mainly to France and the US. The war in the Portuguese overseas territories of Africa was increasingly unpopular in Portugal itself as the people got weary of war and balked at its ever-rising expense. Many ethnic Portuguese of the African overseas territories were also increasingly willing to accept independence if their economic status could be preserved. In addition, younger Portuguese military academy graduates resented a program introduced by Marcello Caetano whereby militia officers who completed a brief training program and had served in the overseas territories' defensive campaigns, could be commissioned at the same rank as military academy graduates. Caetano's government had begun the program (which included several other reforms) in order to increase the number of officials employed against the African insurgencies, and at the same time cut down military costs to alleviate an already overburdened government budget. Thus, the group of revolutionary military insurgents started as a military professional class protest of Portuguese Armed Forces captains against a decree law: the Dec. Lei nº 353/73 of 1973, organizing themselves in a loosely allied group known as the Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA). Arquivo Electrónico: Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, Centro de Documentação 25 de Abril, University of Coimbra Carnation Revolution (1974) Faced with government inflexibility over proposed reforms, some Portuguese junior military officers, many from underprivileged backgrounds and increasingly attracted to the Marxist philosophy of their African insurgent opponents, began to move the MFA to the political left. On April 25, 1974, Portuguese military officers of the MFA staged a bloodless military coup that toppled António de Oliveira Salazar's successor Marcelo Caetano, and successfully overthrew the Estado Novo regime. The revolt later became known as the Carnation Revolution. General Spínola was invited to assume the office of President, but resigned a few months later after it became clear that his desire to set up a system of federalized home rule for the African territories was not shared by the rest of the MFA, who wanted an immediate end to the war (achievable only by granting independence to the provinces of Portuguese Africa). The 25 April coup led to a series of temporary governments, marked by a nationalization of many important areas of the economy. Aftermath After the coup on April 25, 1974, while the power struggle for control of Portugal's government was occurring in Lisbon, many Portuguese Army units serving in Africa simply ceased field operations, in some cases