commanders, fed up by the political infighting, staged a coup. They instituted an anti-communist "Regime of Colonels," with a puppet civilian government in place to make a semblance of legality. The regime ended partly due to the Cyprus War, in which the Greek Cypriot nationalists overthrew the government of Archbishop Makarios. The de facto Greek dictator, Dimitrios Ioannidis, later intervened with his troops, only to face Turkish occupation of the northern part of Cyprus. Later, the junta gave up its power to Prime Minister Karamanlis in 1974, and the Greek military later gave up politics for good.

Currently, the Greek Military still uses conscription for men; the women can volunteer but are not conscripted.