Xenophon Stratigos
Xenophon Stratigos was a senior Greek Army staff officer who played a major role in the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 and the Asia Minor Campaign in 1921–22, serving also as de facto Chief of the Hellenic Army General Staff in 1916–17 and in 1921. He retired from the army in September 1921 and served as Minister for Transport in 1922. Condemned to life imprisonment at the Trial of the Six, he was later pardoned and left for Switzerland, where he lived until his death.Life
Xenophon Stratigos was born in Corfu on 7 July 1869. He studied in the Hellenic Army Academy, graduating on 10 August 1890 as a 2nd Lieutenant of Engineers. He fought in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, after which he was sent for studies to the Prussian Military Academy in Berlin. During the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, he served as a staff officer in the operations department of the Greek General Headquarters, with the rank of Captain.
In 1915 he was appointed head of the Intelligence Directorate of the Army Staff Service, and became Deputy Chief of Staff in 1916. From November 1916 until June 1917, he substituted as Chief of the Staff Service, as the latter post was vacant. A staunch royalist, he was dismissed from the Army in 1917 due to the National Schism, but returned following the electoral defeat of Eleftherios Venizelos in November 1920. Promoted to Major General, he was again appointed Deputy Chief of the General Staff. As Greece was embroiled in the Asia Minor Campaign against Mustafa Kemal's Turkish National Movement, he was named personal liaison between King Constantine I and the Headquarters of the Army of Asia Minor during the 1921 Greek offensive operations.
On 28 September 1921 he retired from the Army, and went on to serve as Transport Minister in the last cabinet of Dimitrios Gounaris, and again in the same post in the cabinet of Petros Protopapadakis . Following the Greek defeat in Asia Minor and the September 1922 Revolution, he was condemned to lifelong imprisonment by a revolutionary tribunal on 15 November for his role in the defeat. He remained in prison until pardoned in a general amnesty, and left for Switzerland. There he dedicated himself to writing, compiling a study of the Asia Minor Campaign in 1925, as well as a Greek translation of Balck's Entwicklung der Taktik im Weltkriege. He died at Davos on 11 March 1927.
