DOMESTIC LIFE AND WAR EFFORT
<Occupation>
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 cost 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 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 once flourishing Jewish community of Salonika. Out of a total population of some 70,000, fewer than 10,000 Greek Jews survived the occupation.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.
<Liberation>
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 to 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'.
R.Clogg,
Oxford Companion to the Second World War (1995), p.504