Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0145/01452.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 40KB | 609 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01452}
$Pretitle{287}
$Title{Greece
Chapter 1D.   The 'Terrible Decade': World War II and the Civil War, 1940-49}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{war
army
greece
greek
communist
british
government
forces
national
resistance}
$Date{1986}
$Log{}
Country:     Greece
Book:        Greece, A Country Study
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1986

Chapter 1D.   The "Terrible Decade": World War II and the Civil War, 1940-49

World War II

     Metaxas reorganized and reequipped the army in preparation for the
European war that he believed was inevitable. At best he hoped to keep Greece
neutral, but there was no question that if Greece were drawn into war it would
side with Britain. On October 28, 1940, the Italian ambassador in Athens
demanded that Italian troops be allowed to occupy "certain strategic points"
on Greek territory. Metaxas rejected the ultimatum out of hand with a succinct
ochi (no), an event that has since been celebrated by a national holiday.
Metaxas geared the army up for battle, even recalling some republican junior
officers who had been dismissed in 1936, albeit severely limiting their
authority.

     The Italian forces that invaded Greece expected an easy victory. Within a
month, however, an inspired Greek army had counterattacked and driven the
Italians deep into Albanian territory. Metaxas' death in January 1941,
however, deprived the Greek war effort of his determined leadership. In
meetings with Mussolini the previous August, Hitler had conceded that "Greece
and Yugoslavia belong exclusively to the Italian sphere of interest," but as
preparations were made for the invasion of the Soviet Union (scheduled for the
spring of 1941), Germany invaded both Yugoslavia and Greece. The British
provided naval support and sent 50,000 troops to aid the Greeks, but within
three weeks the Allied defense lines were overrun by a combination of air and
armored attacks. Faced with an army visibly disintegrating, General Georgios
Tsolakoglou, the Greek commander in Epirus, surrendered his army in the field
without government approval. Prime Minister Alexander Korysos, who had taken
over after Metaxas' death, committed suicide after learning of treason in his
cabinet. Athens was occupied on April 27, 1941, and Crete was captured in June
by German airborne units after nine days of fierce fighting. In 53 days the
country fell. The king and his government were evacuated to Egypt, where Greek
naval units and the remnants of the army were reorganized to continue the war
under British command.

     The Axis powers occupied Greece for four years. The Germans were
interested in holding only the principal communications routes and positions
of vital strategic importance, leaving the rest of Greece to the Italians or
the Bulgarians. A collaborationist government, headed by Tsolakoglou, directed
general administration and security, particularly after the establishment in
1944 of the collaborationist Security Battalions, armed police forces
recruited from young villagers and led by Metaxists and often former army
officers. During the occupation most Greeks suffered more from hunger and cold
than from military action. During the winter of 1941-42 there was mass
starvation, especially in Greater Athens, and casualties numbered in the
thousands.

The Resistance

     More than 40 years after the end of World War II much of the history of
the resistance and of the subsequent Civil War (1946-49) remains
controversial. In the mid-1970s and early 1980s many important documents
from British, American, and Greek archives were opened to scholars, and a
new debate ensured the revelation of much new material. Nevertheless, to a
very large degree interpretations of this period depend on ideological and
political biases, and it remains difficult to assign an objectively correct
history to the period.

     What is clear is that spontaneous resistance sprouted almost from the
moment of occupation. The first recorded organized subversion occurred in
Macedonia in September and October 1941. The remnants of the predominantly
royalist Greek armed forces had been evacuated to the Middle East. Many of the
officers who had been purged after 1935 remained in Greece but, wedded to the
idea of traditional set-piece warfare, were reluctant to take up arms since
they were hopelessly outmanned and outgunned. The only organized force willing
to shoulder the burden of resistance, therefore, was the KKE.

     The communist organization had been mauled under the Metaxas regime, but
most of its leaders had escaped or had been inexplicably released from prison
by the Germans in the weeks before the invasion of the Soviet Union. They
quickly began to rebuild and expand their former network. The KKE had been
founded in 1918 and was, like all communist parties of the period, closely
tied to the Soviet Union. The ground was not exactly fertile for communist
recruitment, for there was no indigenous socialist movement. As territorial
expansion proceeded in the north, and particularly after the arrival of the
refugees after 1922, the party began to attract members from ethnic and
religious minorities (Macedonians, Albanians, Slavs, and Muslims) condemned to
an inferior social and economic status. It grew rapidly during the Great
Depression, especially after 1935 when the party, following the policy of the
Communist International (an organization founded and directed by Moscow, also
known as Comintern), abandoned the idea of Macedonian autonomy and actively
sought alliance with the mainstream parties; but it remained weak, receiving
only 9 percent of the vote at its height in 1935.

     The threat of Communist participation in a coalition government in 1935
and their leadership of strikes in 1936 precipitated Metaxas' seizure of
power. The KKE had always been unusual among Greek parties because of its
classical communist structures - a small, disciplined, and ideologically
committed membership hierarchically organized and headed by a strong, united
leadership - and Metaxas tried to destroy it from within. He came close to
succeeding but, ironically, the period of underground activity during the
dictatorship gave it precisely the kind of experience necessary for resistance
activities.

     The National Liberation Front (Ethnikon Apeleftherotikon Metopon -EAM)
was founded in September 1941 as a coalition of five parties, joining
Communists, socialists, and some republicans, but it was dominated by the KKE,
although this was not generally known at the time. In February 1942 the EAM
announced that it was "taking up arms" and formed the National People's
Liberation Army (Ethnikos Laikos Apeleftherotikos Stratos - ELAS). ELAS
quickly became the largest national resistance organization, eventually
fielding an army of over 1.5 million. Although its recruits came from all
social classes and regions, republicanism was a common bond. ELAS' connection
with the KKE was purposely kept hidden because the EAM (that is, KKE)
leadership feared that the communist label would repel many potential
resisters. Nevertheless, the EAM-ELAS spoke openly about imposing a new social
order after the war and eventually discussed using the resistance against the
occupation as the first step in a revolutionary process. Both the nationalist
and the revolutionary themes found an eager audience among the educated,
white-collar, urban elite, as well as among rural villagers. By December 1944
ELAS and EAM, its parent organization, had the backing of probably two-thirds
of the electorate.

     By comparison, other resistance movements paled. In September 1941 a
rival organization, the National Republican Greek League (Ethnikos
Dimokratikos Ellinikos Stratos-EDES), led by Napoleon Zervas and other
regular army officers who were victims of the 1935 purges, was founded. The
EDES was republican and antiroyalist and, like the other noncommunist forces,
was regionally based and tended to consist of old-style personalist an