Metaxas, Yanni 1870-1941
Greek politician

He was born in Ithaka. He fought in the Thessalian campaign against the Turks in 1897, and helped reorganize the Greek army before the 1912-13 Balkan Wars, when he became Chief of the General Staff. A Royalist rival of the Republican Eleutherios Venizelos, he opposed Greek intervention in World War I. On King Constantine I's fall he fled to Italy, but returned with him in 1921. In 1923 he founded the Party of Free Opinion. In 1935 he became deputy Prime Minister after the failure of the Venizelist coup, and in April 1936 became Prime Minister, in August establishing an authoritarian government with a cabinet of specialist and retired service officers. His work of reorganizing Greece economically and militarily bore fruit in the tenacious Greek resistance to the Italian invasion of 1940-41.