Full Description
This fully illustrated study examines the German, Italian and Bulgarian occupation forces in Greece during 1941-44 as well as those of the two Greek Resistance organizations.
Italy's failed invasion of Greece in 1940-41 led to the German invasion of Yugoslavia in spring 1941 being extended into Greece, and, after the fall of Athens and Crete in April and May, the division of the country under German, Italian and Bulgarian occupation. The royal government and Army survivors withdrew to British-ruled Egypt, but at home resistance organizations of differing political character soon sprang up, forming guerrilla forces that exploited Greece's rugged terrain and limited communications.
The strongest resistance force was the Communist-dominated National Liberation Front (EAM) with its partisan Greek Popular Army (ELAS). Agents of the Western Allied powers had only brief success in mediating cooperation between the mutually hostile EAM/ELAS, and the National Republican Greek League (EDES) with its EOEA. Foreshadowing the Greek Civil War that would follow liberation, ELAS and EOEA clashed, in the background to their separate operations against the Axis occupiers.
Drawing upon a wide range of sources, Phoebus Athanassiou charts the development of the fighting in occupied Greece: a struggle as ferocious as that fought in neighbouring Yugoslavia, which cost both the resistance and the Axis forces some 15,000 men killed.
Contents
Introduction
Greece's traditions of irregular warfare
Resistance in Greece
Chronology
ELAS: The pan-Hellenic resistance army: Command structure - Organization and recruitment - Weapons and personal equipment - ELAS naval forces
EDES: the junior resistance army: Organization and command structure - Recruitment base - Weapons and personal equipment
Guerrilla training, tactics and operations
German occupation forces in Greece: Organization and occupation record - Anti-partisan tactics and operations
Italian occupation forces
Bulgarian occupation forces
Collaborationist forces
The reckoning
Further reading
Plate commentaries
Index
