The 1967 military dictatorship in Greece came as a surprise to all foreign observers who considered the country part of a Western family of democratic regimes. The event generated a belated interest in the study of Greek civil-military relations and scholarly research sought to identify the precursors of 21 April 1967. The Venizelist coup which backed the break-away Thessaloniki government of 1916 was probably the first of a series that politicised the officer corps and introduced the armed forces to military conspiracies.

The role of the military throughout the nineteenth century was of a different nature. The first mission of the regular army and its officer corps in post-independence Greece was to consolidate the authority of the centralised state and its institutions. While accomplishing that task officers also embraced the ideology of Greece's expansion and were engaged in the irredentist pursuits of the Greek kingdom. Throughout the nineteenth century the military rarely challenged civilian supremacy in state policy. When they did enter the political discourse in the twentieth century, officers were initially united in their protest against the shortcomings of the crown and its supporters but were later subordinated to liberal or royalist agendas rather than acting as a corporate body. The only organised attempt against civilian authorities that conformed to the pattern of a corporate military conspiracy, namely the coup of 1935 against the government of Panagis Tsaldaris, was undermined by clientele networks and personal rivalries and failed miserably.