George was born at the royal villa at Tatoi, near Athens, the eldest son of Crown Prince Constantine of Greece and his wife, Sophia of Prussia.

George also made visits to Germany to see his mother's family and they stayed in Schlosshotel Kronberg with his grandmother, Victoria, but also took summer holidays in Corfu and Venice, travelling on their private yacht, Amphritrite IV.

[10] George has been described by historians John Van der Kiste and Vicente Mateos Sáinz de Medrano as the most introverted and distant of his siblings, having been aware of his role as heir from a young age.

[20] To avoid controversy, their exile was branded as a three-year "education leave", which was approved and so George continued his military training, but with the prestigious First Foot Guards Regiment of the Prussian army.

[24] In 1911, Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos allowed members of the royal family to be given back their former ranks in the military, but George returned to Germany to continue training with the Prussian army.

George accompanied his father on a state visit to Berlin and received the Order of the Red Eagle from his uncle, Wilhelm II, the German Kaiser.

Greece was pushed back from the Anatolian lands granted to them in the Treaty of Sèvres to Ankara and suffered heavy defeats at the Battle of Sakarya in August and September 1921.

[65][66] In the next few months, Greek forces continued to be defeated and slowly retreated towards Smyrna,[67][68] while George was stationed in Ionia and Elisabeth joined the Red Cross to help Christian refugees who had escaped villages that had fallen to the Turkish army.

[76] When the Turks again defeated Greece at the Battle of Dumlupınar, a sector of the military, led by colonels Nikolaos Plastiras and Stylianos Gonatas, demanded the abdication of Constantine and the dissolution of the parliament.

In Greece, there had been greater political instability since the 1922 Greek coup d'état, which influenced Constantine's abdication, and a large influx of refugees from Asia Minor as a result of the war.

The Greek government was criticised by George V of the United Kingdom, Alfonso XIII of Spain and Pope Pius XI,[85] before Andrew's sentence was reduced to capital banishment in order to avoid sanctions.

On 5 December [Old Style: 22 November], a British ship was sent to transport Andrew and his family, including the young Prince Philip, out of Greece and to Britain, to the dismay of George.

[72][94] Exiled in Romania from December 1923, George and his wife settled in Bucharest, where Elisabeth's parents, King Ferdinand and Queen Marie, put at their disposal a wing of the Cotroceni Palace for some time.

[102][103] Accompanied by his squire, Major Dimitrios Levidis, and one of his servants, Mitso Panteleos, George rented a small suite with two rooms at Brown's Hotel in Mayfair.

Under Freeman Freeman-Thomas, the Viceroy and Governor-General of India, George was treated as the sovereign of Greece and met numerous officials stationed there, while being enthusiastically interested in the Indian culture.

[116] Aware of Kondylis' ultimate aim of restoring the monarchy, George, who had been living at Brown's Hotel, demanded a plebiscite be held in order to determine whether he would be reinstalled.

When the election results were announced, a delegation was sent to the Greek embassy in London to officially ask George and his younger brother, Paul, to return to Athens, which they accepted on 5 November 1935.

After a brief stay in Rome with Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, the Greek royals boarded the cruiser Elli in Brindisi and returned to Phalerum in Athens on 25 November.

Though not branded as a fascist regime, Metaxas's dictatorship was arguably quasi-fascist and heavily imitated that of Benito Mussolini in Italy, whom Adolf Hitler had also been inspired by in Germany.

[145] After facing pressure to marry, Paul wedded Frederica of Hanover, the daughter of his cousin, Victoria Louise, and Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick, on 9 January 1938.

[146] On 1 July 1939, George's sister, Irene, married Prince Aimone, Duke of Aosta, a cousin of Victor Emmanuel III and the future King of Croatia.

[152] George consequentially took charge of Greek armed forces and established contact with the Allies, while conducting daily war council meetings at the Hotel Grande Bretagne.

[154][155] The Invasion of the Balkans by the Axis Powers ensued and the Luftwaffe conducted Operation Punishment on 6 April, in which Belgrade was bombed when the government denounced the Tripartite Pact.

Instead, veteran Venizelist general Alexandros Mazarakis-Ainian was given the mandate to form a government, but returned it on 20 April, partly due to his refusal to collaborate with Metaxas's hated Security Minister Konstantinos Maniadakis.

[177] The British ambassador to the government-in-exile, Sir Reginald Leeper, noted that the king's coldness did not win him many friends, writing: "Amongst these vivacious, talkative and intensely political southerners he is very much the reserved northerner who damps the ardour of those who might otherwise acclaim him".

[178][179] Although he effectively renounced the Metaxas regime in a radio broadcast, a large section of the people and many politicians rejected his return on account of his support of the dictatorship.

Either deliberately or accidentally, the version released for publication omitted the words "of the date", creating the impression that George had agreed to a further plebiscite on the monarchy, even though a retraction was issued.

As late as Christmas Eve 1944, during the height of the Dekemvriana, George had rejected the compromise solution of a regency, demanding that he return to Greece at once to reclaim his throne.

[191] The official Allied observation report recorded, "There is no doubt in our minds that the party representing the government view exercised undue influence in securing votes in support of the return of the King.

[201] On the occasion of the restoration of George II as monarch in 1935, the rebetiko singer Markos Vamvakaris wrote a song titled "We welcome you, King" (Greek: Καλώς μας ήρθες Bασιλιά, romanized: Kalós mas írthes Vasiliá).