However, it failed to live up to its promise to bring the troops back home and became more entangled in Asia Minor than their Liberal Party predecessors. To complicate matters further, after the death of King Alexander on October 25, 1920, it brought back exiled Constantine I which cost Greece the support of her former Entente Allies. Defeat in the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) and the subsequent Asia Minor disaster put an end to its rule as Greek military leaders overthrew the government they viewed as responsible for the national catastrophe.
Its leaders, including Dimitrios Gounaris, were executed after a short trial and the party suffered great losses in the following elections. Nevertheless, it returned to power, in 1933 under the leadership of Panagis Tsaldaris[2] and in 1935 played a leading part in the restoration of monarchy with the return of King George II.
The People's party remained the dominant power of the right until 1950, but, in 1951, the Greek Rally of retired General Alexandros Papagos swept the election. A number of prominent Populists, including future Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis, defected to the new party.
Relegated to the margins of Greek politics, the once-proud party fought an election for the last time in 1958. It was then dissolved by its last leader, Konstantinos Tsaldaris. The bulk of its supporters had already joined Karamanlis' National Radical Union, the successor of the Greek Rally.
References
^Roudometof, Victor (2002), Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian Question, Praeger Publishers, p. 98
^Clogg, Richard (1992), A Concise History of Greece (Second ed.), Cambridge University Press, p. 115
^Clogg, Richard (1992), A Concise History of Greece (Second ed.), Cambridge University Press, p. 135
