Greek Prime Minister Feared a Coup

Greek Prime Minister Feared a Coup

A banner with a large ‘Oxi’ (Greek for no) is pictured at the anti-austerity protest outside the Greek Parliament.

Michael Debets/Pacific Press/LightRocket/Getty Images

What went on when Greece surrendered to Germany’s demands in the summer of 2015?

By Richard Palmer • May 1

In July 2015, Greece defied Germany and the eurozone. The new left-wing Syriza government held a referendum on whether or not to submit to Germany’s conditions. The country overwhelmingly voted no.

The next day Greece submitted anyway. At the time, the EU Observer wrote: “Monday, July 13, will go down in history as the day Greece lost its independence after 185 years of freedom, the day democracy died in the country that invented it.” What happened to cause such a dramatic turnaround?

Yanis Varoufakis, who was Greece’s finance minister at the time, has written a book on the subject to be released on Thursday, titled Adults in the Room: My Battle With Europe’s Deep Establishment. In the book, Varoufakis claims that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras capitulated to Germany because he feared that if he did not, the nation would suffer a coup. In an excerpt of the book published ahead of time by the Telegraph, Varoufakis writes:

At that point Alexis confessed that he feared a “Goudi” fate awaited us if we persevered—a reference to the execution of six politicians and military leaders in 1922.

I laughed, saying that if they executed us after we had won 61.3 percent of the vote, our place in history would be guaranteed.

Alexis then began to insinuate that something like a coup might take place, telling me that the president of the republic, Stournaras, the intelligence services and members of our government were in a “readied state.”

The Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard called these “extraordinary developments.”

“What the former finance minister reveals is that leaders of the Syriza government were seriously worried about dark forces in the shadows,” Evans-Pritchard wrote. “They were frightened.” He continued:

Vested interests with huge sums at stake—within Greece, and implicitly across the eurozone—were prepared to defend the existing financial order by any means necessary. The prime minister feared a military coup.

His warnings to Mr. Varoufakis in soul-searching talks that night certainly raise eyebrows, all vividly narrated in a subchapter entitled “The Overthrowing of a People.”

Varoufakis describes pro-euro Greeks allying with eurozone officials to keep Greece in the euro by any means necessary. Evans-Pritchard summarized the book, writing:

Syriza claimed that the Bank of Greece had been operating as a Fifth Column, acting as an outpost of the European Central Bank inside the country.

As Mr. Varoufakis describes events, it incited a run on the banking system as a pressure tool from the start, igniting a fire fanned enthusiastically by the Greek oligarchy through its stranglehold over the media.

The ecb [European Central Bank] was more than complicit. It stripped Greek banks of crucial support within days of the new government taking power, delivering a dagger blow even before Syriza had presented its first negotiating plan to eurozone finance ministers.

This asphyxiation campaign would reach its grim conclusion when the ecb cut off emergency liquidity for private Greek banks that had done nothing wrong, bringing the country to its knees. This was done in murky legal circumstances, arguably in violation of the ecb’s treaty duty to safeguard financial stability. It was a highly political move.

“What happened in Greece over those strange days in July 2015 raises disturbing questions about the character of Europe’s monetary union,” wrote Evans-Pritchard. “One might conclude that when push comes to shove, the euro system is held together by fear rather than democratic consent.”

Varoufakis’s dramatic claims are no ravings of a madman. The former finance minister is an economist, albeit a left-wing economist, well regarded among his peers. If true, his dramatic claims show that Europeans will go to great lengths to keep their project together—even to the point of overthrowing a government.

This proposition could soon be put to the test—with polls indicating that near majorities in France and Italy want out of the European bloc.

“Wealth without strength is an invitation to disaster,” wrote Geopolitical Futures founder George Friedman in his book Flashpoint. In time, he says, Germany will see that wealth taken away or use “its vast resources to transform wealth into power.”

This is exactly the dilemma a breakup of the euro poses. If nations are allowed to quit the euro, it poses a real threat to Germany’s trade-based economy. Alternatively, if nations like France and Italy get their way, the euro would be reconfigured so that German taxpayer money flows south forever, another outcome Germans could not tolerate.

Germany may have to use some kind force if it wants to prevent either outcome, and it appears that it was prepared to do so in Greece.

Another revelation from Varoufakis’s book is that then French Economic Minister Emmanuel Macron tried to help Greece, before being squashed by Germany. Varoufakis says Macron told him, “I do not want my generation to be the one responsible for Greece exiting Europe.” Macron reportedly called the deal Greece was forced to accept “a modern-day version of the Versailles Treaty.”

Varoufakis writes that German Chancellor Angela Merkel “ordered [French President François] Hollande to keep Macron out of the Greek negotiations.”

Now Macron looks likely to be France’s next president. (If his opponent wins, Germany has even bigger problems.) If Macron wins and opposes Germany in the next showdown, he would be much harder for Germany to stop.

How will Germany respond when (not if) its eurozone is again threatened? The summer of 2015 gives us a pretty good indication.

After the Greek crisis first began, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote, “The crisis in Greece is a forerunner of a whole rash of similar crises set to soon break out across Europe. They will provide the catalyst for the EU’s leading nation, Germany, to rise to the fore with solutions of its own making.”

This process is still underway. As Mr. Flurry wrote back then, “Watch Germany. Watch for Germany to be at the helm in a restructuring not only of EU member nations’ economies, but of the entire European Union itself!”