Odysseas Alepoudelis, is serving as a reserve officer in the Cretan Division. In his little spare time he writes poems which he posts to his friend Giorgos Seferiades a high ranking diplomat with the Greek ministry of foreign affairs.
Euripides Bakirtzis is in command of the II Infantry division and one of the proteges of Pangalos. Both he and his close friends Demetrios Psarros and Stephanos Sarafis have done very well in the recent fighting.
Prodromos Bodosakis-Athanasiadis is the undisputed master of Greek heavy industry. His Hephaestus Works, ELEO and ELEX, the Hellenic Steel Company, are playing a pivotal role in the war effort and he's informally coordinating Greek war industries.
Nicholas Christofilos, is working with his former professor Pavlos Santorinis in KEHT the state factory of electronics and telecommunications recently created after the Greek state confiscated all German economic interests in Greece following the German declaration of war.
Ion Dragoumis is prime minister of Greece, in a coalition government with the Liberals under George Kafandaris. His marriage with
Marika Kotopouli back in 1923 a scandal at the time is still going strong 18 years on even though no children have been born to it.
Roza Eskenazi is in Smyrna. Her club "Krystal" in the industrial district of Vyronas, the former Daragatsi, where she performs with
Panagiotis Toundas and
Iovan Tsaous is very popular despite, or perhaps because, rembetiko being looked down by polite society. This "second Smyrna trio" is the main representative of the Smyrna school of rembetiko, the main alternative to the "Piraeot school".
Demetrios Glinos is leading the Communist party in the senate. An articulate man well respected by not communists, he actually has relatively little influence within the party itself.
Pavlos Gyparis, is back with the army. Where exactly? Somewhere in Macedonia...
George Kafandaris, is vice-premier in the Greek government. His Liberal party is actually the largest one in parliament with 97 seats to 79 of Dragoumis National Radical party.
Konstantinos Karamanlis was first elected with the National Radicals in parliament in 1936 and recently been made minister of transport, a role in which he's proving quite effective. Karamanlis has ambitions. But he's not the only potential candidate to succeed Dragoumis, Panagiotis Kanellopoulos the minister of justice appears the most likely candidate and Dragoumis is not particularly old in the first place...
Thanasis Klaras, now Ares Makedon has taken things in his hands and start a resistance organization in occupied Thessaloniki, where the German advance caught him, even before the Communist party threw its lot with the war effort after he invasion of the Soviet Union. So far neither the "People's Liberation Front" he helped create nor the bourgeois "National Liberation Organization" of the Venizelists have had much of an impact.
Makarios Kykkotis, has been recently made an archimandrite and is officiating in the Saint Herene church as he continues his studies in the Theological school of the university of Athens. He has no immediate plans to return to Cyprus.
Leontios bishop of Paphos, has been elected archbishop of Cyprus in 1937 after the death of Nikodemos I, defeating Makarios bishop of Kyreneia. His chronic tonsil issues have gotten better after he had time to perform a tonsilectomy in
Hellenic Hospital of Smyrna back in 1936 although he still must be careful with his diabetes. Leontios has proven a capable hierarch forwarding the cause of Enosis and Greek-Cypriot interests and maintaining a working relationship with the Communist Party of Cyprus, under Ploutis Servas. Leontios is himself most likely liberal leaning working closely with EOK the National Organization of Cyprus.
Kitsos Maltezos, has just joined the Hellenic Army, he's a cadet in the Reserve Officer School, moved to Heraklion in Crete from Corfu. It is going to be a difficult six months. SEAK [1] is not for the weak of heart even in peacetime, all the more so in wartime. Lieutenant General George Papastergiou the new commanding general of both SEAK and the Evelpidon school makes certain of that...
Konstantinos Mitsotakis, is serving as a 2nd lieutenant along with his close friend Panos Kokkas in the Thessalian front. Despite or perhaps because of close family ties to the Venizelos family he remains in the front lines. By all accounts the tall Cretan is remarkably unperturbed under fire, always a good thing for an officer.
Dario Moreno, is serving with the Army of Asia Minor in the siege lines of Smyrna. During his leaves he's singing in the "Black Cat" night club in Melantia/Karatas, the upper class mixed Jewish/Christian district of Smyrna. The young singer is already popular with the upper echelons of Smyrniot society. Despite similarities in their music he keeps his distance from the rather more disreputable rembetiko musicians.
Aristotle Onassis, is an up and coming name in Greek finances. His tobacco company has taken a hit from the war and the occupation of Asiatic Greece but his shipping business is flourishing.
Theodore Pangalos, is commading the Greek army. His success in holding back the German and Italian armies at Thermopylae, has made made headlines in the free world.
Alexandros Papagos has recently been promoted to command the Western Greece Army section as part of the reorganization of the Greek army. He doesn't entirely see eye to eye with his second in command Georgios Tsolakoglou who has been recently promoted to command the Greek 2nd Army Corps, in place of Alexandros Merenditis now inspector of the army.
Andreas Papandreou, is studying in Harvard university. His participation in a Trotskyite group while in the university back in Greece had been cause for a scandal against his father, but this and Trotskyism are firmly in the past. His relation with his father is problematic since the elder Papandreou divorced his mother for Cybele. Andreas has not returned back to Greece to join the army after the declaration of war, recently he has married a Greek-American, Christina Rasia.
George Papandreou, has led a split of the more leftist elements of the Liberals after the death of Eleutherios Venizelos and a failed bid to take over the party. His Democratic Agrarian party, is small in numbers with only 16 MPs but these include people like Alexandros Svolos, Elias Tsirimokos, Ioannis Sofianopoulos and Georgios Kartalis. While proclaiming himself socialist Papandreou is a committed anti-communist. In his personal life he remains married to
Cybele Andrianou the great theatrical rival of Kotopouli. Their daughter Pagona was born in 1928.
George Pesmazoglou is once more the Greek minister of finance, a challenging role with war underway, over half the country occupied and the Mediterranean closed for Greek shipping. "Proia" the newspaper he created with his brother is one of the stalwarts of the National Radicals.
Spyros Pisanos is flying Ierax II fighters for the Hellenic Air Force, he became an ace back in February.
Nikolaos Plastiras has just become the Greek military attache to London, an very important position the Britain Greece's primary ally. It is also a polite way of easing him out of frontline service after Pangalos passed him over for corps command.
Themistoklis Sofoulis, has been elected to a second term as president of Greece back in December 1939. For an 81 year old, he is remarkably spry amd has repeatedly visited the front.
Ioannis Tsigantes was last seen in Thessaloniki, operating for DYPL, the Greek secret service and SOE counterpart. His brother Christodouos has recently been given command of a small new unit of which little is known...
Vasilis Tsitsanis, is on leave from the Greek army after being wounded in action. His mother and his fiancee Zoe have followed him from occupied Trikala to Piraeus where the "Vlach" is thinking of opening his own club if he gets a permanent deferment from the army.
Sofoklis Venizelos, has been a member of parliament since his election in October 1920. He has recently been made minister of war in the coalition government in place of Kafandaris as wartime pressures were too much for Kafandaris to wear that hat in addition to that of vice-premier. The younger Venizelos may not me up to the calibre of his late father but few men ever will...
Georgios Vlachos has been publishing "Kathimerini", the leading paper of the right for more than two decades. He has not been particularly happy with Dragoumis choice to enter a coalition with the Liberals but the war effort takes precedence over internal politics, although the rivalry with the Lambrakis house papers "Athinaika Nea" and "Eleutheron Vima" which support the Liberals continues unabated. A very talented writer his own articles are always making a sense among friends and rivals alike.
Nikos Zachariadis, is general secretary of the Communist Party of Greece. Outside parliament and too young to enter the senate he does so while technically a simple citizen.
[1] Scholi Efedron Aksiomatikon Kritis
