October 28th 1940: Greece rejects Mussolini’s ultimatium
On this day in 1940 during World War Two, the Greek government
rejected Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s demand that the Greeks allow the
Italian army to enter and occupy the country.
At 3 a.m. the Italian ambassador to Greece, Emanuele Grazzi,
delivered Mussolini’s ultimatum to Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas.
The Prime Minister replied with"Alors, c’est la
guerre" (“Then, it is war”).
The people of Greece celebrated Metaxas’s defiant “Oxi”
(Greek for ‘no’) and resisted when the Italian army crossed the Greek border.
The Greeks fought valiantly in the subsequent Greco-Italian War
and dealt the first
victory for the Allies successfully pushing the Italian army back into
Albania.
