'Sir Basil Zaharoff, of Greek origin, financier and international armaments
dealer, was one of the richest men in the world. Chairman of the British company Vickers
(a company more important even than Krupp), he sold war equipment both to Greece and Turkey. From 1910 on
he changed his attitude. Just before the Balkan Wars, he offered the Greek state a glorious building in Paris,
for the Greek Embassy; by now he sported only Greek colours.
The Encyclopaedia Brittanica reports that he donated to Greece
2,500,000 dollars in 1912-1913 and 1,250,000 dollars more in 1916-1917 [...] he later substantially sponsored
the Asia Minor Campaign. Its failure cost him half his fortune.
Having supplied products on credit and direct subsidies he had nothing left. Bodosakis Athanasiadis was a provider of the Turkish army until 1910.
It was then that he also decided to stake all on the Greek effort. He spent 7 millions francs
on the purchase and modernization of the luxurious hotel 'Pera
Palace' in Constantinople and offered it to the Greek government. After
1922, having undergone losses of 5 million pounds sterling, he settled in Greece, where
he engaged in the monopoly of the automatic telephone network, as well as the monopoly of gunpowder;
thus he became the most powerful Greek industrialist.
[...] (footnote text) We also note that among the closest collaborators of Venizelos can be included Benakis, Mayor of Athens and one of the richest Greeks from Egypt, as one of the major
financial supporters of the Venizelist regime. Benakis settled in Greece in 1910,
the year that Venizelos entered the Greek political scene, and became Minister of Trade
and Industry in the first Venizelos government.
[...] Until the Balkan Wars, this circle (the Greeks of London) had not displayed
any serious concern for the fate of Greece. Only after 1912-1913 did they evolve into a pressure group
for the promotion of the expansionist interests of the country. Thus, the mercantile bourgeois
class participated for the first time directly in the consolidation of Greek expansionism
that followed the rise to power of Venizelos'.
Tsoukalas K., Exartisi kai anaparagogi. O koinonikos rolos ton ekpaideftikon mihanismon stin
Ellada (1830-1922), Athens, Themelio editions, 1985 (4th edition), pp. 368-369.
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