Evangelos Averoff

Evangelos Averoff-Tositsas (April 17,1910 - January 2,1990) was a distinguished liberal Greek politician and a prominent author.

During the tripartite Axis occupation of Greece, Averoff was taken hostage and imprisoned in Italy. He escaped after a year of imprisonment and created the "Freedom or Death" resistance group, which had the purpose of liberating Greek and Allied war hostages.

During the military dictatorship of 1967-1974, Averoff participated in one of the foremost acts of resistance against the regime, the Velos mutiny, for which he was arrested as an "instigator".

After the restoration of democracy in 1974, during metapolitefsi he participated in the New Democracy centre-right party under Konstantinos Karamanlis, and served as minister in subsequent governments.

He was elected president of the party in 1981, but had to leave his post due to health problems in 1984.

Evangelos Averoff has been a prominent author of political and historical works, amongst which the "Customs Union in the Balkans" (1933), which the Carnegie institute awarded, "Fire and Axe, 1944-1949" (1974) dealing with the Greek civil war, "A History of missed opportunities: The Cypriot Problem 1956-1963" (1981), and others.