Il Parlamento italiano e il colpo di Stato in Grecia

The article examines the immediate reaction of the Italian Parliament to the coup d’état carried out in Greece by the colonels in April 1967. Primarily, it will consider the sessions of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic in the days following the coup dedicated to an examination of the Greek events, with the aim of revealing the positions of the various political, government and minority formations, and the differences between them. Faced with a rapid evolution of events that were not always easy to follow, starting from the apparently ambiguous role exercised by the young King Constantine, the condemnation of the military action, albeit with different tones, united all the political parties; all except the Social Movement, which, in the name of anti-communism, ended up justifying, if not exalting, what had taken place. The event must be placed within the historical context of the Cold War and, therefore, also the speeches given in the chamber by the Italian parliamentarians. The left, on the other hand, committed to defending individual rights and freedoms of the people and democracy, focused on the fear of a possible return of fascism. Consequently, demands for the expulsion of Greece from the Council of Europe and, in some of the more heated speeches, even from NATO, became almost inevitable, which however was opposed by the more moderate components of the executive, including the Christian Democrats, precisely because of the rigid dynamics imposed by the international politics of the time.