When dictatorships protest dictatorships: East German anti-fascism, protests and solidarity for Greek political prisoners, 1967–72

This article explores how the GDR turned solidarity into strategy during Greece’s military dictatorship (1967–74), weaving anti-fascist rhetoric, communist kinship, and Cold War rivalry into a campaign for political prisoners. Mobilising party and mass organisations, East Berlin projected itself as the moral, principled, internationalist and just German state. Yet as détente softened ideological divides, this once-vocal activism faded into pragmatism. Drawing on rarely used Greek and German sources, the study reveals how the East German socialist state navigated the tension between conviction and realpolitik, offering new insight into the moral, yet pragmatic, diplomacy of the Cold War’s lesser-known fronts.