Aris: The Triumphs and Persecution of a Revolutionary Genius

By Dionysis Charitopoulos

This book is a torn page from the History of World War II.

It cost the author 20 years of research.

It cost the Greek National Resistance thousands of dead and wounded in battles and acts of sabotage that have remained unsung.

The inspiration and the leader of the unorthodox and harsh war without prisoners against the invaders was Aris; a charismatic 36-year-old man with an iron will. He created ELAS, the largest volunteer army in the history of Greece, and a “Free Greece” within enslaved Europe. But when the invaders left, Aris clashed with the political leadership of both the right and the left and he took to the mountains again, where he committed suicide on June 15, 1945, hounded by all of them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035805280

Dionysis Charitopoulos

Dionysis Charitopoulos was born in 1947 and is one of the most celebrated contemporary writers of Modern Greece. He belongs to the privileged elite who write works of quality literature that quickly become bestsellers and remain classics.  Works by the author: Andartes, (Heroes of the Greek Resistance), historical, 2022 Love Affairs After the Fall of the Junta, novella, 2019 Secret Piraeus, novel, 2018 Relationships, essay, 2017 People of Piraeus, novel, 2016 War Rehearsals, novella, 2014 Piraeus, novel, 2012 Imbecility Manual, essay, 2008 Say My Name, novel, 2005 Aris, historical biography, 2003 We Ourselves, collection of essays, 2003 The Wedding List, theatrical play, 1998 Eggs Dyed Black, theatrical play, 1995 Kilroy Was Here, novella, 1992 Against Marlboro, novella, 1990 The Night Bukovi Left, novella, 1989 Despoina, novella, 1984 The Cildren of Chelidona, novel, 1983 525 Infantry Battalion, novel, 1981 The Borrowed Tie, short stories, 1976

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Preface

Everywhere he went, I went. I had to see the places he saw action, and listen to the people who had known and lived with him.

Fortunately, in the early 1970s, when I began my research, many of those who had worshipped or hated him and had fought with, or against him, were still alive, so many of his mannerisms, behaviour and even genuine phrases have survived by being handed down from person to person just like the lyrics of an old folk song. I was also fortunate to have wonderful guides to each of these places. It is one thing to wander about searching and quite another to be shown around the first hideouts of the andartes (Resistance/Freedom fighters) on Mount Parnassos by the old andartes chiefs Pericles and Nikiforos themselves. And it is one thing to gaze at a mountain from afar and quite another to be ushered through the narrow passes of Chelidona by Katsantonis, one of his personal guard, the Blackcaps.

At the beginning, unsuspecting, I covered hundreds of kilometres to talk to someone who claimed to have been ‘quite close to Aris’ only to find that the person had simply seen him riding on horseback through the village square. I met so many henchmen, messengers, officials and aides to the leader, that their number was simply absurd. I do not blame them for making these claims; indeed, I understand them. Legend is alluring. In most Greek villages, especially those nestled high up on the mountains; there was always someone who had at least one sensational story to tell me of an incident he had witnessed involving Aris.

However, none of these stories have been included in this book unless I was able to corroborate them fully. If someone described an incident, I would ask them who else had been present. I would then seek out those witnesses and only when their version agreed completely with what I had been previously told, did I include it in the material I was collecting for this book. If there were no other witnesses to the incident then, regardless of how convincing or plausible the story, I acted as if I had never heard it.

In 1974, the collapse of the military dictatorship, opened the way for the return of hundreds of former fighters of the Mountains who, in order to survive, had fled to countries in Eastern Europe. There followed another flood of interviews, information, and written memoirs.

By 1990, I had amassed an enormous amount of material, which now had to be catalogued. Interviews had to be fully transcribed and the more interesting quotes to be selected. And finally, the book to be written. Putting all other professional activities (and a number of personal commitments) aside, I dedicated myself to the effort.

In writing about the Greek Resistance forces, I did not consider their postliberation activities; whether they continued their social activism or withdrew to their private lives, the people in this book are presented and, by and large, are judged by their contribution during the crucial years 1940 to 1944. I must have met and interviewed hundreds of former andartes, officers, politicians and villagers from all sides, although only a few are still alive. Many were ordinary folk who had simply done their patriotic duty; some of them were truly extraordinary, and some were immersed in their own world.

However, I shall never forget:

Pericles, the bravest, most sensible and dignified gentleman I have ever met in my life. Aris’ first kapetanios and a member of the first three-member ELAS headquarters, lived withdrawn in a small apartment in a tenement housing block in the outskirts of Lamia, refusing to ask anybody for anything. We met, or talked on the phone, over many years. We became friends. He entrusted me with his memories. We offered each other hospitality and, each time, he impressed me by his subtlety, austerity and self-knowledge.

Nor will I forget:

The giant Blackcap Parousis, ravaged by illness and bed-ridden, living in absolute destitution in a ‘shed’ of a room with a dusty earthen floor in Neos Kosmos, telling me with faltering diction that ‘I am the first to enter his home’ in forty years.

Father Anypomonos, in the guest quarters in the monastery of Ypati, who has no time for small talk but he led me conspiratorially into his tiny cell where the walls are covered with icons of saints, and a photograph of Aris.

The charismatic and inconsolable military cadet Nikiforos who entrusted me with relics of the struggle and we spent endless hours talking in Athens, Mikro Chorio and Agoriani.

The lady at Tropaia in Arkadia, where Aris had established his headquarters in the Peloponnese, who confessed to me that not only herself but also her friends had fallen in love with the Blackcaps who, despite their wild and sharp appearance, were even more shy than young maidens.

The indomitable last andartes: Despo, who returned after 20 years in China where she lived as a guest of Chou-en-Lai and who did the daily rounds in her daughter’s clinic with the vitality of a 20-year-old.

Gavrias, the legendary Lieutenant of ELAS who immediately after the end of the Resistance movement became a master of ceremonies in a well-known Athens night club in Syntagma Square where Edith Piaf had had star billing whilst they were searching for him up on the Mountains. And on the 21st April 1967, in order to avoid capture, he stowed away aboard a ship bound for Buenos Aires where he was found many years later.

The tiny Melios Ksekarfotos who told me, with pride, that when he appeared before Aris to be recruited, he said, Give him the ladle and he was sent to the kitchen as a cook, but nevertheless an andarte.

The last surviving member of a family of andartes which had been wiped out, and because those were the days of the dictatorship and he was being watched, we met and talked in a ravine outside his village for three nights in succession.

The village policeman in Epirus who told me to leave because a Security Service car was on its way from Ioannina to arrest me.

The two members of the gang of thieves from Agoridaia who opened their heart to me about Aris who rightly disbanded the gang and ordered the execution of its leaders.

The lonely shepherd at Agrafa who recounted to me that the leader was studying Hippocrates, Pythagoras and Aristotle, and the other one who remembered verbatim ancient phrases like ‘Άμμες δε γ’ εσόμεθα πολλώ κάρρονες’ (We shall become much better) which Nikiforos used to start a speech in his village.

The sepia coloured photo of Aris, clipped from a newspaper, stuck between icons of saints in the homes of the poor, and some moonstruck inhabitants of Roumeli’s Mountains who assured me that Aris was not dead, he was alive and he would reappear when he thought the time was right.

In Greece, a country that does not have nobles or a titled gentry, the most splendid title of honour for a Greek is that of the andarte, the resistance fighter, the patriot who takes up arms and heads for the Mountains to fight the foreign conqueror. Regardless of whether they were members: of ELAS and with Aris or Zervas’ National Republican Greek League (EDES) or Psarros’ 5/42, the andartes are above judgement; for they are the ones who sacrificed their lives, and not those who criticised them (and still do) with the benefit of hindsight.

As for Aris Velouchiotis, his archaic end is further proof that the fate awaiting those charismatic leaders who express a vision of freedom with no limits, is the same everywhere on this planet. Or, as a follower of Che Guevara wrote: All of us misfits are condemned to be killed, crushed by power that we, in the end, support with our own deaths.¹

Dionysis Charitopoulos

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E. T. Guevara Latinoamericana AA, Livanis Publishing House↩︎

1. For the Record

Prophecy

Η Ελλάδα έκανε μαζί του, για πρώτη φορά, ασκήσεις ελευθέρων αναπνοών στα Bουνά…

Together with Greece, he did free breathing exercises on the Mountains for the first time, yet his usual parting words were: See you at the furriers¹. His belief in a different finale for the Resistance, and for himself, was dwindling.

At the sight of his severed head, the feelings of the leadership of both the Right and the Left were of mutual relief. And both his icon makers, and denigrators later on, were struggling to interpret something that the man who committed suicide at Mesounda had transcended long before: his party identity.

For the record, and in order to understand him, it is necessary to state briefly certain events that preceded his lifetime.

What is Greece?

It is an Occupied Country that is fighting to rid itself of its Conquerors, but it is also more than that. The Country is like a degenerate family, whose glory belongs in the past and it now survives on errands. To quote Stavrianos:² During the four centuries of Ottoman Occupation, Greece has been totally erased from the conscience of Westerners. It does not exist. The Greek spirit is still alive, the Greeks are not.

It is as though the Country has sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean.

The incident that occurred to Adamantios Koraes³ is typical. During the time of the French Revolution he was in Paris and he applied to the French authorities for a cárte de sécurité. When he stated that his nationality was Greek, everybody’s eyes were fixed upon him and a few approached him to make sure that a Greek is the same as other men.

The 1821 Revolution awakened the West.

During the Revolution the Westerners witnessed heroic deeds, evidence that Modern Greeks were worthy successors of the Ancient Greeks.

In the Eastern Mediterranean basin, the differences between the three Great Powers of the period—Britain, France, Russia and the advancing decomposition of the Ottoman Empire impeded but also favoured the Greek struggle.

Russia was the sworn enemy of the Sultan’s Empire which it considered the main obstacle to its expansion. Russian agents had penetrated the Balkans to incite or encourage any revolutionary activity that would speed up the downfall of the ‘great invalid’. The statement of Tsar Alexander I at the Council of Vienna (following the Napoleonic adventures) that, Russia is the natural protector of the Christian Orthodox Greeks who were under Ottoman Occupation boosted the hopes of the local revolutionaries. They were anxious for the arrival of the Muscovite and his army.

Initially, Great Britain opposed Greek dreams, in line with the basic doctrine of its foreign policy that, it must not allow Russia to expand and, at the same time, it must not let Turkey weaken. The Anglophile faction of the Greek revolutionaries used every possible means to win the favour of the British. They sent a written petition to the British Government stating their resolution to place under the absolute defence of Great Britain the sacred heritage of freedom, national independence and political existence of the Greek nation.

The dangerously increasing Russian influence in the Balkans, the strong current of philhellenism growing in the West, the Turkish atrocities and the struggle for freedom of an Ancient Nation, changed British policy. Above all, the establishment of an independent Greece under Russian protection must be avoided. (Castellan)⁴

The British masterfully interposed in the embryonic Greco-Russian affair, encouraged the Greek expectations, and in 1823 approved the first loan of 2.4 million pounds for the revolutionaries. Their contribution to the Greek national liberation struggle proved decisive in 1827, when the Greek Revolution appeared to wane. With British exhortation, the united fleets of the three Great Powers; sank the combined Turkish-Egyptian fleet at Navarino and the Greeks took a breather. Certainly, the cunning British politicians rushed to relinquish responsibility, and publicly declared their regret for the ‘regrettable incident’ against a friendly country like Turkey. The British King George IV attributed the conflict to a ‘deplorable misunderstanding’ and threatened to punish the chief of the fleet British Admiral Codrington.

Finally, under the London Protocol of 1830, Greece won its independence.

But only on paper.

Because the three Great Powers declared themselves protectors of the newly established Greek State and declared: We do not have only the right, but also the duty to intervene for the preservation of peace and order in the Country.

The prophecy of Laonikos Chalkokondyles, who experienced the fall of the Byzantine Empire, about the future of his enslaved compatriots was, The children of the Greeks will gather and set up a state of their own; and they will live their lives in a way that they will like and foreigners will admire. (Toynbee)⁵

Only the first part came to pass.

Protectorate

According to the dictionary, a protectorate is defined as one nation whose foreign affairs are dealt with by another. This is really the accurate and mild definition of the Greek nation: under compulsory management.

The great power of antiquity awoke after centuries in an asphyxiatingly confined state, in a world much bigger than it had known and infinitely more advanced in every field. The ecumenical Greek language had shrunk to a local dialect and the Country’s fragile security was threatened on all fronts: more directly by Turkey, which would never resign its ambition to transform the independent Greek state into a Turkish province.

Professor of History, Nikos Svoronos in his book Histoire de la Grèce Moderne notes that: Of the three powers who assumed Greece’s ‘protection’, Britain, which has the undisputed dominance in the Mediterranean since the nineteenth century and having the Greek economy in its hands, plays the leading role. Russian or French influence in Greece is no more than transient moments.

In order to discourage the Austrians who have ambitions in the Mediterranean and anyone else, in 1841, without a trace of diplomatic tact, the British Ambassador in Athens Sir Edmund Lyons, declares:

A truly independent Greece it is an absurdity. Greece can become either British or Russian and, since it must not become Russian, it is necessary to become British. (Clogg)⁶

For more security, using the internal anarchy as a pretext the assassination of the governor Ioannis Kapodistrias etc. the Protector Powers imposed a monarchy on Greece.

An affront to the country that gave birth to democracy.

Greece has been declared independent but it has not been allowed to return to its ancient democratic traditions (George Herbert Wells World History)

The monarchs who, from time to time, ascended to the Greek throne took the role of a contemporary foreign manager in charge of a subsidiary company. There was no osmosis with the natives, but total loyalty to the metropolis from which they derived their strength with overt protection of their interests. If all this was not enough, ‘the Protectors’ did not hesitate to impose harsher measures; such as military intervention, exclusion and occupation. But, sometimes, the monarch needed to be brought into line by different means, the ultimate of which is dethronement. The first monarch to the Greek throne, the 17-year-old Otto of the House of Bitelsbach of Bavaria, was ‘withdrawn’ quietly in 1862 because he dared take liberal initiatives without British approval. Greek people living outside the national borders would be liberated gradually at painful cost to the Greek nation, and only if it coincided with the objectives of the Great Powers.

After the ousted Otto, George of Denmark of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Glücksburg was placed on the vacant Greek throne, and the seven Ionian islands (Heptanese) were given as dowry from Britain to the new King on the condition—which was accepted—that the Greeks abandon every attempt to extend the Greek nation at the expense of Turkey.

Victoria, the Queen of Great Britain, did not hold the new King of Greece in high regard ‘the poor silly boy Willie’ she called him and she considered him ‘not very clever’. (Stavrianos) Nevertheless, he was exceptionally obedient and his dynasty was a long one. All the Kings of Willie’s family tree followed his example; Britain above all. Despite various intrigues and flirtations, such as those of Konstantine I with Germany during World War I, the line was kept intact until 1948. Since then, custody of the Country has been undertaken by the USA.

Politicians

The childhood illness of Greek political life was dependence. The first political parties flew their flags with the British, French, Russian as well as the Austrians and others.

The Greek politicians, instead of being the indigenous counterbalance to the foreign monarch, relied on foreign powers, either as support or as an alibi for their inadequacy.

Not a single ideology was proposed by the Parties, or the political leaders, or a convincing set of principles.

German historian Heinz A. Richter, known for his work on the history of World War II and modern Greece, although particularly caustic, is not far from reality: "The created parties were identical with their political leaders. Everything is concentrated on the politician who is the face of the Party, who depending on his ‘success’ could attract a larger or smaller number of followers…Its support is bribery, political dealings, corruption, demagoguery and political terrorism, in two words ‘political prostitution’…The attitude of the Greeks was similar.

No one voted for a party, but against the party that had not bribed him in the previous parliamentary period.

This is client politics, without any social agenda such as housing, illiteracy, the lack of road building and transport infrastructure, crime prevention, poverty. The bright interludes of Charilaos Trikoupis⁷ and Eleftherios Venizelos⁸ provided a brief respite to the internal situation, but in relation to the big challenge which was the real independence of the Country, their contribution was very small.

After recovering their Independence, politics was not one of the fields in which the Greeks achieve success, writes Toynbee.

It is fairer to state that, the dependency of the new Greek nation has not permitted the development of politics to the same degree as other social activities. The Modern Greece of a few million inhabitants had the good fortune to bring forth distinguished scientists, military leaders and artists, but not politicians. The process of advancement to the highest offices of State will be almost always external. In Greece, the dictum ‘people have the leadership they deserve’ is very seldom applied. As a rule, the political leaders of the Country were not equal to the potential of its citizens.

The army burst onto the Greek political scene with its own demands. From 1824 up to 1935, there were 38 revolutions and coups. Army officers in agreement with either politicians or the secret service: changed governments, dismissed or restored Kings, imposed their personal dictatorships, and they even managed to influence stock market prices in order to benefit certain businessmen. In this chaotic environment of political incoherence, the sole active defence of the people in the countryside against the autistic nation of Athens was the mass desertion of the Country. In their thousands, they emigrated to the United States and Western Europe.

Based on Ministry for External Affairs data only; between 1890 and 1920, 400,000 Greeks emigrated to the USA and Australia a number that represented a sixth of the population: all men. Fortunately, the change in the immigration law in the USA intercepted this desperate escape leap until the Post-War period (1950–1980) when 1,000,000 emigrants or 12% of the population left the Country. The areas which were really laid bare were the more vulnerable ones nationally: Eastern Macedonia (where one in three emigrated), and Thrace and Epirus, However, these desperate people of the Diaspora did not forget their homeland: wherever they settled, they tried to preserve their national identity and many of them sent endowments and donations to help the place of their birth by establishing churches and schools.

The establishment of SEKE (Socialist Labour Party of Greece) took place on 17th November 1918, and was renamed KKE (Greek Communist Party) in 1924. Although its gospel was radical social change in support of the weaker classes, it received a poor response from workers and farmers, but it proposed arguments which created another obsession, the ‘Communist danger’ and offered an ideological garment to the arguably bare dogmatism of politicians and army officers.

Order

The wounds of World War I, the rise to power of the October Revolution in Tsarist Russia, and especially the effects of the Great Depression of the world economy created a tidal wave of social unrest in Europe.

It was the first time that the civic state and its government were so intensely scrutinised, the danger was not as some feared, from the export of the Russian Revolution, but from the European Far-Right that was gaining momentum and imposing dictatorships or authoritarian regimes in most countries. The Fascist plague that would plunge the world into bloodshed once more with World War II emerged first in Italy, with the rise of Mussolini, and ominously gathered momentum in Germany with Hitler’s ascendancy. The Nazi monster-state that openly flouted European democratic institutions and human liberties found advocates in almost every country in the world.

The same happened in Greece.

The strongest of the foreign lobbies was the British, with the French second. The influence of Russia, which was now the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was limited chiefly to the members of the Greek Communist Party (KKE). Since Hitler’s rise to power, the strength of the German lobby in Greece grew impressively: businessmen, intellectuals, and military officers looked to Germany.

Greece’s ruling class was divided into Anglophiles and Germanophiles. The former saw Germany’s massive military power as a threat to their traditional economic and other ties to Britain; the latter believed Germany could provide the proper response to every manner of social revolutionaries or agitators in the world.

But as always, developments were controlled by the British.

To stem any possibility of Greece sliding into the German camp, they set in motion the wheels for the return of the trusted King George II from exile in Britain. The official result of the farcical plebiscite was 98% in favour of the monarch, which after the removal of thousands of votes reached 105%. Indeed, in some regions, the corruption of election officials pushed that total to 130%. The statement of the Danish Ambassador that the elections ‘were undoubtedly the biggest comedy every performed’ sealed Greece’s international embarrassment. (Hagen Fleischer)

King George returned to Greece determined to manipulate the Greeks, for whom he had not the slightest regard, nor sympathy. When he was among foreign friends, he disclaimed any similarity to them. This is shown in a number of Foreign Office documents, and in the diary of diplomat Giorgos Seferis, who reveals the palace atmosphere: They mock and snub the Greeks. The Greeks are stupid. They don’t like them (Seferis, Meres).

At the monarch’s command, on 4th August 1936, General Ioannis Metaxas imposed an autocratic regime by using, as a pretext, the Communist threat. In reality, his dictatorship ‘was considered by the Greek ruling class as a suitable agent to safeguard their interests’. (Svoronos)

The power of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) was minimal. In a coalition with some other socialist-inclined groups, the Party secured 15 seats in Parliament, yet was powerless to halt the inevitable. Thousands of Communists, or simply anti-monarchists, were arrested and after being taken care of by the security services (doused with resin oil, ice, hot pepper put in the anus, and merciless beatings) were either imprisoned or exiled.

The order imposed in Greece by the Metaxas dictatorship had all the Fascist characteristics; from the structure of a police-state to the Youth, and even the salute. The decreed dictator analysed the regime’s nature in his diary: Greece, as of 4th August, has become an anti-Communist state. An anti-parliamentary state. A totalitarian state. And because he feared an attack by the Axis powers⁹ he pointedly noted: If Hitler and Mussolini were truly fighting for the ideology whose flag they raised, then they should have supported Greece with all their power.

The New Order (1)

The real causes of wars are seldom admitted in public. Since the 19th century, the military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz had exposed the true nature concealed behind the pompous nationalistic or religious eruptions and ‘insane’ leaders: War is a form of human relations…It is a clash of huge interests regulated by blood, and this is the only way in which it differs from other clashes. More than any other art, it is better compared to commerce, which is also a clash of interests.

Starting on 5th June 1940, France was subjected to the German blitzkrieg and was crushed in a few days. Italian troops attacked from the rear to share the spoils. Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg had already acquiesced to Germany.

Hitler’s new order was sadly established in Europe.

On 28th October 1940, Italy attacked Greece. This was not entirely without cause, as is usually presented. With coordinated moves aimed at creating a distraction, the British attempts to extend the war in the Balkans led to the expected conquest of the entire peninsula by Germany.

Italian Forces entered Greek territory from the Albanian border, half an hour before the ultimatum they had issued Metaxas expired. The world waited for the drama to unfold anew. The Invaders bore no relation to the political cartoons in the Greek newspapers of the day. They did not come to leave their bones in the Pindos range; they were very well-armed and fought hard. At the start, they scored some victories. Only a handful of battalions of conscripted Albanians seem unwilling to fight against the Greeks and eventually dissolved.

The British, who were fully aware of the state of the Greek Army, ruled out any Greek victory. The British Military Attaché in Athens predicted a crushing defeat for the Greeks, while the British Field Marshal Henry Maitland Wilson observed that the Greek Government had not made any preparations in order to be able to counter this attack. The Commander of the Greek Forces Alexandros Papagos, shifted blame to Metaxas: The unprovoked Italian attack on 28th October was met by Greece essentially unprepared. And from the front-lines, Major-General Petroutsopoulos, Head of the Operations Office of the Epirus 8th Division, confirmed, The leadership did not believe in victory but just wanted us to fire some shots for the honour of the corps.¹⁰

The American correspondent of the New York Times in Greece, watching the Greek soldiers march towards the Front foretells their fate: They were nervous men with bright eyes. The underdogs, we said, what chances do they have in front of the Italian army. Perhaps the motorised forces of the fascists are already 1/3 of the way to Athens. But these small Greeks, like the population of the villages, did not seem worried. They continued their march north, further and further north. (Stavrianos)

But no one considered one thing: the Greek people, who had taken the war into their own hands. After the first ambush, the Greeks launched a counter-attack and from 22nd November repelled the enemy from their borders.

The war shifted to Albania; one after another, towns were taken and despite all expectations the Italian position became increasingly untenable.

In December, Mussolini admits defeat:

There is nothing we can do anymore. It is stupid, it is ridiculous, but we must ask for an armistice through the mediation of Hitler.

Unbelievable.

The people regained courage and hope.

This was the first Axis defeat since the Luftwaffe’s failed air strikes across the English Channel. It seemed like a miracle.

In Albania, frozen in the midst of the harshest winter in 50 years, 27 Italian Divisions, with a definite superiority in supplies, ammunition and air cover were pursued by 15 Greek Divisions which were insufficiently armed and unsuitably dressed. The Greeks are naked, writes Raymond Cartier in his History. He noted that, in addition, to combat fatalities, thousands of soldiers lost limbs due to frostbite.

The Greeks transcended these difficulties with seeming ease.

The civilian and military leadership were absent in Athens, awaiting news of the surrender. Papagos had not even moved his headquarters to the Front and his first visit was not until 2nd December. Also absent was any military planning: General Dimitris Katheniotis subsequently tried to find a single order to attack the enemy ‘to pin up’ but found none as ‘the General Staff had settled on mounting a heroic resistance and a quick, but honourable end’.¹¹

For the first time since 1821, Greece was again the focus of global attention; the unexpected victories prompted the world’s admiration.

In the West, the philhellenism that marked the previous century was fanned anew. The entire world, the entire history of the world has its eyes on Greece, this small corner, this barren rocky place, (Seferis). In the USA, the Modern Greeks were likened to the Ancient Gods. General Charles de Gaulle and the Free French literally raved: Never, since the Battle of Salamis, has Greece scaled such heights. Along the Italian border with France, a humorous sign was posted. Greek soldiers, halt! This is where the French border begins.(Lampsas)

In Germany also, there was admiration of the achievements of the Greeks.

They simply sought to interpret the event, and Hitler with his racist theories, would boast that the contemporary Greeks are the descendants of the Dorians who, again according to Hitler, were Aryans and an Indo-German tribe. In the Greeks’ veins flows Indo-German blood and the Dorians were the founders of German civilisation. (Vassos Mathiopoulos, Antistasis)

The New Order (2)

Hitler could not afford to have the Axis tarnished further. The expected German attack on Greece created panic among the Commanders and the men of the Greek Army’s largest units. More or less, with a few shining exceptions, the Commanders and the men of the Army’s largest units had been corrupted by ‘Germanoplexy’. (Alexandros Zaousis) A visit by Crown Prince Paul, the King’s brother, to the Albanian Front led to an unprecedented clash between the successor to the throne and the military chiefs. The very idea of mounting a resistance against the Germans had brought some of the chiefs to their knees and they went as far as doing the incredible: tendering their resignations.

After this depressing tour, there were sweeping changes in the military leadership, with defeatist Generals publicly replaced for ‘health reasons’ and Colonels, with the determination to fight, placed in command of Divisions.

The Germans attacked Yugoslavia first.

Yugoslavia had joined the Axis, signing a secret protocol with the incentive of realising their perennial dream: to acquire Thessaloniki. Turkey, similarly promised Western Thrace by Hitler, was not as easily lured into the Axis camp and struck a more opportunistic stance by refusing to be openly allied with him.

The eleventh-hour anti-government coup was the feat of British agents who brought the wavering Country back into their camp.

Yugoslavia was unable to live up to the Allies’ expectations and its army, though one-million-strong, almost immediately buckled. The Wehrmacht trumpeted its success, boasting that it suffered just 150 fatalities and about 400 wounded from the operations, in which 6,000 Yugoslav officers and 350,000 troops were taken captive.

Now the Germans targeted Greece on 6th April 1941.

Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, did not wish the military entanglement of his Country in a lost cause but for political reasons it was difficult to escape it. Britain’s relations with the United States were another reason Churchill was forced to aid Greece—if only for show. There was a powerful Greek lobby in the USA and a broader feeling of goodwill towards the Greeks, which had been bolstered by their success in Albania, and leaving the small Allied Country to its fate would have caused a fierce backlash. British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden promised 100,000 troops, 142 tanks, and 650 armed vehicles, yet just 53,000 British soldiers landed in Greece in early March.

The domestic situation was tragic.

The majority of the military leadership asked to surrender to Germany, begging or threatening everyone. Units were scattered before making contact with the enemy; plans were not put into action and strategic posts were abandoned. The victorious army of the Albanian Front, which had been left without cover and in imminent danger of being surrounded by Italian and German Forces, retreated hastily in panic-racked hordes.

The British will often speak about treason—and they were right. The Front had been undermined from the inside. As Germans and Greeks clashed, Nikolaos Papadimas, Deputy Secretary of the Military, forged an unrelated Government order into ‘an order giving leave to officers and troops engaged in battle’. The new Prime Minister, Alexandros Koryzis—who succeeded Metaxas after his death on 29th January 1941—rescinded the order and accused Papadimas of High Treason. Field Marshal Wilson elegantly described this disgraceful behaviour as an ‘indiscretion’.

Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident. It was obvious that aside from those who have switched sides, a fifth phalanx of the New Order was also acting in the Germans’ favour within the military and civilian ranks. By contrast, the people were unbending; in the Capital, rallies were organised with anti-German slogans, a number of which also showed some humour, such as ‘Down with the house-painter!’ mocking Hitler’s attempts at painting.

En masse, citizens volunteered for the German Front while labour Unions applied to the Government for permission to set up roadblocks to defend Athens. Prime Minister Koryzis outlined the situation to the King, who accused the Prime Minister of losing control; whereupon Koryzis kissed his hand and went home, where he committed suicide.

The Germans may have corrupted and terrorised the Country’s leadership but the fighters at the Macedonian Front restored the Country’s honour. German superiority was overwhelming, in both men and fire-power, yet the Germans admitted that the Greeks mounted a ferocious defence and their morale was unshakeable. Despite the fierce German attacks, the line of defence was not breached anywhere. The American Ambassador in Athens, Lincoln MacVeagh, enthusiastically reported to Washington that the Greeks, although fewer in number than the Germans, have surpassed even what they did against the Italians.

The Germans could not believe what was happening to them. Fierce hand-to-hand combat with those hardy soldiers who were chasing them inside the galleries of the fortifications they had breached; even ambushing them with lances from stretchers where they lay injured. The German losses were considerable, leading to atrocities but also chivalry. A typical incident involved a German Officer who sought the Commander of a Machine-gun Unit which had cut down 200 of his men, and which had only surrendered after its ammunition was exhausted. An ordinary Sergeant was brought forward, Dimitris Intzos. The German pointed to the dead soldiers and said: This massacre is your work. You killed my best soldiers. I congratulate you. He then ordered the Sergeant’s execution. Not too far away, another German Officer had his troops stand in formation so they can be inspected by the Greek Officer whose fort had been taken, and only raised the German Flag after the Greek Unit had retreated.

The troops were holding up. The Generals were not. They sidestepped Papagos and the pathetic passiveness to which he had succumbed, and General Tsolakoglou was authorised to sign the surrender. The victors over the Italians and the heroes of the German Front, abandoned by their leaders, fell into a panicked retreat. Dunkirk, on a smaller scale, repeated itself on Greek soil as the British troops who came to help were left without cover. Field Marshal Wilson’s brilliance averted a near-disaster that would have stigmatised Greece as its leadership, before surrendering, had not provided for the foreign troops fighting on its soil.

The Royal Family and the Government fled to Crete, where they were all but stoned. When the epic Battle of Crete was launched, the Royals were transferred to Cairo after the British refused to officially receive them on Cyprus, which they intended as a gift to the Turks, if they entered the war, according to a secret agreement, which they subsequently attempted to refute. But it is beyond doubt that in addition to Cyprus, Turkey had been offered the Dodecanese, with Stalin’s agreement. The Greeks were taken for granted.

Eventually, Crete was occupied but at very heavy cost to the Germans. Churchill believed that with the Forces they lost on the Greek island, the Germans could have conquered Cyprus, Israel, Syria, and perhaps even Persia.

The British and the Germans were likely to be the only ones who appreciated the character of the Greek people and army. As Field Marshal Wilson remembered, the morale of the Greek people was never shaken. On his departure, as he travelled across the City, he was greeted as a victorious hero, not as the commander of an army that was abandoning them. They showered him with flowers, calling out to him to return quickly and thanking him for his help.

Hitler, addressing the Reichstag on 4th May 1941, said: Historical objectivity compels me to conclude that of all the opponents we’ve faced to date, only the Greek soldier could fight with the same valour and disregard for death equal to us. And he made an important distinction that enraged the humiliated Italians: This is why, in respect for the valiant stance of these soldiers, Greek prisoners of war have been and are being freed immediately.¹²

Mr Thanasis Klaras (1)

The capitulation sent thousands of desperate troops to Athens; some had no means of returning to their homes, others simply had nowhere to go. Homeless and dressed in rags, they aimlessly roamed the streets of a Capital that anxiously awaited the Conqueror’s arrival. And there were clashes. During one, near Omonia in the City Centre, a large group of soldiers protested against the beating of a fellow soldier by a policeman. The incident escalated as more and more soldiers gathered in support. During the commotion, a man in civilian clothes mounted some steps and addressed the crowd. His appearance made no particular impression. He was neither especially imposing nor well-dressed, just an ordinary Corporal who had also just returned from the Front.

But his words struck an odd note.

He told them not to surrender their arms as the war was not over: it had only just begun. Certainly, many thought he was insane. But Mr Thanasis Klaras, this fiery orator, continued to urge them to return to their villages and from there to continue the fight. A few days after the Germans entered the City, he said the same to another crowd of citizens that he had gathered at a park in Athens, on the evening of 15th May. The men listened, doubtfully, as he made his argument that armed struggle is the only way to resist. The resistance.

The new 1821 revolution. He kept repeating every little while.

His words did not seem to have any logic. The German war machine had levelled Europe. Athens and the entire Country was flooded with highly-armed troops and Mr Klaras was arguing for a resistance from the Mountains.

They did not believe him, but they liked listening to him.

Mental Demobilisation

The Germans occupied a Country that had been left to its fate. Those in power on 4th August, have not made any provision for the eventuality of Occupation…they have not organised a single unit in Athens that could act as a link with the Free State that was about to leave the Country; in other words, what was left behind was absolute chaos. (Panayiotis Kanellopoulos)

But the British, once again, had thought ahead. When war had broken out, a British Special Operations Unit had arrived in Greece and trained more than 300 Greeks—all opponents of the dictatorship—in wireless transmission and explosives in case the Country came under Occupation. The entire operation was not known to the pro-German officials of the Metaxas Government, for obvious reasons.

Alfred Rosenberg, the ideological high priest of Nazism, had predicted:

In every country, we will find many selfish scoundrels And in Greece this is fully verified.

General Tsolakoglou forms a government, choosing academics and military officers keen to become ministers. The same people who had served the royal dictatorship of 4th August, become willing servants of the conquerors.

The four-year-old impotent political leadership of the Country expresses its satisfaction with the new government and calls on the Greeks to obey it, as if the most important thing is passivity. As they proclaim, the war for us is over. We did our duty and now we must settle down.

The censored newspapers of Athens go out of their way with persuasions of compliance and obedience to the conquerors:

For real peace…the mental demobilisation of the Greeks is also needed. (Newspaper Estia, 29th April 1941)

The war is over…With mental demobilisation we will feel liberated. (Newspaper Kathimerini, 30th April 1941)

During the Occupation the pre-existing gap between the people and the leadership becomes an abyss. Not only were the people ‘fifty years ahead’ (Lenin) of their government, but they were imbued with a totally different ethos. Although numbed at first, the people ignored Government decrees and threats, and tried to help the British soldiers who did not have time to escape.

One should never again think of Greece without thinking first of the women who seized the brooms from the hands of the British prisoners scavenging the streets, to do their work for them; of the street-urchins who flung the cigarettes with which they earned their living, into lorries loaded with British prisoners as they passed; of the families that died at the Chaidari prison-camp for helping British prisoners to escape. When the common people do such things, they too are influencing the history of human relations; but not in the way that politicians do so, nor for the same reasons. (C. M. Woodhouse)

One myth artfully propagated by the pro-German bourgeoisie to offset British oppression was the ‘civilised Germans’ respect for Greece. But the holocausts of entire Greek villages, the mass executions of innocents, the atrocious crimes and the ravaging of the countryside justified those who considered the Wehrmacht the most repulsive army ever formed in Europe.

Highly civilised peoples wage and can wage wars as brutal as those called barbarians. (Clausewitz)

Revolutionaries

The Greek Communist Party (KKE) had what the other political parties lacked: ideology. But it suffered from the same malaise as the rest: dependence. Hitched and unconditionally subservient to the Communist International, that was the Soviet Union, it transformed internationalism into a noose. The Greek Communist Party’s (KKE) vital historical and social role was demoted into no more than that of a Soviet disciple.

The Communist International (C.I. Comintern or 3rd International) which was founded by Lenin in 1919, was the multinational of revolution. The conditions of admission to the Comintern are arbitrary. It demands complete submission to its decisions and whenever necessary it intervenes with chilling brutality.

The Soviets had split the international labour movement, removing Socialist and Labour parties, and had created, by the standards of the Leninist Party, an elite of full-time professional revolutionaries because in the ensuing battle, there would be a place only for soldiers. But all these were no more than a rhetorical ultra-revolutionism by the Comintern since actually, the movement was not expecting, nor was it prepared to gain power anywhere.

The manipulation of the Communist Party of Greece was not simple, nor bloodless. There are those in the Party who believe in copying the Soviet revolutionary model and those who face it with criticism and want, the truth is somewhat vague, the political line of the KKE to be derived from the Greek reality.

In 1924, the first graduates of the Communist University of Eastern Workers (KUTV) who were also known as ‘Kutvs’ arrived in Greece from Moscow. Their mission was to ‘bolshevize’ the KKE by eliminating any internal resistance.

The ones who questioned the Soviet model were isolated and persecuted by their comrades; some even paid for their deviation with their lives. The KKE was transformed into a pure Leninist Party, a compact cadre of completely devoted and disciplined activists who defied torture, imprisonment, exile, and even the firing squad.

In Nikos Zachariadis, the only survivor from the first mission of the Kutvs, the KKE had found its perfect Stalin replica.

Zachariadis was the Party’s demon.

Intelligent, dynamic, daring, with incomparable organising skills, an incurable adventurist, Zachariadis imposed the model of the totally devoted Party cadre which prevailed thereafter. The Party acquired an almost metaphysical status, all other ties family, lovers, friends had to be sacrificed on its altar. The new General Secretary organised the comrades but stamped out comradeship. Discussion was suppressed in favour of monolithism, internal democracy into a cult of the personality; expressing any opinion that differed from his own, or from the opinion of someone in his trusted inner circle, was tantamount to betrayal.

The KKE was on a slippery slope.

Given the Greek tradition of anthropocentrism and fierce spirit of independence, the KKE was transformed into a party as primitive as the harsh imported Stalinist methods of disciplining members. A statement by Thanasis Hatzis, Secretary of the Federation of Greek Communist Youth Groups (OKNE), who later served as Secretary of the wartime resistance group EAM (National Liberation Front), is shocking: Within KKE and OKNE there was an unprecedented fear. They feared the ‘Guidance’, [as they called the imposition of the ideological guidelines] and the ‘Party’, as the then Communists called it, more than the class enemy. (Thanasis Hatzis, Rizes)

In 1935, the continuing Great Depression, the presence of refugees from Asia Minor, the ‘correction’ of the KKE position over the Macedonian issue, and the electoral cooperation with socialist groups attracted a slightly larger number of voters (5.7%). But the Communist Party did not pose the threat to the State described by Metaxas, not at all; proof of this is the relative ease with which it was disorganised by the Deputy Minister for Security, Konstantinos Maniadakis. The Security Police used their Venizelos inspired statement of repentance and recanting of Communist ideas and mercilessly tortured arrested Party members into signing it.

The KKE was literally crushed.

Instead of sparing its members the ‘sin’ of signing the recanting statement, the Party’s leadership left everyone at the mercy of the Security Police’s cannibalism. Thousands buckled under the pressure; they signed, then returned home, shattered physically and emotionally by the stigma of being recanters, and by their former comrades’ scorn. Those who signed, the recanters, were labelled ‘traitors, stool-pigeons, dead’. Maniadakis’ deviousness and the dogmatic inflexibility of the KKE’s leadership deprived the Party of loyal and able members simply because they could not exceed the human limits of enduring physical pain. The KKE was reduced to 2,000 unyielding members in prison or exile.

When Greece was enslaved, the stance of the dictatorship towards the Communists did not change. Except for a few shining examples, the prison guards handed over the Greek political detainees to the Foreign Occupiers; among them was Zachariadis, whom the Germans sent to the Dachau Concentration Camp.

Yiorgis Siantos was the Secretary of the KKE during the entire period of the foreign occupation, with the fateful Yiannis Ioannidis second in the hierarchy.

Mr Thanasis Klaras (2)

He could have become a lawyer like his father and older brother. He could have drawn income from the land offered to him by his father. He could have remained a high-ranking rural constable in the Civil Service. He could have fallen into the Bohemian lifestyle of his intellectual friends in Athens. He could have taken a more serious view of journalism as a profession and followed a career in that field like his younger brother. He could have been a Party-faithful and risen quickly through the Party’s hierarchy, whose members were mainly illiterate workers.

But Mr Thanasis Klaras did not fit in anywhere.

Born on 27th August 1905, in Lamia, he was continuously a source of headaches to everyone around him. His anarchic behaviour and the young friends he kept company with brought disgrace on his wealthy and respectable family. At school, he was tolerated until he was 13-years-old when he was barred from High School because of his conduct; indeed, he only just managed to graduate from Agricultural School.

In 1922, the year he joined the Civil Service as an agronomist, he had clashes over regulations, ways of thinking, and with individual colleagues, and he did not stay long. He refused to accept the gift of a large-scale agricultural enterprise that his father had prudently set up for him and left Lamia to seek adventure in Athens. There, in order to survive, he did odd jobs and he teamed up with his compatriot and political mentor, Takis Fitsios, who initiated him into the ideas of the October Revolution.

Mr Klaras and Fitsios frequented the circles of young intellectuals, with whom they shared their social concerns. For a time, Mr Klaras was immersed in books and theoretical discussions but he still felt unfulfilled. In 1925, he was conscripted; although he had been selected to go to the School for Reserve Officers it seemed almost inevitable that he ended up at the Disciplinary Platoon. Together with other social misfits and conscripts with ‘suspect’ political orientation he was assigned to water telegraph poles until they blossomed. (One of various humiliations at the base) Although sick in bed, he threw himself into the freezing river as a cure and became familiar with beatings and the isolation cell.

When he was released from the army, he returned briefly to Lamia but soon left again for Athens, still on his quest for a great adventure. He was not interested in a pre-ordered, comfortable life, no matter how attractive it was made to seem; he knew that a life without risks held little interest. And the big risk at the time was idea of social revolution—a path which he almost immediately followed.

Moreover, there was an air of expectation everywhere.

Per capita income in Greece in the 1940s is 61 dollars, compared to between 300 and 400 dollars in Western Europe, 560 dollars in Britain, and 690 in the United States. Thirty-five per cent of the population is at starvation level, thirty-seven per cent barely covers its basic needs poverty level. (N. Psiroukis, Istoria)

It is important to note that Mr Klaras was neither a member of the proletariat nor without property or prospects. He sought a revolt because of a raised consciousness of the social inequities and wretchedness which were rife in Greece.

In 1929, he joined the KKE and threw himself into the adventure of revolutionary activity. His constant references to the misery plaguing the masses earned him the nickname ‘Miserias’ which he used as a pseudonym at Party meetings and on Party missions. He worked in construction, in print shops, in the sewers, and wrote articles for the Party newspaper in which he energetically entered the intellectual fray on the side of ideological clarity against the Trostskyists. (Later, during the Occupation, when more mature and politically autonomous, he would defend his heretical comrades and, as the Trotskyists’ leader Pablo noted, he will shield them from the murderous mania of the Party’s Stalinist leadership.

Mr Klaras wanted to change the world and he feared nothing.

He became personally acquainted with Zachariadis, who offered him opportunities for even more activity. He planned and organised Party missions that demanded great daring and composure. He wrote compelling articles in ‘Rizospastis’, the KKE’s daily newspaper, put himself at risk with actions aimed at diverting the police’s attention to enable convicts to escape, he organised prison-breaks and saved the Party Secretary Zachariadis, by snatching him from the hands of the Security Police when he was being held on charges of murdering the Marxist archivist, Ilias Georgopapadatos, and was facing a heavy sentence.

Miserias, I’ll never forget this, Zachariadis promised, although later, when he should have remembered it, he did not.

Despite being a long-standing member of the Party, despite the imprisonments, exiles, and merciless beatings honorifically swelling his Party file, he did not rise in the Party’s hierarchy. The KKE’s ranks had seen ideologues and adventurers, fighters and little dictators, patriots and slaves of Foreign Powers, but none who was as much trouble as Mr Klaras. He was an absolute misfit and was disliked by the zealots. He smoked, drank, sung, fell in love, poked fun at everything; he was foul-mouthed and belligerent. He had no respect for what had been decreed.

The dynamic solutions he chose in most cases, and his unwillingness to accept police violence without reciprocation, were considered negatives. He seemed to respect only Zachariadis; in a way the relentless vigour of one matched the other. Of course, in the Party Secretary’s case, this was considered a leadership trait, while in Mr Klaras’ it was considered extremism and characteristic of the lumpen proletariat.¹³

It seemed that the rebels were condemning rebelliousness!

By contrast, his rank-and-file comrades admired him; they were impressed by his sense of humour, his boldness, and his composure. Nothing scared him. He even faced torture at the hands of the Security Police by mocking and taunting his torturers rather than with the ‘patient heroism’ displayed by those who became martyrs for their beliefs—and this was completely unusual for a Communist. When he was arrested for the last time in 1938 by the Metaxas dictatorship, the Security Police again applied their most brutal methods against him. Indeed, sometimes murder by being thrown out a window would seem preferable to the torture inflicted, such as nailing horse shoes to prisoners’ feet or worse. Mr Klaras endured and did not bend; his guiding principle was simply that:

They’re doing their job and I’m doing mine.

Weary of trying to break him, they sent him to Aegina.

I met him again at the Aegina prison in 1938. This time he was different from the man I knew. He seemed to have changed…He had passed the test of bravery, yet there was a change. You could see this by how serious he had become, his jokes were numbered,¹⁴ according to a fellow prisoner.

Certainly it takes tremendous mental courage to continue cracking jokes when his torturers have brutally deprived forever one’s sexual capability.

In June 1939, Mr Klaras was transferred to Corfu, where Zachariadis was also being held. Soon, in the prison’s steady environment and without any evident threat, he incredibly ‘recanted’, he renounced the Communist Party and was released. The Party has affirmed that aside from signing the declaration, he made no other compromise, such as betraying any comrades or divulging information.

The signing of the renouncement on Corfu spawned an entire mythology, ranging from the heroic version: that he signed at Zachariadis’ behest to gain his release in order to execute some very important mission, to the tearful version: that he signed because his supposed fiancée was being tortured in his presence.

Most likely, Mr Klaras was simply not one of those Christian-Communist martyrs who would let himself be devoured by the lions or consumed by tuberculosis in some dank dungeon. He could not breathe without action. Rather than be buried alive with his ideas, he preferred to take evasive measures. Moreover, it was a course of action he and other colleagues had supported, yet failed to persuade the Party’s rigid leadership.

But he would pay dearly for his initiative.

He returned to Athens marked as a dilosias (a recanter), isolated from the milieu in which he belonged: the revolutionaries. Despite their shortcomings and pettiness, his comrades were the only people with whom he had anything in common: the dream of a new and more just world. And for them, he was as good as dead—as anyone was who renounced the Party. His psyche could not endure a second wound. He fell apart and started to drink. He sank so deeply into alcohol that it took the outbreak of the war to sober him up and return him to his old self.

Resistance

Every resistance is inadequate.

Resistance is not the widespread uprising, nor a revolt that will bring the desired liberation. It is only resistance; occupied people who continue fighting. But that is why it is wonderful. The Greeks knew that their freedom was at stake on what happened far away at other Fronts, yet they opened one of their own.

Greece had been divided into three Occupation zones: German, Italian and Bulgarian. The Bulgarians swooped down on the Germans’ heels, once again claiming Macedonia.

The conquerors acted exactly as conquerors: they imposed themselves through terror and strangled any possibility of human survival. Life became a nightmare; the currency was debased, foodstuffs vanished. Urban populations were condemned to death from starvation; in Athens alone, more than 150,000¹⁵ died during the winter of 1941. A plan was being proposed to remove all children from the Country to preserve the Greek race.

Mussolini is being sarcastic: ‘The Germans have taken from the Greeks even their shoelaces’. (M. Mazower)

The countryside suffered too. The Occupation troops forcibly withheld a share of agricultural production, which severely reduced the already-insufficient food available to villagers. Additionally, meagre food supplies were threatened by the foreign troops’ daily raids, while the local ‘tradition’ of stealing animals and produce, enjoyed a spectacular revival.

There is no mix more explosive than enslavement and want; much less a freedom-loving people with the revolutionary tradition of the Greeks. The steel plate of horror in which the Occupiers encased the Country started to show cracks quite early, on Crete, in Roumeli (north-central Greece)¹⁶, in Thessaly, in Macedonia, and even in Athens, where Manolis Glezos and Lakis Santas scaled the Acropolis and snatched off the German Flag.

Some resolute men had the prescience to hide the weapons abandoned by the Greek Army, others soon fled to the Mountains. Ordinary citizens and low-ranking officers took the initiative and Resistance groups sprouted unremittingly. Some were restricted to the hearts of their founders, up to the end of the Occupation, others saw action to a varying degree: like relaying news, putting up notices, writing slogans on walls, smuggling Allied soldiers out of the area, transmitting information over the wireless, or engaging in small acts of sabotage. There were dozens of noble attempts at resistance which were viewed as criminal acts by the ‘sold-out’ political and military leadership, and as frivolous by the shirkers.

As expected, in a divided Country whose institutions had crumbled over the last 15 years (1925–1940) and whose political leaders were completely incompetent, the Resistance groups formed had a dual purpose—liberation and social reform. The three largest, which left their mark on the Occupation as well as the Post-War years, were the National Liberation Front (EAM), the National Republican Greek League (EDES), and the National and Social Liberation (EKKA). Their manifestos articulated quite similar Post-War social visions; the reasons for their subsequent mortal animosity must be sought elsewhere.

EAM

The initiative to organise the National Liberation Front, or EAM, was taken by the Communists—the two or three hundred of those who managed to escape from prison or from exile on barren islands.

The KKE itself, which had counted on the Non-Aggression Pact signed by Germany and the Soviet Union, only mobilised for Resistance after 22nd June 1941, when Germany attacked the Soviet Union. The Greek Communists abandoned their delusions, and the war, which they had seen as an ‘internal affair’ of the imperialist forces, now became anti-Fascist and patriotic.

The Greek Communist Party initiated contacts with the leaders and eminent members of other political parties, in the context of a common anti-Fascist and patriotic struggle. The older bourgeois parties had little, if any, desire to work with the Communist Party.

What is disappointing is that they did not undertake any Resistance initiative of their own. In most Western societies, the ruling class saw it not just as a duty, but as an inalienable right and matter of honour to take the lead in the War or the Resistance of their Country. In France, for example, the bourgeoisie followed the then-unknown General Charles De Gaulle against their legal