Greek Civil War

The Greek Civil War was a war fought between 1944 and 1949 in Greece. On one side were the armed forces of the Greek government, supported at first by Britain and later by the United States. On the other side were the forces of the wartime resistance against the German occupation, whose leadership was controlled by the Communist Party of Greece.

The war had two phases. In the first phase (1944-45), the left-wing resistance movement, which had control of most of Greece, was confronted by the returning Greek government in exile, which had been formed under the auspices of the British in Cairo. In the second phase (1946-49), a right-wing government, elected under abnormal conditions, fought against armed forces controlled by the Communist Party of Greece. The civil war left Greece with severe economic problems and a legacy of political division which lasted until the 1970s.

Table of contents

1 Background: 1941-44

2 Confrontation: 1944

3 Interlude: 1945-1946

4 Civil War: 1946-1949

5 The End of the War: 1949

6 Further reading

Background: 1941-44

The background to the civil war lay in the occupation of Greece by Nazi Germany (and its allies Italy and Bulgaria) from 1941 to 1944. King George II and his government escaped to Egypt, where they set up a government in exile which was recognised by the Allies. But this government had lacked legitimacy in Greece even before the war, since it descended from the unconstitutional dictatorship of General Ioannis Metaxas from 1936 to 1941. King George II himself had returned to the throne after a period of exile after a disputable plebiscite in 1935. The government in exile was cut off from events in Greece and had little support there.

The Germans set up a collaborationist government in Athens, but this government too lacked legitimacy and support, particularly once German economic exploitation of Greece created runaway inflation, acute shortages and eventually famine among the Greek civilian population. Many officers of the pre-War Greek regime served the Germans in various posts. During the war, this government controlled military forces armed by the Germans.

This vacuum of legitimacy was filled by several resistance movements which began operations within months of the German occupation. The largest of these was the National Liberation Front (in Greek Ethniko Apeleftherotiko Metopo, or EAM), which was founded in September 1941. EAM and its military wing, the Greek National Liberation Army (Ethnikos Laikos Apeleftherotikos Stratos or ELAS), were established by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), whose acting leader at this time was Giorgios Siantos (its leader, Nikos Zakhiariadis, was in a German prison). Following the Soviet line of a broad united front against fascism, however, EAM succeeded in winning the support of many non-Communists. It expanded into a large organisation which could not by entirely controlled by the KKE.

EAM and ELAS were opposed by two smaller resistance movements; the Greek National Republican League (Ellinikos Dimokratikos Ethnikos Syndesmos or EDES), led by a former army officer, Colonel Napoleon Zervas, and the National and Social Liberation (Ethniki Kai Koinoniki Apeleftherosis, or EKKA), led by Colonel Dimitrios Psaros. EKKA was liberal and republican. EDES was mainly anti-Communist.

Greece is a country very favourable to guerilla operations, and by 1943 the Germans and their collaborationist allies controlled only the main towns and connecting roads, leaving the mountainous interior to the resistance. By 1943 ELAS had about 20,000 men under arms, and effectively controlled large areas of the Peloponnese, Crete, Thessaly and Macedonia. EDES had about 5,000 men, nearly all of them in Epirus. EKKA only had about 1,000 men. ELAS was equipped by looting the enemy, while EDES enjoyed some British support. However, the former took control of the weapons of the Italian garrisons in Greece when Italy withdrew from the war in late 1943.

There were also right-wing military organisations, such as X ("Khi")and others, which claimed to be part of the resistance but were in fact armed by the Germans. EAM fought against these as well as the armed forces of the collaborationist government. EAM accused EDES of collaboration with the Germans. and was determined to establish a monopoly over the resistance, since it believed that the Allies would soon invade southern Europe through Greece, and wanted to be in a dominant position when the Germans were evicted. This situation led to triangular battles between ELAS, EDES and the Germans. Given the support of the British and the Greek Cairo Government for EDES, these conflicts precipitated a civil war. In October 1943 ELAS attacked its rivals, particularly EDES, precipitating a civil war across many parts of Greece which continued until February 1944, when the British agents in Greece negotiated a ceasefire (the Plaka agreement).

In March 1944 the EAM, now in control of most of the country, established the Political Committee of National Liberation (Politiki Epitropi Ethnikis Apelevtheroseos, 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's first president was Euripides Bakirtzis, the military leader of EKKA. Later on, Alexander Svolos took his position and Bakirtzis became vice-president.

The deliberately moderate aims of the PEEA aroused support even among Greeks in exile. In April 1944 the Greek armed forces in Egypt mutinued against the royalist government in exile, demanding that the Government of National Unity should be established based on the PEEA principles. The mutiny was suppressed by British armed units. This episode disarmed and discredited the government in exile. Later on, through political screening of the officers, the Cairo government created reliably anti-Communist armed forces. In May 1944, representatives from all political groups came together at a conference in Lebanon, seeking an agreement about a government of national unity. Despite EAM's accusations of colloration against other Greek forces, the conference succeded because of Soviet directives to the KKE to avoid harming Allied unity.

In Greece under Nazi occupation the struggle was bitter and there was no room for delicate differentiations. All sides burned villages and executed civilians and suspected collaborators. The collaborationst groups such as X, however, used terrorism as a deliberate strategy, while with ELAS fighters it was the result of over-zealous local commanders rather than official policy. The execution of the EKKA leader Dimitrios Psaros was one of the most repellent ELAS crimes, but some of his officers were lated proved to be collaborators with the Germans.

Confrontation: 1944

By late 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 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 liberation of 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.

British troops landed in Greece in October. There was little fighting since the Germans were in full retreat. They were greatly outnumbered by ELAS, which by this time had 50,000 men under arms and was re-equipping itself from supplies left behind by the Germans. On October 13 the British entered Athens, and Papandreou and his ministers followed a few 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 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, above all control of Germany. Stalin had in fact agreed with Winston Churchill that Greece would be in the British sphere of influence after the war. The KKE leadership knew this, but the ELAS fighters and rank-and-file Communists did not. This became a source of conflict within EAM and ELAS.

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

The issue of disarmaming the resistance organisations was the cause of the 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 and the constitution of a National Guard under government control. EAM, believing that this would leave ELAS defenceless against the right-wing militias, submitted an alternative plan which Papandreou rejected, and EAM then resigned from the government. On December 1, Scobie issued a proclamation requiring the dissolution of ELAS. Command of ELAS was the 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 to ELAS's resistance to disarmament. Tito was outwardly loyal to Stalin but had come to power through his own forces and believed that the 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.

On December 3, following an outbreak of shooting at an EAM demonstration in Syntagma square in central Athens, full-scale fighting between ELAS and troops of the Greek government and the British began, with artillery and aircraft being freely used. On December 4 Papandreou attempted to resign but the British Ambassador forced him to stay. By December 12 ELAS was in control of most of Athens and Piraeus. The British, outnumbered, flew in the 4th Division from Italy as reinforcements. During the battle, ex-Nazi collaborators fought side by side with the government forces and the British troops, triggering a massacre by ELAS fighters.

Fighting continued through December, with the British slowly getting the upper hand. Curiously, ELAS forces in the rest of Greece did not attack the government forces or the British. It was obvious that ELAS did not have a plan for a real coup, but was drawn into the fighting by the indignation of its fighters.

The outbreak of fighting between British troops and an anti-German resistance movement, while the war was still being fought, was a serious political problem for Churchill's coalition government, and caused much protest in the British and American press and the House of Commons. To prove his peace-making intention, Churchill himself arrived in Athens on December 24 and presided over a conference, in which Soviet representatives participated, to bring about a settlement. It failed because the EAM/ELAS demands were considered excessive and rejected.

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's 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.

The KKE's defeat in 1945 was mainly political. The exaltation of terrorism on both sides made a political settlement even more difficault. The hunting of "collaborators" was extended to unrelated people. The KKE made many enemies by summarily executing up to 8,000 people for various political "crimes" during their period of control of Athens, and they took another 20,000 hostages with them when they departed. After the Athens fighting its support declined sharply. As a result of this, most of the prominent non-Communists in EAM left the organisation. On the other hand, the terrorism of the right-wing extremist gangs was strengthened. The Greek people had endured four years of acute suffering and wanted peace and reconstruction, not civil war.

Interlude: 1945-1946

In February 1945 the various Greek parties came to the Varkiza Agreement, with the support of all the Allies. This provided for the complete demobilisation of ELAS and all other paramilitary groups, an amnesty for all political offences, a referendum on the monarchy and a general election as soon as possible. The KKE remained legal, and its leader Nikos Zakhariadis, 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.

The Varkiza Agreement transformed the KKE's political defeat to 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 classed as criminal and so excepted from the amnesty. 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. The KKE renounced Veloukhiotis when he called on the veteran guerrillas to start a second strugge: shortly after he was killed by the security forces.

The KKE soon reversed its political position as relations between the Soviet Union and the western Allies deteriorated with the onset of the Cold War and Communist parties everywhere moved to more militant positions. Although Stalin still did not support a resumed armed struggle in Greece, 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 (LK) of Konstantinos Tsaldaris. In September a referendum narrowly decided to retain the monarchy, although the KKE disputed the results, and King George returned to Athens.

Civil War: 1946-1949

Fighting resumed in March 1946 as armed bands of ELAS veterans infiltrated into Greece through the mountainous regions near the Yugoslav and Albanian borders. They were now organised as the Democratic Army of Greece (Dimokratikos Stratos Elladas, DSE), under the command of the ELAS veteran Markos Vafiadis (known as "General Markos"), who operated from a base in Yugoslavia.

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 a British-supported government in Greece, and the Soviets gave little direct support to the KKE campaign.

By late 1946 the DSE could deploy about 10,000 partisans in various areas of Greece, mainly in the northern mountains. Paradoxically, this is one of the most conservative parts of the country, and the KKE conducted a reign of terror in areas which were militarily favourable but politically hostile to it, while the government controlled the most left-wing parts of the country - Athens, Piraeus and the islands.

The Greek Army now numbered about 90,000 men and was gradually being put on a more professional basis. The task of re-equipping and training the Army had been carried out by the British, but by early 1947 Britain, which had spent 85 million pounds in Greece since 1944, could no longer afford this burden. President Harry S. Truman announced that the United States would step in to support the governments of both Greece and Turkey 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. The DSE launched large-scale attacks on towns across northern Epirus, Thessaly and Macedonia, provoking the Army into massive counter-offensives, which then encountered no oppposition as the DSE melted back into the mountains and into its safe havens over the northern borders. Army morale remained low and it would be some time before the support of the United States became apparent.

In September 1947, however, the KKE 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 finally to ban the KKE and suppress its press. 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 increasing the size of the Army. Controlling the main cities, the government cracked down on KKE members and sympathisers, many of whom were imprisoned on the island of Makronisos.

Despite setback such as the fighting at Konitsa, during 1948 the DSE reached the height of its power, extending its operations to the Peloponnese and even to Attica, within 20km of Athens. It had at least 20,000 fighters and a network of sympathisers and informants in every village and every suburb. The DSE tactic of attacking and burning villages made it many enemies, but also created a refugee problem for the government and kept the Army spread thin defending mountain villages. On the other hand, the Army added to the refugee problem by organised expeditions to clear entire areas and deprive the DSE of support.

American funds, advisors and equipment were now flooding into the country, and under American 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. Army morale rose, and the morale of the DSE fighters, many of whom had been "conscripted" at gunpoint, fell correspondingly.

The End of the War: 1949

The fatal blow to the KKE and the DSE, however, was political, not military. In June the Soviet Union and its satellites broke off relations with Prime Minister 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 Zakhariadis, chose Stalin. In January 1949 Vafiadis was accused of "Titoism" and removed from his political and military positions, being replaced by Zakhariadis.

After a year of increasing acrimony, Tito closed the Yugoslav border to the DSE in July 1949 and expelled them from their camps inside Yugoslavia. The DSE could still operate from Albania, but this was a poor substitute. The split with Tito also set off a witch-hunt for "Titoites" inside the KKE, leading to disorganisation and demoralisation in the DSE and a loss of support for the KKE in urban areas.

At the same time, the Army had at last found a talented commander in General Alexander Papagos. In August 1949 he launched a major offensive, Operation Torch, against DSE forces in northern Greece. The DSE was no longer able to mount sustained resistance in a set-piece battle, and by September most of its fighters had surrendered or escaped over the border into Albania. In September the Albanian government, presumably with Soviet approval, told the KKE that it would no longer allow military operations from its territory. On October 16, Zakhariadis announced a "temporary cease-fire to prevent the complete annihilation of Greece." This marked the effective end of the Greek Civil War.

In the United States the end of the civil war was seen as a victory in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. The paradox of this was that the Soviets never actively supported the KKE's efforts to seize power in Greece, and at the crucial moment at the end of 1944, when ELAS controlled most of the country, intervened decisively to restrain the KKE, in the interests of the Soviet Union's larger strategy. The KKE's major supporter and supplier was always Tito, and it was the rift between Tito and the KKE which marked the real demise of the party's efforts to take power.

The Civil War left Greece in ruins and in even greater economic distress than it had been in 1945. It created a permanent division among the greek people. Thousands of Greeks languished in prison for many years. Many thousands more went into exile in Communist countries, or emigrated to Australia and other countries. The polarisation of Greek politics lingering from the Civil War was a major contributor to political instability of the 1960s. Right-wing extremist orginisations played an important role in politics, leading to the murder of the left-wing politician Grigorios Lambrakis in 1963 and the 1967 coup were some of them. The leader of the coup, George Papadopoulos, was a former Nazi collaborator and a member of the extra-military organization IDEA (Ieros Desmos Ellinon Axiomatikon or Sacred Bond of Greek Officers). It was not until the fall of the military regime in 1974 that the KKE was re-legalised, and not until the election of a left-wing government in 1981 that Greek politics returned to a "normal" state.