helmodww2f

GREECE IN WW II - RESISTANCE

Small guerrilla bands, whose activities provoked savage reprisals, came into existence as early as the summer of 1941.

The main initiative in organizing 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 disputed 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 enables 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, 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 groups, 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 [Special Operations Executive], destroyed the Gorgopotamos viaduct which carried the Salonika-Athens railway line, perhaps the most spectacular ac 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 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 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 roll 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.

<Cairo>

But the 'National Bands' agreement was in effect for 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 was 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 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 civil war, had broken out between ELAS and EDES, with the former accusing the later 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 19444 led to a ceasfire and delineated the respective operation areas of ELAS and EDES, with the later being restricted to Epirus in north-western Greece.

R.Clogg,

Oxford Companion to the Second World War (1995), pp.509,510