Greece came out bad at the end of the Second World War. It was a nation torn down the
middle by contrasting political stances and worn to the bone by a collapsed economy.
This unrest culminated in the third and final phase of Greek Civil War, which set the
casualty bar high for subsequent conflicts falling under the banner of the Cold War.
But this does not at all take away from how ferociously the Greeks — irrespective
of politics — fought against the Axis powers throughout World War II. They
were lions pushed into a corner, and they bled themselves near dry fending off their occupiers
until they (the occupiers) were forced home by the advance of the Red Army in October 1944.
In this video, we're going to highlight the struggle and ferocity of the Greeks up to then.
In 1940, much of the world thought Hitler's war machine was unstoppable. It had blitzed
Western Europe, pulverised it into the ground, and its victories had left fascist Italian
leader Benito Mussolini feeling more than a little jealous and more than a little bald.
He'd locked forearms with Hitler, and now he wanted to prove himself. What Hitler could do,
Mussolini could do too. He rallied his pasta-fuelled army in Albania and got
ready to pour it over Greece. But all the he got for his bloodthirsty ambition was pain.
Mussolini demanded that Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas give up Greece,
but Metaxas told him where he could go shove it. And to his people,
Metaxas said, "[...] The time has come for Greece to fight for her independence. [...] We
now must prove worthy of our ancestors and the freedom they gave us. Fight for the Fatherland,
for your wifes, for your children and for the sacred traditions. Now, above all, FIGHT."
In response, Mussolini thrusted 140,000 troops into the mountains dividing Albania and Greece
on the 28th of October 1940. But the Italians were met a
stubborn and heavily entrenched Greek defence. Their forces were rebounded,
and the Greeks chased them back into Albania with their tails between their legs. The conflict was,
of course, vastly more complicated than that, and to put it in perspective,
the Italians took over 100,000 casualties for the 83,000 they inflicted on the Greeks.
The fighting lasted just short of four months, and it was known thereon as the Greco-Italian War.
In this war's first days, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said, "Until now we used to say
that the Greeks fight like heroes. Now we shall say: The heroes fight like Greeks."
So, Mussolini had failed himself and, worse,
failed Hitler. Now, the head of the Nazi serpent had to take matters into his own scaly hands.
To cut to the point, Hitler bore down on Greece out of Bulgaria and, with the Greeks distracted
with the Italians in Albania, drove them down through their country and into the sea,
spilling them on the shores of Crete. This was the Battle of Greece, and it resulted
in thousands of Greek deaths and some 270,000 Greeks becoming prisoners of war. The battle
devastated the Greek Armed Forces and crippled the British Commonwealth units reinforcing them.
But the Germans didn't hold up. They came down upon Crete in parachutes and gliders in May,
slaughtering Allied troops and angry Cretan civilians alike. German reinforcements arrived,
and knowing they could not win, the Greeks and their Commonwealth allies fled for Egypt. While
a portion of the Greek Armed Forces escaped to fight another day, more than 500 were killed, and
another 5,300 were taken prisoner alongside 12,200 Commonwealth troops. The Greek mainland and her
largest island were overrun, and the Germans took their anger out on the Greek people, massacring
them in droves. These were the same brave civilians that — with little more than knives,
improvised clubs, rocks, and, in some cases, their naked hands — stabbed and bludgeoned many German
soldiers to death, fighting to their last drop of blood for their freedom and for their homes.
British agent Patrick Leigh Fermor remained on Crete after the evacuation and,
later in life, wrote of the ferocity of Cretan resistance:
"When the Germans invaded Crete, their armies had just defeated the whole of
Europe [...]. Logically the civilian population could have been expected to remain inactive
while the professionals [...] fought it out with the invaders. But to the great astonishment of
both sides, all over the island bodies of Cretans – villagers, shepherds, old men, boys, monks and
priests and even women [...] – rose up at once and threw themselves on the invaders [...]."
So, despite the massacres, despite the brutal occupation of
not only the Germans but their Italian and Bulgarian friends too,
the Greeks endured, and out of the ashes, hundreds of partisan forces were born.
Bear in mind that this occupation was, indeed, brutal. The Greek government operated from exile
in Egypt, and Axis had established a puppet government. Greece was sundered into German,
Italian, and Bulgarian zones. With its industry, infrastructure, and natural resources in ruins,
the Greek economy turned its legs up and died. Between 7 and 11% of the civilian population
perished, many from starvation, many in vengeful Axis massacres, and many as a result of demented
Nazi doctrines. Greece's Jewish population, for instance, was brought to the brink of extinction.
And a quote from Greek survivor Mary Agrafiotou puts the word "extinction" into perspective:
"The daughter of a Jewish family living next door to us [...] said to my mother,
'Mrs Athena now that the War has started the Germans will come and we are going to be taken
away and we won’t come back again.' [...]" A few paragraphs on, Mary continued, "We had a
very strong Jewish community in Thessaloniki, 50,000 Jews were there and they were all taken
to Auschwitz and other camps, we had friends who we missed a lot, and only 1800 came back."
It was hell on Earth, but again, the Greeks *endured.* They *resisted.*While
existing across a vast political spectrum, as many as 140 partisan groups contested Axis occupation
between May 1941 and October 1944. Their numbers are difficult to ascertain, but the largest
resistance organisation, the National Liberation Front or EAM, numbered between 500,000 and two
million, with up to 150,000 engaging directly in guerrilla warfare operations.
Remember, this was just the EAM, and still it accounted for up to 27% of Greece's
7,500,000-strong population. The EAM was largely a communist organisation, and its violent
misunderstandings with other partisans — primarily the National and Social Liberation and National
Republican Greek League — did result in the Greek Civil War, but that's the topic of another video.
For now, let's focus on Greeks fighting German, Italians, and Bulgarians.
While there were Axis-collaborating Greeks, most resistance forces worked to sabotage
their Axis occupiers' operations, provide intelligence to the Allies,
spread propaganda, and run escape networks, among other things.
A women from Greece's capital city, Athens, who joined the EAM explained in an interview what
drove her, quoting a song she and the other partisans would sing: "Brothers and sisters,
we who are faced with starvation and slavery; we will fight with all our hearts and our strength;
for life and for freedom, so that our people might have bread."
Throughout their existence, Greek partisans killed more than 21,000 Axis soldiers, paying
for this with almost as many partisan lives. Some 17,500 of these dead Axis soldiers were German,
while around 2,700 were Italian, and 1,500 were Bulgarian. The outcome of resistance cannot be
understated. The partisans kept the Germans occupied for years, bogging them down and
preventing them from committing their divisions to their invasion of the Soviet Union. In turn,
the Soviets were afforded the breathing space to mount their war-winning counter-offensive.
As Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov put it,
"If the Russian people managed [...] to halt and reverse the German torrent, they owe it to
the Greek People, who delayed the German divisions during the time they could bring us to our knees."
Earlier, we mentioned a portion of the Greek Armed Forces that escaped Crete to fight another day;
let's cover that quickly. Those men — regrouping in Egypt and then in the
Middle East under the Greek government in exile and the British — became the Greek
Armed Forces in the Middle East. In June 1942, the 1st Greek Brigade boasted some 6,000 men.
This unit fought under the British in the Second Battle of El Alamein, suffering more than 300
casualties. By January 1943, the 2nd Greek Brigade numbered more than 5,500, but this unit suffered
a pro-EAM mutiny and was basically dissolved. A similar fate befell the 1st Brigade in April 1944,
but the 3,500 men remaining in the wake of this second mutiny continued to fight under the British
with distinction. Survivors of the Battles of Greece and Crete also served in the reformed
Hellenic Royal Navy and in fighter and bomber squadrons under the Allied Desert Air Force.
US President Franklin Roosevelt said, "When the entire world had lost all hope,
the Greek people dared to question the invincibility of the German monster
raising against it the proud spirit of freedom."
And if that — and all that came before it — doesn't convince you that the Greek's
were a ferocious enemy in the Second World War, the Führer himself said,
"For the sake of historical truth I must verify that only the Greeks,
of all the adversaries who confronted us, fought with bold courage and highest disregard of death."
If you're still not convinced, we'd like to know why. Otherwise, did you know how important Greek
sacrifice was to the outcome of the war before this video? Can you think of any specific examples
in which Greek ferocity was undeniable? Please share your thoughts down in the comments,
and please feel free to share the wartime stories of your Greek ancestors.