ied faction often called "Venizelist" after its leader, Eleutherios Venizelos (Alexander, 1982: 1 4).
These factions were not primarily distinguished by ideology or program: they were both, essentially, patronage movements held together by personal and family ties between leaders and their followers "feudal" movements, in the broadest sense of the word. In 1936, both were swept effectively aside by the dictatorship of General Ioannis Metaxis. Metaxis was a right wing authoritarian, but in spite of some Fascist style rhetoric, his ties were more to the traditional, "reactionary" Right than to a fascistic "counterrevolutionary" Right: he was closer in spirit to Franco than to Mussolini (much less Hitler).
Whatever the qualities or defects of his regime, Metaxis may be said to have distinguished himself as leader of his country when it was invaded by the Italians in the fall of 1940. Mussolini's forces were thrown back, and Hitler had to send in the German Wehrmacht to retrieve the situation in the spring of 1941. Metaxis
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