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Greek Civil War
Part of the Cold War
Map of Greece.
Date 1946 - 1949 Location Greece Result National Army victory
Belligerents
National Army  United Kingdom (until early 1947)  United States (from early 1947 and onwards)	Democratic Army of Greece N.O.F. partisans
Commanders
Alexander Papagos, Thrasyvoulos Tsakalotos James Van Fleet	Markos Vafiadis, Nikolaos Zachariadis Stefanos Sarafis
Strength
150,000	50,000
Casualties and losses
Hellenic Army, Navy and Air Force, from August 16, 1945 to December 22, 1951:[1] 15,268 dead 37,255 wounded 3,843 missing 865 deserters Hellenic Gendarmerie, from December 1, 1944 to December 27, 1951:[2] 1,485 dead 3,143 wounded 159 missing	25,000 officially killed many more missing or injured (can't be estimated precisely)[3]
1,000,000 people were relocated temporarily during the war[3]

The Greek Civil War (Greek: ο Eμφύλιος [Πόλεμος], "the Civil War"), fought from 1946 to 1949 by the Governmental forces, receiving logistical support by the United Kingdom at first and later by the United States, and the Democratic Army of Greece, the military branch of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), was the result of a highly polarized struggle between leftists and rightists which started from 1943 and targeted the power vacuum that the German occupation during World War II had created. One of the first conflicts of the Cold War, according to some analysts it represents the first example of a post-war Western interference in the internal politics of a foreign country,^[4] and for western analysts, marked the first serious test of the theory of the so called Churchill-Stalin percentages agreement.

The first phase of the civil war occurred in 1942–1944, during the Occupation. With the Greek government in exile unable to influence the situation at home, various resistance groups of differing political affiliations emerged, the dominant one being the leftist National Liberation Front (EAM), controlled effectively by the Communists. Starting in autumn 1943, friction among EAM and the other resistance groups resulted in sporadic clashes, which continued until the spring of 1944, when an agreement was reached forming a national unity government which included six EAM-affiliated ministers. The second phase occurred in December 1944, after the country had been liberated. EAM, in military control of most of Greece, confronted the British-backed government, and tried to wrest control of the capital, Athens. The defeat of EAM forces spelled the end of its ascendancy: ELAS was disarmed, and EAM continued as its political action as a multi-party organization. Tensions remained high however, as clashes between right and left-wing factions continued. In the third phase (1946–1949), guerrilla forces controlled by the KKE, having a political and logistic back up by the newly founded northern Socialist States ( Albania, Yougoslavia, Boulgaria and USSR) fought against the internationally recognized Greek government which was formed after elections boycotted by KKE. Despite initial failures by the government forces from 1946 untill 1948, increased American aid, lack of high numbers of recruites on the renks of DSE and the side-effects of the Tito–Stalin split, led to their defeat.

The final victory of the Western-supported government forces led to Greece's membership in NATO, and helped to define the ideological balance of power in the Aegean for the entire Cold War. The civil war also left Greece with a vehemently anti-Communist security establishment, which would lead to the establishment of a military regime, and a legacy of political polarization which lasted until the 1980s.

Contents 1 Background: 1941-44 1.1 Origins 1.2 The first conflicts: 1942-1944 1.3 The Egypt mutiny and Lebanon conference 2 Confrontation: 1944 2.1 From the Lebanon conference to the outburst 2.2 The Dekemvriana 3 Interlude: 1945-1946 4 Civil War: 1946-1949 4.1 The crest: 1946-1948 4.2 The evacuation of children (paidomazoma) and the Queen's Camps 4.3 The end of the war: 1949 5 Post-war division and reconciliation 6 Representation in culture 7 Notes 8 Bibliography 8.1 English Sources 8.2 Greek Sources 9 See also 10 External links

Background: 1941-44

Origins

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See also: Axis Occupation of Greece during WWII and Greek Resistance

The origins of the civil war lie in the occupation of Greece by Nazi Germany, Bulgaria and Italy from 1941 to late October 1944. While Germans forces approached Athens in April 1941 King George II and his government escaped to Egypt, where they proclaimed a government-in-exile, recognised by the Western Allies, but not by the Soviet Union. The Western Allies encouraged, and even coerced, the King to appoint a moderate cabinet. As a result, only two of his ministers were previous members of the 4th of August dictatorship under Ioannis Metaxas, which with the blessings of the King himself had governed the country since August 1936. The newly-formed resistance group named EAM-ELAS and its left-wing leadership soon claimed the government to be illegitimate, highlighting its connection with the pre-war oppressive regime. Nevertheless the exiled government's inability to influence the governance of Greece rendered it irrelevant in the minds of most Greek people.

The Germans set up a collaborationist government in Athens which lacked legitimacy and support. The puppet regime was further undermined when economic mismanagement in wartime conditions created runaway inflation, acute food shortages, and even famine, amongst the civilian population. In 1943, Ioannis Rallis, the prime-minister of the collaborationist government, authorized the creation of paramilitary forces, composed mostly of local fascists, convicts, and sympathetic prisoners of war, in order to fight the partisans -mostly communists- and spare the German army from committing more of its highly trained troops that were needed on other fronts. These forces, known as the Security Battalions, numbered 20,000 men at their peak in 1944.

The power vacuum that the occupation created was filled by several resistance movements that ranged from a pro-Royalist to Communist ideologies. The largest of those was the National Liberation Front, founded in 27 September 1941 by representatives of four left-wing parties. Following the Soviet policy of creating a broad united front against fascism, EAM -as it became known in Greek- won the support of many non-Communists patriots. It soon became the most popular organization, numbering nearly 2,000,000 members in 1943. Although controlled by KKE, the organization had a modest democratic republican rhetoric. Its military wing, the Greek People's Liberation Army or ELAS was founded in February 1942.At EAM's peak, the Organization for the Protection of the People's Fighters - OPLA was founded as EAM's militia, mainly in the occupied cities and especially Athens. Other communist aligned organizations, included and in the Florina region, the NOF comprised mostly by Slavic Macedonians which would play later a critical role in the civil war.^[5][6]

EAM - ELAS and the other popular resistance movements, including the EDES, led by the royalist former army officer, Colonel Napoleon Zervas, and the social-liberal EKKA, led by Colonel Dimitrios Psarros were embroiled in mutual suspicion which in the coming years would transform to an open conflict. Resistance was born first in Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, where Bulgarian troops occupied Greek territories. Large demonstrations were organized by YVE, a right wing organization, in many cities, as a response.

The Greek landscape favoured guerrilla operations, and by 1943 the Axis forces and their collaborators were in control only of the main towns and connecting roads, leaving the mountainous countryside to the resistance. At about this time, ELAS had about 30,000 men under arms and effectively controlled large areas of the mountainous Peloponnese, Crete, Thessaly, and Macedonia (a territory of 30,000 km². and 750,000 inhabitants). EDES had about 10,000 men, nearly all of them in Epirus. EKKA had only about 1,000 men.

The first conflicts: 1942-1944

The Western Allies at first provided all resistance organizations with funds and equipment, having a special preference towards ELAS whom they saw as the most reliable partner and a formidable fighting force that could actually create more problems to Axis in comparison to the rest of the resistance movements. However as the end of the war approached, the British Foreign Office, fearing a possible communist upsurge, observed with displeasure the transformation of ELAS into a large-scale conventional army more and more out of Allied control. After the September 8th 1943 Armistice with Italy ELAS seized control of the weapons of the Italian garrisons in Greece. As a response the Western Allies started favouring the rival anti-communist resistance groups - as far as ammunition supplies and logistical support are concerned - as a mean to sabotage ELAS’s increasing influence. In time the flow of weapons and funds to ELAS stopped altogether with rival EDES enjoying the bulk of the Allied support.

In mid-1943 the animosity between EAM-ELAS and the other movements took the form of an armed conflict. The communists accused EDES and EKKA of being traitors and collaborators and vice versa. Still the extent of the validity of these accusations, in the chaos of wartime, remains a source of age-old, perennial controversy in Greece. The historic research showed that while some organizations did accept assistance from the Nazis in their operations against EAM-ELAS, the great majority of the population refused any form of co-operation with the occupation authorities. By early 1944, after a British negotiated ceasefire EAM-ELAS had effectively routed EKKA and confined EDES to a small part of Epirus where it could only play a marginal role in the rest of the war.

As the communist position strengthened, so did the numbers of the Security Battalions with both sides engaged in several skirmishes. ELAS units were accused for the Meligalas massacre, where after a battle between ELAS and the Security Battalions (Meligalas was the HQ of a local Security Battalion Unit that was given the control of the wider area of Messenia by the Nazis), 1,500 members of the collaborationists along with civilians were massacred. According to left wing sources, ^[7], ^[8] the civilian bodies found there might have been victims of the Security Battalions.

Also the recruiting by both sides was controversial as the case of Stefanos Sarafis indicates. The soon-to be military leader of ELAS, sought to join the non-communist resistance group commanded by Kostopoulos in Thessaly along with other former officers. On their way they were caught by an ELAS group with Sarafis agreeing to join ELAS at gun point when all the other officers who refused were killed.^[9] Sarafis never admitted this incident, and on his book for ELAS.^[10] makes special remark on the letter he sent to all officers of the former Greek Army to join the ranks of EAM-ELAS. ^[11]

The Egypt mutiny and Lebanon conference

See also: National People's Liberation Army (Greece)#The "Mountain Government"

In March 1944 the EAM established the Political Committee of National Liberation (Politiki Epitropi Ethnikis Apeleftherosis, or PEEA), in effect a third Greek government to rival those in Athens and Cairo. Its aims were, "to intensify the struggle against the conquerors... for full national liberation, for the consolidation of the independence and integrity of our country... and for the annihilation of domestic Fascism and armed traitor formations." PEEA consisted not only of communists but also of progressives, who had nothing to do with communist ideas.

The moderate aims of the PEEA (known as κυβέρνηση του βουνού, "the Mountain Government") aroused support even among Greeks in exile. In April 1944 the Greek armed forces in Egypt, many among whom were well-disposed towards EAM, mutinied against the Western Allies, demanding that a Government of National Unity be established based on the PEEA principles. The mutiny was suppressed by Western Allied armed units and Greek officers loyal to the exiled government. Approximately 8,000 Greek soldiers were sent into prison camps in Libya, Sudan, Egypt and elsewhere. Later on, through political screening of the officers, the Cairo government created staunchly anti-Communist armed forces.

In May 1944, representatives from all political parties and resistance groups came together at a conference in Lebanon, seeking an agreement about a government of national unity. Despite EAM's accusations of collaboration, made against all the other Greek forces, and charges against EAM-ELAS members of murders, banditry and thievery, the conference ended with an agreement for a government of national unity consisting of 24 ministers (6 of whom were EAM's members). The agreement was made possible by Soviet directives to KKE to avoid harming Allied unity, but it didn't resolve the problem of disaramanent of resistance groups.

Confrontation: 1944

From the Lebanon conference to the outburst

By the summer of 1944 it was obvious that the Germans would soon withdraw from Greece, because the armed forces of the Soviet Union were advancing into Romania and towards Yugoslavia and the Germans risked being cut off. The government-in-exile, now led by a prominent liberal, George Papandreou, moved to Caserta in Italy in preparation for the return to Greece. Under the Caserta agreement of September 1944, all the resistance forces in Greece were placed under the command of a British officer, General Ronald Scobie.

Troops of the Western Allies landed in Greece in October. There was little fighting since the Germans were in full retreat and most of Greek territory had already been liberated by either ELAS or EDES. For example, only the central part of Athens was under German occupation on October 13, while all other regions were under EAM-ELAS rule. The German forces were greatly outnumbered by ELAS, which by this time had 50,000 men under arms and was re-equipping from supplies left behind by the Germans. On October 13 British troops entered Athens, and Papandreou and his ministers followed 6 days later. The King stayed in Cairo, because Papandreou had promised that the future of the monarchy would be decided by referendum.

At this point there was little to prevent ELAS from taking full control of the country. They did not do so because the KKE leadership was under instructions from the Soviet Union not to precipitate a crisis that could jeopardise Allied unity and put at risk Stalin's larger post-war objectives. KKE’s leadership knew this, but the ELAS fighters and rank-and-file Communists didn't. This became a source of conflict within EAM and ELAS.

Following Stalin's instructions, KKE’s leadership tried to avoid a confrontation with the Papandreou government. The majority of ELAS members saw the Western Allies as liberators, although some KKE leaders such as Andreas Tzimas and Aris Velouchiotis did not trust the Western Allies. Tzimas was in touch with the Yugoslav Communist leader Josip Broz Tito, and he disagreed with ELAS's co-operation with the Western Allied forces.

The issue of disarming the resistance organizations was a cause of friction between the Papandreou government and its EAM members. Advised by the British ambassador Sir Reginald Leeper, Papandreou demanded the disarmament of all armed forces apart from the Sacred Band and the III Greek 'Rimini' Mountain Brigade, which were formed after the suppression of the April 1944 Egypt mutiny, and the constitution of a National Guard under government control. EAM, believing that this would leave ELAS defenceless against the right-wing militias and the anti-communist Security Battalions, submitted an alternative plan of total and simultaneous disarmament, which Papandreou rejected, as he had started viewing the Security Battalions as a good reserve against a possible communist coup, and EAM ministers resigned from the government on December 2. On December 1, Scobie had issued a proclamation requiring the dissolution of ELAS. Command of ELAS was KKE's greatest source of strength, and the KKE leader Siantos decided that the demand for ELAS's dissolution must be resisted.

Tito's influence may have played some role in ELAS's resistance to disarmament. Tito was outwardly loyal to Stalin but had come to power through his own forces and believed that the Communist Greeks should do the same. His influence, however, had not prevented the EAM leadership from putting its forces under Scobie's command a couple of months earlier, according to the Caserta agreement.

In the meanwhile, following Grivas' instructions, Organisation X members had set up many outposts in central Athens and resisted EAM for several days, until the British troops arrived, as their leader had been promised.

The Dekemvriana

In November 1944, six ministers of the EAM, most of whom were KKE members, resigned from their positions in the "National Unity" Government. Fighting broke out in Athens on 3 December 1944 during a demonstration, organised by EAM, involving more than 100,000 people. According to some accounts, the police, covered by British troops opened fire on the crowd.^[12][13][14] According to other accounts, it is uncertain if the first shots were fired by the police or the demonstrators.^[15] More than 28 people were killed and 148 injured. This signalled the beginning of the "Dekemvriana" ("the December events"), a 37-day period of full-scale fighting in Athens between ELAS and the forces of the British Army and the Government.

The British tried to stay neutral but when the battle escalated they intervened, with artillery and aircraft being freely used. At the beginning the government had only a few policemen and gendarmes, the distinguished at the Gothic Line offensive III Greek Mountain Brigade, which however lacked heavy weapons and militia units, accused by EAM of collaboration with the Nazi forces (e.g. the royalist group X, also known as Χίτες - Chites). On December 4 Papandreou gave his resignation to the British Commander, General Scobie. His resignation was not accepted by the General By December 12 ELAS was in control of most of Athens and Piraeus. The British, outnumbered, flew in the 4th Infantry Division from Italy as reinforcements. During the battle with the ELAS, local militias fought alongside the British, triggering a massacre by ELAS fighters. It must be noted that although the British were fighting openly against ELAS in Athens there were no fights in the rest of Greece. In certain cases like Volos some RAF units even gave equipment to ELAS fighters.

Conflicts continued throughout December with the British slowly gaining the upper hand. Curiously, ELAS forces in the rest of Greece did not attack the British. It seems that ELAS preferred a legitimate rise to power, but was drawn into the fighting by the indignation and, at the same time, the awe of its fighters after the slaughter on December 3, aiming at establishing its predominance. Only this version of the events can explain the simultaneous struggle against the British, the large-scale ELAS operations against trotskyists and other political dissidents in Athens and many contradictory decisions of EAM leaders. Videlicet, KKE's leadership was supporting a doctrine of 'national unity' while eminent members, e.g. Stringos or Makridis and even Georgios Siantos, were elaborating revolutionary plans.

This outbreak of fighting between Allied forces and an anti-German European resistance movement, while the war in Europe was still being fought, was a serious political problem for Churchill's coalition government of left and right, and caused much protest in the British press and in the House of Commons. To prove his peace-making intention, Churchill himself arrived in Athens on December 25 and presided over a conference, in which Soviet representatives also participated, to bring about a settlement. It failed because the EAM/ELAS demands were considered excessive and, thus, rejected.It is of most importance at this point to mention Churchill's telegraph to General Scobie in mid-December advising him to "...treat Athnes as an occupied city". By his arrival in the Greek Capital, the evacuation of the British forces and the trial of all NAZI collaborators, that EAM asked for, was not on Churchill's agenda.

In the meanwhile, the Soviet Union remained surprisingly passive about the developments in Greece. True to their "percentages agreement" with Britain, the Soviet delegation in Greece wasn’t encouraging or discouraging EAM’s ambitions, as Greece belonged to the British sphere of influence. Pravda didn’t mention the clashes at all. If this position of the Soviet leadership had been brought home to KKE’s leadership, the Dekemvriana might have been averted. It seems that Stalin didn’t have the intention to avert the Dekemvriana, as he would profit no matter the outcome. If EAM rose to power, he would gain a country of major strategic value. If not, he could use the British actions in Greece to justify to the Allies any intervention in his own sphere of influence.

By early January ELAS had been driven from Athens. As a result of Churchill's intervention, Papandreou resigned and was replaced by a firm anti-Communist, General Nikolaos Plastiras. On January 15, 1945 Scobie agreed to a ceasefire, in exchange for ELAS' withdrawal from its positions at Patras and Thessaloniki and its demobilisation in the Peloponnese. This was a severe defeat, but ELAS remained in existence and the KKE had an opportunity to reconsider its strategy.

KKE's defeat in 1945 was mainly political. The exaltation of terrorism on the communist side made a political settlement even more difficult. The hunting of "collaborators" was extended to people who had not been involved in collaboration. Several Trotskyists had to leave the country to save their lives (e.g. Cornelius Castoriadis fled to France). After the Athens fighting, KKE support declined sharply, and as a result most of the prominent non-Communists in EAM left the organisation. But terrorism among the right-wing extremist gangs was strengthened.

Interlude: 1945-1946

In February 1945 the various Greek parties signed the Treaty of Varkiza, with the support of all the Allies. This provided for the complete demobilisation of ELAS and all other paramilitary groups, an amnesty for only political offences, a referendum on the monarchy, and a general election as soon as possible. The KKE remained legal, and its leader Nikolaos Zachariadis, who returned from Germany in April 1945, said that the KKE's objective was now a "people's democracy" to be achieved by peaceful means. There were dissenters, of course, like former ELAS leader Aris Velouchiotis. The KKE renounced Velouchiotis when he called on the veteran guerrillas to start a second struggle: shortly afterwards, he committed suicide, surrounded by the security forces.

The Treaty of Varkiza transformed the KKE's political defeat into a military one. ELAS's existence was terminated. At the same time the National Army and the right-wing extremists were free to continue their war against the ex-members of EAM. The amnesty was not comprehensive, because many actions during the German occupation were classified as criminal and so excepted from the amnesty. Thus, the authorities captured approximately 40,000 communists or ex-ELAS members. As a result, a number of veteran partisans hid their weapons in the mountains and 5,000 of them escaped to Yugoslavia, although the KKE leadership did not encourage this.

During 1945–1946, right-wing gangs killed about 1,190 pro-communist civilians, and tortured many others. Entire villages that helped the partisans were attacked by those right-wing gangs. According to the right-wing citizens, these gangs were retaliating for what they had suffered during the reign of ELAS. The reign of "White Terror" wave led many of persecuted ex-ELAS members to form self-defense troops, without any KKE approval.

KKE soon reversed its former political position, as relations between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies deteriorated. With the onset of the Cold War, Communist parties everywhere moved to more militant positions. This change of political attitude, the choice to escalate the crisis was primarily deriving from the persuasion that the regime subversion, that hadn’t succeeded in December 1944, could now be achieved.

George Papandreou in July, 1945, informed the government that the dissolution of the Comintern was a fraud. Although Stalin still did not support a resumed armed struggle in Greece, showing his respect for percentages agreement of Moscow, that placed Greece in the British sphere of influence and Romania as a counterweight in the Soviet one, the KKE leadership in February 1946 decided, "after weighing the domestic factors, and the Balkan and international situation," to go ahead with the, "organisation of a new armed struggle against the Monarcho-Fascist regime." The KKE boycotted the March 1946 elections, which were won by the monarchist United Patriotic Party (Inomeni Parataxis Ethnikofronon), the main member of which was the People's Party of Konstantinos Tsaldaris. In September a referendum decided to retain the monarchy, although KKE disputed the results, and King George returned to Athens.

The King's return in Greece reinforced the British influence in Greece. Nigel Clive was then a liaison officer to the Greek Government and later the head of the Athens station of MI6. In his view, 'Greece was a kind of British protectorate, but the British ambassador was not a colonial governor'. Whether this is true or not, it is a fact that six Prime Ministers changed within just two years, an indication of the instability that would characterize the country's political life for the next years.

Civil War: 1946-1949

The crest: 1946-1948

Fighting resumed in March 1946, as a gang of 30 ex-ELAS members, most of whom were persecuted, attacked a police station in village Litohoro. Next day, the official KKE paper’s coversheet stated that “The authorities and the gangs fabricate alleged communist attacks”. Contemporaneously, armed bands of ELAS veterans infiltrated into Greece through the mountainous regions near the Yugoslav and Albanian borders. They now were organized as the Democratic Army of Greece (Dimokratikos Stratos Elladas, DSE), under the command of the ELAS veteran Markos Vafiadis (known as "General Markos") who, operating from a base in Yugoslavia, sent by the KKE to organize already existing troops.

Both the Yugoslav and Albanian Communist regimes, which had come to power through their own efforts and were not Soviet puppets, supported the KKE fighters, but the Soviet Union remained ambivalent. It was not part of Stalin's strategy to conduct a war against the Western Allies in Greece, and the Soviets gave little direct support to the KKE campaign. Certain historians believe that Stalin's only object in Greece was to test the determination of the western allies.

By late 1946 DSE could deploy about 16,000 partisans, 5,000 of them in Peloponnese and other areas of Greece. According to the DSE, its fighters, "resisted the reign of terror that the right-wing gangs conducted all over Greece".

The average and mainly peasant citizen was caught in the crossfire. When the DSE partizans were entering a village asking for supplies, the citizens could not resist. And when the national army was coming to the village the same citizens who had given supplies to the partizans, were characterized as communist sympathizers and suffered the consequences (usually imprisonment or exile).

The Greek Army now numbered about 90,000 men, and gradually was being put on a more professional basis. The task of re-equipping and training the Army had been carried out by its fellow Western Allies. But by early 1947 Britain, which had spent 85 million pounds in Greece since 1944, no longer could afford this burden. President Harry S. Truman announced that the United States would step in to support the government of Greece against Communist pressure. This began a long and troubled relationship between Greece and the United States. For several decades the American Ambassador advised the King about important issues such as the appointment of the Prime Minister.

Through 1947 the scale of fighting increased. DSE launched large-scale attacks on towns across northern Epirus, Thessaly, Peloponnese and Macedonia, provoking the Army into massive counter-offensives, which then encountered no opposition as the DSE melted back into the mountains and into its safe havens over the northern borders. In Peloponnese, where General Georgios Stanotas was appointed as area commander, DSE suffered a lot, as there was no way to escape to mainland Greece. Generally speaking, Army morale was not high, and it would be some time before the support of the United States became apparent.

In September 1947, however, KKE’s leadership decided to move from these guerilla tactics to full-scale conventional war, despite the opposition of Vafiadis. In December the KKE announced the formation of a Provisional Democratic Government, with Vafiadis as Prime Minister. This led the Athens government to finally ban KKE. No foreign government recognised this government. The new strategy led the DSE into costly attempts to seize a major town to be the seat of its government. In December 1947 1,200 DSE men were killed at a set-piece battle around Konitsa. However, this strategy forced the government to increase the size of the Army. Controlling the main cities, the government cracked down on KKE members and sympathizers, many of whom were imprisoned on the island of Makronisos.

Despite setbacks such as the fighting at Konitsa, during 1948 the DSE reached the height of its power, extending its operations to Attica, within 20 km of Athens. It had at least 20,000 fighters, and a network of sympathizers and informants in every village and every suburb. It has been estimated that out of DSE's 20,000 fighters, 14,000 were Slavic Macedonians from Greek Macedonia.^[16] Given their important role in the battle^[17], KKE changed its policy towards them. At the fifth Plenum of KKE on January 31 1949, a resolution was passed declaring that after KKE's victory, the Slavic Macedonians would find their national restoration within a united greek state.^[18] Several "calculations have been made to associate DSE fighters with foreign "invading" armies. One must take into account that KKE had in total 400.000 member (800.000 according to other sources) just before December 1944 and that during Civil war 100.000 ELAS fighters - KKE members in their majority- were put in prison (3000 of them were executed). Given these facts, it is easy to understand how DSE was conducting its war effort thought the country aiming at " a Free and Liberated Greece from all protectors that will have all the nationalities working under one Socialist State".

Western Allied funds, advisers and equipment now were flooding into the country, and under Western Allied guidance a series of major offensives were launched in the mountains of central Greece. Although these offensives did not achieve all their objectives, they inflicted some serious defeats on the DSE.

The evacuation of children (paidomazoma) and the Queen's Camps

The transfer or relocation of children from Greece to Socialist States was another contested issue. About thirty thousand underaged children were leaving in territories controled by DSE were relocated to Eastern Bloc countries.^[19] Many others were moved to special camps of the Government of Athens, inside Greece and found in foster homes in US decadeslater[1][2] (see: Political refugees of the Greek Civil War). The issue drew the attention of the international public opinion, and a United Nations Special Committee issued a report, according to which "some children have in fact been forcibly removed".^[20] Communist leadership accepted that children were being gathered for the purpose of evacuating them from Greece, but they argued that this happened per the request of "the popular organizations and the parents".^[21] According to other researchers, the Greek government also followed a policy of displacement by adapting children of the guerrillas, and placing them in indoctrination camps.^[22]

According to Kenneth Spencer, member of the Balkan Comittee of UN by that time reported "Queen Federica has already prepared special "reforming camps" in grek islands for 12.000 greek children..." ^[23]. According to official KKE historiography, no such abductions occurred, and any evacuations were undertaken for the children's own protection from the "National Army"; This is stated clearly to the decisions of the Provisional government on the 7 of March 1948,^[24]. According to non-KKE accounts, the children were abducted to be indoctrinated as communist janissaries.^[25] Several United Nations General Assembly resolutions appealed for the repatriation of children to their homes.^[26]

After 50 years the truth regarding the "children abduction by KKE" is finally revealed. Many of these children have returned to Greece between 1975-1990 and their testimonies are ,often, other than the described anti-communist references. ^[27],^[28].

Furthermore, another side of the children abduction is now revealed: During the Civil War more than 25.000 of children, most of them with their parents belonging to DSE, were put in 30 "Children Towns" under the immediate control of Frederika of Hanover. After 50 years the majority of these children is found given to American families, searching their family background in Greece. ^[29],^[30], ^[31], ^[32], ^[33], ^[34], ^[35].

The end of the war: 1949

The fatal blow to KKE and the DSE, however, was political, not military. In June of that year, the Soviet Union and its satellites broke off relations with President Tito of Yugoslavia, who had been the KKE's strongest supporter since 1944. The KKE thus had to choose between their loyalty to Stalin and their relations with their closest and most important ally. Inevitably, after some internal conflict the great majority of them, led by Zachariadis, chose Stalin. In January 1949 Vafiadis was accused of "Titoism" and removed from his political and military positions, being replaced by Zachariadis.

After a year of increasing acrimony, Tito closed down the Yugoslavian border to the guerrillas of DSE in July of 1949 and disbanded their camps inside Yugoslavia. The DSE still could operate from Albania, but to the DSE that was a poor alternative. The split with Tito also set off a witch-hunt for "Tito-ites" inside the Greek Communist Party, leading to disorganisation and demoralisation within the ranks of the DSE and decline of support of the KKE in urban areas.

At the same time, the National Army found a talented commander in General Alexander Papagos. In August of 1949, Papagos launched a major counter-offensive against DSE forces in northern Greece, code-named "Operation Torch". The campaign was a major victory for the National Army and resulted in heavy losses for the DSE. The DSE army was no longer able to sustain resistance in set-piece battles. By September of 1949, most of its fighters had surrendered or escaped over the border into Albania. By the end of the month, the Albanian government, presumably with Soviet approval, announced to KKE that it would no longer allow the DSE to perform military operations from within Albanian territory. On October 16, Zachariadis announced a "temporary cease-fire to prevent the complete annihilation of Greece." This ceasefire marked the end of the Greek Civil War.

The Western Allies saw the end of the Greek Civil War, as a victory in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. The irony was that the Soviets never actively supported the Communist Party's efforts to seize power in Greece. The KKE's major supporter and supplier had always been Tito, and it was the rift between Tito and the KKE which marked the real demise of the party's efforts to assert power.

Post-war division and reconciliation

The Civil War left Greece in ruins, and in even greater economic distress than it had been after the end of the German occupation. Additionally, it divided the Greek people for the following decades, with both sides vilifying their opponents. Thousands of Greeks languished in prison for many years or were sent in exile in the islands of Gyaros or Makronisos. Many thousands more took refuge in communist countries, or emigrated to Australia, Germany, the USA, and other countries.

The polarisation and instability of Greek politics in the mid-1960s was a direct result of the Civil War and the deep divide between the leftist/deomocratic and rightist/monarchical sections of Greek society. A major such crisis was the murder of the left-wing politician Gregoris Lambrakis in 1963 (the inspiration for the Costa Gavras political thriller, Z). The crisis of the Apostasia followed in 1965, together with the "ASPIDA affair", which involved an alleged coup plot by a left-wing group of officers. The group's alleged leader was Andreas Papandreou, the son of George Papandreou, the leader of the Center Union political party and the country's Prime Minister at the time.

On April 21, 1967, a group of rightist Army officers carried out a coup d'état and seized power from the government, using as a pretext the political instability and tension of the time. The leader of the coup, George Papadopoulos, was a member of the right-wing military organization known as IDEA (Ιερός Δεσμός Ελλήνων Αξιωματικών, "Sacred Bond of Greek Officers"). The military regime later referred to as the Regime of the Colonels) lasted until 1974.

After the collapse of the military junta, a conservative government under Constantine Karamanlis led to the abolition of monarchy, the legalization of the KKE and a new constitution which guaranteed political freedoms, individual rights, and free elections. In 1981 the center-left-wing government of PASOK, which was elected with a substantial majority, allowed DSE veterans who had taken refuge in Communist countries to return to Greece and reestablish to their former estates. PASOK claimed that this helped diminish the consequences of the civil war in Greek society. Moreover, PASOK government offered state pension to former partisans of the Anti-Nazi resistance; Markos Vafiadis was honorarily elected as member of the Greek parliament under PASOK's flag.

In 1989, the coalition government between Nea Dimokratia and the Coalition of Left and Progress (SYNASPISMOS) - where KKE was the major party by that time - suggested a law, that was passed unanimously by the Greek Parliament. The results were final recognition by the Greek state of the 1946-1949 war as a Civil War and not merely a Communist insurgency ( Ν. 1863/89 (ΦΕΚ 204Α΄) ).^[36],^[37][38] According to this law, for the first time in the Greek post-war history, the war of 1946-1949 is recognized as a Greek Civil War between the National Army and the Democratic Army of Greece. According to the aforementioned law, the term "Communist Bandits" (Κομμουνιστοσυμμορίτες, ΚΣ) wherever it occurs in Greek laws should be replaced by the term "Fighters of DSE".^[39]

Representation in culture

The Civil War is part of a film with a long time-span from 1939 to 1952, The Travelling Players, by Theo Angelopoulos.

The war is a backdrop in the 1985 film, Eleni with Nicholas Cage.

Notes

Bibliography

English Sources

• W. Byford-Jones, The Greek Trilogy: Resistance-Liberation-Revolution, London, 1945
• R. Capell, Simiomata: A Greek Note Book 1944-45, London, 1946
• W. S. Churchill, The Second World War
• Nigel Clive, A Greek experience 1943-1948, ed. Michael Russell, Wilton Wilts.: Russell, 1985 (ISBN 0-85955-119-9)
• D. Close (ed.), The Greek civil war 1943-1950: Studies of Polarization, Routledge, 1993
• Dominique Eude, Les Kapetanios (in French and Greek), Artheme Fayard, 1970
• N.G.L. Hammond Venture into Greece: With the Guerillas, 1943-44, London, 1983 (Like Woodhouse, he was a member of the British Military Mission)
• Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, New York 1948
• S.N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War, Cambridge, 2006
• Georgios Karras, ``The Revolution that Failed. The story of the Greek Communist Party in the period 1941-49`` M.A. Thesis, 1985 Dept. of Political Studies University of Manitoba Canada.
• D. G. Kousoulas, Revolution and Defeat: The Story of the Greek Communist Party, London, 1965
• Reginald Leeper, When Greek Meets Greek: On the War in Greece, 1943-1945, London, 1950
• M. Mazower (ed.) "After the War was Over. Reconstructing the Family, Nation and State in Greece, 1943-1960" Princeton University Press, 2000 (ISBN 0691058423)[3]
• E. C. W. Myers, Greek Entanglement, London, 1955
• Elias Petropoulos, Corpses, corpses, corpses (ISBN 960-211-081-3)
• C. M. Woodhouse, Apple of Discord: A Survey of Recent Greek Politics in their International Setting, London, 1948 (Woodhouse was a member of the British Military Mission to Greece during the war)

Greek Sources

The following are available only in Greek:

• Ευάγγελος Αβέρωφ, Φωτιά και τσεκούρι. Written by ex-New Democracy leader Evangelos Averoff — initially in French. (ISBN 960-05-0208-0)
• Γιώργος Δ. Γκαγκούλιας, H αθέατη πλευρά του εμφυλίου. Written by an ex-ELAS fighter. (ISBN 960-426-187-8)
• Αλέξανδος Ζαούσης, Οι δύο όχθες, Athens, 1992
• Αλέξανδος Ζαούσης, Η τραγική αναμέτρηση Athens, 1992
• Νίκος Μαραντζίδης, Γιασασίν Μιλλέτ (ISBN 960-524-131-5)
• Γιώργος Μαργαρίτης, Ιστορία του Ελληνικού εμφύλιου πολέμου 1946-1949, "Βιβλιόραμα", Athens, 2001
• Σπύρος Μαρκεζίνης, Σύγχρονη πολιτική ιστορία της Ελλάδος, Athens, 1994
• Γεώργιος Μόδης, Αναμνήσεις, Thessaloniki, 2004 (ISBN 960-8396-05-0)
• Γενικόν Επιτελείον Στρατού, Διεύθυνσις Ηθικής Αγωγής, Η Μάχη του Έθνους, Ελεύθερη Σκέψις, Athens, 1985. Reprinted edition of the original, published in 1952 by the Hellenic Army General Staff.

See also

• ELAS
• KKE
• National Liberation Front (Macedonia)
• Aris Velouchiotis
• Nikolaos Zachariadis
• Nikos Belogiannis
• Nikos Ploumpidis
• Markos Vafiadis

• George Papandreou (senior)
• Alexander Papagos
• Air operations during the Greek Civil War
• Greek Resistance
• Security Battalions
• Occupation of Greece by Nazi Germany
• Proxy war

External links

• Greek Civil War Archive at marxists.org
• Andartikos - a short history of the Greek Resistance, 1941-5 on libcom.org/history
• Report from globalsecurity.org
• Απολογισμός των 'Δεκεμβριανών' (only in Greek) Εφημερίδα ΤΟ ΒΗΜΑ-Δεκέμβρης 1944:60 χρόνια μετά
• Battle of Grammos-Vitsi The decisive battle which ended the Greek Civil War
• Nicholas Gage, author of the book Eleni
• Paidomazoma - Communist Children Abducations in the Greek civil war

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