Athens, June 1st 1923
Italy simultaneously with the bombardment and occupation of Corfu had closed the straits of Otranto to Greek ships and suspended sea-borne communications between Greece and Italy. The Albanian government had at the same time closed the Greek Albanian border and massed what few troops it had on the border. The Greeks had been caught by surprise but Venizelos start reacting swiftly. Martial law was declared through out Greece and the fleet along with the Smyrna Army corps in Ionia and the VIII infantry division in Epirus were quietly mobilized. Greece starting a war with Italy on its own was not practical. But Greece was not necessarily on its own. Just as Greece appealed to the League of Nations asking for its intervention, Venizelos was contacting Britain and France asking for them to mediate if Italy was willing to negotiate, to help defend Greece otherwise. Nikolaos Politis, the Greek foreign minister, had been sent right away to Belgrade and from there had continued to Bucharest asking Greece's Balkan Entente allies for their support. And there were military options the Italians had apparently not taken into consideration. The Italian mandate in Caria was wide open if the Greeks crossed the Meander, with the geography making its defense all the more difficult as the mountain ranges that run vertical to the river separated the few Italian troops there into multiple contingents along the valleys. [1]
Understandably, the Greek press was up in arms against Italy. The Italian ambassador's complaint to the Greek government when one of the papers had called the Italians "the fugitives of Caporetto", had been met by a flat refusal to take any action against the newspaper, the ambassador being simply informed that Greece had freedom of the press. Mussolini had in turn recalled his ambassador with Greece reciprocating. [2] The opposition had stood understandably at the side of the nation with Ion Dragoumis in particular being particularly scathing in his rhetoric against Italy. Nikolaos Stratos at the head of the Reformist Conservative party can been less scathing but had not omitted calling in parliament for the immediate completion of the battleship Salamis and the procurement of further heavy units to replace to old Kilkis and Lemnos pre-dreadnoughts. Had Greece possessed the three battleships projected by the Greek naval program he argued Italy would had never dared to occupy Corfu. [3]
London, June 3rd 1923
Italian actions had been to put it mildly a nasty surprise to the British government. David Lloyd George was a known partisan of Greece of course but he wasn't alone in his support of Greece this time. Lord Curzon, the foreign minister described the Italian action as "violent and inexcusable" and that if Britain did not back the Greek appeal in the league of nations "that institution may as well shut its doors". [4] Winston Churchill with Lloyd George's backing had ordered the Mediterranean fleet on a "goodwill visit" to the Aegean. Britain of course did not want war with Italy but the presence of the Royal Navy in Greek waters was a pointed reminder that attaching Greece would be problematic. Mussolini would have to be insane to want to take on the Royal Navy. Of course reports from the British embassy in Rome claimed that this was possibly true but even if insane he was preferable to communists. This put something of a crimp to the British ability to safely predict his actions...
Rome June 10, 1923
The crisis went on. Both the Balkan Entente members as well as Czechoslovakia were openly supporting the Greeks, as did Britain and to a lesser extend France. International opinion in general was decidedly supportive of Greece. Within Corfu, the Greek 10th Infantry now and full strength was dug in in the interior of the island effectively limiting Italian control to the town of Corfu and the Italians had been quietly informed that if they tried to advance to the interior the Greeks would fight back, of course Greek resistance could be likely overcome but Mussolini did not want to start an actual war at the moment. Not all was bad though. Within Italy a wave of patriotism had swept the nation securing the fascists hold on power. Britain when told that if it insisted on the Greek appeal being taken before the League of Nations, Italy would simply leave the League had backed down an agreed that the matter should be dealt by the ambassadors conference, particularly since France also preferred this and wanted to retain Italian support against Germany. In Sivas calls were being raised in the Turkish grand national assembly to attack Greece in conjunction with Italy, a welcome increase of Italian influence within the country. Mussolini chose a French newspaper to declare that if Greece did not find the perpetrators of the murder by June 27th, Italy would refuse to leave Corfu. Of course there was the minor issue that according to the Greek "Corfu office of information" established under lieutenant colonel Fessopoulos to coordinate Greek intelligence operations related to the crisis the murderers were being harboured by the Italians in the first place but that was surely the Greeks problem...
Geneva, June 29th, 1923
The ambassadors conference voted by three to one that Greece was not responsible for the murder. Then it continued by claiming that nevertheless she was responsible for some undefined negligence before and after the murder, for which a formal apology should be presented to Italy. Since Greece was not responsible for the murder, there was no reason for the 50,000,000 lire indemnity claimed by Italy, the formal Greek apology should suffice, behind the scenes Venizelos had made it clear that Greece was willing to compromise and accept a formula that let Italy maintain face but was not paying a single penny for a crime she was not responsible for. Italy was free to go to the International court of justice for her demand for Greece to pay the occupation costs for the month Corfu remained occupied. It was a decision both sides could live with. The Greeks got the Italians off Corfu. But they would remember the forced apology, the half million pounds demanded by Italy was instead assigned to the navy. Mussolini got to pretend he had won and show to the Italian public how his government followed a dynamic foreign policy unlike his predecessors and had forced Greece to a formal apology, increasing his popularity. Money, Italy was above mere money, the Greek formal apology was worth much more fascist propaganda would claim. But Mussolini would remember he failed to keep Corfu. A day of reckoning would come he claimed. The League of Nations was the only one that had no reason to be happy with the result. In her first major test it had failed.
Corfu, June 30th, 1923
Back during the Great war, when Italian troops had been stationed in Corfu before the Greek entry into the war, the commander of the Italian garrison, had hanged a wooden rooster from the gate of the Corfu New Fortress and claimed Italians would leave the island when the wooden rooster crowed. Italian troops had left under cover of night in 1918. Now they were leaving again and several thousand Corfiotes were in the port to see them off, all crowing like roosters. The wooden rooster had after all crowed for a second time. It remained to be seen it it would crow for a third time as well...
[1] That is obviously a factor not present in OTL. But Italy would hardly have more than 10-15,000 men in peacetime in the area, it had fewer during the Greek-Turkish war after all.
[2] The incident is copied from OTL, but TTL reaction is liable to be different. A Greece that has just won its war with Turkey and is closely connected to Britain and France is an entirely different beast from the OTL one both militarily and politically...
[3] There had actually been supporters of the idea that Greece needed to be able to build up to 3 battleships in OTL 1923-24, like admiral Periklis Rediadis. Saner heads prevailed, three battleships was 60% of the French and Italian tonnage an more than any of the proposed lesser power allocations in the 1924 Rome naval conference. But Stratos is a navalist, "heavy units" can mean anything, the naval staff hoped to eventually build heavy cruisers in replacement of the pre-dreadnoughts which count for heavy units and besides... he is in the opposition he won't need to put his claims to actual work...
[4] Historical
