Three Times to Greece? — New Zealand State Attitudes and Public Projection about Greek Politics during the 1940s

All rights reserved © 2017, Modern Greek Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand. Reproduced with permission of the publisher.During the 1940s the Pacific Dominion of New Zealand either sent or was faced with the possibility of despatching army formations to Greece no less than three times. The specific contexts were very different. However, it was the same Labour government of Peter Fraser in every instance. The military was under the leadership of Lieutenant General Bernard Freyberg for two of them. Fraser and Freyberg were dominant personalities in directing the war effort. This essay uses the trigger of actual/possible military expedition as a vehicle to illustrate changing attitudes of the Dominion’s military-political leadership to the complexity of Greek politics. The period under examination was also a time when the New Zealand state elite and wider community were first making expressions about a “special relationship” (MFAT, “Greece”) between the Dominion and the Mediterranean country