Far-Right Greek Party Rides Wave Of Economic Anger
When German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Athens last month, a few Greek Army reservists in fatigues greeted her with chants of "Get out, Nazis!" Like other Greeks, they are furious over the drastic budget cuts Germany and other eurozone countries are demanding in exchange for billions in bailout loans.
The protesters compared the situation to Nazi Germany's brutal occupation of Greece during World War II, when more than 400,000 Greeks died.
But investigative journalist Dimitris Psarras hears other echoes of the past.
"The economic crisis that Greece is facing today is similar to the one faced by Weimar Germany," he says. "Just as Germany struggled to pay reparations imposed by the victors of World War I, Greece is now struggling to pay off giant debt racked up by its own corrupt political system."
Even Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has used the reference. In Weimar Germany, paramilitaries from the far right and far left fought in the streets. Germans struggled through head-spinning economic and political crises.
Then, in 1933, after parliamentary elections that gave the Nazi Party the biggest share of the vote, Adolf Hitler came to power.
Now Greece may have its own version of the Nazis, Psarras says, the Golden Dawn Party. He has researched the movement for more than two decades and just released a book, The Black Bible of Golden Dawn.
Enlarge Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty Images
Ilias Panagiotaros, deputy of the Greek Parliament and member of Golden Dawn, looks on before giving a speech in Athens in June.