Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
KKE members who had lived in Moscow in the 1930s and harboured ambitions of estab-
lishing a postwar communist Greece. EDES consisted of right-wing and monarchist res-
istance fighters. These groups fought one another with as much venom as they fought the
Germans, often with devastating results for the civilian Greek population.
The Germans began to retreat from Greece in October 1944, but the communist and
monarchist resistance groups continued to fight one another.
Inside Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44,
by Mark Mazower, is an
intimate and comprehensive account of Greece under Nazi occupation and the rise of
the resistance movement.
Civil War
By late 1944 the royalists, republicans and communists were polarised by interparty divi-
sion and locked in a serious battle for control. The British-backed provisional govern-
ment was in an untenable position: the left was threatening revolt, and the British were
pushing to prevent the communists from further legitimising their hold over the adminis-
tration - influence the communists gained during the German occupation - in an effort to
augment British hopes to reinstate the Greek monarchy.
On 3 December 1944 the police fired on a communist demonstration in Plateia Syn-
tagmatos (Syntagma Sq) in Athens, killing several people. The ensuing six weeks of
fighting between the left and the right, known as the Dekemvriana (events of December),
marked the first round of the Greek Civil War. British troops intervened and prevented an
ELAS-EAM coalition victory.
In February 1945 formal negotiations for reconciliation between the government and
the communists fell flat, and the friction continued. Many civilians on all political sides
were subjected to bitter reprisals at the hands of leftist groups, the army or rogue right-
wing vigilantes, who threatened political enemies with widespread intimidation and viol-
ence. The royalists won the March 1946 election (which the communists had unsuccess-
fully boycotted), and a plebiscite (widely reported as rigged) in September put George II
back on the throne.
In October the left-wing Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) was formed to resume the
fight against the monarchy and its British supporters. Under the leadership of Markos
Vafiadis, the DSE swiftly occupied a large swathe of land along Greece's northern border
with Albania and Yugoslavia.
In 1947 the US intervened and the civil war developed into a setting for the new Cold
War theatre. Communism was declared illegal and the government introduced its notori-
