The Greek interwar period, after 1923 and the Treaty of Lausanne, is characterized by three major facts. First, the need for national homogenization and state modernization after the partial fulfilment of the Great Idea. Second, major social transformations, which have to do both with the entry of new ethnic and other groups into the national body and at the same time with the economic and cultural developments in a society that had been changing because of them. And third, the persistent continuation of the National Schism which had multiple effects on the functioning of institutions but also interacted with the great ideological conflicts ongoing at the same time in the rest of Europe, mainly based on the dilemma, ‘parliamentary democracy or dictatorship’. In this sense, the legacy of the Greek interwar period is strongly contradictory as on the one hand it had beneficial effects leading to the triumph of the 1940 war against Moussolini’s Italy and on the other hand it can offer interpretations for the long civil strife of 1943–49. In any case, this crisis of democratization, albeit in different terms, will continue in the post-war period, until 1974. Therefore, it is important to see the Greek interwar period as the first episode of a long political and social crisis, which will be resolved several decades later.