Aristotle Onassis was born in 1906 in the Greek city of Smyrna (later occupied by Turkey). The little data available on his childhood suggests that those years were quite difficult: he lost his mother while still a baby and his father remarried a year and a half later. Her relationship with her stepmother was extremely bad: they were in a state of continuous warfare, she considered her a usurper and refused to obey her. Also, his relationship with his father was not much better. A wealthy wholesaler from Smyrna, he was a strict father whom his son feared.
As a result of these problems, Onassis did poorly in school. He did not like to study and constantly skipped classes. He was also extremely disruptive and annoyed his classmates. As a result, he was expelled from all the schools he attended. Under these circumstances, it was no wonder Onassis never finished his studies. When he took the final exams required for a high school diploma in 1922, he failed, and never tried again.
The same year, the situation became even more difficult for him: the Turks invaded the city of Smyrna from Onassis after defeating the Greek army. The young Onassis, then 16, was caught up, as he would often later recall, in the disaster that followed. The Turkish army swept the city from one side to the other for many days, killing, looting and burning. Smyrna was completely destroyed.
Onassis’s father gathered his family inside their home when the Turks entered the village and closed the doors and windows. Terrified, they saw the destruction through the cracks in the walls. On the fifth day, the Turks entered the house and arrested the father, leaving young Onassis as the only male there. The next day, Onassis took on the responsibility of rescuing his family. He went out into the chaotic streets of Izmir and there, by chance, he met the American vice consul. With his intervention, the Onassis family were immediately transferred in a small boat to the nearby Greek island of Lesbos. Three weeks later, the Onassis family arrived at the Greek port of Piraeus – as war refugees – in a miserable state.
Desperate, Onassis had the idea to emigrate to the United States. But he was unable to obtain a visa, so as a second option he decided on Argentina. Sadly, her father was vehemently opposed, so much so that he refused to even give her the money for tickets. Onassis was forced to borrow from some of his friends. He obtained a negligible amount and with it he embarked on a risky adventure. In August 1923 he left the Greek port of Piraeus, arriving a month later in Buenos Aires. He was only 17 years old, he was grabbing a broken suitcase and he didn’t have a penny.
His first priority was, of course, finding work. He soon realized that it would not be easy. To stay alive, he had to wash dishes in restaurants and haul bricks to construction sites. Finally, in March 1924, he found work at the Buenos Aires Telephone Company as an electrician. This was not the Argentina Onassis had dreamed of.
But in 1925, Onassis’s fate changed. As soon as he found a decent job, his next step was to reach an agreement with his father so that he could start selling Greek tobacco in Argentina. In early 1925 he began to correspond with his father and, in no time, convinced him to send him samples of high-quality Greek tobacco. With samples in hand, Onassis began visiting cigarette makers in Argentina to try and sell them tobacco. He quickly received his first order, for $ 10,000. Since the quality of the tobacco was excellent, a second order was soon placed, for $ 50,000. Orders came faster and faster. By May 1925 he had managed to put $ 25,000 in the bank, which was not bad for someone who had recently been penniless. And between 1930 and 1931 he expanded the business to Cuba and Brazil.
In the fall of 1932, Onassis collected all his savings – about $ 600,000 – and headed to London, the capital of the maritime world, to buy ships. Due to the economic crisis of 1929-1932, ship prices had plummeted. A ten-year freighter, which had cost $ 1 million to build in 1920, could now be had for $ 20,000. Onassis was quick to find what he was looking for – a full fleet of ten of these ships were for sale in Saint Lawrence, Canada. In the winter of the same year, it was found in San Lorenzo. After brief negotiations, he bought six of those ships in 1933, for $ 20,000 each.
Onassis’s career as a point guard had begun.