Greece
Vangelis Tzoukas and Ben H. Shepherd
Greece, at the crossing between Asia and Europe, has always been vulnerable to foreign invasion. The 1821 Revolution against the Ottoman Empire led to the creation of a tiny Greek state which then expanded its territory over the course of the nineteenth century and even more so following the Balkan Wars of 1912–13. When the First World War broke out, King Constantine favoured a policy of neutrality while the prime minister, Venizelos, wanted the country to join the Entente. From 1916 the country split amid violent clashes between the Venizelists and Monarchists. Venizelos formed a government in Thessaloniki and the Allies, predominantly Britain and France, intervened in his favour decisively.
After the First World War, Greek irredentism reached its height with the Greek army’s landing in Smyrna in May 1919 and the military conquest of Asia Minor, a region containing a strong Greek element within its population. But Greece’s internal politics were still tense. In August 1922 the Asia Minor front collapsed and millions of refugees swarmed into Greece. The 1923 Lausanne Treaty and a population exchange between Greece and Turkey delineated Greece’s present boundaries (excepting the Dodecanese, which was incorporated in 1948).
The foundation of the so-called Second Greek Republic of 1924–35, following the monarchy’s temporary abolition, was characterized by political instability, military movements and short-lived dictatorships. At this time the Greek military was actively intervening in politics, and the officer corps split along political lines between royalists and venizelists. The schism between the two parties still dominated a country facing the challenge of developing a modern state.1 Though industrialization and modernization were promoted, small-scale peasant agriculture still provided a very significant proportion of employment.2 From 1929 onward the economic crisis blighted the Greek economy, and at the end of 1932 the country defaulted.
Amid all this, both venizelists and royalists sought to defend bourgeois democracy and its institutions against the tiny Communist Party (KKE) that had emerged after 1918. At the end of 1935, following a failed coup d’état of venizelist officers, a notoriously rigged referendum led to the monarchy being restored in the person of King George II. On 4 August 1936, the pro-British king allowed the prime minister (and former general) Ioannis Metaxas to establish a fascist-inspired right-wing dictatorship. It banned political parties, suppressed civil liberties and trade-union action, unleashed extreme violence upon the KKE and its members, and geared the state more generally towards anti-communism.3 The KKE’s political infrastucture was almost destroyed, and prominent liberal politicians went into exile on various islands. All this set the scene for the foreign invasion and occupation which, during the early to mid-1940s, would challenge Greece’s political elites and transform its society in ways no one could have foreseen.
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Italy’s entry into the Second World War in June 1940, and her geographical ambitions in the Mediterranean, made it increasingly likely that Greece would be pulled into the conflict. Metaxas turned down an Italian ultimatum, and on 28 October 1940 Mussolini invaded Greece itself.4 In a relatively short period, however, the Greek army repelled the Italian offensive into the mountains of Epirus and western Greek Macedonia and pushed the Italians back into Albania. Hitler was infuriated at the comprehensiveness of the Italians’ failure.
The British had begun to fortify the strategically important island of Crete in November 1940. Otherwise, however, British assistance to the Greeks was long in coming. Negotiations between the two sides were still ongoing following Metaxas’ death on 29 January 1941. King George appointed Alexandros Koryzis, governor of the Central Bank, as prime minister, and in early March the British finally decided to dispatch an expeditionary force and a small number of aircraft to Greece and continue the fortification of Crete. All sides knew, however, that if the Germans attacked then Greece’s position would become untenable.
After the failure of the Italian ‘spring offensive’, directed personally by Mussolini, German forces launched Operation Marita against Yugoslavia and Greece on 6 April. Three days later the Germans entered Thessaloniki and cut the Greek forces in two. Local army commanders on the Albanian front took the initiative and, in order to prevent their army’s complete destruction, capitulated to the Germans. Lieutenant General George Tsolakoglou signed an armistice with the Germans and—more reluctantly and to the Greeks’ immense chagrin—with the Italians, whose forces the Greeks had so comprehensively repelled only months before. King George and his government fled to Crete, while the British Expeditionary Force similarly sought to escape from the mainland. The Germans’ entry into Athens on 27 April heralded the occupation of mainland Greece.
That left Crete.5 Capturing the island would complete the German conquest of south-eastern Europe and eliminate any risk to the valuable Romanian oilfields. Operation Mercury, launched on 20 May, pitted German paratroopers and the 5th Mountain Division against the remnants of the British Expeditionary Force that had made their way to Crete and the tiny Greek force on the island. Allied troops fought bravely, but inefficient strategy and errors made by the Allied commander, Major General Freyberg, led to German victory at the end of May. Yet the battle also saw thousands of armed citizens, organized according to local and family ties, trying to assist the regular troops defending the island. The German reaction was immediate. By the end of August 1941, several hundred civilians had been executed, mostly in the area of Khania in western Crete. Crete, then, was the first setting for that new kind of warfare that would make itself felt to such dramatic effect during the occupation of Greece over the next three-and-a-half years.
Occupied Greece, 1941–4.
By June 1941 Greece had been divided among the Germans, the Italians and their Bulgarian allies. Hitler, eyes set firmly on the impending invasion of the Soviet Union and conscious of the already overstretched state of German occupation forces across Europe, sought to parcel off as much of Greece as possible to his Axis allies. The Italians occupied most of mainland Greece, including the areas of the Peloponnese, Epirus, Thessaly, Greek Macedonia and the islands of the Aegean and Ionian Seas; the latter were to be incorporated directly into the Italian state. At the Italian military administration’s disposal were three armies, comprising between eleven and twelve divisions. Meanwhile, Bulgarian forces held eastern Greek Macedonia and Thrace, regions considered part of a ‘Great Bulgaria’. The Germans themselves held Athens, Thessaloniki, part of central Greek Macedonia, a buffer zone along the Turkish frontier, and a number of islands including much of the strategically important island of Crete. The various German-occupied areas were divided into two regional commands, Salonika-Aegean and Southern Greece, together with a fortress command on Crete, all of which were subordinate to Wehrmacht Command South-East. The Germans’ military forces consisted primarily of the 6th Mountain Division and auxiliary and police units. Political administration was the preserve of the Reich Plenipotentiary for Greece, Dr. Gunther Altenbourg, who was based in Athens.6 Lieutenant General Tsolakoglou, meanwhile, was appointed by the Axis as head of a collaborationist government in Athens with an appearance of sovereign power.
Axis economic exploitation of Greek territory began almost immediately after the Greek collapse. Conditions were consequently very harsh for the civil population, and by winter 1941–2 thousands of people were suffering from malnutrition and famine.7 These conditions were in part a legacy of Greece’s pre-war dependence on food imports, but the effects of wartime made them incomparably worse. Not only Axis demands but also the British blockade contributed to a humanitarian crisis, one that could only be temporarily alleviated by intervention from the Red Cross. Problems in transportation between rural and urban areas, meanwhile, helped fuel the emergence of a flourishing black market. How many people perished as a result of famine conditions is in dispute.8 What is clear, however, is that the suffering that hunger inflicted upon the general population throughout the occupation was superseded only by the suffering of the Greek Jews. This particular group was subjected to vicious and increasingly murderous persecution in those regions that the Germans occupied.9
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Already, however, groups were forming that aimed to resist the occupying forces. Some were connected with British espionage networks and SOE agents. Others, particularly on the political left, sought the political and military mobilization of the entire population against the Axis and the puppet Greek government.10 The main resistance organizations were the right-wing EDES (National Democratic Greek League) and the left-wing EAM (National Liberation Front) with its military branch ELAS (Greek People’s Liberation Army). Both organizations, from 1942 onwards, began forming political committees and military units and eventually succeeded in controlling a large part of Greece. Their strongest centre, however, was in the mountainous region of Pindus, which stretches from near the Greek-Albanian borders in Northern Epirus, through Epirus and Macedonia in northern Greece and down to the north of the Peloponnese. EDES was a pro-British, conservative and nationalist organization, officially founded on 9 September 1941, and had its main base in Epirus in western Greece. EAM was officially founded eighteen days later as a political coalition of KKE and small left-wing parties. Its bases of support were spread all over Greece.
EDES started as an anti-monarchist organization favouring social reform measures, and was commanded by former colonel Napoleon Zervas. He was born in Arta, a town in Epirus, and he was considered a venizelist officer. He had participated in all the Greek army’s major campaigns between 1910 and 1920, and had achieved fame by organizing a failed coup d’état in 1926 against the short-lived dictatorship of Theodoros Pangalos. Yet Zervas’ opportunism, fondness for gambling and other bad habits had also earned him a reputation for unreliability. Nevertheless, the leader of EDES possessed a strong network of relatives and friends in Epirus, something that would prove crucial to his efforts at creating a guerrilla force there.
EAM, meanwhile, was commanded by members of KKE and by other leftwing sympathizers.11 By winter 1941–2 EAM had established local committees in most parts of the country, organized the workers of the leftist organization EEAM (Worker’s National Liberation Front), and was supporting Ethniki Allilleggii (National Solidarity)—a group seeking to help the most vulnerable in society. In May 1942 the communist Aris Veloukhiotis, whose real name was Athanasios Klaras, led a tiny group of guerrillas (andartes) in the mountains of Roumeli in central Greece. Before the war Veloukhiotis had been a KKE member, jailed by the Metaxas regime but released after signing a ‘declaration of repentance’. He had served in the Greek army against the Italians, and after the front’s collapse had rejoined KKE. Though he was considered unreliable by the party’s leadership, his persistence and organizational skills led EAM to assign to him the task of developing a guerrilla force. These guerrillas depicted themselves as the vanguard of a new national revolution in the spirit of 1821. Thus was the nucleus of ELAS created in a region Veloukhiotis knew well.
Both organizations drew their forces mainly from the peasant population. The Pindus mountain region offered great advantages for guerrillas. State control there was a difficult task, with many communities responding negatively to modern institutions that tried to impose central authority. Despite significant political and economical developments in the interwar period, Pindus mostly remained isolated from the modernization processes that characterized urban Greece, its population’s main economic activities being semi-nomadic stockbreeding and agriculture. During the Metaxas dictatorship the state’s attempt to suppress banditry had been considered successful to a great extent, but the structure of society remained essentially unaltered. In particular, family and local ties remained dominant in the lives of the villagers, thus dictating the limits within which behaviours were judged permissible or not.12
The region’s peculiarities, and its propensity for guerrilla warfare, were reinforced by the slavophone Macedonians, a group that may have numbered anything between 100,000 and 200,000 persons. They were particularly suspicious of central government, still more so after the Venizelos government had transferred 600,000 Greeks from Asia Minor to Macedonia and Thrace following the Greco-Turkish War. The influx of so many new smallholders which this population transfer had created, and the claim upon territory that they made, had exacerbated tensions between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ populations of these regions, and between the Macedonian Slavs and central government. By contrast, the communists, with their long-standing championing of ethnic minorities, held considerable attraction for the Macedonian Slavs. EAM built on this advantage by allowing the Macedonian Slavs to retain their own organization, the Slav-Macedonian Popular Liberation Front (SNOF), their own schools and armed detachments, and their communication links with fellow Slavs beyond Greece’s borders. Faced with such enticements, the Macedonian Slavs aligned themselves predominantly with EAM in preference to the Bulgarian occupiers, who were also seeking to woo them. And they were certainly going to prefer EAM to non-EAM resistance organizations which advocated national expansion beyond Greece’s borders at the expense of Greece’s Slavic neighbours.13 The formation of the People’s Republic of Macedonia under Tito’s regime in Yugoslavia would eventually prove a crucial factor in shaping the political and military involvement of the slavophone Macedonians in the Greek Civil War of 1946–9.14
The withdrawal of the state following the collapse of the front and the capitulation of April 1941 drove the need to organize everyday life from the bottom up. Local communities had to find their own solutions to the multiple problems posed by the new situation. The protection of individual property from the re-emerging danger of bandits, the safeguarding of civil rights and indeed the population’s very survival were all at stake. An active mechanism ‘from below’ began to manage everyday life. One effect was the formation of militias in the villages in order to resist outlaws and bandits. Networks emerged covering a broad geographical scope, and a barter economy began gradually replacing cash transactions that had in fact become inactive.15 But the different resistance organizations sought to renovate and expand quasi-state mechanisms. EAM was particularly active in this respect, seeking to establish its hegemony in the political arena and challenge the political elites of pre-war Greek society.16
In summer 1942, meanwhile, Napoleon Zervas made an appearance in the mountains of Valtos in western Greece. He was facing serious difficulties in his attempt to establish a guerrilla army, the main one being limited British support and the lack of a political infrastructure similar to that of EAM. In October, the first conflicts broke out between EDES guerrillas and Italian forces in the Radhovizi mountains. The Italian attack was conducted by the 37th Modena Division; Zervas’ guerillas were mainly villagers from the region, mobilized on the basis of locality and kinship. Most of them were incorporated into EDES after Operation Harling, which took place in November of the same year and led to the destruction of the Gorgopotamos bridge.
The British wanted to destroy a railway bridge in central Greece, and a group of twelve saboteurs was formed in pursuit of this objective. Operation Harling would be one of the most impressive actions of sabotage in occupied Europe. Eddie Myers led the mission, with Christopher Woodhouse as his deputy.17 Members of the group arrived by parachute in the mountains of central Greece in autumn 1942 with a mandate to come into contact with the Greek guerrillas. However, the British authorities in Cairo had no clear information as to the political and military goals of the resistance. Members of the mission finally managed to restore contact, following some fleeting British visits in late summer 1941, with Aris Veloukhiotis and Napoleon Zervas. Veloukhiotis had doubts about the mission, fuelled by negative instructions from EAM’s political committee in Athens, but nevertheless agreed to help. Zervas, by contrast, was wholehearted about participating in a mission that would help restore contact with the British. Thus the two protagonists temporarily set aside their differences and cooperated, and the bridge was blown on 25 November 1942. This highly successful mission was the only major common enterprise between ELAS and EDES during the whole period of 1941–4.
During winter 1942–3 the armed groups active in the Pindus region began to proliferate and live up to their self-depiction as the warriors of ‘the New 1821’.18 By summer 1943 most of Greece’s mountainous regions was held by the andartes. The main focus of guerrilla activity remained the mountains of Pindus, a fact that the occupying forces recognized. In western Macedonia, Evritania (and the wider area of central Greece) and Thessaly and Epirus, the two movements began properly implementing state-like structures. ELAS had its base in Evritania in central Greece, and EDES its base in Tzoumerka in Epirus. At this point a third resistance organization, the politically liberal EKKA (National and Social Liberation), formed a military unit, 5/42 Evzonoi Regiment, with British help. 5/42 Regiment had its main base in Roumeli and was headed by the venizelist colonel Dimitrios Psarros. The number of guerrillas at this time was estimated at approximately 20,000 for ELAS, between 4 and 5,000 for EDES and between 500 and 1,000 for EKKA.19
The crucial factors that fuelled the development of guerrilla armies in the Pindus region were the aforementioned well-established feeling of independence from the state and its mechanisms, a tradition of rebellion connected to irredentist movements of the past, a long-standing tradition of independent groups that fought for ‘national liberation’ purposes, and the presence of some particularly important individuals. From this viewpoint one can discern the reemergence of warlords (oplarhighoi) or local leaders, some of whom had also been involved in the 1912–13 Balkan Wars. Oplarhighoi were people with great influence in their villages and even in neighbouring communities, who established armed groups by making use of kinship ties and local networks. The word oplarhighoi on the one hand evokes the nineteenth-century rebellions against the Ottomans, and on the other hand the Balkan Wars when semi-irregular forces had sided with the regular Greek army. The heads of those semi-irregular forces were called chieftains or captains (kapetanioi). In Epirus most of these warlords decided to support Zervas and EDES, mainly because EDES offered them the chance to act in a semi-autonomous way. Some of the most famous warlords were Spyros Karambinas, Alekos Papadopoulos, Stylianos Khoutas, Kostas Voidaros and the leaders of the Koliodimitraioi family.20
By contrast, the kapetanioi that sided with ELAS had to co-operate with military officers and political commissars in a system designed to promote not just combat effectiveness but also the movement’s political goals. By June 1943 an ELAS GHQ had been established in the mountains. Its members at that time were Aris Veloukhiotis, the former venizelist Colonel Stephanos Sarafis and a prominent communist named Andreas Tzimas.
By 1943 EAM was extending its political power across Greece and thus seriously challenging the occupation forces. It was also behaving antagonistically towards the small nationalist resistance organizations that had emerged by that time. The political antagonism between EAM and its rivals was clear to every observer. EAM had managed, nevertheless, to lead great demonstrations in Athens, organize strikes and mobilize thousands of non-communists. Women and youth were particularly attracted to it.21 A youth movement (EPON-Eniaia Panelladiki Organosi Neon) was created by EAM, attracting thousands of young men and women.22 The wholehearted acceptance of women into left-wing organizations, with its explicit challenge to pre-war hierarchies of age and gender, provoked a fierce reaction from the conservative element of Greek society. EAM also enjoyed extensive approval among intellectuals and writers.
But relations between the British and EAM were a major problem. The British supported EAM strictly for military reasons, but they did not trust it. It was considered a serious threat to Greece’s political future. Gradually, EAM leaders started demanding that King George not be allowed to return to Greece without a referendum. The Greek government-in-exile was powerless to mobilize action on the mainland, and the British were fully aware that no serious royalist resistance organization had been formed there. But Churchill, not wanting to abandon King George II, insisted on his return to Greece after the war. The British now decided to support Zervas and the smaller nationalist groups in order to strengthen the power of the anti-communist bloc.23 Zervas in fact was forced to support the return of the king in order to maintain his organization. EAM leaders, increasingly uncertain about British intentions, briefly pondered an agreement with Tito and the Albanian guerrillas. Finally, they decided to accept British supervision of resistance.
In July 1943, supervised by British HQ Middle East, a joint general headquarters of the Greek guerrillas began to operate in Pertouli, a village in central Greece. The Headquarters (KGSA) was to become the coordinating core of guerrilla actions. Operation Animals was planned in order to convince the Germans that an Allied invasion on the Greek coast was imminent. Where possible, British liaison officers started co-operating with guerrillas on the ground.24 In Crete, where EAM was less powerful, various semi-independent warlords, such as Manolis Bandouvas and Petrakogiorgis, had formed armed groups that fought the Germans, and British espionage networks were highly active.25 Elsewhere, although EDES and EKKA-5/42 were co-operating with ELAS in KGSA, tensions were always present.
For the occupiers, however, the guerrillas constituted a mounting threat. Yet the Italians, who controlled most of the country until summer 1943, were more reluctant to fight them than were the Germans or Bulgarians. This unwillingness was partly because the Italians’ defeat at the hands of the Greek army was deeply ingrained within them. Though they were no less arrogant towards the Greek people compared with the Germans and Bulgarians, they were considered more lenient. Though it was far from the case that they eschewed brutality altogether, something to which their widespread destruction of villages testifies,26 they were generally more hesitant about executing civilians.27
Following the collapse of Mussolini’s regime, the Italian forces in Greece found themselves facing huge dilemmas in an immensely difficult situation. Some units tried unsuccessfully to negotiate with the Germans, while others tried to approach the guerrillas. In one infamous instance the soldiers of the Acqui Division, stationed on the island of Cephalonia, were massacred by their former allies.28 A few months later, many of these formerly gloriosi (glorious soldiers) of the fascist regime were wandering around Pindus with ‘holes in their boots’, in the words of a survivor.29
The German army’s response to Greek guerrillas was undeniably harsher, infused by the spirit of modern total warfare and the German military’s particularly marked contempt for guerrilla movements. After the Italian collapse, more than ten German army divisions and various subsidiary forces were dispatched to the Balkan peninsula with the aim not just of suppressing guerrilla movements but also of securing the region against potential Allied invasion. General Wilhelm Speidel, subordinate to Colonel General Alexander Löhr’s Army Group E, took charge of all occupied Greece save the newly extended Bulgarian zone. The powers of the SS and Police were extended also, with the appointment of a Higher SS and Police Leader in September 1943.30 The new German command structure faced a burgeoning resistance movement and a population that, groaning under ongoing Axis exploitation, shortages of food and materials and increasingly intolerable levels of inflation, continued to resent the Axis occupation bitterly.31
In order to confront the guerrillas effectively, the Germans deemed it necessary to implement the toughest measures against civilian populations suspected of supporting them. Prior to the appearance of Greek guerrillas in serious numbers, the Germans, indeed even Hitler himself, retained a strong degree of respect for a people that had spawned ancient Greek civilization and shown resilience and bravery in modern times. But the emergence of resistance led the Germans to think differently about Greeks. The new attitude is exemplified in a typical order by Löhr to local German commanders on 10 August 1943.32 That said, a framework for markedly brutal anti-guerrilla conduct in the Balkans had already been set by the Wehrmacht in autumn 1941. In September 1941 the Armed Forces High Command had issued a decree that stipulated the execution of 100 hostages for every German soldier killed by guerrillas, and the following month the Wehrmacht had unleashed an especially ferocious reprisal campaign against the Serb national uprising.33
In order to control the Greek guerrillas, the German Armed Forces High Command ordered the 1st Mountain Division Edelweiss to Ioannina, capital of Epirus. The division, commanded by Lieutenant General Walter von Stettner, formed part of the newly created XXII Army Corps under General Hubert Lanz. The total number of German soldiers in the region exceeded 20,000 men.34
The Germans faced a situation in which death could come from lone snipers, guerrillas rarely wore insignia and avoided open battle involving hit and run tactics. Indeed, any civilian could be considered a suspect. In the words of General Lanz,
During the entire period of the Occupation hardly a night and, from the summer of 1944, not a single day passed without a surprise attack, a mine explosion, or another act of sabotage occurring on one of the supply roads. Valuable material was consequently lost every time, frequently heavy casualties occurred, and only in a few cases did one succeed in locating and inflicting damage upon an enemy adept in clever operations.35
An example was the death of Colonel Josef Salminger on 30 September 1943, an event that prompted Lanz to order immensely harsh reprisals. The trap on the Ioannina–Arta road that led to Salminger’s death had been constructed by two members of the Xirovouni Regiment of EDES, well known for their pre-war ‘love of illegal practices’.36 More generally, the Germans’ brutal retaliatory measures included the burning of villages and the mass execution of civilians. In one particularly infamous episode, the peaceful village of Kommeno, south of Arta, suffered the execution of 317 of its inhabitants including women and children.37 The massacre took place on 16 August 1943, carried out by members of the 98th Regiment of the 1st Mountain Division. The regiment, commanded by the same Colonel Salminger, whose days were numbered, was supposedly ‘eliminating the guerrillas’ who had previously made an appearance in the village. In fact, the village was not a guerrilla base, but rather had been forced to supply the andartes of both ELAS and EDES.38
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The Germans’ specific military aim in autumn 1943 was two-fold. They first sought to regain control of the main road between Epirus and Thessaly (Ioannina–Metsovo–Kalambaka), which ELAS had captured following Italy’s capitulation. Secondly, they sought to put the resistance under heavy economic pressure by destroying its main bases of supply. The guerrillas were able to reorganize their forces with relative ease, but hundreds of villages, located mostly in the area of Pindus, were burned, executions were common practice and the economic damage was incalculable. Between July and October 1943 in Epirus alone, 210 villages were destroyed, 5,200 houses burned to the ground and 1,746 civilians executed. In Kalavryta in the Peloponnese, the 117th Infantry Division, commanded by General Karl le Suire, executed hundreds of civilians in reprisal for the killing of 78 of its soldiers by ELAS guerrillas.39 Between March 1943 and October 1944, 21,255 Greeks had been killed by the occupying powers and a further 20,000 imprisoned.40
The German campaign also unleashed terrible Greek-on-Greek violence between ELAS and Greek anti-communist collaborators. Some anti-communists forces were provided by semi-independent warlords, mostly from Greek Macedonia. More extensively, the Germans utilized large numbers of Greeks in security battalions (Tagmata Asfaleias), founded by the government of Ioannis Rallis, who had replaced Konstantinos Logothetopoulos, Tsolakoglou’s succesor, as prime minister in April 1943. The Germans found not just their fighting power useful, but more importantly their local knowledge. Few security battalionists were consciously pro-German; indeed, many convinced themselves that the British approved of their anti-communist actions. Many security battalionists were drawn from ethnic minorities, such as Turkish-speaking Greek Christians from Asia Minor; they hated the Macedonian Slavs who formed such a large mainstay of ELAS manpower. Others were bandits and other criminals motivated primarily by the opportunities for plunder that such work offered. In Macedonia, security battalionists were also recruited as a result of independent warlords approaching the Germans in order to maintain some sort of autonomy in the face of EAM’s attempts to neutralize them. Religious, local and family ties played a major role in shaping the development of the security battalions. But what probably animated security battalionists above all, recruited from traditionally pro-royalist regions as so many of them were, was anti-communism. Whatever the motives of their personnel, the Germans frequently employed security battalions as an instrument of terror and to deter civilians from supporting ELAS.
Most of the civil strife that ravaged Greece in 1944 resulted not from the antagonism between ELAS and its rivals, but from that between ELAS and collaborationist forces.41 By 1944 over 18,000 men were active in such forces.42 The undoubted brutality of many collaborationist troops notwithstanding, however, there remains a difficult question for historians. It is not clear just how far the pressure that EAM put upon the population in many regions—their antagonism towards refugee Greek smallholders in western Macedonia, for instance, was severe—compelled many civilians to join the security battalions at a time when an eventual Allied victory looked increasingly likely.43
In October 1943, meanwhile, the political differences between EAM/ELAS and EDES flared into open civil war. The surrender of the Italian Pinerolo Division to ELAS boosted the latter militarily and encouraged its leaders to believe that their forces could now destroy EDES. Meanwhile, Zervas thought the time right to break with the ‘communists’ of EAM and destroy its infrastructure. He had, after all, sided with his former royalist ‘enemy’ in March 1943 when, under a British initiative, he had sent two letters to King George informing him that he would not oppose his return to Greece if the British were to sanction it.
The battles were fought from October 1943 until February 1944 in the Tzoumerka region, the ‘apple of discord’ for both ELAS and EDES, and were for many years seen as the ‘first round’ of KKE’s attempt to seize power. Tzoumerka had an enormous geo-strategic significance for both organizations. For ELAS, its capture would signify the ‘unification’ of the area with Thessaly and the establishment of an exceptionally robust bridgehead in the Epirus region. On the other hand, for EDES, which was deprived of ‘mainland affiliations’, abandoning Tzoumerka would automatically signify the organization’s confinement to western Epirus—as indeed subsequently came to pass. The military situation at the local level seemed negative for ELAS, however. Despite its efforts to assemble an effective force of regional guerrillas, EDES’ dominance was incontestable. This was clear in the number of villagers who joined its forces.44 The greatest significance of the clashes between ELAS and EDES was that they banished the very last chance of a solid, unified resistance, and catalysed mutual hatred among those sections of the civilian population that supported them. Moreover, the conflict brought dramatic consequences for the inhabitants of the regions held by the guerrillas.
The multiple pressures upon EDES led Zervas to strike a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ with the Germans, while at the same time he was being instructed by the British in Cairo to abstain from any kind of operation in order to avoid civilian casualties.45 This move, according to Christopher Woodhouse, was similar to the kapaki—the practice of the klefts and armatoloi of the Ottoman era who negotiated with the Turks every time they faced difficulties, but were ready to confront them again when circumstances changed.46 In the same way, the forces of EDES attacked the Germans once more in summer 1944, again provoking a fierce German reaction.
As a result of the conflict between EAM/ELAS and EDES, the region of Epirus became split into two distinct entities. On the one hand there was EAM’s Free Greece (Elefhteri Ellada), which, following the Pláka agreement of 29 February 1944, included Zervas’s former strongholds in the eastern part of the prefecture. On the other hand, there was EDES’ Free Mountainous Greece (Elefhteri Oreini Ellada), the western region beyond the Árakhthos River. In the EDES-controlled region, guerrillas were reorganized by means of ‘militarization’—namely, transforming the guerrilla groups into organized troops which gave the impression of a regular army. In the EAM-controlled region, local ELAS guerrillas were also reorganized, elections were held and a provisional government set up. While both sides spent most of the time until summer 1944 preparing for the aftermath of the impending German retreat, they also raced to take over the region’s main urban centres.
The political situation was complicated further after George Papandreou formed a government-in-exile of ‘national unity’ in May 1944. Negotiations in Lebanon had paved the way for a political compromise with EAM. EAM’s leaders were uncertain about the upcoming agreement, however. Among other things, they were now accused by their opponents of the destruction of 5/42 Regiment, of the execution of Colonel Psarros in Klima Doridas in April 1944, and of being implicated in a mutiny within the Greek army of the Middle East that had led to the resignation of the prime minister-in-exile, Emmanouil Tsouderos. Eventually, however, EAM decided to support a ‘national unity’ government under Papandreou. Papandreou, strongly supported by Churchill, was confident he would be able to tackle EAM with British help if necessary. The situation, then, was far from stabilized.
In summer 1944 major German offensives were launched all over Greece in order to suppress the guerrilla movement. Again, however, the operations failed in their ultimate goal despite the Germans’ ferocious retaliatory measures.47 By the end of October 1944 German forces had withdrawn from mainland Greece and the country was liberated. Athens was evacuated by the Germans on 12 October and thousands celebrated in the capital’s streets. But the celebration would be short-lived. For one thing, though EAM/ELAS was controlling most of the country, with the exception of parts of Epirus and eastern Macedonia, battles were still being fought in most areas of the countryside between ELAS and the security battalions. ELAS exacted fierce vengeance upon collaborators during the closing months of 1944. In Euboia and western Macedonia in particular, the looting and terror that the security battalions had inflicted upon EAM/ELAS-supporting villages was answered with a brutal ELAS campaign against the families of collaborationist troops and also of gendarmes.48
Meanwhile, the Germans increased the likelihood of eventual civil war between EAM/ELAS and EDES by abandoning ammunition to both mutually antagonistic organizations. In the weeks up to December 1944, relations between EAM/ELAS and the non-communist element of the provisional government and its supporters deteriorated further. This set the scene for the final prominent episode in Greece during the Second World War, the Battle of Athens. Given that the battle had its origins in the years of occupation and resistance, it deserves some discussion here.
Immediately following the liberation, the British were too busy harrying the fleeing Germans to assist Papandreou extensively, and this temporarily increased his reliance upon EAM/ELAS. Meanwhile, EAM’s high levels of support and the intimidatory tactics it readily utilized strengthened its authority in the areas it already controlled, and encouraged it to extend its control further. It now sought to punish not just collaborators, but also prominent supporters of the old Metaxas regime, and also imposed communist-style policies upon the areas it controlled. None of this reassured the rest of the provisional government that EAM intended to adhere to democratic principles in the future. A further flashpoint came with the return of the Greek Mountain Brigade from service in Italy, which EAM feared would form the nucleus of a new Greek army out with its control, and which indeed some liberals and impartial observers feared might be used to try to install another royalist dictatorship. Yet when Papandreou agreed to disband the brigade, General Ronald Scobie, the abrasive commander of Allied forces in Greece, vetoed his decision for fear of weakening the forces that might halt a future communist takeover. This, and the fact that the British were allowing some former collaborators in their custody considerable freedom of movement, in turn alarmed EAM/ELAS. Relations deteriorated further as the British registered movements of ELAS troops in the direction of Athens.
In late November, talks in Athens to demobilize the andartes broke down. In the first days of December, EAM ministers resigned from the government, demonstrations broke out around the capital upon which the police opened fire and EAM supporters retaliated by blockading and attacking the city’s police stations. It is unclear how far, if at all, each side was deliberately provoking a civil war type situation, but such was the position they were now in. EAM/ELAS does not appear to have wanted to launch a full-scale attack against the British; after all, its main forces were locked in combat in Epirus with EDES. But the British, despite being initially caught off balance by ELAS snipers, soon hit back in a counter-offensive supported by many conservative Greeks who saw in it an opportunity to finish off ELAS in the capital. The combination of air strikes and overwhelming manpower that the British employed led to many civilian as well as combatant deaths.49
The defeat in Athens meant that EAM was in no position to dictate terms to the British or to the new prime minister, Nikolaos Plastiras.50 EAM/ELAS now lost its advantage in the rest of the country also. The British denied food to rebellious areas, and EAM was forced to increase taxation in the areas it controlled. This antagonized a population already increasingly Anglophile in its sympathies, grateful for its recent liberation and fearful that the strong preponderance of Macedonian Slavs in EAM/ELAS would lead it to concede territory to Greece’s Slavic neighbours. Neither Stalin nor Tito, concerned not to antagonize the Western Allies unnecessarily, proffered practical help to EAM/ELAS. Moreover, when the British rounded up 15,000 leftist sympathizers, ELAS reacted by executing hundreds of members of ‘reactionary families’ and lost massive moral capital, domestically as well as internationally, in the process.51
EAM/ELAS now sought peace and demobilization in return for an amnesty and free elections—though it was careful to hide its better quality arms first for future use.52 In February 1945 the Varkiza Agreement was signed in Athens, and the resistance armies were disbanded. General elections and a referendum on the fate of the monarchy were to be held. But the situation was still not stabilized. In 1946, full-scale civil war broke out between the communist and anti-communist camps. American intervention in 1947 was crucial, and led to the defeat of the communists in 1949. The origins of this war, like those of the Battle of Athens before it, were to be found in the period of occupation and resistance.
* * *
The historiography on the Greek resistance has addressed it mainly with regard to the struggle between EAM/ELAS and its rival resistance organizations, and how each sought to impose hegemony upon its opponents. EAM’s policy towards its opponents was, and remains, particularly controversial in this regard. Particularly important questions relate to how far EAM was intending to impose a communist regime at the end of the war, the organization’s social composition, how it radicalized much of the population and how far the full-scale civil war that broke out in 1946 was a genuine continuation of the struggle between the left-wing and anti-communist resistance movements during the years 1943–4. The debate over ‘red’ and ‘white’ terror—that is to say, communist and anticommunist violence—during the period has been particularly strong during the last fifteen years or so.53 Other studies over the same period have addressed themes such as collaboration, the impact of local and family feuds upon the formation of the guerrilla armies, the social identity of the participants and the role of ethnic minorities in the resistance.54 Young scholars are particularly active in furthering study, at a time of great political and economic crisis in Greece which many perceive as resembling earlier times of instability and turmoil.
1. G. Mavrogordatos, Stillborn republic: social coalitions and party strategies in Greece 1922–1936 (Berkeley, Cal., 1983).
2. S. Sepheriades, ‘Small Rural Ownership, Subsistence Agriculture, and Peasant Protest in Interwar Greece: The Agrarian Question Recast’, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 17 (1999).
3. Neni Panourgia, Dangerous Citizens. The Greek Left and the terror of the state (New York, 2009), pp. 39–48.
4. Hellenic Army General Staff, An Abridged History of the Greek-Italian and Greek-German War (Athens 1997).
5. A. Beevor, Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (London, 1991).
6. On German occupation arrangements see Hans Umbreit, ‘Towards Continental Dominion’, in Bernhard R. Kroener, Rolf-Dieter Muller, Hans Umbreit, Ewald Osers, John Brownjohn, Patricia Crampton, Louise Willmott, Germany and the Second World War Vol. V: Organization and Mobilization of the German Sphere of Power. Pt 1: Wartime administration, economy, and manpower resources 1939–1941 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 9–404.
7. Violetta Hionidou, Famine and Death in Occupied Greece, 1941–1944 (New York, 2006), pp. 32–48.
8. The numbers vary between 500,000 and 100,000. See E. Bournova-G.Progoulakis, ‘Oi oikonomikes sinthikes stin periodo tis Katohis’ (‘The economic conditions in the Occupation period’), in H. Fleischer (ed.), Katohi-Antistasi 1941–1944 (Occupation-Resistance 1941–44) (Athens, 2010), pp. 57–63.
9. The ultimate result was the death of 50,000 Greek Jews, most of them residents of the hitherto flourishing Jewish community of Thessaloniki. As the fate of the Greek Jews did not have a major impact upon the growth of the Greek resistance—though some escaping Jews did join the resistance—these tragic events are largely outside the scope of this chapter. The reader is directed to Mark Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941–44 (New Haven, Conn., 1992), pp. 235–61; idem, Salonica—City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430–1950 (London, 2005), pp. 421–42; Steven B. Bowman, The Agony of Greek Jews, 1940–1945 (Palo Alto, Cal., 2009).
10. Tsolakoglou resigned from the government in 1942 and was replaced by Dr Konstantinos Logothetopoulos.
11. H. Vlavianos, ‘The Greek Communist Party: in search of a Revolution’, in Tony Judt (ed.), Resistance and Revolution in Mediterranean Europe 1939–1948 (London, 1989), pp. 168–72.
12. A. Kitroeff, ‘Greek peasantry from dictatorship to occupation’, in Robin Higham and Thanos Veremis (eds), Aspects of Greece 1936–40. The Metaxas Dictatorship (Athens, 1993), pp. 63–84.
13. David H. Close, The Origins of the Greek Civil War (London, 1995), pp. 5, 51, 65, 75, 95.
14. A. Rossos, ‘Incompatible Allies: Greek Communism and Macedonian Nationalism in the Civil War in Greece’, Journal of Modern History, 69/3 (1997).
15. G. Margaritis, Apo tin itta stin exegersi (Ellada anoixi 1941–fthinoporo 1942) (From Defeat to Revolt. Greece spring 1941–autumn 1942) (Athens, 1993).
16. On EAM see in particular Mark Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, passim.
17. For accounts by these principal eyewitnesses, see E.C.W. Myers, Greek Entanglement (London, 1955); C.M. Woodhouse, Apple of Discord: A Survey of Recent Greek Politics in their International Setting (London, 1948).
18. R.V. Boeschoten, From Armatolik to people’s rule: Investigation into the collective memory of rural Greece 1750–1949 (Amsterdam, 1991).
19. See J. Handrinos, ‘The Organisations of National Resistance’ (‘Oi organoseis tis Ethikis Antistasis. Katagrafi kai Analysi’), in H. Fleischer (ed.), Katohi-Antistasi 1941–1944 (Occupation-Resistance 1941–44) (Athens, 2010), pp. 77–108.
20. Vangelis Tzoukas, ‘Oi oplarhigoi tou EDES stin Ipeiro. Topikotita kai politiki entaxi (The Warlords of EDES in Epirus. Locality and political integration)’, PhD dissertation, Panteion University of Political and Social Sciences (Athens, 2003).
21. Tasoula Vervenioti, ‘Left-wing Women between Politics and Family’, in Mark Mazower (ed.), After the War was Over. Reconstructing the Family, Nation and the State in Greece, 1943–1960 (Princeton, New Jer., 2000), pp. 105–21.
22. Odette Varon Vassard, I enilikiosi mias genias. Neoi kai Nees stin Katohi kai tin Antistasi (The coming of age of a generation. Young men and women in Occupation and Resistance) (Athens, 2009).
23. Procopis Papastratis, British policy towards Greece during the Second World War 1941–44 (Cambridge, 1984).
24. Lars Baerentzen (ed.), British Reports on Greece 1943–44 by J.M. Stevens, C.M. Woodhouse and D.J. Wallace (Copenhagen, 1982).
25. Beevor, Crete, pp. 235–83.
26. Davide Rodogno, ‘Italian Soldiers in the Balkans: The experience of the occupation’, Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, 6/2 (2004).
27. Lidia Santarelli, ‘Muted Violence: Italian war crimes in occupied Greece’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 9/3 (2004).
28. Charles T. O’Reilly, Forgotten Battles: Italy’s War of Liberation 1943–45 (Lanham, Md., 2001), pp. 100–1.
29. R. Galiberti, Trypia Arvyla (Athens, 1999).
30. Hans Umbreit, ‘German Rule in the Occupied Territories 1942–1945’, in Bernhard R. Kroener, Rolf-Dieter Müller, Hans Umbreit, Derry Cook-Radmore, Ewald Osers, Barry Smerin and Barbara Wilson, Germany and the Second World War Vol. 5: Organization and Mobilization of the German Sphere of Power. Pt 2: Wartime administration, economy, and manpower resources 1942–1944/5 (Oxford, 2003), pp. 5–291, here pp. 42–5.
31. Ibid.
32. A. Löhr in M. Zekedorf (ed.), I Ellada kato apo ton agkiloto stavro—Dokoumenta apo ti germaniki Katohi (Greece under the Swastika. Documents from the German Occupation) (Athens, 1991).
33. On the Germans’ 1941 campaign in Yugoslavia see Walter Manoschek, Serbien ist judenfrei: Militärische Besatzungspolitik und Judenvernichtung in Serbien 1941/42 (Munich, 1993); Klaus Schmider, Partisanenkrieg in Jugoslawien 1941–1944 (Hamburg, 2002), pp. 54–103; Ben Shepherd, Terror in the Balkans: German Armies and Partisan Warfare (Cambridge, Mass., 2012), pp. 83–147.
34. H.F. Mayer, Blutiges Edelweis Die 1. Gebirgs-Division im Zweiten WeltKrieg (Berlin, 2007) (Greek trans., Aimatovammeno Entelvais: H 1h Oreini Merarxia, to 22o Soma Stratou kai I egklimatiki drasi tous stn Ellada, 1943–1944 (Athens, 2009)).
35. (General) H. Lanz, Partisan Warfare in the Balkans (US Army, European Command, Historical Division, 1952), pp. 7–8.
36. Tzoukas, ‘The Warlords of EDES’, pp. 50–130.
37. M. Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, pp. 190–200. See also H.F. Mayer, I Blutiges Edelweis Die 1. Gebirgs-Division im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Berlin, 2007) (Greek trans., Aimatovammeno Entelvais, H 1h Oreini Merarxia, to 22o Soma Stratou kai I egklimatiki drasi tous stn Ellada, 1943–1944), Vol. 1, pp. 294–314.
38. Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, pp. 190–200.
39. Mayer, Aimatovammeno Entelvais, Vol. II, pp. 111–12; Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, p. 179.
40. Umbreit, ‘German Rule in the Occupied Territories 1942–1945’, p. 45.
41. Close, The Origins of the Greek Civil War, pp. 90–1, 115.
42. Ian F.W. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies: Guerrillas and their opponents since 1750 (New York, 2001), p. 67.
43. S. Kalyvas, ‘Red Terror. Leftist Violence during the Occupation’, in Mark Mazower (ed.), After the War was Over, pp. 142–83.
44. The local regiment of EDES was one of the best units of the Andartiko. By the summer of 1943 it numbered 1,370 guerrillas. See V. Tzoukas, ‘Oi oplarhigoi tou EDES stin Ipeiro. Topikotita kai politiki entaxi (‘The Warlords of EDES in Epirus. Locality and political integration’)’, PhD dissertation, Panteion University of Political and Social Sciences (Athens, 2003), p. 244.
45. J.L. Hondros, Occupation and Resistance: The Greek Agony 1941–44 (New York, 1983).
46. C.M. Woodhouse, The Struggle for Greece 1941–49 (New York, 1976), p. 91.
47. S. Dordanas, To aima ton athoon. Antipoina ton germanikon arxon katoxis sti Makedonia, 1941–44 (Blood of the innocents. Reprisals of the German occupation forces in Macedonia, 1941–44) (Athens, 2007).
48. Close, The Origins of the Greek Civil War, p. 115.
49. On the causes and course of the December 1944 fighting, see Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, pp. 368–72; Close, The Origins of the Greek Civil War, Ch. 5.
50. David Close and Thanos Veremis, ‘The British Defeat of EAM, 1944–45’, in David Close (ed.), The Greek Civil War: Studies of Polarization (London, 1993), pp. 97–128.
51. Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, pp. 370–2; Close, The Origins of the Greek Civil War, pp. 141–5.
52. Close, The Origins of the Greek Civil War, p. 144.
53. See for example Stathis Kalyvas, ‘Red Terror. Leftist Violence during the Occupation’; idem, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge, 2006); Giorgos Antoniou, ‘The lost Atlantis of Objectivity: the revisionist struggles between the academic and public spheres’, History and Theory, 46/4 (2007).
54. Mark Mazower, ‘Historians at War: Greece, 1940–1950’, Historical Journal, 38/2 (1995); Nikos Marantzidis and Giorgos Antoniou, ‘The Axis Occupation and Civil War: Changing Trends in Greek Historiography, 1941–2002’, Journal of Peace Research, 41 (2004).
Guide to Further Reading
Beevor, A., Crete: The Battle and the Resistance (London, 1991).
Close, David H., The Origins of the Greek Civil War (London, 1995).
Hionidou, Violetta, Famine and Death in Occupied Greece, 1941–1944 (New York, 2006).
Hondros, J.L., Occupation and Resistance: The Greek Agony 1941–44 (New York, 1983).
Marantzidis, Nikos and Giorgos Antoniou, ‘The Axis Occupation and Civil War: Changing Trends in Greek Historiography, 1941–2002’, in Journal of Peace Research, 41 (2004).
Mazower, Mark, Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941–44 (New Haven, Conn., 1993).
Idem, ‘Historians at War: Greece, 1940–1950’, in Historical Journal, 38/2 (1995).
Myers, C.W., Greek Entanglement (London, 1955).
Rossos, A., ‘Incompatible Allies: Greek Communism and Macedonian Nationalism in the Civil War in Greece’, in Journal of Modern History, 69/3 (1997).
Vlavianos, H., ‘The Greek Communist Party: in search of a Revolution’, in Tony Judt (ed.), Resistance and Revolution in Mediterranean Europe 1939–1948 (London, 1989).
Woodhouse, C.M., Apple of Discord: A Survey of Recent Greek Politics in their International Setting (London, 1948).
Idem, The Struggle for Greece 1941–49 (New York, 1976).