From the end of the Balkan Wars to the present

In 1914 the Great War broke out. Greece eventually sided with the Entente (principally France, Great Britain, and Russia) against the central Powers (Germany and Austro-Hungary, with Turkey and Bulgaria as their allies). Bulgaria occupied eastern Macedonia anew and systematically deported its inhabitants. The defeat of the Central Powers led to the signing of the treaty of Neuilly (1919) which compelled Bulgaria to evacuate the temporarily occupied Greek Macedonian provinces as well as western Thrace.

A special provision of the treaty provided that Greece and Bulgaria could proceed with the exchange of populations on a voluntary basis. Meanwhile, Greece’s disastrous Asia Minor campaign (1919-1922) was concluded by the treaty of Lausanne (1923), which provided for a compulsory exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey. One of the consequences was the arrival in Greece of more than a million of Greek refugees from Turkey. The settlement of hundreds of thousands destitute refugees in the ‘new lands’ (Hellenic Macedonia included) significantly strengthened the Greek majority of the population.

During the Second World War, Greece chose, once again, to fight, against the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Bulgaria) alongside the western allies. The Hellenic army scored the first allied victory during the Greek-Italian war (Oct.1940 to Apr. 1941). Following a second attack, this time by the Germans via Bulgaria and Yugoslavia (April 6, 1941) Greece came under a triple occupation — by Germany, Italy, and Bulgaria. Once again, the Bulgarian occupation authorities in western Thrace and Eastern Macedonia, reverted to their First World War tactics of expelling the Greek inhabitants of the region seeking to replace them with Bulgarians. Occupation by the foreign invading armies ended in October 1944, and Greece returned to the previous regime.

Meanwhile, the termination of the war brought major changes to Greece ‘s other northern neighbor, Yugoslavia, which was transformed into a socialist (communist) federation of six constituent federative republics. Its southern republic was named “People’s Republic of Macedonia” and its Slav population was officially recognized as a separate Slavonic ethnicity.

During the Greek Civil War (1946-1949), Belgrade (via Skopje) assisted the Greek communist insurrection, in the expectation of annexing parts of Hellenic Macedonia. The end of the fratricidal war in Greece annulled the vision for the Slav Macedonians in Skopje for expansion to the Aegean coast.

Forty years later, in 1991, with the dissolution of Federal Yugoslavia, the former federative republic of Macedonia proclaimed itself independent, under the name ‘Republika Makedonija”. Its territorial aspirations against Hellenic Macedonia were given a new lease of life. Claims were not limited to Hellenic territories but sought to challenge and to usurp cherished symbols and the cultural heritage of the Greek Macedonians. Under these circumstances the reactions of the Greeks, especially in Macedonia, were reasonable and unavoidable.