Greece

Greece For the fighting on the Greek mainland, see Balkan campaign.

1. Introduction

Greece, an independent kingdom with a population of 7,345,000 ( 1940), was drawn into the Second World War as a result of the Italian invasion launched from Albanian territory on 28 October 1940. This began the Balkan campaign and was followed by a German invasion in April 1941, the exile of the king, George II (1890–1947), and the Axis occupation of the country. Athens, the capital, was liberated on 18 October 1944 by a British Expeditionary Force and the rest of Greece soon afterwards, but the travails of war, resistance, and occupation were to be prolonged by a savagely fought civil war from 1946 to 1949. Just as Greece had been on a war footing for much of the period between the outbreak of the First Balkan War in October 1912 and the defeat in Asia Minor of its forces by the Turkish nationalists in September 1922, so the entire decade of the 1940s was to be blighted by the war and its bitter aftermath.

2. Domestic life and war effort

From the outset of the occupation Greece was systematically plundered of its economic resources, principally foodstuffs and raw materials, which were shipped off to Germany. The requisitioning of food led to immediate shortages. Moreover, German insistence that the Quisling government pay the full costs of occupation gave rise to inflationary pressures that led to one of the highest rates of inflation in recorded history. At the time of the Italian invasion in October 1940 an oka (1.3 kg., or nearly 3 lb.) of bread cost 10 drachmas. By the time of the liberation in October 1944 the price was 34,000,000 drachmas.

During the dreadful famine of the winter of 1941–2 some 100,000 people died as a result of malnutrition. So appalling, indeed, was the situation that the British government, under pressure from the government-in-exile (see below) and the US administration, agreed to a partial lifting of the blockade. From the summer of 1942 onwards, the International Red Cross was able to distribute relief supplies in sufficient quantity to prevent a recurrence of the worst horrors of the previous winter. The catastrophic effects of famine and inflation were compounded by forced Bulgarianization, with the importation of Bulgarian immigrants into the Bulgarian-occupied territories of Western Thrace and Eastern Macedonia, and by the systematic destruction of the once flourishing Jewish community of Salonika. Out of a total population of some 70,000, fewer than 10,000 Greek Jews survived the occupation (see also Final Solution). Such privations by no means broke the spirit of the people. As early as the night of 30/31 May 1941 the Nazi swastika was torn down from the Acropolis. This symbolic act was followed by sporadic acts of sabotage and passive resistance, which soon developed into more organized forms of armed resistance (see below).

The problems that confronted the government-in-exile when it returned to Greece in October 1944 were truly formidable. The economy was shattered; food was in short supply; disease was rife and the distribution of relief was made additionally difficult by the disruption of communications. Inflation continued to accelerate. The only currency to retain confidence was the gold sovereign, which had been shipped into Greece in large quantities by the British authorities to finance resistance activities. Alongside the economic hardships of the great mass of population, the black market flourished and those with access to money could freely purchase food and imported luxury goods. There remained, too, the pressing problem of what to do about collaborators and those who had belonged to the German-equipped, collaborationist, and anti-communist ‘security battalions’.

3. Government and legal system

(a) Pre-occupation government

From the foundation of the independent state in the early 1830s, the UK, with France and Russia one of the original ‘Protecting Powers’, had exercised a preponderant influence over the external affairs of Greece. None the less, the British government turned down the offer made in 1938 by the dictator General Ioannis Metaxas (1871–1941) of a formal alliance. In April 1939, however, following the Italian occupation of Albania, the UK and France undertook to guarantee the integrity of Greece and Romania provided they resisted aggression. Moreover, despite the adoption of some of the external trappings of fascism by Metaxas, and notwithstanding the high degree of German penetration of the economy, Greece's external relations, in part as consequence of the pro-British proclivities of King George II, remained oriented towards the UK.

On the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Metaxas sought to maintain Greek neutrality, while being prepared to give some low-level assistance to the British war effort. Hitler had sought to dominate south-east Europe through economic and political means. Mussolini, on the other hand, was determined to make territorial gains at the expense of Yugoslavia and Greece. In the summer of 1940, the Italian dictator adopted an increasingly menacing stand towards Greece, authorizing the torpedoing of the Greek cruiser Elli stationed off the island of Tenos on 15 August. This and other provocations were followed by the presentation by the Italian ambassador in the early hours of 28 October of a calculatedly unacceptable ultimatum. Metaxas, authoritarian, unpopular, and unrepresentative though he was, captured the national mood in a dignified rejection of the ultimatum. (After the war 28 October was declared a national holiday as Okhi (‘No!’) day.) The ultimatum was followed three hours later by the Italian invasion of northwest Greece. This was quickly repulsed, with Greek forces capturing a substantial area of southern Albania before the advance ground to a halt in atrocious weather.

Shortly before his death on 29 January 1941, Metaxas refused Churchill's offer of ground troops for he was still hopeful of securing some accommodation with Italy through German mediation. However, in secret talks at the royal palace of Tatoi on 22/23 February between Alexandros Koryzis, the new prime minister, King George II, and the C-in-C General Alexandros Papagos (1883–1955) on the Greek side and Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary, Field-Marshal Dill, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and General Wavell, the C-in-C Middle East, on the British, it was agreed to dispatch an expeditionary force, composed largely of Australian and New Zealand troops.

A misunderstanding occurred at the Tatoi meeting which was seriously to diminish such chances as existed of a successful combined resistance to an increasingly imminent German invasion. The British participants were under the impression that Papagos had agreed to an immediate withdrawal of Greek forces from the fortified Metaxas Line on the Bulgarian frontier to the natural defensive line of the Aliakmon River in Western Macedonia, there to link up with the British expeditionary force. Papagos, with reason in the light of the available evidence, understood such a withdrawal to be contingent on the prior determination of Yugoslavia's willingness to resist the Germans.

The delay critically impeded resistance to the German invasion, (MARITA) launched on 6 April 1941. In the chaos of the invasion, Koryzis committed suicide. Emmanouil Tsouderos, Koryzis' successor as the legitimate prime minister, was in office for only three days before withdrawing with King George and the rest of the government to Crete on 23 April as resistance to the invading German forces collapsed.

(b) Government under occupation

General Georgios Tsolakoglou, in command of the Western Ma cedonian Army, had negotiated an unauthorized armistice. He subsequently became prime minister of a collaborationist government, to be succeeded by Konstantinos Logothetopoulos and Ioannis Rallis.

The Italians were the principal occupying power, until the Italian armistice in September 1943, but the Germans controlled key areas that were important from an economic and strategic point of view, while the Bulgarians were permitted to occupy most of Western Thrace and part of Macedonia (see Map 46).

(c) Government-in-exile and post-occupation government

Official British policy, and Churchill in particular, favoured the restoration of King George II, whereas the resistance, communist-controlled or not, that soon came into existence was overwhelmingly republican in orientation. This created a serious dilemma for British policy-makers. The British military authorities were in general anxious to maximize the anti-Axis military effort with little regard for the political consequences, while the foreign office was primarily concerned with ensuring a postwar Greece that was well-disposed to British interests, preferably monarchist, and certainly not communist.

This contradiction was present from the outset and the situation was further complicated by the fact that relations between the two principal resistance movements within Greece, the National People's Liberation Army (ELAS) and the National Republican Greek League (EDES), were poor and co-operation minimal. In the winter of 1943–4 fighting broke out between the two organizations but a truce was negotiated between them in February 1944; the Communist-dominated political wing of ELAS, the National Liberation Front (EAM), created a Political Committee of National Liberation (PEEA) whose function was to administer the large areas of rural Greece under its control.

Although PEEA was careful not to claim that it constituted a rival government, it clearly posed a threat to the government-in-exile, whose influence within Greece was marginal throughout the period of the occupation. Within days of the establishment of PEEA, mutinies broke out in the Greek armed forces in the Middle East, the leaders of which demanded the creation of a government of national unity based on PEEA. An incensed Churchill ordered the forcible suppression of the disorders but not before they had provoked a profound crisis within the government-in-exile. This resulted in the veteran liberal politician and staunchanti-communist George Papandreou (1888–1968), becoming prime minister. Seeking to isolate the left, he organized a conference in Lebanon in May 1944 to which he invited representatives of all political parties and resistance groups. EAM, ELAS, PEEA, and the KKE (Communist Party) all sent delegates, but only two were communists, despite the power, deriving from genuine popular support reinforced by terror, wielded by the far left in the country. EAM/ELAS, by now by far the most powerful political and military formation in occupied Greece, was to disown the concessions made by its delegates in Lebanon. Instead it demanded control of key ministries and the removal of Papandreou from the newly formed government of national unity.

The deadlock was to be resolved, unbeknown to the principal protagonists, by high-level horse-trading between Churchill and Stalin. Churchill, in the early summer of 1944, had become obsessed with preventing the communist tide that he foresaw would follow in the wake of the Red Army's drive through eastern Europe from reaching Greece, which he looked upon as a vital link in the protection of the UK's imperial communications. For this reason, in May 1944 he offered to accept Soviet preponderance in Romania in exchange for British preponderance in Greece, a deal that was subsequently widened to include Bulgaria and Yugoslavia in the ‘percentages agreement’ that he negotiated with Stalin in Moscow in October 1944 (see TOLSTOY). In this the ‘percentage’ of British interest in Greece and, conversely, of Soviet interest in Romania was put at 90%.

This agreement was to overshadow all subsequent developments in Greece. Churchill's understanding with Stalin may indeed—although there is no direct evidence—explain EAM's sudden abandonment at the beginning of August 1944 of its uncompromising line towards Papandreou and the government of national unity. Only a week earlier a Soviet military mission, headed by Colonel Grigori Popov, had parachuted to ELAS headquarters. It has been speculated that Popov brought instructions to EAM to co-operate, or at least indicated that Stalin was indifferent to the fate of the Greek left and that, for this reason, the communist leadership of EAM felt that it had to make some accommodation with a Britain that appeared likely to be the predominant power in Greece after the liberation as it had been before the war.

Be this as it may, EAM now agreed to enter the Papandreou government on the original terms that had been agreed in the Lebanon in May, though these did not reflect the strength of the EAM/ELAS power base in Greece. Six EAM nominees entered the government in relatively junior positions and, even more significantly, ELAS, together with the much smaller EDES, agreed to place its armed forces (some 60,000 strong) under the command of Lt-Gen Ronald Scobie, the commander of the small (smaller than Churchill would have wished) British expedition to Greece which accompanied the Papandreou government's return on 18 October 1944. This was recognized as the legitimate government by the Allies and was ultimately backed up by British arms. Moreover, Churchill had prevailed upon King George not to return with his government. As the last of the German forces withdrew from Greece, harassed by guerrilla units and by British raiding forces, Papandreou and his government were greeted with overwhelming enthusiasm. Yet within less than three months the legitimacy of the government of national unity was to face a fierce challenge in the communist insurgency of December 1944; Papandreou was ousted from the premiership; and King George was forced to agree at last to the creation of the regency that he had so long resisted.

The reasons for this turn of events are complicated and controversial. The most pressing and, at the same time, the most intractable problem was the question of the demobilization of the guerrilla formations and their replacement by a national army that would underpin the authority of the Papandreou government. Throughout November 1944, Papandreou and the left-wing ministers in the government were engaged in protracted negotiations over the demobilization issue. Amid charges and counter-charges of lack of good faith and in a climate of mounting tension, the left-wing ministers resigned from the government on 2 December and EAM called a general strike for 4 December, to be preceded by a mass demonstration in Syntagma Square, in the centre of Athens, on Sunday 3 December.

The mistakes and miscalculations of those involved, the left-wingers, the national government, and the British, all contributed to the creation of a situation that was moving rapidly and seemingly inexorably towards a tragic climax. Thousands of pro-EAM demonstrators converged on Syntagma Square, and, at the height of the demonstration, in circumstances that are still not wholly clear, panic-stricken police opened fire, leaving some fifteen dead and many more wounded. The shooting provoked attacks by ELAS on police stations and within a few days ELAS and British troops were locked in bloody street fighting. Churchill, who for some time had made it clear that he did not flinch from the prospect of outright confrontation with EAM/ELAS, cabled Scobie, the British military commander, that he should treat Athens as a conquered city which must be held even at the price of bloodshed. The leaking of this telegram in the American press contributed to the policy of ostentatious neutrality adopted by the US administration throughout the fighting in December 1944. The Soviets likewise stood aloof from this vicious conflict, unique in the Second World War, between erstwhile allies.

The small number of British troops in the capital were rapidly thrown on to the defensive and before long controlled only a small area of the city centre. With the inflow of reinforcements, which could be ill spared from the Italian campaign, the military tide began to turn. The communists' motives in launching the December insurgency still remain unclear. If bent on an outright seizure of power there were a number of curious features in their tactics, notably their decision (apart from an irrelevant attack on the forces of EDES in Epirus) to restrict the fighting to Athens despite their effective de facto control of much of the rest of the country. It seems that they were not so much after outright power as the de-stabilization of the Papandreou government and ousting him from office, for he was clearly perceived as the principal obstacle to any attempt by the left to achieve power through constitutional or quasi-constitutional means.

Whatever the motives behind the insurgency, it was characteristic of Churchill's obsession with Greek affairs that, to the astonishment of his staff and with the war in the west still far from over, he made the impulsive decision to fly with Eden to Athens on Christmas Eve 1944 in an effort to negotiate a settlement. Not even Churchill's great prestige could effect a deal but he was now aware of the pressing need to establish a regency and, on his return to London, pressured King George into appointing Archbishop Damaskinos as regent. In early January Papandreou was replaced as prime minister by the seemingly more conciliatory General Nikolaos Plastiras. The insurgency was essentially suppressed by military means, in which British control of the air was vital.

A ceasefire, negotiated on 11 January 1945, was followed by a political settlement at Varkiza on 12 February. Given the bitterness of the December conflict, the terms imposed on the left were not as oppressive as might have been expected. ELAS had to give up its arms but EAM and the KKE remained legal organizations and the government undertook to purge the administration, security battalions, and police of collaborationist elements and to hold a plebiscite on the monarchy, to be followed by elections. The peace that appeared to have been secured by the Varkiza agreement proved, however, to be illusory. A succession of weak governments proved incapable of holding in check the anti-communist backlash that followed the December 1944 insurgency. Moreover, with the KKE itself vacillating between a policy of seeking power, or a share of it, through constitutional means, and preparing for further armed conflict, the country slithered towards chaos. The liberation of the country from Axis occupation proved to be the prelude to a bitterly fought civil war (1946–9) which was to set back the process of post-war reconstruction for a further five years.

4. Armed forces

(a) Army

In 1940 the Greek Army totalled 18 divisions. Except for its heavy guns, which were inferior, it had more efficient artillery than the Italians and more machine-guns, but it had only one pitifully equipped motorized division and virtually no tanks. In October 1940 at the start of the Balkan campaign four first-line divisions opposed six Italian ones on the Albanian border. But Italian divisions 12,000–14,000 strong were smaller than Greek ones (18,500 strong) and the Italians were soon driven back, though they had air superiority. By mid-November the Greeks had numerical superiority on the front where eventually eleven infantry divisions, two infantry brigades, and one cavalry division opposed fifteen Italian infantry divisions and one tank division. Other Greek divisions manned the Metaxas, or Nestos, Line, which protected Salonika, and, with British forces, the Aliakmon Line. Casualties during the Balkan campaign amounted to 13,408 killed and 42,485 wounded. About 9,000 escaped to Crete, others fled through Turkey to Egypt. These constituted the 18,500-strong Royal Hellenic Army in the Middle East which came under British command and which eventually formed three brigades, an armoured car regiment, an artillery regiment, and the Greek Sacred Regiment, made up solely of officers. One brigade fought at the second El Alamein battle before being withdrawn, but the rest, apart from the Greek Sacred Regiment, saw little active service as the army was riven by politics. After the mutiny of April 1944, which precipitated a confrontation with British forces, much of it was interned. The rest were used for non-operational duties, though 2,500 of those regarded as more ‘reliable’ were formed into the Third Mountain Brigade which subsequently fought with distinction in the Italian campaign. There it became known as the Rimini Brigade, and it helped the British quell the ELAS insurgency in Athens in December 1944.

(b) Navy

In October 1940 the Greek Navy comprised 200 officers and 2,700 men. The fleet consisted of an ancient 10,000-ton cruiser, a flotilla of 6 modern and 4 old destroyers, 13 old torpedo boats, 6 submarines, and 30 miscellaneous craft. Its submarines sank 18 Italian ships from Adriatic convoys, but in April 1941 many Greek warships were sunk by German aircraft. Twelve, including the cruiser, three new destroyers, and three submarines escaped to Alexandria, and these subsequently operated under overall British command. By April 1944 the numbers had risen to several thousand men, some of whom manned destroyers handed over by the British. Five ships, which joined the mutinies of April 1944, were stormed by Greek seamen loyal to the government-in-exile. Eleven seamen were killed, others were wounded, and many were subsequently interned.

(c) Air Force

The Army and Navy Air Forces comprised about 3,000 men. These flew and maintained a miscellany of about 300 aircraft, many of them obsolete, and they made no impact on the Italians. There were too many aircraft types, few spare parts, no replacement aircraft, and a dearth of forward airfields because of the country's rugged terrain. Too few personnel escaped for an independent air force to be formed but eventually three Greek squadrons (nos. 13, 335, and 336) were raised as part of the Western Desert Air Force.

5. Merchant marine

At the outbreak of war the substantial Greek Merchant Marine consisted of 577 ships, totalling 1,837,315 tons. Of these 334 were sunk through Axis action, 32 were seized by the Axis powers, and 63 were lost for other reasons. Total tonnage lost amounted to 1,346,502, 71% of the total. Two thousand seamen lost their lives and a further 2,500 were wounded, losses which had a disproportionate impact on the relatively small number of Aegean islands from which crews were recruited.

6. Resistance

Small guerrilla bands, whose activities provoked savage reprisals, came into existence as early as the summer of 1941. The main initiative in organizing more co-ordinated resistance was taken by the Communist Party (KKE) which, paradoxically, was to emerge as the major political force in occupied Greece. Paradoxically because, riven by factional disputes and obliged by the Comintern to espouse the unpatriotic cause of an independent Macedonia, the KKE had been a marginal political force during the inter-war period.

The Metaxas dictatorship had, however, left behind a political vacuum which was perpetuated by the occupation. This enabled the KKE, with much greater experience of clandestine activity than the bourgeois politicians, adroitly to exploit their inadequacies, want of vision, and lack of organization. It was thus able to project itself with some conviction as the only valid instrument of change and progress in the war-ravaged country. Once Hitler had launched the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 (see BARBAROSSA), the KKE abandoned its hitherto ambiguous line towards the war, and took the lead in organizing a mass resistance movement. In September 1941 the National Liberation Front (EAM), nominally a coalition of a number of small left-leaning parties, was founded. From this the traditional party leaders stood wholly aloof. From the outset the KKE kept a tight grip on EAM, even if the bulk of its rank- and-file membership (estimates of its size range between 500,000 and 2,000,000) was not communist. A number of offshoots of EAM came into existence, the most important of which was the Ethnikos Laikos Apeleftherotikos Stratos (ELAS, the National People's Liberation Army), which was founded in December 1941 as the military arm of EAM. In the early summer of 1942 the first ELAS guerrilla band under the able but ruthless leadership of Ares Veloukhiotis (the pseudonym of Athanasios Klaras) took to the mountains. There it was joined by another resistance group, the Ethnikos Dimokratikos Ellinikos Syndesmos (EDES, the National Republican Greek League), commanded by General Napoleon Zervas (1891–1957). This was non- communist but, like EAM/ELAS, was republican. Other small resistance groups came into being but the royalist presence in the resistance was minimal.

The potential of guerrilla resistance was realized when, on 25/26 November 1942, detachments of ELAS and EDES, armed and co-ordinated by a British sabotage team parachuted in by SOE, destroyed the Gorgopotamos viaduct which carried the Salonika–Athens railway line, perhaps the most spectacular act of sabotage anywhere in occupied Europe up to that time. It had originally been intended that the British team would be withdrawn. Now, however, it was ordered to remain in Greece to assist in the co-ordination of resistance activity. The Gorgopotamos operation was to prove the only instance of co-operation under a unified command between ELAS and EDES during the occupation. At best relations between the two organizations were uneasy, at worst they degenerated into internecine fighting, as ELAS sought to consolidate its hold over all resistance activity with an eye to the inevitable power struggle on liberation. British fears as to the ultimate political objectives of EAM led to a conscious effort during the early months of 1943 to build up EDES as a counterweight to EAM/ELAS. In the course of this process Zervas, the leader of EDES, was induced to make a statement of support for King George II.

Military necessity, however, was soon to lead the British to switch from a policy of containment of ELAS to one of co-operation. deception schemes in connection with the invasion of Sicily in July 1943 (see Sicilian campaign) made it imperative to lead Hitler, already obsessed with the idea of an Allied landing in the Balkans such as had occurred during the First World War, to expect the opening of a front in Greece. These deceptions required large-scale sabotage activity, which could only be carried out in co-operation with ELAS, given its domination of the resistance. Accordingly, in July 1943, the ‘National Bands’ agreement was negotiated. In return for an undertaking not to molest rival resistance organizations, EAM/ELAS was given a predominant role in the Joint General Headquarters that was set up in free mountain Greece with the object of co-ordinating all resistance activity under the aegis of the Middle East Command. The diversionary sabotage of the summer of 1943 achieved some notable successes, including the blowing-up of the Asopos railway viaduct by an SOE team. Hitler was duly deceived into transferring two crack divisions to Greece.

But the ‘National Bands’ agreement was in effect for only a short time before a major crisis developed in relations between the resistance organizations in Greece and the British diplomatic and military authorities, the government-in-exile, and King George II in the Middle East. It was occasioned by the arrival in Cairo in August 1943 of a guerrilla delegation, accompanied by Brigadier E. C. W. Myers, the commander of the British military mission. As was the case with the guerrilla Joint General Headquarters, the delegation was dominated by representatives of EAM/ELAS. The arrival of the guerrillas represented possibly the only opportunity during the occupation of creating a unified resistance movement. But the chance of reaching agreement between the resistance forces within Greece, the government-in-exile, the king and the British—the principal source of logistical support for the resistance and who recognized the king and the Tsouderos government as the embodiment of constitutional continuity—was bungled by the British authorities.

The guerrilla delegates had two basic demands. Firstly, they wanted the king to declare unambiguously that he would not return until a plebiscite had voted in his favour. Secondly, they wanted to take charge of three key government portfolios in those areas of Greece that they already effectively controlled. Both demands were refused and the guerrilla delegation returned to the mountains in September convinced that the British were prepared to impose the monarchy by force if necessary. Within a matter of weeks, internecine fighting, with many of the characteristics of a civil war, had broken out between ELAS and EDES, with the former accusing the latter of collaboration. The British sought to staunch the fighting by cutting off supplies to ELAS, but this move was largely negated by the fact that ELAS secured the lion's share of the arms and equipment of the Italian forces in Greece following Italy's armistice with the Allies on 9 September. Eventually, the truce of February 1944 led to a ceasfire and delineated the respective operational areas of ELAS and EDES, with the latter being restricted to Epirus in north-western Greece.

Richard Clogg

Bibliography

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Hondros, J. , Occupation and Resistance: the Greek agony (New York, 1983).
Mazower, M. , Inside Hitler's Greece. The Experience of Occupation, 1941–44 (New Haven, 1993).
Woodhouse, C. M. , The Struggle for Greece 1941–49 (London, 1976).