For decades, sci-fi movies as well as books that focused on time travel tickled our imagination into believing that maybe one day, some scientist or an inventor could discover a device, or a time machine that would enable us to turn the clock upside down. We have asked ourselves zillion times, can it be done? Obviously it can't be done, but the next best thing to time travel are books, photographs and movies. Today hellasfrappe debutes a new category titled TIME MACHINE and every so often we will be featuring a decade, or year in Greek history. Today we feature the 1950s (the whole decade). In the 1950s Greece was a war-torn country that was quickly making a comeback following WWII and the civil war. What was the news like in the 1950s? What type of music was popular? How were the commercials like? The fashion? What movies were most favored by movie goers and who were the new Spartans? Find out on Today's Time Machine - The 1950s.
POLITICS/ECONOMY - From 1951 until his death in 1955 Papagos dominated Greek politics, his Greek Rally Party gaining an overwhelming majority in the elections of 1952. Though his rule was authoritarian, the mass of Greeks welcomed it as providing stability after all the years of enemy occupation, civil war, and vacillating coalitions. In addition, he had the personal appeal of a national hero. The economy of the country revived, and in 1953 a treaty of friendship was signed between Greece, Turkey, and Yugoslavia, by which the Greeks who had been taken into Yugoslavia during the civil war were repatriated. In 1951 Greece became a member of NATO. From 1953 onwards Greek politics became increasingly dominated by the Cyprus question, the court and government soon identifying themselves with the popular desire for enosis, the union of Cyprus with Greece. Greece's open sympathy and tacit support for EOKA (the Cypriot movement pressing for this union) soon strained its relations with Turkey and Britain, and consequently NATO strength in the eastern Mediterranean was threatened. However, in 1959 the Zürich and London agreements, in which Greece participated, established an independent Cyprus, with Archbishop Makarios as first president. This ended the crisis for the time being, even though the settlement rejected enosis, on which Greece and the Greek Cypriots had always insisted in the past.
MASS MIGRATION/IMMIGRANTION - In 1950, the refugees from the Civil War, who lived in the Yugoslav camps, were sent to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, as well as to the DR Germany and the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan – frequently enduring forceful separation of their families. In the same year, the DAG partisans from Albania were transferred to the countries with popular democracy. From1950 on, there were about 100,000 civilian refugees from the Civil War in the whole territory under Soviet domination. A large number of the refugees, about 30,000, were placed in the Soviet Union, mainly in Tashkent. About 2,000 lived in the DR Germany, mainly in Radeboil and Dresden, while almost 70,000, half of them Macedonians, lived in the countries with popular democracy, for the most part Czechoslovakia and Poland. Most of the refugees were concentrated in the historical Schlesia, that is, the region on both sides of the new Polish-Czechoslovak border, the Polish territorial belt west of the Odra River, near Pulitz, Moravia with Brno, Budapest and its surrounding area and the refugee town of Belonjanis in Pusta, renowned for the killed Greek partisan hero Nikos Belojanis. In 1950, the first, weak wave of re-emigration took place: about 800 children from Yugoslavia and about 150 from Czechoslovakia were sent back to their Greek motherland. This tendency, however, did not continue in the following years. From the beginning of the 1950s, the merging of families started taking place, an activity organised partly by the state and partly by the refugees themselves. In this way, for instance, several thousand Greeks and Macedonians moved to Poland and Uzbekistan. In the 1950s, a small number of the refugees from the Civil War left Eastern Europe and Central Asia for Australia and North America.
OUTPOST HARRY - THE NEW SPARTA WARRIORS - In June of 1953 in far away Korea, an event that parallels the heroics of Leonidas at Thermopylae takes place on a small hill called Outpost Harry (for Haros, meaning Death). Peter Company, and Sparta Battalion, soldiers of the Greek Expeditionary Forces attached to the 15th U.S. Infantry Regiment with less than 100 men withstood wave after wave of attacks by the Chinese trying to take the hill. For eight days, waves of Chinese Communist Forces stormed Harry’s trench lines--more than 13,000 soldiers in all. And yet each of the five companies ordered to hold Outpost Harry, when its turn came, held it. The relentless attacks would continue throughout the week, each evening bringing a flood of Chinese soldiers pouring through barbed wire, and on the worst nights, into Harry's trenches. On the seventh day of the siege, Outpost Harry's defiant, week-long survival and its continued defense were entrusted to the Greek soldiers of Peter Company, Sparta Battalion.
EUROPEAN RELATIONS - In Europe, the 1950s were dominated by a cold war between east and west. Protests in Hungary against the Communist regime are put down by Soviet tanks in 1956; while the following year, 1957, the Soviet Union takes the lead in the space race, when it launches the first man-made space satellite, Sputnik 1. Also in 1957, the Treaty of Rome creates the European Economic Community (EEC), or ‘Common Market’.
EDUCATION - In the 1950s, only about 30% of Greek adults could read and write. Now, the literacy rate is more than 95%. The educational system of Greece in the 1950s had three levels: a six-year compulsory primary school; a six-year secondary school (gymnasium) with a humanistic curriculum; and the tertiary level consisting of universities and the few tertiary schools of general education, such as the Teacher Training and the Physical Education academies. There was some preprimary education. Generally the kindergartens were attended by a small number of children. Sixty percent of the kindergartens were in Northern Greece. In the late 1950s the emphasis on modernization and planned economic development intensified reforms, especially for the expansion of technical/vocational education. In 1958-1959, there were 39,824 pupils attending vocational schools, and 239,648 enrolled in secondary schools (OECD 1980). The educational reforms that followed were tied to the recognition that education and training are important elements in the economic growth of the country. Without education, the national income could not be increased, nor the social welfare and stability ensured.
IN THE WEST - A domino theory, also called Domino Effect, Harry Truman was adopted by US foreign policy after World War II stating that the “fall” of a noncommunist state to communism would precipitate the fall of noncommunist governments in neighbouring states. The theory was first proposed by President Harry S. Truman to justify sending military aid to Greece and Turkey in the 1940s, but it became popular in the 1950s when President Dwight D. Eisenhower applied it to Southeast Asia, especially South Vietnam. The domino theory was one of the main arguments used in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations during the 1960s to justify increasing American military involvement in the Vietnam War.
MUSIC - Laika developed from the Rebetika which was popular among the underclasses during the 1940s and 1950s. From the end of the 1950s onwards, Greek Laika became more and more popular, partly due to the economic development of Greece that was slowly recovering from the two wars, the Second World War and the Civil War. More and more Greeks could afford to buy radios and record players and the competition gave way to new artists and many fun loved tunes. The Greek record companies, seeing the potential of Laika, signed contracts with singers, musicians and composers and the mass production of popular Greek music really began to take off.
ART WORLD - In 1957 one of the most influencial writers of the 20th century Nikos Kazantzakis dies (1957). This poet and philosopher, influenced by the writings of Nietzsche and Bergson and the philosophies of Christianity, Marxism and Buddhism. Among his works are The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, which continues the story of Odysseus form the point where Homer leaves off, a poem 333,333 verses long. His book, The Last Temptation of Christ, is banned by the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church which tries to have him excommunicated. Other well-known books by Kazantzakis are Freedom or Death, The Fratricides, The Greek Passion and the most famous of all Zorba the Greek which in 1964 is made into one of the most popular movies of all time, starring Anthony Quinn.
Interesting Facts In Brief
- Until the 1950s agriculture dominated the Greek economy, with subsistence farming predominant in many areas.
- In 1952, Siemens in Greece landed one of its first major orders of the post-war period: to supply the electrical equipment for 12 railcars on the Piraeus-to-Athens light rail line. In the following years, the number of trains equipped with Siemens electrical devices rose to over 35.
- Statue of Zeus is found at the ruins of the Temple of Zeus at the archaeological site of Olympia, Greece, built about 460. The statue was one of two masterpieces by the Greek sculptor Phidias (the other being the statue of Athena in the Parthenon) and was placed in the huge Temple of Zeus at Olympia in western Greece.
MUSIC VIDEO -
A TOUR OF GREECE IN 1951
MUSIC VIDEO - Η άμαξα μεσ' στη βροχή - Παγιουμτζής & Κωνσταντινίδου
ELECTIONS AT MAKRONYSO
COMMERCIALS OF THE 1950s
BEST MOVIE DRAMA - ΣΤΕΛΛΑ
BEST COMEDY - Η ΘΕΙΑ ΑΠΟ ΤΟ ΣΙΚΑΓΟ
References
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/656808/Statue-of-Zeus
http://www.siemens.com/history/en/news/1032_greece.htm
http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/542/Greece-CONSTITUTIONAL-LEGAL-FOUNDATIONS.html#ixzz1pObuQXil
http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/Political+history+of+Greece
http://europa.eu/about-eu/eu-history/index_en.htm