Stockholm, December 10th, 1928
Kostis Palamas had been called by Romain Rolland the greatest poet of Europe and had been nominated for the Nobel prize for literature twice, in 1926 and 1927. Third time was apparently the charm as Palamas became the first Greek to win the Nobel prize for his poetry, in particular his "Twelve Lays of the Gypsy". The growing role and influence of Greece over the last two decades probably hadn't hurt Palamas chances... [1]
Athens, December 11th, 1928
The new government of the United opposition, received its vote of confidence in a joint session of senate and parliament. Stratos following the earlier example of Venizelos kept for himself the ministry of the army in addition to being prime minister, with Ion Dragoumis receiving the ministry of foreign affairs and Tsaldaris the ministry of public works. Rear admiral Periklis Rediadis would become minister of the navy and
George Pesmazoglou minister of finance. In the army general Konstantinos Nider, would become the new chief of the general staff with Konstantine Gouvelis assistant minister of war but Stratos carefully avoided touching any of the primary Venizelist officers in the army otherwise. After all after 11 years it wasn't practical to reinstate any of the officers that had been removed by the Venizelists back in 1917.
It remained to be seen how Stratos government would fare but its material prospects at the moment looked relatively good. State finances were generally sound, taxes had returned slightly over 13 billion drachmas in 1928 out of total state revenues of 16 billion and the budget remained balanced. The debt service at 1.38 billion this year and 2.42 billion in 1929 was notable but hardly crippling, the only foreign loans singe the end of the war were the $10 million taken to rebuild Athens water system and 4 million pounds for infrastructure projects earlier in the year. GDP had grown from $780 million in 1921 to $963 million in 1928, if anything the growth was all the more pronounced when looking at it in constant prices, industrial output had doubled and the country was on its way to becoming self sustained in wheat production over the next few years. Infrastructure had seen steady improvement most notably a new railroad between Kalambaka and Veroia in Macedonia had been completed in 1927, the Greek road network had been expanded from about 11,000 km to 17,000 and significant effort had been put at drainage of swamps, hoping both to reclaim land and combat the malaria endemic to the country. Refugee resettlement was mostly complete, with exchangees being settled in Macedonia, Ionia and Thrace, 6 billion drachmas in bonds issued in 1926 had gone a long way towards completing the process but ironically might have helped cost the Liberals the election as many exchanged had been miffed at being responsible for paying the bonds instead of being given loans for free. The one thing that had definitely not gone well had been the drachmas exchange rate which had finally stabilized to 250 drachmas to the pound in 1927, fully 10 times the exchange rate back in 1914.
Athens, February 1929
Ford had first proposed establishing a
car factory in Greece back in 1926. Despite its policy in favour of developing industry within Greece, negotiations with Ford had gone nowhere under the Venizelos government. Pesmazoglou, an economist of note, had repeatedly accused Venizelos for the delays and of supposed influence of British finance causing them. As soon as he became minister of finance he took it upon himself to complete the deal with no further delays. By this time next years the first cars would be coming out of Ford's factory in Piraeus. Pesmazoglou also hoped to see the virtual monopoly Bodosakis had in Greek heavy industry broken, since importing the first Siemens-Martin furnace from German reparations back in 1923, Bodosakis steel factory in Eleusis remained the only one of its kind in Greece producing 36,000t of steel in 1928. But no candidates appeared to exist so far.
Deutche Werke shipyard, Kiel, February 1929
Erzatz Preussen, the first German panzerschiff was laid down. If people thought the provisions of the treaty of Versailles would severely hinder German naval power, the new ship under construction, she would be named Deutschland, had just thrown a spoke in the wheels of these ideas and of the naval disarmament treaties in general. The presence of the Turkish naval attache in the laying down of the ship would go relatively unnoticed.
Britain, May 30th, 1929
In its four and a half years in power the Conservative party hadn't done badly, quite notably it had introduced the Widows, Orphans and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act in 1925 an unprecedented act on the part of Tories and introduced universal women suffrage in 1928. But the economy had grown only slowly, the British return to the gold standard under Churchill in 1925 at the pre-war exchange rate of $4.86 to the pound had probably been a mistake, and the voters acted accordingly. For the first time in history Ramsey MacDonald's Labour came first in an election with 36.1% of the vote and 258 seats. The Conservatives had come slightly behind with 34.4% and 224 seats. The Liberals despite increasing their vote share to 28.3% of the vote and nearly doubling their seats to 124 where still a distant third in parliament. [2] But with none of the other two parties gaining a majority, Lloyd George could now play king maker. Already recognizing the predicament the Liberals were in his price was simple. Electoral reform and introduction of
Alternative Vote for British parliamentary elections. Labour was willing to pay the price. Stanly Baldwin hesitated and bad blood between him and Llooyd George over the end of the coalition government six years earlier certainly didn't help. Britain would get her first Labour government in history, even one at the sufferance of the Liberals. And the Liberals would get their price.
Mount Ararat, Turkey (free Kurdistan proclaimed), July 1929
Two Turkish divisions launched a renewed offensive against the Kurdish rebels. Despite initially gaining ground the Kurdish rebels under Ihsan Nuri, managed to stave the attack off. By September the Kurdish rebellion would close two years and no end appeared to be in sight. Lack of air support, aircraft couldn't be used in open violation of the treaty of Chantilly, to attack Kurdish positions were certainly a problem from the Turkish point of view, as was the ability of rebels to draw supplies through Iran and from French Syria. Grumblings within the grand national assembly increased. By August, with some behind the scenes prompting from Kemal grand vizier Salih Hulusi pasha was gone, replaced by
Bekir Sami bey. He was the first openly nationalist grand vizier since the end of the war.
Phaleron, Piraeus, September 1929
The first of 50 Hawker Horsley's and Fairey IIIFs came out of the aircraft factory to join the recently formed air force that had replaced the separate army and navy air services back in 1927. Stratos was actually of two minds over the new arm and had thoughts of returning to the navy its own air service but nothing had come out of them so far.
New York, October 1929
Rumblings in the international stock markets were being felt since the start of September. But by the end of October Wall Street had crashed, quite worse than in the panic of 1907 over two decades earlier. Over the next few years repercussions would be felt around the world.
Sebastopol, November 1929
Battleship
Parizhskaya Kommuna formerly Sebastopol joined the Soviet Black Sea fleet along the light cruiser Profintern, the former Svetlana. For the first time since the October revolution the Soviets had naval superiority in the Black sea as
Parizhskaya Kommuna comfortably outgunned the much older Greek battleships Lemnos and Kilkis combined. This was of some concern the the Balkan Entente and the Greek naval staff, Rediadis the navy minister had been on record that while aircraft were likely to make battleships obsolate further in the future, the Greek navy needed at least one battleship and ideally as many as three. [3] Most navy officers, with the exception of a vocal minority under vice admiral Kolialexis, agreed with him. But for the time being Stratos refused to alter the existing naval program as adding even a single battleship to the fleet would require expenditure of 5 to 8 million pounds. Meanwhile Soviet yards were busy rebuilding the battleship Frunze to a new modernized design as part of the first five year plan... [4]
[1] In OTL Palamas was nominated virtually every year between 1926 and the start of WW2 and arguably did deserve the prize. Sorry Sigrid Undset!
[2] The Liberals start from a relatively stronger position TTL
[3] From OTL parliamentary minutes
[4] A side effect of the Soviets feeling more threatened TTL from the British/French presence in Constantinople
