“From the moment the polling stations opened – at 6:45 a.m. most of them, but some with a delay of about an hour due to technical difficulties – the impression, first of all, from the complete failure of the refrain slogan, from the number of citizens who came to the polling stations, from absolute, truly absolute order and, thirdly, the seriousness with which the voters carried out their electoral duty,” writes Kathimerini on its front page on April 1, 1946.

These were the elections scheduled for January 19, 1946, and which were to be the first electoral contest since January 1936. They occurred at a time of great political instability, when mutual suspicion was growing and the grave danger of open civil conflict loomed. . For its part, the KKE decided to call for the abstention of the elections, arguing that holding them before the statehood referendum was a clear violation of the Varkiza agreement signed on February 12, 1945. In addition, citing a number of events at the expense of people close to the EAM and the KKE who were characterized as “white terrorism”, he argued that there were no guarantees of inviolable elections.

However, despite the order shown by the Athenian voters, the event that took place on the night before the elections was to mark the history of post-war Greece: “By a telegram from the commander of the gendarmerie Katerini to the Ministry of Public Order at 11.30 on the night of March 30, a gang of more than 100 communists armed with automatic weapons and mortars, attacked conscripts of the gendarmerie and the national guard in the gendarme station of Litohori Katerini, who were tasked with maintaining order during the elections. A battle ensued that lasted more than an hour, as the gendarmerie building caught fire from mortar shells. During the conflict, 5 gendarmes, a sergeant and a soldier were killed.

The conflict at Litochoro was seen as the start of a civil war. As a result, the pro-royal factions won the election (the United Nationalist Party received a percentage of 55.12%), followed by the return of George II.