Protesters of EAM on 3rd of December of 1944 lying dead or wounded in
front of the Greek Parliament's building, while others running for their lives,
moments after the first shootings that left at least 28 dead and signaled the
beginning of the "Dekemvriana" events.
When World War II broke out Metaxas worked hard to keep
Greece out of the conflict without jeopardizing good relations with Great
Britain. Benito Mussolini, however, wanted to demonstrate to Hitler that Italy
was an equal and victorious Axis partner and picked Greece as an easy target.
Italy attacked Greece in October 1940 but the Italian offensive was checked by
the Greek army and the Italian troops retreated to Albania. In April 1941
Germany intervened and invaded Greece. The government and the king fled to the
Middle East, and the country was ultimately divided by the three occupying
forces (Germany, Italy, and Bulgaria), and a collaborationist government was
installed in Athens. The economic dislocation of the country due to the war and
the severity of the German occupation created serious food shortages in the
urban centers. In the winter of 1941–1942 the population of Athens faced a
terrible famine that caused the death of more than thirty thousand people. The
dire living conditions drove many people to form committees to address the food
shortage problems, which often became the nuclei of the Resistance in the urban
centers. In 1942 the Resistance spread to the countryside and grew to become
one of the largest resistance movements in occupied Europe. The Communist Party
together with other small socialist parties founded the National Liberation
Front (EAM) and its military wing, the National People’s Liberation Army
(ELAS), which were by far the strongest resistance organizations in occupied
Greece. The Resistance was, however, intertwined with a civil war between rival
resistance organizations (leftist and rightist), but mostly between ELAS and
the Security Battalions, Greek armed units that collaborated with the Germans
in campaigns against the guerrillas. The brutality of the German occupation
reached its climax in 1943–1944: sixty thousand Greek Jews (mostly from
Salonika) were deported to be exterminated in concentration camps; hundreds of
civilians were executed on the spot in mass executions in places such as
Kalavryta, Kommeno, and Distomo; villages were razed to the ground in
retaliation for guerrilla attacks; and hostages were taken and later executed
after roundups in Athens neighborhoods.
LIBERATION AND CIVIL WAR
Greece was liberated in October 1944. When the
government-in-exile and prime minister George Papandreou arrived in Athens the
country was controlled by EAM. The civil war during the occupation had
heightened political tensions. The government and the British feared that the
communists might attempt a coup and sought to disarm ELAS. A new bloody
conflict broke out in Athens in December 1944. The government with the support
of British troops forced ELAS to evacuate the capital and after the Varkiza
Agreement (February 1945) the guerrillas surrendered their arms. After the
disarmament of the ELAS a period of ‘‘white terror’’ followed during which the
ultra-royalist armed bands unleashed a campaign of violence against the
leftists in the countryside. The Communist Party abstained from the elections
of 1946 and in a climate of disorder and terror the royalists won the absolute
majority. The polarization was further aggravated when the royalist government
held a rigged plebiscite in September 1946, in which 68 percent voted for the
return of the king to Greece.
The armed groups formed by leftists who took to the
mountains to escape from right-wing violence began to swell in 1946 and a
full-scale civil war between the army and the communist guerrillas of the
Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) broke out (1946–1949). The failure of the army
to defeat the guerrillas alarmed the United States, which viewed the Greek
civil war as another instance of a Soviet-inspired communist expansionism. The
declaration of the Truman Doctrine (March 1947) outlined the U.S. foreign
policy of ‘‘containment’’ vis-a`-vis the Soviet Union, and it was accompanied
by generous economic aid to Greece and Turkey, which proved to be crucial for
the military victory. On the other hand, the DSE, despite its initial success,
faced insurmountable problems, such as few reserves, inferior weapons, and the
limited support of the neighboring socialist countries, while the shift from
partisan to regular army tactics increased its casualties. The Greek Civil War
took a heavy toll: thirty-eight thousand soldiers and guerrillas were killed,
seven hundred thousand peasants became war-stricken refugees, and twenty-five
thousand boys and girls were evacuated by guerrillas from the war zones to the
socialist countries, while in the final stages of the war about fifty-eight
thousand people fled the country and became political refugees.
The civil war had a major impact on political developments
in Greece. In the following decades political discrimination against the Left
became an integral part of the state policy, a combination of anticommunism and
nationalism characterized the official ideology, and the army gained
considerable political power. Marshal Alexander Papagos, commander-in-chief of
the army during the civil war, and Constantine Karamanlis were leaders from the
Right who became prime ministers successively (1952–1955 and 1956–1963) and
laid the foundations for the economic reconstruction and development.
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