At 3 a.m. on October 28, 1940, the Italian Ambassador to Athens, Emanuele Grazzi, delivered an ultimatum from Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini to Ioannis Metaxas, a former military major and Prime Minister of Greece, at his residence in Kifissia. The ultimatum said that the Italian army had to be able to cross the Greek-Albanian border without any problems. This meant that Italy was going to take over certain important parts of Greece.
After reading the letter, Metaxas turned to the Italian Ambassador and famously said "Ochi!" which means "No!" in Greek.
That "No!" made Greece join the Allies in the second world war. For a while, Greece was Britain's only friend in the fight against Hitler.
Metaxas spoke for the Greek people at the time, who were refusing to pledge loyalty. The Greek press got this rejection with the term "Oxi," which means "No." The term "Oxi" originally appeared as a title in the main article of the journal "Greek Future" by N. P. Efstratios on October 30, 1940. People in various parts of Athens raced through the streets screaming "OXI"!
Greece not only turned down Mussolini's requests, but they also took the offensive and pushed the Italians back across much of Albania.
If Metaxas hadn't answered "No," it's possible that the Second World War would have gone on for a lot longer. One hypothesis is that if Greece had given up without a fight, Hitler might have invaded Russia in the spring instead of the winter, when his effort to do so failed.
During the Greco-Italian War, Winston Churchill observed, "We will not say that Greeks fight like heroes, but that heroes fight like Greeks."
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis remarked in 2019, "October 28 is not just another chance to honour our glorious past; it is also a chance to show how we understand the unity of Hellenism today."
