Greek Civil War
Encyclopedia
The Greek Civil War was fought from 1946 to 1949 between the Greek governmental army, backed by the United Kingdom
and United States
, and the Democratic Army of Greece
(ΔΣΕ) (Greek initials DSE), the military branch of the Greek Communist Party
(KKE), backed by Bulgaria
, Yugoslavia
and Albania
. It was the result of a highly polarized struggle between leftists and rightists which started in 1943 and targeted the power vacuum that the German-Italian occupation during World War II
had created. One of the first conflicts of the Cold War
, according to some analysts it represents the first example of postwar British and American interference in the internal politics of a foreign country.
The first signs of the civil war occurred in 1942–1944, during the Occupation. With the Greek government in exile
unable to influence the situation at home, various resistance groups of differing political affiliations emerged, the dominant one being the leftist National Liberation Front (EAM), controlled effectively by the KKE
. Starting in autumn 1943, friction among EAM and the other resistance groups resulted in scattered clashes, which continued until the spring of 1944, when an agreement was reached forming a national unity government which included six EAM-affiliated ministers.
The prelude of the civil war occurred in December 1944, approximately 3 months after the country had been liberated. A bloody battle (The "Dekemvriana") erupted in Athens after government and British soldiers opened fire on a massive peaceful demonstration organized by EAM against the disputed order for the disarmament of the left-wing guerrilla forces. The result was the defeat of EAM forces. The defeat of EAM forces spelled the end of its ascendancy: ELAS (the military arm of EAM) was partly disarmed, while EAM continued its political action as a multi-party organization. Tensions remained high however, as clashes between right and left-wing factions continued.
The civil war erupted in 1946 when forces of former ELAS partizans that found shelter in their hideouts and were controlled by the KKE, organized the Democratic Army of Greece
(DSE) and its High Command HQ. KKE backed up the whole endeavor, deciding that there are no more political means to use against the right wing that had an international recognition of their government formed after the 1946 elections
(boycotted by KKE). The Communists formed the Provisional Government and used DSE as the military branch of this government. The neighboring Socialist States of Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria offered logistic support to the Provisional Government - especially in the forces operating in the North.
Despite initial failures by the government forces from 1946 until 1948, increased American aid, lack of high numbers of recruits to the ranks of DSE and the side-effects of the Tito–Stalin split, led to victory for the government forces.
The final victory of the Western-supported government forces led to Greece's membership in NATO, and helped to define the ideological balance of power in the Aegean
for the entire Cold War. The civil war also left Greece with a vehemently anti-communist security establishment, which would lead to the establishment of the Greek military junta of 1967–1974, and a legacy of political polarization which lasted until the 1980s.
, Bulgaria and Italy
from April 1941 to late October 1944. While Axis forces approached Athens in April 1941 King George II
and his government escaped to Egypt
, where they proclaimed a government-in-exile
, recognised by the Western Allies, but not by the Soviet Union
. The Western Allies (Winston Churchill in particular) encouraged, and even coerced, the King to appoint a moderate cabinet.
As a result, only two of his ministers were previous members of the 4th of August dictatorship
under Ioannis Metaxas
, which with the blessings of the King himself had seized power with a coup d'état and governed the country since August 1936. Nevertheless, the exiled government's inability to influence the affairs inside Greece rendered it irrelevant in the minds of most Greek people. At the same time, the Germans set up a collaborationist government in Athens
, which lacked legitimacy and support. The puppet regime was further undermined when economic mismanagement in wartime conditions created runaway inflation, acute food shortages and even famine amongst the civilian population.
The power vacuum that the occupation created was filled by several resistance movements that ranged from pro-Royalist to Communist ideologies. Resistance was born first in Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, where Bulgarian troops occupied Greek territories. Soon large demonstrations were organized in many cities by the Defenders of Northern Greece (YVE), a patriotic organization. But the largest group to emerge was the National Liberation Front (EAM), founded on 27 September 1941 by representatives of four left-wing parties. Proclaiming that it followed the Soviet policy of creating a broad united front
against fascism, EAM, as it became known in Greek, won the support of many non-communist patriots.
These resistance groups launched attacks against the occupying powers and set up large espionage networks. But the communist leaders of EAM planned that it would dominate in the post-war Greece, so, usually by force, they tried to take up or destroy the other resistance-groups in Greece (like the destruction of EKKA, and the murder of its leader Dimitrios Psarros
by ELAS partisans. When liberation came in October 1944, Greece was in a state of crisis, which soon led to the outbreak of civil war.
It soon became the largest mass organization in Greek history, numbering nearly 2,000,000 in 1944. Although controlled by the KKE, the organization had a modest democratic republican
rhetoric. Its military wing, the Greek People's Liberation Army, or ELAS, was founded in February 1942. Aris Velouchiotis
, a member of KKE's Central Committee, was nominated Chief (Kapetanios) of the ELAS High Command. The military chief, Stefanos Sarafis
, was a colonel in the pre-war Greek Army who had been dismissed during the Metaxas regime due to his democratic views. The political chief of EAM was Vasilis Samariniotis (nom de guerre of Andreas Tzimas).
The Organization for the Protection of the People's Struggle (OPLA) was founded as EAM's security militia, operating mainly in the occupied cities and most particularly Athens. Furthermore, a small Greek People's Liberation Navy (ELAN) existed, operating mostly around the Ionian Islands and some other coastal areas. Other communist-aligned organizations were present, including the NOF, comprised mostly by Slavic Macedonians in the Florina
region. They would later play a critical role in the civil war. The two other large resistance movements were the National Republican Greek League (EDES), led by republican former army officer Colonel Napoleon Zervas
, and the social-liberal National and Social Liberation (EKKA), led by Colonel Dimitrios Psarros
.
The Greek landscape was favourable to guerilla operations, and by 1943 the Axis forces and their collaborators were in control only of the main towns and connecting roads, leaving the mountainous countryside to the resistance. EAM-ELAS in particular controlled most of the country's mountainous interior, while EDES was limited to Epirus
and EKKA to eastern Central Greece
. By early 1944, ELAS could call on nearly 25,000 men under arms, with another 80,000 working as reserves or logistical support, EDES roughly 10,000 men, and EKKA under 10,000 men.
To combat the rising influence of the EAM, and fearful of an eventual takeover after the German defeat, in 1943, Ioannis Rallis
, the conservative Prime Minister of the collaborationist government, authorized the creation of paramilitary forces, known as the Security Battalions
. Numbering 20,000 men at their peak in 1944, composed mostly of local fascists, convicts, and sympathetic prisoners of war, as well as forcibly conscripted soldiers, they operated under German command in anti-partisan operations, and soon achieved a reputation for brutality.
EAM-ELAS, EDES and EKKA were mutually suspicious, and tensions were exacerbated as the end of the war became nearer, and the question of the country's political future arose. The role of the British military mission in these events proved decisive. To EAM, London's preferences were clear: although EAM was by far the largest and most active group, due to their persistence to achieve their own political goals (not always with actions against axis' powers) in order to dominate on post-war Greece, British material support was directed mostly to the more reliable Zervas, who by 1943 had reversed his earlier anti-monarchist stance.
, ELAS seized control of Italian garrison weapons in Greece. In response, the Western Allies began to favor rival anti-communist resistance groups. They provided them with ammunition, supplies and logistical support as a way of balancing ELAS’s increasing influence. In time, the flow of weapons and funds to ELAS stopped altogether, with rival EDES enjoying the bulk of the Allied support.
In mid-1943, the animosity between EAM-ELAS and the other movements took the form of an armed conflict. The communists and EAM accused EDES of being traitors and collaborators, and vice versa. Other smaller groups, such as EKKA, continued the anti-occupation fight with sabotage and other actions. They declined to join the ranks of ELAS, and were systematically murdered by the Communists. While few organizations did accept assistance from the Nazis in their operations against EAM-ELAS, the great majority of the population refused any form of cooperation with the occupation authorities.
By early 1944, after a British-negotiated ceasefire (the Plaka Agreement), EAM-ELAS had destroyed EKKA and confined EDES to a small part of Epirus
, where it could only play a marginal role in the rest of the war. Their political network (EAM) had reached about 500,000 citizens around the country. By 1944, the numbers of the armed forces favored ELAS, having more than 50,000 men in arms and an extra 500,000 working as reserves or logistic support personnel (Efedrikos ELAS). In contrast, EDES had around 10,000 fighters and EKKA around 10,000 men.
As the communist position strengthened, so did the numbers of the Security Battalions
, with both sides engaged in several skirmishes. The ELAS units were accused of the Meligalas
massacre. Meligalas was the headquarters of a local Security Battalion Unit that was given the control of the wider area of Messenia by the Nazis, After a battle there between ELAS and the security battalions, ELAS forces prevailed and the remaining forces of the collaborators were taken into custody (according to several references). In the later years, the post-civil war governments declared that 10,500 members of the collaborationist units were massacred along with civilians by the communists, number that never met the real bodies found in the mass grave (an old well in the area) . According to left-wing sources, civilian bodies found there could have been victims of the Security Battalions. As Security Battalions were replacing occupation forces in territories that Germans could not enter, they were accused of numerous instances of brutality against civilians and captured partisans, as well as the executions of prominent EAM and KKE members by hanging.
In addition, recruiting by both sides was controversial, as the case of Stefanos Sarafis
indicates. The soon-to-be military leader of ELAS sought to join the non-communist resistance group commanded by Kostopoulos in Thessaly
, along with other former officers. On their way, they were captured by an ELAS group, with Sarafis agreeing to join ELAS at gunpoint when all other officers who refused were killed.
Sarafis never admitted this incident, and in his book on ELAS makes special reference to the letter he sent all officers of the former Greek Army to join the ranks of EAM-ELAS. Again, numbers favoured the EAM organization; Nearly 800 officers of the pre-war Greek Army joined the ranks of ELAS with the position of military leader and Kapetanios.
(Politiki Epitropi Ethnikis Apeleftherosis, or PEEA), in effect a third Greek government to rival those in Athens and Cairo. "to intensify the struggle against the conquerors... for full national liberation, for the consolidation of the independence and integrity of our country... and for the annihilation of domestic Fascism and armed traitor formations." PEEA consisted not only of communists but also of progressives, who had nothing to do with communist ideas.
The moderate aims of the PEEA (known as "κυβέρνηση του βουνού", "the Mountain Government") aroused support even among Greeks in exile. In April 1944 the Greek armed forces in Egypt, many of them well-disposed towards EAM, demanded that a Government of National Unity be established, based on PEEA principles, and replace the government-in-exile
as it had no political or other link with the occupied home country. The movement was suppressed by British forces and Greek forces loyal to the exiled government. Approximately 80,000 Greek soldiers and officers were sent into prison camps in Libya, Sudan, Egypt and South Africa.
Later on, through political screening of the officers, the Cairo government created the III Greek Mountain Brigade, composed of staunchly anti-Communist personnel, under the command of Brigadier Thrasyvoulos Tsakalotos
.
In May 1944, representatives from all political parties and resistance groups came together at a conference in Lebanon
, seeking an agreement about a government of national unity. Despite EAM's accusations of collaboration made against all other Greek forces, and charges against EAM-ELAS members of murders, banditry and thievery, the conference ended with an agreement for a government of national unity consisting of 24 ministers (6 of whom were EAM members). The agreement was made possible by Soviet directives to KKE to avoid harming Allied unity, but did not resolve the problem of disarmament of resistance groups.
were advancing into Romania
and towards Yugoslavia
, and the Germans risked being cut off. In September, General Tolbukhin
's armies advanced into Bulgaria
, forcing the resignation of the country's pro-Nazi government and the establishment of a pro-communist regime, while Bulgarian troops withdrew from Greek Macedonia. The government-in-exile, now led by prominent liberal George Papandreou
, moved to Caserta
, Italy, in preparation for its return to Greece. Under the Caserta Agreement of September 1944, all resistance forces in Greece were placed under the command of a British officer, General Ronald Scobie
.
The Western Allies
arrived in Greece in October, by which time the Germans were in full retreat and most of Greece's territory had already been liberated by Greek partisans. On October 13, British troops entered Athens, the only area still occupied by the Germans, and Papandreou and his ministers followed six days later. The King stayed in Cairo
, because Papandreou had promised that the future of the monarchy
would be decided by referendum
.
At this point there was little to prevent ELAS from taking full control of the country. With the German withdrawal, ELAS units had taken control not only of the countryside but of most cities as well. However, they did not take full control because the KKE leadership was instructed by the Soviet Union not to precipitate a crisis that could jeopardize Allied unity and put Stalin's
larger post-war objectives at risk. KKE’s leadership knew this, but ELAS's fighters and rank-and-file communists did not, which became a source of conflict within both EAM and ELAS.
Following Stalin's instructions, KKE’s leadership tried to avoid a confrontation with the Papandreou government. The majority of ELAS members saw the Western Allies as liberators, although some KKE leaders, such as Andreas Tzimas and Aris Velouchiotis
, did not trust them. Tzimas was in touch with the Yugoslav Communist leader Josip Broz Tito
, and he disagreed with ELAS's co-operation with the Western Allied forces.
The issue of disarming the resistance organizations was a cause of friction between the Papandreou government and its EAM members. Advised by the British ambassador Reginald Leeper
, Papandreou demanded the disarmament of all armed forces apart from the Sacred Band
and the III Mountain Brigade
, which were formed following the suppression of the April 1944 Egypt Mutiny, and the constitution of a National Guard under government control. EAM, believing that this would leave ELAS defenseless against right-wing militias, submitted an alternative plan of total and simultaneous disarmament. Papandreou rejected this plan, causing EAM ministers to resign from the government on December 2. On December 1, Scobie issued a proclamation calling for the dissolution of ELAS. Command of ELAS was KKE's greatest source of strength, and the KKE leader Siantos decided that the demand for ELAS's dissolution must be resisted.
Tito's influence may have played some role in ELAS's resistance to disarmament. Tito was outwardly loyal to Stalin but had come to power through his own forces and believed that the Communist Greeks should do the same. His influence, however, had not prevented the EAM leadership from putting its forces under Scobie's command a couple of months earlier, in accordance with to the Caserta Agreement.
In the meanwhile, following Grivas' instructions, Organization X
members had set up many outposts in central Athens and resisted EAM for several days, until British troops arrived, as their leader had been promised.
, originating from the side of the building of the General Police Headquarters, across from the Grande Bretagne
hotel (where international observers had settled), the hotel itself, the Parliament (Βουλή) and from other governmental buildings. The British commander Woodhouse suggests it is uncertain whether the first shots were fired by the police or the demonstrators. More than 28 demonstrators were killed 148 were injured. This signaled the beginning of the "Dekemvriana" , a 37-day period of full-scale fighting in Athens between EAM fighters and smaller parts of ELAS, and the forces of the British Army and the government.
At the beginning, the government had only a few policemen and gendarmes, some militia units, the 3rd Mountain Brigade distinguished at the Gothic Line offensive in Italy, which, however, lacked heavy weapons, and the royalist group X
, also known as 'Chítes' (Χίτες), which was accused by EAM of collaborating with the Nazis. Consequently the British intervened in support of the government, freely using artillery and aircraft as the battle approached its last stages. On December 4 Papandreou gave his resignation to the British Commander, General Scobie, who rejected it. By December 12 ΕΑΜ was in control of most of Athens and Piraeus
. The British, outnumbered, flew in the 4th Indian Infantry Division from Italy as emergency reinforcements. Although the British were openly fighting against EAM in Athens, there were no such battles in the rest of Greece. In certain cases, such as Volos, some RAF units even surrendered equipment to ELAS fighters.
Conflicts continued throughout December with the forces confronting EAM slowly gaining the upper hand. Curiously, ELAS forces in the rest of Greece did not attack the British. It seems that ELAS preferred to avoid an armed confrontation with the British forces initially and later tried to reduce the conflict as much as possible, although poor communication between its much independent units around the country might also have played a role. This might explain the simultaneous struggle against the British, the large-scale ELAS operations against Trotskyists
and other political dissidents in Athens, and the many contradictory decisions of EAM leaders. Videlicet, KKE's leadership, was supporting a doctrine of "national unity" while eminent members, such as Stringos, Makridis and even Georgios Siantos, were creating revolutionary plans. Even more curiously, Tito was both the KKE's key sponsor and a key British ally, owing his physical and political survival in 1944 to British assistance.
This outbreak of fighting between Allied forces and an anti-German European resistance movement, while the war in Europe was still being fought, was a serious political problem for Churchill's coalition government of left and right, and caused much protest in the British press and the House of Commons
. To prove his peace-making intentions to the public, Churchill himself arrived in Athens on December 25 and presided over a conference, in which Soviet representatives also participated, to bring about a settlement. It failed because the EAM/ELAS demands were considered excessive and, thus, rejected.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union
remained passive about developments in Greece. True to their "percentages agreement
" with Britain relating to Greece, the Soviet delegation in Greece did not encourage or discourage EAM's ambitions, as Greece belonged to the British sphere of influence. The delegation's chief gained the nickname "sphinx" among the local communist officers for not giving any clues about Soviet intentions. Pravda
did not mention the clashes at all. It appears that Stalin didn't intend to avert the Dekemvriana, as he would profit no matter the outcome. If EAM rose to power, he would gain a country of major strategic value. If not, he could use British actions in Greece to justify similar actions in countries in his own sphere of influence.
By early January, EAM forces had lost the battle. As a result of Churchill's intervention, Papandreou resigned and was replaced by General Nikolaos Plastiras
. On January 15, 1945, Scobie agreed to a ceasefire in exchange for ELAS' withdrawal from its positions at Patras
and Thessaloniki
, and its demobilization in the Peloponnese. Despite this severe defeat, ELAS continued to exist and the KKE had an opportunity to reconsider its strategy.
KKE's defeat in 1945 was mainly political but the exaltation of terrorism on the communist side made a political settlement even more difficult. The hunting of "collaborators" was extended to people who had not been involved in collaboration, but they were supporting the Greek government.. It is remarkable the cruelty that OPLA and some other communist groups showed against their opponents (including politicians, policemen, professors, priests etc), while they were killing them; something that increased the anti-communist fury on the other side. Also, several trotskyists had to leave the country in fear for their lives (Cornelius Castoriadis
fled to France). As a result of the fighting in Athens, most of the prominent non-communists of EAM left the organization and KKE support declined sharply.
, with the support of all the Allies. This provided for the complete demobilization of ELAS and all other paramilitary groups, amnesty for only political offenses, a referendum on the monarchy, and a general election to be held as soon as possible. The KKE remained legal, and its leader Nikolaos Zachariadis
, who returned from Germany in April 1945, said that the KKE's objective was now for a "people's democracy" to be achieved by peaceful means. This objective had dissenters, of course, such as former ELAS leader Aris Velouchiotis
. The KKE renounced Velouchiotis when he called on the veteran guerrillas to start a second struggle; shortly afterwards, he committed suicide, surrounded by the security forces.
The Treaty of Varkiza transformed the KKE's political defeat into a military one. ELAS's existence was terminated. The amnesty was not comprehensive, because many actions during the German occupation and Dekemvriana were classified as criminal, exempting them from the amnesty. Thus, the authorities captured approximately 40,000 communists or ex-ELAS members. As a result, a number of veteran partisans hid their weapons in the mountains, and 5,000 of them escaped to Yugoslavia
, although the KKE leadership did not encourage this.
Between 1945–1946, right-wing gangs killed about 1,190 pro-communist civilians and tortured many others. Entire villages that had helped the partisans were attacked by the gangs. According to right-wing citizens, these gangs were "retaliating" for their suffering during the ELAS reign. The reign of "White Terror" led many persecuted ex-ELAS members to form self-defense troops, without any KKE approval.
KKE soon reversed its former political position, as relations between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies deteriorated. With the onset of the Cold War
, communist parties everywhere moved to more militant positions. This change of political attitude, and the choice to escalate the crisis, derived primarily from the conclusion that regime subversion, which had not been successful in December 1944, could now be achieved. The KKE leadership decided in February 1946, "after weighing domestic factors, and the Balkan and international situation", to go forward with "organization of a new armed struggle against the Monarcho-Fascist regime." The KKE boycotted the March 1946 elections, which were won by the monarchist United Patriotic Party (Inomeni Parataxis Ethnikofronon), the main member of which was Konstantinos Tsaldaris
' People's Party
. In September, a referendum
favored the retention of the monarchy, though the KKE disputed the results, and King George returned to Athens.
The King's return to Greece reinforced British influence in the country. Nigel Clive, then a liaison officer to the Greek Government and later the head of the Athens station of MI6, stated that "Greece was a kind of British protectorate, but the British ambassador was not a colonial governor." There were to be six changes of prime ministers within just two years, an indication of the instability that would characterize the country's political life over that period.
. The next day, the official KKE paper
’s coversheet announced, "Authorities and gangs fabricate alleged communist attacks". Contemporaneously, armed bands of ELAS veterans infiltrated Greece through mountainous regions near the Yugoslav and Albanian borders; they were now organized as the Democratic Army of Greece
(Dimokratikos Stratos Elladas, DSE), under the command of the ELAS veteran Markos Vafiadis
(known as "General Markos"), operating from a base in Yugoslavia and sent by the KKE to organize already existing troops.
Both the Yugoslav and Albanian communist states supported the DSE fighters, but the Soviet Union remained ambivalent. The KKE kept an open line of communication with the Soviet Communist Party, and its leader Nikos Zachariadis had visited Moscow on more than one occasion. The Soviet Union was backing the Greek communist struggle politically, as demonstrated in several assemblies of the UN Security Council, but was determined not to interfere further in the Greek Civil War. Certain western historians believe it was not part of Stalin's strategy to conduct a war against the Western Allies in Greece, and the Soviets gave little direct support to the KKE campaign.
By late 1946 the DSE was able to deploy about 16,000 partisans, including 5,000 in the Peloponnese and other areas of Greece. According to the DSE, its fighters "resisted the reign of terror that right wing gangs conducted across Greece". In the Peloponnese especially, local party officials, headed by Vangelis Rogakos, had established a plan long before the decision to go to guerrilla war, under which the numbers of partisans operating in the mainland would be inversely proportional to the number of soldiers the enemy would concentrate in the region. According to this study, the DSE III division in the Peloponnese numbered between 1,000 and 5,000 fighters in early 1948.
Rural peasants were caught in the crossfire. When DSE partisans entered a village asking for supplies, citizens were either supportive (years previously, EAM could count on 2 million members across the whole country) or could not resist. When the national army arrived at the same village, citizens who had supplied the partisans were immediately denounced as communist sympathizers, and were usually imprisoned or exiled. Rural areas also suffered as a result of tactics dictated to the National Army by US advisers; as admitted by high-ranking CIA officials in the documentary "NAM: the true story of Vietnam", a very efficient strategy applied during the Greek Civil War, as well as in the Vietnam and Korean wars, was the evacuation of villages under the pretext that they were under direct threat of communist attack. This would deprive supplies and recruits to the partisans, while simultaneously raising antipathy towards them.
The Greek Army now numbered about 90,000 men, and was gradually being put on a more professional footing. The task of re-equipping and training the Army had been carried out by its fellow Western Allies. By early 1947, however, Britain, which had spent 85 million pounds in Greece since 1944, could no longer afford this burden; President Harry S. Truman
announced that the United States would step in to support the government of Greece against communist pressure. This began a long and troubled relationship between Greece and the United States. For several decades to come, the US Ambassador advised the King on important issues, such as the appointment of the Prime Minister.
Through 1947 the scale of fighting increased; the DSE launched large-scale attacks on towns across northern Epirus, Thessaly
, Peloponnese and Macedonia
, provoking the Army into massive counter-offensives, themselves meeting no opposition as the DSE melted back into the mountains and its safe havens across the northern borders. In the Peloponnese, where General Georgios Stanotas
was appointed area commander, the DSE suffered heavily, with no way to escape to mainland Greece. In general, army morale was low, and it would be some time before the support of the United States became apparent.
In September 1947, however, the KKE’s leadership decided to move from guerrilla tactics to full-scale conventional war, despite the opposition of Vafiadis
. In December, the KKE announced the formation of a Provisional Democratic Government, with Vafiadis as prime minister; this led the Athens government to finally ban the KKE. No foreign government recognized this government. This new strategy led the DSE into costly attempts to seize a major town as its seat of government, and in December 1947 1,200 DSE fighters were killed at a set piece battle around Konitsa
. At the same time, the strategy forced the government to increase the size of the army; with control of the major cities, the government cracked down on KKE members and sympathizers, many of whom were imprisoned on the island of Makronisos
.
Despite setbacks, such as the fighting at Konitsa, the DSE reached the height of its power in 1948, extending its operations to Attica
, within 20 km of Athens. It drew on more than 20,000 fighters, both men and women, and a network of sympathizers and informants in every village and suburb. Amongst analysts emphasizing the KKE's perceived control and guidance by foreign powers such as USSR and YSR, some estimate that of the DSE's 20,000 fighters, 14,000 were Slavic Macedonians from Greek Macedonia. Expanding this reasoning, they conclude that given their important role in the battle, KKE changed its policy towards them. At the fifth Plenum of KKE on January 31, 1949, a resolution was passed declaring that after KKE's victory, the Slavic Macedonians would find their national restoration within a united Greek state.
The extent of such involvement remains contentious and unclear; some emphasize that the KKE had in total 400,000 members (or 800,000, according to some sources) immediately prior to December 1944, and that during the Civil War 100,000 ELAS fighters - mostly KKE members- were imprisoned and 3,000 were executed. Faced with this point of view, those more favorable to the organization emphasize instead the DSE's conduct of a war effort across the country, aiming at "a free and liberated Greece from all protectors that will have all the nationalities working under one Socialist State".
DSE Divisions conducted guerrilla warfare across Greece; III Division, with its 1948 count of 20,000 men, controlled 70% of the Peloponnese both politically and militarily; Battalions named after ELAS formations were active in Northwestern Greece, alongside the islands of Lesvos, Limnos, Ikaria, Samos, Creta, Evoia and the bulk of the Ionian Islands. Western-allied funds, advisers and equipment were now flooding into the country, and under Western Allied guidance a series of major offensives were launched into the mountains of central Greece. Although these offensives did not achieve all their objectives, they inflicted serious defeats on the DSE.
Many others were moved for protection to special camps inside Greece, an idea of Queen Frederica. This issue drew the attention of international public opinion, and a United Nations Special Committee issued a report, stating that "some children have in fact been forcibly removed".
Communist leadership claimed that children were being gathered to be evacuated from Greece, allegedly at the request of "popular organizations and parents". According to other researchers, the Greek Government also followed a policy of displacement by adopting children of the guerrillas and placing them in indoctrination camps.
According to Kenneth Spencer, a UN Committee reported at that time that "Queen Frederica has already prepared special 'reform camps' in Greek islands for 12,000 Greek children...". According to official KKE historiography, the Provisional Government issued a directive for the evacuation of all minors from 4 to 14 years old for protection from the war and problems linked to it. This is stated clearly according to the decisions of the Provisional Government on March 7, 1948.
According to non-KKE accounts, the children were abducted to be indoctrinated as communist janissaries. Several United Nations General Assembly
resolutions appealed for the repatriation of children to their homes.
After 50 years, more information regarding the children has gradually emerged. Many returned to Greece between 1975–1990, with varied views and attitudes toward the communist faction.
During the Civil War more than 25,000 children, most with parents in the DSE, were also placed in 30 "child towns" under the immediate control of Frederika of Hanover
, something especially emphasized by the left. After 50 years some of these children were found to have been given up for adoption to American families, now retracing their family background in Greece.
and the other newly founded socialist states broke off relations with President Josip Broz Tito
of Yugoslavia
. In one of the meetings held in Kremlin with Yugoslav representatives, during the Soviet-Yugoslav crisis, Joseph Stalin stated his unqualified opposition to the "Greek uprising". Stalin explained to the Yugoslav delegation that the situation in Greece has always been different from the one in Yugoslavia, because the US and Britain would "never permit [Greece] to break off their lines of communication in the Mediterranean." (Stalin used the word svernut, Russian for "fold up", to express what the Greek communists should do.)
Yugoslavia had been the Greek communists' main supporter from the years of Nazi occupation. The KKE thus had to choose between its loyalty to USSR, and its relations with its closest ally. After some internal conflict, the great majority, led by party secretary Zachariadis
, chose to follow the USSR, not like the YSR that had already started to negotiate with the British. In January 1949 Vafiadis himself was accused of "Titoism" and removed from his political and military positions, to be replaced by Zachariadis.
After a year of increasing acrimony, Tito closed the Yugoslav border to the DSE in July 1949, and disbanded its camps inside Yugoslavia. The DSE was still able to use Albanian border territories, a poor alternative. Within the Greek Communist Party, the split with Tito also sparked a witch-hunt for "Titoites" that demoralized and disorganized the ranks of the DSE and sapped support for the KKE in urban areas.
In the summer of 1948, DSE Division III in the Peloponnese suffered a huge defeat; lacking ammunition support from DSE headquarters, and having failed to capture ammunition depots belonging to the National Army at Zacharo in the western Peloponnese, its 20,000 fighters were doomed. The majority (including the commander of the Division, Vangelis Rogakos) were killed in battle with nearly 80,000 National Army troops under the command of General Tsakalotos. The National Army's strategic plan, codenamed "Peristera" (the Greek word for "dove") had proven successful. A number of other civilians were sent to prison camps as helpers of the communists. The Peloponnese was now governed by paramilitary groups fighting alongside the National Army. In order to terrify urban areas assisting DSE's III Division, these forces decapitated a number of dead fighters and placed them in central squares. Following this defeat in southern Greece, DSE continued to operate in Northern Greece and some islands, but as a greatly weakened force facing significant obstacles both politically and militarily.
At the same time, the National Army found a talented commander in General Alexander Papagos
, commander of the Greek Army during the Greco-Italian War
. In August 1949, Papagos launched a major counter-offensive against DSE forces in northern Greece, code-named "Operation Torch". The campaign was a victory for the National Army, and resulted in heavy losses for the DSE. The DSE army was now no longer able to sustain resistance in set piece battles. By September 1949, the main body of DSE Divisions defending Grammos and Vitsi, the two key positions in northern Greece for DSE, had retreated to Albania, while two main groups remained within the borders, trying to reconnect with scattered DSE fighters largely in Central Greece.
These groups, numbering 1,000 fighters, exited Greek borders by the end of September 1949, while the main body of DSE, accompanied by its HQ, after discussion with the USSR's Communist Party and other Socialist governments, was moved to the capital of Uzbekistan, Tashkent. They were to remain there, in military encampments, for three years. Other older combatants, alongside injured fighters, women and children, were relocated to European socialist states. On October 16, Zachariadis
announced a "temporary ceasefire to prevent the complete annihilation of Greece"; the ceasefire marked the end of the Greek Civil War.
Almost 100,000 ELAS fighters and communist sympathizers, able to serve in DSE ranks, were imprisoned, exiled or, in some cases, executed. This deprived the DSE of the principal force able to support its fight. According to some historians, the KKE's major supporter and supplier had always been Tito, and it was the rift between Tito and the KKE that marked the real demise of the party's efforts to assert power.
Greek right-wingers and Western Allied governments saw the end of the Greek Civil War as a victory in the Cold War against the Soviet Union; left-wingers countered that the Soviets never actively supported the Communist Party's efforts to seize power in Greece. Both sides had, at differing junctures, nevertheless looked to an external superpower for support.
and Makronisos
. Many others sought refuge in communist countries or emigrated to Australia, Germany, the USA, UK, Canada and elsewhere.
The polarization and instability of Greek politics in the mid-1960s was a direct result of the Civil War and the deep divide between the leftist and rightist sections of Greek society. A major crisis showing this was the murder of the left-wing politician Gregoris Lambrakis
in 1963 (the inspiration for the Costa Gavras political thriller, Z
). The crisis of the Apostasia
followed in 1965, together with the "ASPIDA affair", which involved an alleged coup plot by a left-wing group of officers; the group's alleged leader was Andreas Papandreou
, son of George Papandreou
, the leader of the Center Union
political party and the country's prime minister at the time.
On April 21, 1967, a group of rightist and anti-communist army officers executed a coup d'état
and seized power from the government, using the political instability and tension of the time as a pretext. The leader of the coup, George Papadopoulos
, was a member of the right-wing military organization IDEA (Ιερός Δεσμός Ελλήνων Αξιωματικών, "Sacred Bond of Greek Officers"), and the subsequent military regime (later referred to as the Regime of the Colonels
) lasted until 1974.
After the collapse of the military junta, a conservative government under Constantine Karamanlis led to the abolition of monarchy, the legalization of the KKE and a new constitution
, which guaranteed political freedoms, individual rights and free elections. In 1981, in a major turning point in Greek history, the center-left government of PASOK
allowed DSE veterans who had taken refuge in communist countries to return to Greece and reestablish their former estates (Slavic Macedonians excluded); this greatly helped diminish the consequences of the Civil War in Greek society. The PASOK administration also offered state pensions to former partisans of the anti-Nazi resistance; Markos Vafiadis
was honorarily elected as member of the Greek Parliament under PASOK's flag.
In 1989, the coalition government between Nea Dimokratia and the Coalition of Left and Progress (SYNASPISMOS) - in which the KKE was for a period the major force - suggested a law that was passed unanimously by the Greek Parliament, formally recognizing the 1946-1949 war as a Civil War
and not merely as a communist insurgency ("Συμμοριτοπόλεμος") ( Ν. 1863/89 (ΦΕΚ 204Α΄) ). Under the terms of this law, the war of 1946-1949 was recognized as a Greek Civil War between the National Army and the Democratic Army of Greece, for the first time in Greek postwar history. Under the aforementioned law, the term "communist bandits" (Κομμουνιστοσυμμορίτες, ΚΣ), wherever it had occurred in Greek law, was replaced by the term "Fighters of the DSE".
In a 2008 Gallup
poll, Greeks were asked "whether it was better that the right wing won the Civil War". 43% responded that it was better for Greece that the right wing won, 13% responded that it would have been better if the left had won, 20% responded "neither" and 24% did not respond. When asked "which side they would have supported had they lived in that era", 39% responded "neither side", 14% responded "the right wing", 23% "the left wing" while 24% did not respond.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and the Democratic Army of Greece
Democratic Army of Greece
This article is based on a translation of an article from the Greek Wikipedia.The Democratic Army of Greece , often simply abbreviated to its initials DSE , was the army founded by the Communist Party of Greece during the Greek Civil War, 1946–1949...
(ΔΣΕ) (Greek initials DSE), the military branch of the Greek Communist Party
Communist Party of Greece
Founded in 1918, the Communist Party of Greece , better known by its acronym, ΚΚΕ , is the oldest party on the Greek political scene.- Foundation :...
(KKE), backed by Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
, Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
and Albania
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...
. It was the result of a highly polarized struggle between leftists and rightists which started in 1943 and targeted the power vacuum that the German-Italian occupation during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
had created. One of the first conflicts of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, according to some analysts it represents the first example of postwar British and American interference in the internal politics of a foreign country.
The first signs of the civil war occurred in 1942–1944, during the Occupation. With the Greek government in exile
Greek government in exile
The Greek government in exile was the official government of Greece, headed by King George II, which evacuated from Athens in April 1941, after the German invasion of the country, first to the island of Crete and then to Cairo in Egypt. Hence it is also referred to as the "Cairo Government"...
unable to influence the situation at home, various resistance groups of differing political affiliations emerged, the dominant one being the leftist National Liberation Front (EAM), controlled effectively by the KKE
Communist Party of Greece
Founded in 1918, the Communist Party of Greece , better known by its acronym, ΚΚΕ , is the oldest party on the Greek political scene.- Foundation :...
. Starting in autumn 1943, friction among EAM and the other resistance groups resulted in scattered clashes, which continued until the spring of 1944, when an agreement was reached forming a national unity government which included six EAM-affiliated ministers.
The prelude of the civil war occurred in December 1944, approximately 3 months after the country had been liberated. A bloody battle (The "Dekemvriana") erupted in Athens after government and British soldiers opened fire on a massive peaceful demonstration organized by EAM against the disputed order for the disarmament of the left-wing guerrilla forces. The result was the defeat of EAM forces. The defeat of EAM forces spelled the end of its ascendancy: ELAS (the military arm of EAM) was partly disarmed, while EAM continued its political action as a multi-party organization. Tensions remained high however, as clashes between right and left-wing factions continued.
The civil war erupted in 1946 when forces of former ELAS partizans that found shelter in their hideouts and were controlled by the KKE, organized the Democratic Army of Greece
Democratic Army of Greece
This article is based on a translation of an article from the Greek Wikipedia.The Democratic Army of Greece , often simply abbreviated to its initials DSE , was the army founded by the Communist Party of Greece during the Greek Civil War, 1946–1949...
(DSE) and its High Command HQ. KKE backed up the whole endeavor, deciding that there are no more political means to use against the right wing that had an international recognition of their government formed after the 1946 elections
Greek legislative election, 1946
These elections were marked by:* The marked abstention of voters, caused by the abstention of Communist Party of Greece, and the effects of the civil war , because of which many citizens either could not or chose not to vote....
(boycotted by KKE). The Communists formed the Provisional Government and used DSE as the military branch of this government. The neighboring Socialist States of Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria offered logistic support to the Provisional Government - especially in the forces operating in the North.
Despite initial failures by the government forces from 1946 until 1948, increased American aid, lack of high numbers of recruits to the ranks of DSE and the side-effects of the Tito–Stalin split, led to victory for the government forces.
The final victory of the Western-supported government forces led to Greece's membership in NATO, and helped to define the ideological balance of power in the Aegean
Aegean Sea
The Aegean Sea[p] is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey. In the north, it is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea by the Dardanelles and Bosporus...
for the entire Cold War. The civil war also left Greece with a vehemently anti-communist security establishment, which would lead to the establishment of the Greek military junta of 1967–1974, and a legacy of political polarization which lasted until the 1980s.
Origins
The origins of the civil war lie in the divisions created during WWI over which side to support, as well as the occupation of Greece by Nazi GermanyNazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, Bulgaria and Italy
Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)
The Kingdom of Italy was a state forged in 1861 by the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which was its legal predecessor state...
from April 1941 to late October 1944. While Axis forces approached Athens in April 1941 King George II
George II of Greece
George II reigned as King of Greece from 1922 to 1924 and from 1935 to 1947.-Early life, first period of kingship and exile:George was born at the royal villa at Tatoi, near Athens, the eldest son of King Constantine I of Greece and his wife, Princess Sophia of Prussia...
and his government escaped to Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, where they proclaimed a government-in-exile
Greek government in exile
The Greek government in exile was the official government of Greece, headed by King George II, which evacuated from Athens in April 1941, after the German invasion of the country, first to the island of Crete and then to Cairo in Egypt. Hence it is also referred to as the "Cairo Government"...
, recognised by the Western Allies, but not by the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. The Western Allies (Winston Churchill in particular) encouraged, and even coerced, the King to appoint a moderate cabinet.
As a result, only two of his ministers were previous members of the 4th of August dictatorship
4th of August Regime
The 4th of August Regime , commonly also known as the Metaxas Regime , was an authoritarian regime under the leadership of General Ioannis Metaxas that ruled Greece from 1936 to 1941...
under Ioannis Metaxas
Ioannis Metaxas
Ioannis Metaxas was a Greek general, politician, and dictator, serving as Prime Minister of Greece from 1936 until his death in 1941...
, which with the blessings of the King himself had seized power with a coup d'état and governed the country since August 1936. Nevertheless, the exiled government's inability to influence the affairs inside Greece rendered it irrelevant in the minds of most Greek people. At the same time, the Germans set up a collaborationist government in Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
, which lacked legitimacy and support. The puppet regime was further undermined when economic mismanagement in wartime conditions created runaway inflation, acute food shortages and even famine amongst the civilian population.
The power vacuum that the occupation created was filled by several resistance movements that ranged from pro-Royalist to Communist ideologies. Resistance was born first in Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, where Bulgarian troops occupied Greek territories. Soon large demonstrations were organized in many cities by the Defenders of Northern Greece (YVE), a patriotic organization. But the largest group to emerge was the National Liberation Front (EAM), founded on 27 September 1941 by representatives of four left-wing parties. Proclaiming that it followed the Soviet policy of creating a broad united front
Popular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
against fascism, EAM, as it became known in Greek, won the support of many non-communist patriots.
These resistance groups launched attacks against the occupying powers and set up large espionage networks. But the communist leaders of EAM planned that it would dominate in the post-war Greece, so, usually by force, they tried to take up or destroy the other resistance-groups in Greece (like the destruction of EKKA, and the murder of its leader Dimitrios Psarros
Dimitrios Psarros
Dimitrios Psarros was a Greek army officer and resistance leader. He was the founder and leader of the resistance group National and Social Liberation , the third-most significant organization of the Greek Resistance movement after the National Liberation Front and the National Republican Greek...
by ELAS partisans. When liberation came in October 1944, Greece was in a state of crisis, which soon led to the outbreak of civil war.
It soon became the largest mass organization in Greek history, numbering nearly 2,000,000 in 1944. Although controlled by the KKE, the organization had a modest democratic republican
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
rhetoric. Its military wing, the Greek People's Liberation Army, or ELAS, was founded in February 1942. Aris Velouchiotis
Aris Velouchiotis
Aris Velouchiotis , the nom de guerre of Athanasios Klaras , was the most prominent leader and chief instigator of the Greek People's Liberation Army , the military branch of the National Liberation Front , which was the major resistance organization in occupied Greece from 1942 to 1945...
, a member of KKE's Central Committee, was nominated Chief (Kapetanios) of the ELAS High Command. The military chief, Stefanos Sarafis
Stefanos Sarafis
Stefanos Sarafis was an officer of the Hellenic Army who played an important role during the Greek Resistance.- Early life and career :Sarafis was born at Trikala in 1890, and studied law in the University of Athens. During the Balkan Wars, he enlisted in the Greek Army as a sergeant, and was...
, was a colonel in the pre-war Greek Army who had been dismissed during the Metaxas regime due to his democratic views. The political chief of EAM was Vasilis Samariniotis (nom de guerre of Andreas Tzimas).
The Organization for the Protection of the People's Struggle (OPLA) was founded as EAM's security militia, operating mainly in the occupied cities and most particularly Athens. Furthermore, a small Greek People's Liberation Navy (ELAN) existed, operating mostly around the Ionian Islands and some other coastal areas. Other communist-aligned organizations were present, including the NOF, comprised mostly by Slavic Macedonians in the Florina
Florina
Florina is a town and municipality in mountainous northwestern Macedonia, Greece. Its motto is, 'Where Greece begins'. It is also the Metropolitan seat for the region. It lies in the central part of Florina peripheral unit, of which it is the capital. Florina belongs to the periphery of West...
region. They would later play a critical role in the civil war. The two other large resistance movements were the National Republican Greek League (EDES), led by republican former army officer Colonel Napoleon Zervas
Napoleon Zervas
Napoleon Zervas was a Greek general and resistance leader during World War II. He organized and led the National Republican Greek League , the second most significant , in terms of size and activity, resistance organization against the Axis Occupation of Greece.-Early life and army career:Zervas...
, and the social-liberal National and Social Liberation (EKKA), led by Colonel Dimitrios Psarros
Dimitrios Psarros
Dimitrios Psarros was a Greek army officer and resistance leader. He was the founder and leader of the resistance group National and Social Liberation , the third-most significant organization of the Greek Resistance movement after the National Liberation Front and the National Republican Greek...
.
The Greek landscape was favourable to guerilla operations, and by 1943 the Axis forces and their collaborators were in control only of the main towns and connecting roads, leaving the mountainous countryside to the resistance. EAM-ELAS in particular controlled most of the country's mountainous interior, while EDES was limited to Epirus
Epirus (region)
Epirus is a geographical and historical region in southeastern Europe, shared between Greece and Albania. It lies between the Pindus Mountains and the Ionian Sea, stretching from the Bay of Vlorë in the north to the Ambracian Gulf in the south...
and EKKA to eastern Central Greece
Central Greece
Continental Greece or Central Greece , colloquially known as Roúmeli , is a geographical region of Greece. Its territory is divided into the administrative regions of Central Greece, Attica, and part of West Greece...
. By early 1944, ELAS could call on nearly 25,000 men under arms, with another 80,000 working as reserves or logistical support, EDES roughly 10,000 men, and EKKA under 10,000 men.
To combat the rising influence of the EAM, and fearful of an eventual takeover after the German defeat, in 1943, Ioannis Rallis
Ioannis Rallis
Ioannis Rallis was the third and last collaborationist prime minister of Greece during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II, holding office from 7 April 1943 to 12 October 1944, succeeding Konstantinos Logothetopoulos in the Nazi-controlled Greek puppet government in Athens.- Early...
, the conservative Prime Minister of the collaborationist government, authorized the creation of paramilitary forces, known as the Security Battalions
Security Battalions
The Security Battalions were Greek collaborationist military groups, formed during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II in order to support the German occupation troops.- History :...
. Numbering 20,000 men at their peak in 1944, composed mostly of local fascists, convicts, and sympathetic prisoners of war, as well as forcibly conscripted soldiers, they operated under German command in anti-partisan operations, and soon achieved a reputation for brutality.
EAM-ELAS, EDES and EKKA were mutually suspicious, and tensions were exacerbated as the end of the war became nearer, and the question of the country's political future arose. The role of the British military mission in these events proved decisive. To EAM, London's preferences were clear: although EAM was by far the largest and most active group, due to their persistence to achieve their own political goals (not always with actions against axis' powers) in order to dominate on post-war Greece, British material support was directed mostly to the more reliable Zervas, who by 1943 had reversed his earlier anti-monarchist stance.
The first conflicts: 1942-1944
The Western Allies at first provided all resistance organizations with funds and equipment, giving special preference to ELAS, whom they saw as the most reliable partner and a formidable fighting force that would be able to create more problems for the Axis than other resistance movements. However, as the end of the war approached, the British Foreign Office, fearing a possible communist upsurge, observed with displeasure the transformation of ELAS into a large-scale conventional army more and more out of Allied control. After the September 8, 1943 Armistice with ItalyArmistice with Italy
The Armistice with Italy was an armistice signed on September 3 and publicly declared on September 8, 1943, during World War II, between Italy and the Allied armed forces, who were then occupying the southern end of the country, entailing the capitulation of Italy...
, ELAS seized control of Italian garrison weapons in Greece. In response, the Western Allies began to favor rival anti-communist resistance groups. They provided them with ammunition, supplies and logistical support as a way of balancing ELAS’s increasing influence. In time, the flow of weapons and funds to ELAS stopped altogether, with rival EDES enjoying the bulk of the Allied support.
In mid-1943, the animosity between EAM-ELAS and the other movements took the form of an armed conflict. The communists and EAM accused EDES of being traitors and collaborators, and vice versa. Other smaller groups, such as EKKA, continued the anti-occupation fight with sabotage and other actions. They declined to join the ranks of ELAS, and were systematically murdered by the Communists. While few organizations did accept assistance from the Nazis in their operations against EAM-ELAS, the great majority of the population refused any form of cooperation with the occupation authorities.
By early 1944, after a British-negotiated ceasefire (the Plaka Agreement), EAM-ELAS had destroyed EKKA and confined EDES to a small part of Epirus
Epirus (region)
Epirus is a geographical and historical region in southeastern Europe, shared between Greece and Albania. It lies between the Pindus Mountains and the Ionian Sea, stretching from the Bay of Vlorë in the north to the Ambracian Gulf in the south...
, where it could only play a marginal role in the rest of the war. Their political network (EAM) had reached about 500,000 citizens around the country. By 1944, the numbers of the armed forces favored ELAS, having more than 50,000 men in arms and an extra 500,000 working as reserves or logistic support personnel (Efedrikos ELAS). In contrast, EDES had around 10,000 fighters and EKKA around 10,000 men.
Security Battalions
The Security Battalions were Greek collaborationist military groups, formed during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II in order to support the German occupation troops.- History :...
, with both sides engaged in several skirmishes. The ELAS units were accused of the Meligalas
Meligalas
Meligalas is a village and a former municipality in Messenia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Oichalia, of which it is a municipal unit...
massacre. Meligalas was the headquarters of a local Security Battalion Unit that was given the control of the wider area of Messenia by the Nazis, After a battle there between ELAS and the security battalions, ELAS forces prevailed and the remaining forces of the collaborators were taken into custody (according to several references). In the later years, the post-civil war governments declared that 10,500 members of the collaborationist units were massacred along with civilians by the communists, number that never met the real bodies found in the mass grave (an old well in the area) . According to left-wing sources, civilian bodies found there could have been victims of the Security Battalions. As Security Battalions were replacing occupation forces in territories that Germans could not enter, they were accused of numerous instances of brutality against civilians and captured partisans, as well as the executions of prominent EAM and KKE members by hanging.
In addition, recruiting by both sides was controversial, as the case of Stefanos Sarafis
Stefanos Sarafis
Stefanos Sarafis was an officer of the Hellenic Army who played an important role during the Greek Resistance.- Early life and career :Sarafis was born at Trikala in 1890, and studied law in the University of Athens. During the Balkan Wars, he enlisted in the Greek Army as a sergeant, and was...
indicates. The soon-to-be military leader of ELAS sought to join the non-communist resistance group commanded by Kostopoulos in Thessaly
Thessaly
Thessaly is a traditional geographical region and an administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, and appears thus in Homer's Odyssey....
, along with other former officers. On their way, they were captured by an ELAS group, with Sarafis agreeing to join ELAS at gunpoint when all other officers who refused were killed.
Sarafis never admitted this incident, and in his book on ELAS makes special reference to the letter he sent all officers of the former Greek Army to join the ranks of EAM-ELAS. Again, numbers favoured the EAM organization; Nearly 800 officers of the pre-war Greek Army joined the ranks of ELAS with the position of military leader and Kapetanios.
Egypt "mutiny" and the Lebanon conference
In March 1944, EAM established the Political Committee of National LiberationPolitical Committee of National Liberation
The Political Committee of National Liberation , commonly known as the "Mountain Government" was a communist-dominated government established in Greece in 1944 in opposition to both the collaborationist German-controlled government at Athens and to the royal government-in-exile in Cairo...
(Politiki Epitropi Ethnikis Apeleftherosis, or PEEA), in effect a third Greek government to rival those in Athens and Cairo. "to intensify the struggle against the conquerors... for full national liberation, for the consolidation of the independence and integrity of our country... and for the annihilation of domestic Fascism and armed traitor formations." PEEA consisted not only of communists but also of progressives, who had nothing to do with communist ideas.
The moderate aims of the PEEA (known as "κυβέρνηση του βουνού", "the Mountain Government") aroused support even among Greeks in exile. In April 1944 the Greek armed forces in Egypt, many of them well-disposed towards EAM, demanded that a Government of National Unity be established, based on PEEA principles, and replace the government-in-exile
Greek government in exile
The Greek government in exile was the official government of Greece, headed by King George II, which evacuated from Athens in April 1941, after the German invasion of the country, first to the island of Crete and then to Cairo in Egypt. Hence it is also referred to as the "Cairo Government"...
as it had no political or other link with the occupied home country. The movement was suppressed by British forces and Greek forces loyal to the exiled government. Approximately 80,000 Greek soldiers and officers were sent into prison camps in Libya, Sudan, Egypt and South Africa.
Later on, through political screening of the officers, the Cairo government created the III Greek Mountain Brigade, composed of staunchly anti-Communist personnel, under the command of Brigadier Thrasyvoulos Tsakalotos
Thrasyvoulos Tsakalotos
Thrasyvoulos Tsakalotos , was a Hellenic Army officer who served in World War I, the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922 and World War II, rising to become Chief of the Hellenic Army General Staff....
.
In May 1944, representatives from all political parties and resistance groups came together at a conference in Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
, seeking an agreement about a government of national unity. Despite EAM's accusations of collaboration made against all other Greek forces, and charges against EAM-ELAS members of murders, banditry and thievery, the conference ended with an agreement for a government of national unity consisting of 24 ministers (6 of whom were EAM members). The agreement was made possible by Soviet directives to KKE to avoid harming Allied unity, but did not resolve the problem of disarmament of resistance groups.
From the Lebanon conference to the outbreak
By the summer of 1944, it was obvious that the Germans would soon withdraw from Greece, as the armed forces of the Soviet UnionSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
were advancing into Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
and towards Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
, and the Germans risked being cut off. In September, General Tolbukhin
Fyodor Tolbukhin
Fyodor Ivanovich Tolbukhin was a Soviet military commander.-Biography:Tolbukhin was born into a peasant family in the province of Yaroslavl, north-east of Moscow. He volunteered for the Imperial Army in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I. He was steadily promoted, advancing from private to...
's armies advanced into Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
, forcing the resignation of the country's pro-Nazi government and the establishment of a pro-communist regime, while Bulgarian troops withdrew from Greek Macedonia. The government-in-exile, now led by prominent liberal George Papandreou
George Papandreou (senior)
Georgios Papandreou was a Greek politician, the founder of the Papandreou political dynasty. He served three terms as Prime Minister of Greece...
, moved to Caserta
Caserta
Caserta is the capital of the province of Caserta in the Campania region of Italy. It is an important agricultural, commercial and industrial comune and city. Caserta is located on the edge of the Campanian plain at the foot of the Campanian Subapennine mountain range...
, Italy, in preparation for its return to Greece. Under the Caserta Agreement of September 1944, all resistance forces in Greece were placed under the command of a British officer, General Ronald Scobie
Ronald Scobie
Lieutenant-General Sir Ronald MacKenzie Scobie KBE, CB, MC was a British Army officer who commanded III Corps.-Military career:...
.
The Western Allies
Western Allies
The Western Allies were a political and geographic grouping among the Allied Powers of the Second World War. It generally includes the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth, the United States, France and various other European and Latin American countries, but excludes China, the Soviet Union,...
arrived in Greece in October, by which time the Germans were in full retreat and most of Greece's territory had already been liberated by Greek partisans. On October 13, British troops entered Athens, the only area still occupied by the Germans, and Papandreou and his ministers followed six days later. The King stayed in Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
, because Papandreou had promised that the future of the monarchy
Monarchy
A monarchy is a form of government in which the office of head of state is usually held until death or abdication and is often hereditary and includes a royal house. In some cases, the monarch is elected...
would be decided by referendum
Referendum
A referendum is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal. This may result in the adoption of a new constitution, a constitutional amendment, a law, the recall of an elected official or simply a specific government policy. It is a form of...
.
At this point there was little to prevent ELAS from taking full control of the country. With the German withdrawal, ELAS units had taken control not only of the countryside but of most cities as well. However, they did not take full control because the KKE leadership was instructed by the Soviet Union not to precipitate a crisis that could jeopardize Allied unity and put Stalin's
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
larger post-war objectives at risk. KKE’s leadership knew this, but ELAS's fighters and rank-and-file communists did not, which became a source of conflict within both EAM and ELAS.
Following Stalin's instructions, KKE’s leadership tried to avoid a confrontation with the Papandreou government. The majority of ELAS members saw the Western Allies as liberators, although some KKE leaders, such as Andreas Tzimas and Aris Velouchiotis
Aris Velouchiotis
Aris Velouchiotis , the nom de guerre of Athanasios Klaras , was the most prominent leader and chief instigator of the Greek People's Liberation Army , the military branch of the National Liberation Front , which was the major resistance organization in occupied Greece from 1942 to 1945...
, did not trust them. Tzimas was in touch with the Yugoslav Communist leader Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz Tito
Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...
, and he disagreed with ELAS's co-operation with the Western Allied forces.
The issue of disarming the resistance organizations was a cause of friction between the Papandreou government and its EAM members. Advised by the British ambassador Reginald Leeper
Reginald Leeper
Sir Reginald Wildig Allen Leeper was a British civil servant and diplomat. He was the founder of the British Council....
, Papandreou demanded the disarmament of all armed forces apart from the Sacred Band
Sacred Band (World War II)
The Sacred band was a Greek special forces unit formed in 1942 in the Middle East, composed entirely of Greek officers and officer cadets under the command of Col. Christodoulos Tsigantes. It fought alongside the SAS in the Libyan desert and the Aegean, as well as with General Leclerc's Free...
and the III Mountain Brigade
3rd Greek Mountain Brigade
The 3rd Greek Mountain Brigade was a unit of mountain infantry formed by the Greek government in exile in Egypt during World War II. It was formed from politically reliable right-wing and pro-royalist personnel following a pro-EAM mutiny among the Greek armed forces in Egypt in April 1944...
, which were formed following the suppression of the April 1944 Egypt Mutiny, and the constitution of a National Guard under government control. EAM, believing that this would leave ELAS defenseless against right-wing militias, submitted an alternative plan of total and simultaneous disarmament. Papandreou rejected this plan, causing EAM ministers to resign from the government on December 2. On December 1, Scobie issued a proclamation calling for the dissolution of ELAS. Command of ELAS was KKE's greatest source of strength, and the KKE leader Siantos decided that the demand for ELAS's dissolution must be resisted.
Tito's influence may have played some role in ELAS's resistance to disarmament. Tito was outwardly loyal to Stalin but had come to power through his own forces and believed that the Communist Greeks should do the same. His influence, however, had not prevented the EAM leadership from putting its forces under Scobie's command a couple of months earlier, in accordance with to the Caserta Agreement.
In the meanwhile, following Grivas' instructions, Organization X
Organization of National Resistance of the Interior X (Chi)
The Organization of National Resistance of the Interior X , commonly known as Organization X or simply X , was a resistance group formed during the Axis occupation of Greece, in June 1941...
members had set up many outposts in central Athens and resisted EAM for several days, until British troops arrived, as their leader had been promised.
The Dekemvriana
On December 1, 1944, General Scobie (the British head of the Allied forces in Greece at that time) officially announced an ultimatum for the general disarmament of all guerrilla forces by 10 December, excluding those allied to the government (the 3rd Greek Mountain Brigade and the Sacred Squadron). As a result, six ministers of the EAM, most of whom were KKE members, resigned from their positions in the "National Unity" government, and a demonstration was organized by EAM on December 3 that involved at least 200,000 people . According to an account of a person participating in the shootings, that day the police, covered by British troops, had been ordered to open fire on the crowd. The shootings began when the marchers had arrived at the Tomb of the Unknown SoldierTomb of the Unknown Soldier
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier refers to a grave in which the unidentifiable remains of a soldier are interred. Such tombs can be found in many nations and are usually high-profile national monuments. Throughout history, many soldiers have died in wars without their remains being identified...
, originating from the side of the building of the General Police Headquarters, across from the Grande Bretagne
Grande Bretagne
The Grande Bretagne is a luxury city hotel in Greece, one of the most luxurious in southeastern Europe. It is located in central Athens immediately adjacent to Syntagma Square, on the corner of Vasileos Georgiou A' and Panepistimiou Streets, and is now part of "The Luxury Collection" hotel chain,...
hotel (where international observers had settled), the hotel itself, the Parliament (Βουλή) and from other governmental buildings. The British commander Woodhouse suggests it is uncertain whether the first shots were fired by the police or the demonstrators. More than 28 demonstrators were killed 148 were injured. This signaled the beginning of the "Dekemvriana" , a 37-day period of full-scale fighting in Athens between EAM fighters and smaller parts of ELAS, and the forces of the British Army and the government.
At the beginning, the government had only a few policemen and gendarmes, some militia units, the 3rd Mountain Brigade distinguished at the Gothic Line offensive in Italy, which, however, lacked heavy weapons, and the royalist group X
Organization of National Resistance of the Interior X (Chi)
The Organization of National Resistance of the Interior X , commonly known as Organization X or simply X , was a resistance group formed during the Axis occupation of Greece, in June 1941...
, also known as 'Chítes' (Χίτες), which was accused by EAM of collaborating with the Nazis. Consequently the British intervened in support of the government, freely using artillery and aircraft as the battle approached its last stages. On December 4 Papandreou gave his resignation to the British Commander, General Scobie, who rejected it. By December 12 ΕΑΜ was in control of most of Athens and Piraeus
Piraeus
Piraeus is a city in the region of Attica, Greece. Piraeus is located within the Athens Urban Area, 12 km southwest from its city center , and lies along the east coast of the Saronic Gulf....
. The British, outnumbered, flew in the 4th Indian Infantry Division from Italy as emergency reinforcements. Although the British were openly fighting against EAM in Athens, there were no such battles in the rest of Greece. In certain cases, such as Volos, some RAF units even surrendered equipment to ELAS fighters.
Conflicts continued throughout December with the forces confronting EAM slowly gaining the upper hand. Curiously, ELAS forces in the rest of Greece did not attack the British. It seems that ELAS preferred to avoid an armed confrontation with the British forces initially and later tried to reduce the conflict as much as possible, although poor communication between its much independent units around the country might also have played a role. This might explain the simultaneous struggle against the British, the large-scale ELAS operations against Trotskyists
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
and other political dissidents in Athens, and the many contradictory decisions of EAM leaders. Videlicet, KKE's leadership, was supporting a doctrine of "national unity" while eminent members, such as Stringos, Makridis and even Georgios Siantos, were creating revolutionary plans. Even more curiously, Tito was both the KKE's key sponsor and a key British ally, owing his physical and political survival in 1944 to British assistance.
This outbreak of fighting between Allied forces and an anti-German European resistance movement, while the war in Europe was still being fought, was a serious political problem for Churchill's coalition government of left and right, and caused much protest in the British press and the House of Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
. To prove his peace-making intentions to the public, Churchill himself arrived in Athens on December 25 and presided over a conference, in which Soviet representatives also participated, to bring about a settlement. It failed because the EAM/ELAS demands were considered excessive and, thus, rejected.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
remained passive about developments in Greece. True to their "percentages agreement
Percentages agreement
The percentages agreement was an alleged agreement between Soviet premier Joseph Stalin and British prime minister Winston Churchill about how to divide southeastern Europe into spheres of influence during the Fourth Moscow Conference, in 1944 . This agreement was made public by Churchill...
" with Britain relating to Greece, the Soviet delegation in Greece did not encourage or discourage EAM's ambitions, as Greece belonged to the British sphere of influence. The delegation's chief gained the nickname "sphinx" among the local communist officers for not giving any clues about Soviet intentions. Pravda
Pravda
Pravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....
did not mention the clashes at all. It appears that Stalin didn't intend to avert the Dekemvriana, as he would profit no matter the outcome. If EAM rose to power, he would gain a country of major strategic value. If not, he could use British actions in Greece to justify similar actions in countries in his own sphere of influence.
By early January, EAM forces had lost the battle. As a result of Churchill's intervention, Papandreou resigned and was replaced by General Nikolaos Plastiras
Nikolaos Plastiras
Nikolaos Plastiras was a Greek general and politician, who served thrice as Prime Minister of Greece. A distinguished soldier and known for his personal bravery, he was known as "O Mavros Kavalaris" during the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922...
. On January 15, 1945, Scobie agreed to a ceasefire in exchange for ELAS' withdrawal from its positions at Patras
Patras
Patras , ) is Greece's third largest urban area and the regional capital of West Greece, located in northern Peloponnese, 215 kilometers west of Athens...
and Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki , historically also known as Thessalonica, Salonika or Salonica, is the second-largest city in Greece and the capital of the region of Central Macedonia as well as the capital of the Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace...
, and its demobilization in the Peloponnese. Despite this severe defeat, ELAS continued to exist and the KKE had an opportunity to reconsider its strategy.
KKE's defeat in 1945 was mainly political but the exaltation of terrorism on the communist side made a political settlement even more difficult. The hunting of "collaborators" was extended to people who had not been involved in collaboration, but they were supporting the Greek government.. It is remarkable the cruelty that OPLA and some other communist groups showed against their opponents (including politicians, policemen, professors, priests etc), while they were killing them; something that increased the anti-communist fury on the other side. Also, several trotskyists had to leave the country in fear for their lives (Cornelius Castoriadis
Cornelius Castoriadis
Cornelius Castoriadis was a Greek philosopher, social critic, economist, psychoanalyst, author of The Imaginary Institution of Society, and co-founder of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group.-Early life in Athens:...
fled to France). As a result of the fighting in Athens, most of the prominent non-communists of EAM left the organization and KKE support declined sharply.
Interlude: 1945-1946
In February 1945, the various Greek parties signed the Treaty of VarkizaTreaty of Varkiza
The Treaty of Varkiza was signed in Varkiza on February 12, 1945 between the Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece for EAM-ELAS...
, with the support of all the Allies. This provided for the complete demobilization of ELAS and all other paramilitary groups, amnesty for only political offenses, a referendum on the monarchy, and a general election to be held as soon as possible. The KKE remained legal, and its leader Nikolaos Zachariadis
Nikolaos Zachariadis
Nikolaos Zachariadis was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece from 1931 to 1956.-Early life:Born in Adrianopole in 1903, the son of an employee of the Ottoman tobacco monopoly. He worked as a seaman on the Black Sea, where he came under the influence of the Bolshevik Revolution...
, who returned from Germany in April 1945, said that the KKE's objective was now for a "people's democracy" to be achieved by peaceful means. This objective had dissenters, of course, such as former ELAS leader Aris Velouchiotis
Aris Velouchiotis
Aris Velouchiotis , the nom de guerre of Athanasios Klaras , was the most prominent leader and chief instigator of the Greek People's Liberation Army , the military branch of the National Liberation Front , which was the major resistance organization in occupied Greece from 1942 to 1945...
. The KKE renounced Velouchiotis when he called on the veteran guerrillas to start a second struggle; shortly afterwards, he committed suicide, surrounded by the security forces.
The Treaty of Varkiza transformed the KKE's political defeat into a military one. ELAS's existence was terminated. The amnesty was not comprehensive, because many actions during the German occupation and Dekemvriana were classified as criminal, exempting them from the amnesty. Thus, the authorities captured approximately 40,000 communists or ex-ELAS members. As a result, a number of veteran partisans hid their weapons in the mountains, and 5,000 of them escaped to Yugoslavia
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...
, although the KKE leadership did not encourage this.
Between 1945–1946, right-wing gangs killed about 1,190 pro-communist civilians and tortured many others. Entire villages that had helped the partisans were attacked by the gangs. According to right-wing citizens, these gangs were "retaliating" for their suffering during the ELAS reign. The reign of "White Terror" led many persecuted ex-ELAS members to form self-defense troops, without any KKE approval.
KKE soon reversed its former political position, as relations between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies deteriorated. With the onset of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, communist parties everywhere moved to more militant positions. This change of political attitude, and the choice to escalate the crisis, derived primarily from the conclusion that regime subversion, which had not been successful in December 1944, could now be achieved. The KKE leadership decided in February 1946, "after weighing domestic factors, and the Balkan and international situation", to go forward with "organization of a new armed struggle against the Monarcho-Fascist regime." The KKE boycotted the March 1946 elections, which were won by the monarchist United Patriotic Party (Inomeni Parataxis Ethnikofronon), the main member of which was Konstantinos Tsaldaris
Konstantinos Tsaldaris
Konstantinos Tsaldaris was a Greek politician and twice Prime Minister of Greece.Tsaldaris was born in Alexandria, Egypt. He studied law at the University of Athens as well as Berlin, London and Florence...
' People's Party
People's Party (Greece)
The People's Party of Greece was a conservative and pro-monarchist political party founded by Dimitrios Gounaris, the main political rival of Eleftherios Venizelos and his Liberal Party. The party existed from 1920 until 1958....
. In September, a referendum
Greek plebiscite, 1946
In 1946, a new plebiscite took place regarding the form of Greece's regime and whether the Greek people would once again decide upon a king or not. For the third time the royal position of George II was at stake. Nonetheless, the final result constituted an expected triumph that cannot be analyzed...
favored the retention of the monarchy, though the KKE disputed the results, and King George returned to Athens.
The King's return to Greece reinforced British influence in the country. Nigel Clive, then a liaison officer to the Greek Government and later the head of the Athens station of MI6, stated that "Greece was a kind of British protectorate, but the British ambassador was not a colonial governor." There were to be six changes of prime ministers within just two years, an indication of the instability that would characterize the country's political life over that period.
The crest: 1946-1948
Fighting resumed in March 1946, as a gang of 30 ex-ELAS members, most of whom were persecuted, attacked a police station in the village of LitochoroLitochoro
Litochoro is a town and a former municipality in the southern part of the Pieria regional unit, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Dio-Olympos, of which it is the seat and a municipal unit. It is located at the base of Mount Olympus, on the western shore...
. The next day, the official KKE paper
Rizospastis
Rizospastis is the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Greece. It is published daily. It was first published in 1916. Some of the more prominent editors in it are Nikos Boyiopoulos and Liana Kanelli.-Motto:...
’s coversheet announced, "Authorities and gangs fabricate alleged communist attacks". Contemporaneously, armed bands of ELAS veterans infiltrated Greece through mountainous regions near the Yugoslav and Albanian borders; they were now organized as the Democratic Army of Greece
Democratic Army of Greece
This article is based on a translation of an article from the Greek Wikipedia.The Democratic Army of Greece , often simply abbreviated to its initials DSE , was the army founded by the Communist Party of Greece during the Greek Civil War, 1946–1949...
(Dimokratikos Stratos Elladas, DSE), under the command of the ELAS veteran Markos Vafiadis
Markos Vafiadis
Markos Vafiadis ]], Ottoman Empire, 1906 – Athens, Greece, February 23, 1992) was a leading figure of the Communist Party of Greece during the Greek Civil War.-Pre-war life:...
(known as "General Markos"), operating from a base in Yugoslavia and sent by the KKE to organize already existing troops.
Both the Yugoslav and Albanian communist states supported the DSE fighters, but the Soviet Union remained ambivalent. The KKE kept an open line of communication with the Soviet Communist Party, and its leader Nikos Zachariadis had visited Moscow on more than one occasion. The Soviet Union was backing the Greek communist struggle politically, as demonstrated in several assemblies of the UN Security Council, but was determined not to interfere further in the Greek Civil War. Certain western historians believe it was not part of Stalin's strategy to conduct a war against the Western Allies in Greece, and the Soviets gave little direct support to the KKE campaign.
By late 1946 the DSE was able to deploy about 16,000 partisans, including 5,000 in the Peloponnese and other areas of Greece. According to the DSE, its fighters "resisted the reign of terror that right wing gangs conducted across Greece". In the Peloponnese especially, local party officials, headed by Vangelis Rogakos, had established a plan long before the decision to go to guerrilla war, under which the numbers of partisans operating in the mainland would be inversely proportional to the number of soldiers the enemy would concentrate in the region. According to this study, the DSE III division in the Peloponnese numbered between 1,000 and 5,000 fighters in early 1948.
Rural peasants were caught in the crossfire. When DSE partisans entered a village asking for supplies, citizens were either supportive (years previously, EAM could count on 2 million members across the whole country) or could not resist. When the national army arrived at the same village, citizens who had supplied the partisans were immediately denounced as communist sympathizers, and were usually imprisoned or exiled. Rural areas also suffered as a result of tactics dictated to the National Army by US advisers; as admitted by high-ranking CIA officials in the documentary "NAM: the true story of Vietnam", a very efficient strategy applied during the Greek Civil War, as well as in the Vietnam and Korean wars, was the evacuation of villages under the pretext that they were under direct threat of communist attack. This would deprive supplies and recruits to the partisans, while simultaneously raising antipathy towards them.
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
announced that the United States would step in to support the government of Greece against communist pressure. This began a long and troubled relationship between Greece and the United States. For several decades to come, the US Ambassador advised the King on important issues, such as the appointment of the Prime Minister.
Through 1947 the scale of fighting increased; the DSE launched large-scale attacks on towns across northern Epirus, Thessaly
Thessaly
Thessaly is a traditional geographical region and an administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, and appears thus in Homer's Odyssey....
, Peloponnese and Macedonia
Macedonia (Greece)
Macedonia is a geographical and historical region of Greece in Southern Europe. Macedonia is the largest and second most populous Greek region...
, provoking the Army into massive counter-offensives, themselves meeting no opposition as the DSE melted back into the mountains and its safe havens across the northern borders. In the Peloponnese, where General Georgios Stanotas
Georgios Stanotas
Georgios Stanotas was a Greek cavalry officer who rose to the rank of Lieutenant General.-Early life and career:He was born in the village of Kastanitsa, in the prefecture of Arcadia in the Peloponnese. He left his village early and went to Athens, where, in 1909, he joined the Hellenic Army as a...
was appointed area commander, the DSE suffered heavily, with no way to escape to mainland Greece. In general, army morale was low, and it would be some time before the support of the United States became apparent.
In September 1947, however, the KKE’s leadership decided to move from guerrilla tactics to full-scale conventional war, despite the opposition of Vafiadis
Markos Vafiadis
Markos Vafiadis ]], Ottoman Empire, 1906 – Athens, Greece, February 23, 1992) was a leading figure of the Communist Party of Greece during the Greek Civil War.-Pre-war life:...
. In December, the KKE announced the formation of a Provisional Democratic Government, with Vafiadis as prime minister; this led the Athens government to finally ban the KKE. No foreign government recognized this government. This new strategy led the DSE into costly attempts to seize a major town as its seat of government, and in December 1947 1,200 DSE fighters were killed at a set piece battle around Konitsa
Konitsa
Konitsa is a town in Epirus, Greece, near the Albanian border. It lies amphi-theatre shaped on a mountain slope of the Pindos mountain range, overlooking the valley where the river Aoos meets the river Voidomatis. The valley is used for farming. Konitsa is a regional centre for many small Pindos...
. At the same time, the strategy forced the government to increase the size of the army; with control of the major cities, the government cracked down on KKE members and sympathizers, many of whom were imprisoned on the island of Makronisos
Makronisos
Makronisos is an island in the Aegean sea, in Greece and is located close to the coast of Attica, facing the port of Lavrio. It has an elongated shape and its terrain is arid and rocky. In ancient times the island was called Helena. It is part of the prefecture of the Cyclades but it is not part...
.
Despite setbacks, such as the fighting at Konitsa, the DSE reached the height of its power in 1948, extending its operations to Attica
Attica
Attica is a historical region of Greece, containing Athens, the current capital of Greece. The historical region is centered on the Attic peninsula, which projects into the Aegean Sea...
, within 20 km of Athens. It drew on more than 20,000 fighters, both men and women, and a network of sympathizers and informants in every village and suburb. Amongst analysts emphasizing the KKE's perceived control and guidance by foreign powers such as USSR and YSR, some estimate that of the DSE's 20,000 fighters, 14,000 were Slavic Macedonians from Greek Macedonia. Expanding this reasoning, they conclude that given their important role in the battle, KKE changed its policy towards them. At the fifth Plenum of KKE on January 31, 1949, a resolution was passed declaring that after KKE's victory, the Slavic Macedonians would find their national restoration within a united Greek state.
The extent of such involvement remains contentious and unclear; some emphasize that the KKE had in total 400,000 members (or 800,000, according to some sources) immediately prior to December 1944, and that during the Civil War 100,000 ELAS fighters - mostly KKE members- were imprisoned and 3,000 were executed. Faced with this point of view, those more favorable to the organization emphasize instead the DSE's conduct of a war effort across the country, aiming at "a free and liberated Greece from all protectors that will have all the nationalities working under one Socialist State".
DSE Divisions conducted guerrilla warfare across Greece; III Division, with its 1948 count of 20,000 men, controlled 70% of the Peloponnese both politically and militarily; Battalions named after ELAS formations were active in Northwestern Greece, alongside the islands of Lesvos, Limnos, Ikaria, Samos, Creta, Evoia and the bulk of the Ionian Islands. Western-allied funds, advisers and equipment were now flooding into the country, and under Western Allied guidance a series of major offensives were launched into the mountains of central Greece. Although these offensives did not achieve all their objectives, they inflicted serious defeats on the DSE.
Communist evacuation of the children and the Queen's Camps
The removal of children from Greece to socialist states was another highly emotive and contentious issue. About thirty thousand children were forcefully taken by the DSE from territories they controlled to Eastern Bloc countries.Many others were moved for protection to special camps inside Greece, an idea of Queen Frederica. This issue drew the attention of international public opinion, and a United Nations Special Committee issued a report, stating that "some children have in fact been forcibly removed".
Communist leadership claimed that children were being gathered to be evacuated from Greece, allegedly at the request of "popular organizations and parents". According to other researchers, the Greek Government also followed a policy of displacement by adopting children of the guerrillas and placing them in indoctrination camps.
According to Kenneth Spencer, a UN Committee reported at that time that "Queen Frederica has already prepared special 'reform camps' in Greek islands for 12,000 Greek children...". According to official KKE historiography, the Provisional Government issued a directive for the evacuation of all minors from 4 to 14 years old for protection from the war and problems linked to it. This is stated clearly according to the decisions of the Provisional Government on March 7, 1948.
According to non-KKE accounts, the children were abducted to be indoctrinated as communist janissaries. Several United Nations General Assembly
United Nations General Assembly
For two articles dealing with membership in the General Assembly, see:* General Assembly members* General Assembly observersThe United Nations General Assembly is one of the five principal organs of the United Nations and the only one in which all member nations have equal representation...
resolutions appealed for the repatriation of children to their homes.
After 50 years, more information regarding the children has gradually emerged. Many returned to Greece between 1975–1990, with varied views and attitudes toward the communist faction.
During the Civil War more than 25,000 children, most with parents in the DSE, were also placed in 30 "child towns" under the immediate control of Frederika of Hanover
Frederika of Hanover
Frederica of Hanover was Queen consort of the Hellenes as the wife of King Paul of Greece.-Early life:...
, something especially emphasized by the left. After 50 years some of these children were found to have been given up for adoption to American families, now retracing their family background in Greece.
The end of the war: 1949
A significant blow to the KKE and DSE, however, was to be political, not military. In June 1948, the Soviet UnionSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and the other newly founded socialist states broke off relations with President Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz Tito
Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...
of Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
. In one of the meetings held in Kremlin with Yugoslav representatives, during the Soviet-Yugoslav crisis, Joseph Stalin stated his unqualified opposition to the "Greek uprising". Stalin explained to the Yugoslav delegation that the situation in Greece has always been different from the one in Yugoslavia, because the US and Britain would "never permit [Greece] to break off their lines of communication in the Mediterranean." (Stalin used the word svernut, Russian for "fold up", to express what the Greek communists should do.)
Yugoslavia had been the Greek communists' main supporter from the years of Nazi occupation. The KKE thus had to choose between its loyalty to USSR, and its relations with its closest ally. After some internal conflict, the great majority, led by party secretary Zachariadis
Nikolaos Zachariadis
Nikolaos Zachariadis was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece from 1931 to 1956.-Early life:Born in Adrianopole in 1903, the son of an employee of the Ottoman tobacco monopoly. He worked as a seaman on the Black Sea, where he came under the influence of the Bolshevik Revolution...
, chose to follow the USSR, not like the YSR that had already started to negotiate with the British. In January 1949 Vafiadis himself was accused of "Titoism" and removed from his political and military positions, to be replaced by Zachariadis.
After a year of increasing acrimony, Tito closed the Yugoslav border to the DSE in July 1949, and disbanded its camps inside Yugoslavia. The DSE was still able to use Albanian border territories, a poor alternative. Within the Greek Communist Party, the split with Tito also sparked a witch-hunt for "Titoites" that demoralized and disorganized the ranks of the DSE and sapped support for the KKE in urban areas.
In the summer of 1948, DSE Division III in the Peloponnese suffered a huge defeat; lacking ammunition support from DSE headquarters, and having failed to capture ammunition depots belonging to the National Army at Zacharo in the western Peloponnese, its 20,000 fighters were doomed. The majority (including the commander of the Division, Vangelis Rogakos) were killed in battle with nearly 80,000 National Army troops under the command of General Tsakalotos. The National Army's strategic plan, codenamed "Peristera" (the Greek word for "dove") had proven successful. A number of other civilians were sent to prison camps as helpers of the communists. The Peloponnese was now governed by paramilitary groups fighting alongside the National Army. In order to terrify urban areas assisting DSE's III Division, these forces decapitated a number of dead fighters and placed them in central squares. Following this defeat in southern Greece, DSE continued to operate in Northern Greece and some islands, but as a greatly weakened force facing significant obstacles both politically and militarily.
At the same time, the National Army found a talented commander in General Alexander Papagos
Alexander Papagos
Field Marshal Alexander Papagos , was a Greek General who led the Greek Army in the Greco-Italian War and the later stages of the Greek Civil War and became the country's Prime Minister...
, commander of the Greek Army during the Greco-Italian War
Greco-Italian War
The Greco-Italian War was a conflict between Italy and Greece which lasted from 28 October 1940 to 23 April 1941. It marked the beginning of the Balkans Campaign of World War II...
. In August 1949, Papagos launched a major counter-offensive against DSE forces in northern Greece, code-named "Operation Torch". The campaign was a victory for the National Army, and resulted in heavy losses for the DSE. The DSE army was now no longer able to sustain resistance in set piece battles. By September 1949, the main body of DSE Divisions defending Grammos and Vitsi, the two key positions in northern Greece for DSE, had retreated to Albania, while two main groups remained within the borders, trying to reconnect with scattered DSE fighters largely in Central Greece.
These groups, numbering 1,000 fighters, exited Greek borders by the end of September 1949, while the main body of DSE, accompanied by its HQ, after discussion with the USSR's Communist Party and other Socialist governments, was moved to the capital of Uzbekistan, Tashkent. They were to remain there, in military encampments, for three years. Other older combatants, alongside injured fighters, women and children, were relocated to European socialist states. On October 16, Zachariadis
Nikolaos Zachariadis
Nikolaos Zachariadis was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece from 1931 to 1956.-Early life:Born in Adrianopole in 1903, the son of an employee of the Ottoman tobacco monopoly. He worked as a seaman on the Black Sea, where he came under the influence of the Bolshevik Revolution...
announced a "temporary ceasefire to prevent the complete annihilation of Greece"; the ceasefire marked the end of the Greek Civil War.
Almost 100,000 ELAS fighters and communist sympathizers, able to serve in DSE ranks, were imprisoned, exiled or, in some cases, executed. This deprived the DSE of the principal force able to support its fight. According to some historians, the KKE's major supporter and supplier had always been Tito, and it was the rift between Tito and the KKE that marked the real demise of the party's efforts to assert power.
Greek right-wingers and Western Allied governments saw the end of the Greek Civil War as a victory in the Cold War against the Soviet Union; left-wingers countered that the Soviets never actively supported the Communist Party's efforts to seize power in Greece. Both sides had, at differing junctures, nevertheless looked to an external superpower for support.
Post-war division and reconciliation
The Civil War left Greece in ruins, and in even greater economic distress than it had been following the end of German occupation. Additionally, it divided the Greek people for ensuing decades, with both sides vilifying their opponents. Thousands languished in prison for many years, or were sent into exile on the islands of GyarosGyaros
Gyaros is an arid and unpopulated Greek island of the northern Cyclades near in the islands Andros and Tinos, with an area of 23 square kilometres. It is a part of the municipality of Ano Syros, which lies primarily on the island of Syros. This and other small islands of the Aegean Sea served as...
and Makronisos
Makronisos
Makronisos is an island in the Aegean sea, in Greece and is located close to the coast of Attica, facing the port of Lavrio. It has an elongated shape and its terrain is arid and rocky. In ancient times the island was called Helena. It is part of the prefecture of the Cyclades but it is not part...
. Many others sought refuge in communist countries or emigrated to Australia, Germany, the USA, UK, Canada and elsewhere.
The polarization and instability of Greek politics in the mid-1960s was a direct result of the Civil War and the deep divide between the leftist and rightist sections of Greek society. A major crisis showing this was the murder of the left-wing politician Gregoris Lambrakis
Gregoris Lambrakis
Grigoris Lambrakis was a Greek politician, physician, track and field athlete, and member of the faculty of the School of Medicine at the University of Athens.-Early life:...
in 1963 (the inspiration for the Costa Gavras political thriller, Z
Z (film)
Z is a 1969 French language political thriller directed by Costa Gavras, with a screenplay by Gavras and Jorge Semprún, based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Vassilis Vassilikos. The film presents a thinly fictionalized account of the events surrounding the assassination of democratic Greek...
). The crisis of the Apostasia
Apostasia of 1965
The terms Apostasia or Iouliana or the Royal Coup are used to describe the political crisis in Greece that centred around the resignation, on 15 July 1965, of Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou and the appointment, by King Constantine II, of successive Prime Ministers from Papandreou's own...
followed in 1965, together with the "ASPIDA affair", which involved an alleged coup plot by a left-wing group of officers; the group's alleged leader was Andreas Papandreou
Andreas Papandreou
Andreas G. Papandreou ; 5 February 1919 – 23 June 1996) was a Greek economist, a socialist politician and a dominant figure in Greek politics. The son of Georgios Papandreou, Andreas was a Harvard-trained academic...
, son of George Papandreou
George Papandreou (senior)
Georgios Papandreou was a Greek politician, the founder of the Papandreou political dynasty. He served three terms as Prime Minister of Greece...
, the leader of the Center Union
Center Union
The Centre Union was a Greek political party, created in 1961 by George Papandreou, senior.The party was elected to power in 1963, with Papandreou as Prime Minister...
political party and the country's prime minister at the time.
On April 21, 1967, a group of rightist and anti-communist army officers executed a coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
and seized power from the government, using the political instability and tension of the time as a pretext. The leader of the coup, George Papadopoulos
George Papadopoulos
Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos was the head of the military coup d'état that took place in Greece on 21 April 1967 and leader of the military government that ruled the country from 1967 to 1974. Papadopoulos was a Colonel of Artillery...
, was a member of the right-wing military organization IDEA (Ιερός Δεσμός Ελλήνων Αξιωματικών, "Sacred Bond of Greek Officers"), and the subsequent military regime (later referred to as the Regime of the Colonels
Greek military junta of 1967-1974
The Greek military junta of 1967–1974, alternatively "The Regime of the Colonels" , or in Greece "The Junta", and "The Seven Years" are terms used to refer to a series of right-wing military governments that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974...
) lasted until 1974.
After the collapse of the military junta, a conservative government under Constantine Karamanlis led to the abolition of monarchy, the legalization of the KKE and a new constitution
Constitution of Greece
The Constitution of Greece , was created by the Fifth Revisional Parliament of the Hellenes and entered into force in 1975. It has been revised three times since, most significantly in 1986, and also in 2001 and in 2008. The Constitutional history of Greece goes back to the Greek War of...
, which guaranteed political freedoms, individual rights and free elections. In 1981, in a major turning point in Greek history, the center-left government of PASOK
Panhellenic Socialist Movement
The Panhellenic Socialist Movement , known mostly by its acronym PASOK , is one of the two major political parties in Greece. Founded on 3 September 1974 by Andreas Papandreou, in 1981 PASOK became Greece's first social democratic party to win a majority in parliament.The party is a socialist party...
allowed DSE veterans who had taken refuge in communist countries to return to Greece and reestablish their former estates (Slavic Macedonians excluded); this greatly helped diminish the consequences of the Civil War in Greek society. The PASOK administration also offered state pensions to former partisans of the anti-Nazi resistance; Markos Vafiadis
Markos Vafiadis
Markos Vafiadis ]], Ottoman Empire, 1906 – Athens, Greece, February 23, 1992) was a leading figure of the Communist Party of Greece during the Greek Civil War.-Pre-war life:...
was honorarily elected as member of the Greek Parliament under PASOK's flag.
In 1989, the coalition government between Nea Dimokratia and the Coalition of Left and Progress (SYNASPISMOS) - in which the KKE was for a period the major force - suggested a law that was passed unanimously by the Greek Parliament, formally recognizing the 1946-1949 war as a Civil War
Civil war
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic, or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation state....
and not merely as a communist insurgency ("Συμμοριτοπόλεμος") ( Ν. 1863/89 (ΦΕΚ 204Α΄) ). Under the terms of this law, the war of 1946-1949 was recognized as a Greek Civil War between the National Army and the Democratic Army of Greece, for the first time in Greek postwar history. Under the aforementioned law, the term "communist bandits" (Κομμουνιστοσυμμορίτες, ΚΣ), wherever it had occurred in Greek law, was replaced by the term "Fighters of the DSE".
In a 2008 Gallup
Gallup
Gallup can refer to:*Gallup, New Mexico*Gallup, South Dakota *George Gallup, American pollster*Elizabeth Wells Gallup, American educator and scholar...
poll, Greeks were asked "whether it was better that the right wing won the Civil War". 43% responded that it was better for Greece that the right wing won, 13% responded that it would have been better if the left had won, 20% responded "neither" and 24% did not respond. When asked "which side they would have supported had they lived in that era", 39% responded "neither side", 14% responded "the right wing", 23% "the left wing" while 24% did not respond.
Representation in culture
- The Greek Civil War is the background to Nikos KazantzakisNikos KazantzakisNikos Kazantzakis was a Greek writer and philosopher, celebrated for his novel Zorba the Greek, considered his magnum opus...
' 1964 novel Fratricides (also published as Father Yanaros). - One of the two narratives within Barry UnsworthBarry UnsworthBarry Unsworth is a British novelist who is known for novels with historical themes. He has published 15 novels, and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, winning once for the 1992 novel Sacred Hunger....
's 1967 novel The Greeks Have a Word For ItThe Greeks Have a Word For ItThe Greeks Have a Word For It is the second novel by Booker Prize-winning author Barry Unsworth published by Hutchinson in 1967. It has since been republished by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1993 and W. W. Norton & Company in 2002...
concerns the aftermath of the war. - The documentary movie Greek Civil War (1997) by Roviros Manthoulis provides a comprehensive look into the civil war. It starts with the Stalin-Churchill agreement and ends with the accounts of the people who have participated in the war with interviews done in the 1990s.
- Crno seme (Black Seed), a 1971 film by Kiril Ceneski about a number of Macedonian soldiers in Greek Royal Army, and their fate after WW2.
- The Civil War forms part of The Travelling PlayersThe Travelling PlayersThe Travelling Players is a 1975 Greek film directed by Theo Angelopoulos that traces the history of mid-20th century Greece from 1939 to 1952.-Plot:...
, by Theo AngelopoulosTheo AngelopoulosTheodoros Angelopoulos is a Greek filmmaker, screenwriter and film producer.-Life:Angelopoulos studied law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, but after his military service went to Paris to attend the Sorbonne. He soon dropped out to study film at the IDHEC before returning...
, a 1975 film with a wide timeframe, running from 1939 to 1952. - The Brotherhood of War: The Lieutenants (1982), book 1 in the series by W. E. B. GriffinW. E. B. GriffinW. E. B. Griffin is a writer of military and detective fiction with 38 novels in six series published under that name. He has also published under several pseudonyms....
, has two of its major characters and one lesser character involved with the Military Advisory Group (MAG) in Greece. It is referenced throughout the rest of the series, but is given detail in the first book. - The tragic end to DSE Division III in the Peloponnese is depicted in the film The Descent of the 9, made by Christos Siopachas in 1985.
- The war forms the backdrop to the 1985 film EleniEleni (film)Eleni is the 1985 film adaptation of the memoir Eleni by Greek-American journalist Nicholas Gage. Directed by Peter Yates, the film stars John Malkovich, Kate Nelligan, Linda Hunt and Glenne Headly.- Synopsis :...
, with John MalkovichJohn MalkovichJohn Gavin Malkovich is an American actor, producer, director and fashion designer with his label Technobohemian. Over the last 25 years of his career, Malkovich has appeared in more than 70 motion pictures. For his roles in Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire, he received Academy Award...
. - Psyhi vathia, a 2009 film by Pantelis VoulgarisPantelis VoulgarisPantelis Voulgaris is a Greek film director and screenwriter. His 1989 film The Striker with Number 9 was entered into the 39th Berlin International Film Festival...
, recounts the story of two brothers fighting on opposite sides during the Civil War.
List of abbreviations
| Abbrev. | Expansion | Translation |
|---|---|---|
| DSE | Δημοκρατικός Στρατός Ελλάδας | Democratic Army of Greece Democratic Army of Greece This article is based on a translation of an article from the Greek Wikipedia.The Democratic Army of Greece , often simply abbreviated to its initials DSE , was the army founded by the Communist Party of Greece during the Greek Civil War, 1946–1949... |
| EAM | Εθνικό Απελευθερωτικό Μέτωπο | National Liberation Front |
| EDES | Εθνικός Δημοκρατικός Ελληνικός Σύνδεσμος | National Republican Greek League |
| EKKA | Εθνική και Κοινωνική Απελευθέρωσις | National and Social Liberation |
| ELAN | Ελληνικό Λαϊκό Απελευθερωτικό Ναυτικό | Greek People's Liberation Navy |
| ELAS | Ελληνικός Λαϊκός Απελευθερωτικός Στρατός | Greek People's Liberation Army |
| HQ | Headquarters | |
| KKE | Κομμουνιστικό Κόμμα Ελλάδας | Communist Party of Greece Communist Party of Greece Founded in 1918, the Communist Party of Greece , better known by its acronym, ΚΚΕ , is the oldest party on the Greek political scene.- Foundation :... |
| NATO | North Atlantic Treaty Organization | |
| Nazi | National-Socialist Nazism Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany... ; National Socialist German Workers' Party |
|
| NOF | Народно Ослободителен Фронт | National Liberation Front (Macedonia) |
| OPLA | Οργάνωση Προστασίας Λαϊκού Αγώνα | Organization for the Protection of the People's Struggle |
| PASOK | Πανελλήνιο Σοσιαλιστικό Κίνημα | Panhellenic Socialist Movement Panhellenic Socialist Movement The Panhellenic Socialist Movement , known mostly by its acronym PASOK , is one of the two major political parties in Greece. Founded on 3 September 1974 by Andreas Papandreou, in 1981 PASOK became Greece's first social democratic party to win a majority in parliament.The party is a socialist party... |
| PEEA | Πολιτική Επιτροπή Εθνικής Απελευθέρωσης | Political Committee of National Liberation Political Committee of National Liberation The Political Committee of National Liberation , commonly known as the "Mountain Government" was a communist-dominated government established in Greece in 1944 in opposition to both the collaborationist German-controlled government at Athens and to the royal government-in-exile in Cairo... |
| UN | United Nations United Nations The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace... |
|
| USSR | Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Soviet Union The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991.... |
|
| YSR | Jugoslavske Svazove Republice | |
| YVE | Yperaspistai Voreiou Ellados | Defenders of Northern Greece |
See also
- ELAS
- EDES
- Communist Party of GreeceCommunist Party of GreeceFounded in 1918, the Communist Party of Greece , better known by its acronym, ΚΚΕ , is the oldest party on the Greek political scene.- Foundation :...
- National Liberation Front (Macedonia)
- Aris VelouchiotisAris VelouchiotisAris Velouchiotis , the nom de guerre of Athanasios Klaras , was the most prominent leader and chief instigator of the Greek People's Liberation Army , the military branch of the National Liberation Front , which was the major resistance organization in occupied Greece from 1942 to 1945...
- Nikolaos ZachariadisNikolaos ZachariadisNikolaos Zachariadis was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece from 1931 to 1956.-Early life:Born in Adrianopole in 1903, the son of an employee of the Ottoman tobacco monopoly. He worked as a seaman on the Black Sea, where he came under the influence of the Bolshevik Revolution...
- Nikos Belogiannis
- Nikos PloumpidisNikos PloumpidisNikos Ploumpidis was a leading cadre of the Greek Communist Party and a famous member of the wartime anti-Nazi resistance.The son of a poor farming family, he was born in Arcadian Langadia...
- Markos VafiadisMarkos VafiadisMarkos Vafiadis ]], Ottoman Empire, 1906 – Athens, Greece, February 23, 1992) was a leading figure of the Communist Party of Greece during the Greek Civil War.-Pre-war life:...
- Napoleon ZervasNapoleon ZervasNapoleon Zervas was a Greek general and resistance leader during World War II. He organized and led the National Republican Greek League , the second most significant , in terms of size and activity, resistance organization against the Axis Occupation of Greece.-Early life and army career:Zervas...
- George Papandreou (senior)George Papandreou (senior)Georgios Papandreou was a Greek politician, the founder of the Papandreou political dynasty. He served three terms as Prime Minister of Greece...
- Alexander PapagosAlexander PapagosField Marshal Alexander Papagos , was a Greek General who led the Greek Army in the Greco-Italian War and the later stages of the Greek Civil War and became the country's Prime Minister...
- Air operations during the Greek Civil WarAir operations during the Greek Civil WarAir operations during the Greek Civil War involved primarily the air forces of the United Kingdom, South Africa, and the government of Greece against ground elements of the ELAS and other anti-government forces.- Arrival of the Royal Air Force :...
- Greek ResistanceGreek ResistanceThe Greek Resistance is the blanket term for a number of armed and unarmed groups from across the political spectrum that resisted the Axis Occupation of Greece in the period 1941–1944, during World War II.-Origins:...
- Security BattalionsSecurity BattalionsThe Security Battalions were Greek collaborationist military groups, formed during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II in order to support the German occupation troops.- History :...
- Axis occupation of Greece during World War II
- Eleni (film)Eleni (film)Eleni is the 1985 film adaptation of the memoir Eleni by Greek-American journalist Nicholas Gage. Directed by Peter Yates, the film stars John Malkovich, Kate Nelligan, Linda Hunt and Glenne Headly.- Synopsis :...
- Proxy warProxy warA proxy war or proxy warfare is a war that results when opposing powers use third parties as substitutes for fighting each other directly. While powers have sometimes used governments as proxies, violent non-state actors, mercenaries, or other third parties are more often employed...
English Sources
- Lars Bærentzen, John O. Iatrides, Ole Langwitz Smith, Studies in the history of the Greek Civil War, 1945-1949, 1987
- W. Byford-Jones, The Greek Trilogy: Resistance-Liberation-Revolution, London, 1945
- R. Capell, Simiomata: A Greek Note Book 1944-45, London, 1946
- Philip Carabott, Thanasis D. Sfikas, The Greek Civil War, 2004
- W. S. Churchill, The Second World War
- Nigel Clive, A Greek experience 1943-1948, ed. Michael Russell, Wilton Wilts.: Russell, 1985 (ISBN 0-85955-119-9)
- Richard Clogg, Greece, 1940-1949: Occupation, Resistance, Civil War: a Documentary History, New York, 2003 (ISBN 0-333-52369-5)
- D. Close (ed.), The Greek civil war 1943-1950: Studies of Polarization, Routledge, 1993
- Dominique Eude, Les Kapetanios (in French and Greek), Artheme Fayard, 1970
- André Gerolymatos, Red Acropolis, Black Terror, London, 2003
- N.G.L. Hammond Venture into Greece: With the Guerillas, 1943-44, London, 1983 (Like Woodhouse, he was a member of the British Military Mission)
- Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, New York 1948
- S.N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil WarThe Logic of Violence in Civil WarThe Logic of Violence in Civil War is a book which challenges the conventional view of violence in civil wars as irrational. The main argument is that violence only emerges in those disputed territories, and it is generally driven not by the conflict itself, but by previous rancors and enmities...
, Cambridge, 2006 - Georgios Karras, The Revolution that Failed. The story of the Greek Communist Party in the period 1941-49 M.A. Thesis, 1985 Dept. of Political Studies University of Manitoba Canada.
- D. G. Kousoulas, Revolution and Defeat: The Story of the Greek Communist Party, London, 1965
- Reginald Leeper, When Greek Meets Greek: On the War in Greece, 1943-1945, London, 1950
- M. Mazower (ed.) After the War was Over. Reconstructing the Family, Nation and State in Greece, 1943-1960 Princeton University Press, 2000 (ISBN 0-691-05842-3)http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/finneyPatrick.html
- E. C. W. Myers, Greek Entanglement, London, 1955
- Amikam Nachmani, International intervention in the Greek Civil War, 1990 (ISBN 0-275-93367-9)
- Elias Petropoulos, Corpses, corpses, corpses (ISBN 960-211-081-3)
- C. M. Woodhouse, Apple of Discord: A Survey of Recent Greek Politics in their International Setting, London, 1948 (Woodhouse was a member of the British Military Mission to Greece during the war)
- C. M. Woodhouse, The Struggle for Greece, 1941-1949
- Heinz Richter, British Intervention in Greece. From Varkiza to Civil War, London, 1985 (ISBN 085036 301 2)
Greek Sources
The following are available only in Greek:- Ευάγγελος Αβέρωφ, Φωτιά και τσεκούρι. Written by ex-New Democracy leader Evangelos AveroffEvangelos AveroffEvangelos Averoff-Tositsas was a distinguished right-wing Greek politician of Aromanian origin and author of several books on political and historical topics....
— initially in French. (ISBN 960-05-0208-0) - Γενικόν Επιτελείον Στρατού, Διεύθυνσις Ηθικής Αγωγής, Η Μάχη του Έθνους, Ελεύθερη Σκέψις, Athens, 1985. Reprinted edition of the original, published in 1952 by the Hellenic Army General Staff.
- Γιώργος Δ. Γκαγκούλιας, H αθέατη πλευρά του εμφυλίου. Written by an ex-ELAS fighter. (ISBN 960-426-187-8)
- "Γράμμος Στα βήματα του Δημοκρατικού Στρατού Ελλάδας Ιστορικός - Ταξιδιωτικός οδηγός", "Σύγχρονη Εποχή" 2009 (ISBN 978-960-451-080-1)
- "Δοκίμιο Ιστορίας του ΚΚΕ", τόμος Ι. History of the Communist Party of Greece, issued by its Central Committee in 1999.
- Αλέξανδος Ζαούσης, Οι δύο όχθες, Athens, 1992
- Αλέξανδος Ζαούσης, Η τραγική αναμέτρηση Athens, 1992
- Α. Καμαρινού, "Ο Εμφύλιος Πόλεμος στην Πελοπόνησσο", Brigadier General of DSE's III Division, 2002
- "ΚΚΕ, Επίσημα Κείμενα", τόμοι 6,7,8,9.The full collection of KKE's official documents of this era.
- Μιχάλης Λυμπεράτος, Στα πρόθυρα του Εμφυλίου πολέμου: Από τα Δεκεμβριανά στις εκλογές του 1946-1949, "Βιβλιόραμα", Athens, 2006
- Νίκος Μαραντζίδης, Γιασασίν Μιλλέτ (ISBN 960-524-131-5)
- Γιώργος Μαργαρίτης, Ιστορία του Ελληνικού εμφύλιου πολέμου 1946-1949, "Βιβλιόραμα", Athens, 2001
- Σπύρος Μαρκεζίνης, Σύγχρονη πολιτική ιστορία της Ελλάδος, Athens, 1994
- Γεώργιος Μόδης, Αναμνήσεις, Thessaloniki, 2004 (ISBN 960-8396-05-0)
- Γιώργου Μπαρτζώκα, "Δημοκρατικός Στρατός Ελλάδας", Secretary of the Communist organization of Athens of KKE in 1945, 1986.
- Περιοδικό "Δημοκρατικός Στράτος", Magazine first issued in 1948 and re-published as an album collection in 2007.
- Στέφανου Σαράφη, "Ο ΕΛΑΣ",written by the military leader of ELAS, General Sarafi in 1954.
- Δημ. Σέρβου, "Που λες... στον Πειραιά", written by one of DSE fighters.
External links
- A full referenced history of DSE
- Greek Civil War Archive at marxists.org
- Andartikos - a short history of the Greek Resistance, 1941-5 on libcom.org/history
- Dangerous Citizens Online, the online version of Neni Panourgiá's Dangerous Citizens: The Greek Left and the Terror of the State (ISBN 978-0-8232-2968-0)
- Report from globalsecurity.org
- Απολογισμός των 'Δεκεμβριανών' (only in Greek) Εφημερίδα ΤΟ ΒΗΜΑ-Δεκέμβρης 1944:60 χρόνια μετά
- Battle of Grammos-Vitsi The decisive battle which ended the Greek Civil War
- Nicholas Gage, author of the book Eleni
- Paidomazoma - Communist Children Abductions in the Greek civil war