1. The historiography tends to categorize the Metaxas regime as an authoritarian dictatorship, rejecting the notion of it being of the fascist type. The most recent work within that tradition is P. J. Vatikiotis, Popular Autocracy in Greece 1936–41: A Political Biography of General Ioannis Metaxas, London, I. B. Tauris, 1998. It was originally among the communists who were the first victims of the Metaxas regime and among the losers in the Greek Civil War of 1946–49 — i.e. the opponents of the victorious national government and its tradition, which has strong connections to the Metaxas regime — that we find the narratives highlighting the fascist aspects of the regime. The most famous and influential works in that tradition is
2. S. Linardatos, Pos ftasame stin 4e augustou and I 4e Avgoustou, Athens, Themelio, 1965 and 1966. Both works are in-depth accounts of the Metaxas period based on the examination of newspapers and laws from the period. Linardatos published his two volumes in the short spell of time during the so-called Greek spring from 1963 to establishment of the 1967 dictatorship. After the downfall of the Colonels’ regime in 1974 a number of authors have taken up the tradition from Linardatos.
3. A. Kallis, ‘Neither fascist nor authoritarian: The 4th of August regime in Greece (1936–1941) and the dynamics of fascistisation in 1930s Europe’, East Central Europe 37, nos. 2–3, 2010, pp. 303–330.
4. On the National Schism see G. Th. Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic: Social Coalitions and Party Strategies in Greece 1922–1936, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1983.
5. On Metaxas’ early career see Vatikiotis, Popular Autocracy; on the Little Court and period before the First World War, see K. Loulos, Die Deutsche Griechenlandspolitik von Jahrhundertwende bis zur Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkrieges, Frankfurt am Main, Berne and New York, Peter Lang, 1986.