Georgios Papadopoulos was a Greek military officer and dictator who led a coup d'etat in Greece in 1967 and became the country's Prime Minister from 1967 to 1973. He also was the President of Greece under the junta in 1973, following a referendum. However, after the effective suppression of the Athens Polytechnic uprising, he was, in turn, overthrown by hardliner Dimitrios Ioannidis, in a string of events that would culminate to the fall of the regime in 1974. His and the dictatorship's legacy, as well as its methods he constructed and effects on Greek economy and society as a whole, are still fiercely debated.

The Athens Polytechnic uprising occurred in November 1973 as a massive student demonstration of popular rejection of the Greek military junta of 1967–1974. It began on 14 November 1973, escalated to an open anti-junta revolt, and ended in bloodshed in the early morning of 17 November after a series of events starting with a tank crashing through the gates of the Athens Polytechnic.