The “black-listed” 10,000 individuals were sent to prison or to the Yaros island concentration camp. Thus, the authorities captured approximately 40,000 Communists or ex-ELAS members. The 1967 coup and the following seven years of military rule were the culmination of 30 years of national division between the forces of the left and the right, that can be traced to the time of the resistance against Axis occupation of Greece during World War II. The ELAS's existence was terminated. "On the Social Construction of Hellenism Cold War Narratives of Modernity, Development and Democracy for Greece. [citation needed] Its military wing, the Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS) was founded in February 1942. Meligalas was the headquarters of a local Security Battalion Unit that was given control of the wider area of Messenia by the Nazis. Other smaller groups, such as EKKA, continued the anti-occupation fight with sabotage and other actions. A riot (the Dekemvriana) erupted; and Greek government gendarmes, with British forces standing in the background, opened fire on a pro-EAM rally, killing 28 demonstrators and injuring dozens. 43% responded that it was better for Greece that the right wing won, 13% responded that it would have been better if the left had won, 20% responded "neither" and 24% did not respond. [52] According to non-KKE accounts, the children were abducted to be indoctrinated as Communist janissaries. As such, much of the KKE leadership had been imprisoned by the onset of Italian aggression toward Greece. The civil war resulted from a highly polarized struggle between left and right ideologies that started in 1943. The neighboring communist states of Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria offered logistical support to this provisional government, especially to the forces operating in the north of Greece. The following are available only in Greek: This article is about the conflict between royalist and communist factions. They both saw that the Germans were going to be defeated and were a temporary threat. PEEA consisted of Communists and noncommunist progressives. The hunting of "collaborators" was extended to people who were supporting the Greek government. Read More on This Topic Greece: Civil war and its legacy The first elections since the … [68], In a 2008 Gallup poll, Greeks were asked "whether it was better that the right wing won the Civil War". The Greek Civil War started shortly after World War II, lasting from March 1946 to October 1949. After the civil war ended, postwar governments declared that 1000 members of the collaborationist units were massacred along with civilians by the Communists; however, that number was not matched by the actual numbers of bodies found in the mass grave (an old well in the area) of executed Security Battalion and civilian prisoners. The new strategy led the DSE into costly attempts to seize a major town as its seat of government, and in December 1947, 1200 DSE fighters were killed at a set battle around Konitsa. For the people who were jailed and tortured, it is a date which brings back dark memories and nightmares, even after half a century. Lacking ammunition support from DSE headquarters and having failed to capture government ammunition depots at Zacharo in the western Peloponnese, its 20,000 fighters were doomed. In 1989, the coalition government between Nea Dimokratia and the Coalition of Left and Progress (SYNASPISMOS), in which the KKE was for a period the major force, suggested a law that was passed unanimously by the Greek Parliament, formally recognizing the 1946–1949 war as a civil war and not merely as a communist insurgency (Συμμοριτοπόλεμος Symmoritopolemos) ( Ν. The KKE supported the endeavor, deciding that there was no alternative way to act against the internationally recognized government formed after the 1946 elections, which the KKE had boycotted. ", Marantzidis, Nikos, and Giorgos Antoniou. [40], The Greek army now numbered about 90,000 men and was gradually being put on a more professional footing. The fighting resulted in the defeat of the DSE by the Hellenic Army.[13]. Additionally, it divided the Greek people for ensuing decades, with both sides vilifying their opponents. Downfall. The delegation's chief gained the nickname "sphinx" among local Communist officers for not giving any clues about Soviet intentions. Third phase (1946–1949) By early 1944, after a British-negotiated ceasefire (the Plaka Agreement), EAM-ELAS had destroyed EKKA and confined EDES to a small part of Epirus, where it could only play a marginal role in the rest of the war. [37] In addition, several Trotskyists had to leave the country in fear for their lives (Cornelius Castoriadis fled to France). Περιοδικό "Δημοκρατικός Στράτος", Magazine first issued in 1948 and re-published as an album collection in 2007. 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, son of George Papandreou, the leader of the Center Union political party and the country's prime minister at the time. [57][58][59][60][61][62][63], The insurgents were demoralised by the bitter split between Stalin and Tito. On April 21, 1967, a group of rightist and anti-communist army officers executed a coup d'état and seized power from the government, using the political instability and tension of the time as a pretext. 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. Despite some setbacks that the government forces suffered from 1946 to 1948, they eventually won, largely due to increased American aid, the failure of the DSE to attract sufficient recruits, and the side-effects of the Tito–Stalin split of 1948. There was little to prevent the ELAS from taking full control of the country. [55][56], During the war, more than 25,000 children, most with parents in the DSE, were also placed in 30 "child towns" under the immediate control of Queen Frederika, something especially emphasised by the left. After the ceasefire, ELAS under the leadership of Siantos left Athens, taking thousands of captives. Communist Party of Greece, The Greek Civil War (Greek: ο Eμφύλιος [Πόλεμος], o Emfýlios [Pólemos], "the Civil War") was fought between the Greek government army (supported by the United Kingdom and the United States) and the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) — the military branch of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) (supported by Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, and covertly by the Soviet Union via their Eastern European proxies) from 1946 to 1949. The Yugoslav and Albanian communist governments supported the DSE fighters, but the Soviet Union remained ambivalent. It would deprive the partisans of supplies and recruits and simultaneously raise antipathy towards them. In the Peloponnese especially, local party officials, headed by Vangelis Rogakos, had established a plan long before the decision to go to guerrilla war, under which the numbers of partisans operating in the mainland would be inversely proportional to the number of soldiers that the enemy would concentrate in the region. In time, the flow of weapons and funds to ELAS stopped altogether, and rival EDES received the bulk of the Allied support. "The axis occupation and civil war: Changing trends in Greek historiography, 1941–2002. The Communists formed a provisional government in December 1947 and made the DSE the military branch of this government. A referendum in September 1946 favored the retention of the monarchy, but the KKE claimed that it had been rigged. According to left-wing sources,[21] civilian bodies found there could have been victims of the Security Battalions. Forgotten by whom? 1949, 16 October: Nikolaos Zachariadis, commander of the Communist guerillas, announces a ceasefire that ends the Greek Civil War. In the village of Feneos, OPLA turned a nearby monastery into a concentration camp and killing ground for those they deemed "reactionaries". On their way, they were captured by an ELAS group, with Sarafis agreeing to join ELAS at gunpoint when all other officers who refused were killed. The moderate aims of the PEEA (known as "κυβέρνηση του βουνού", "the Mountain Government") aroused support even among Greeks in exile. Can the Deadly Earthquake Reduce Tensions Between Greece and Turkey? Just last summer I had a HUGE argument with a very good friend of mine (the best man at my wedding actually) about the civil war and about how the Communists have been idolised and the Royalists demonised. Government forces took no action but the procession was attacked by Chites led by Colonel Grivas, with over 100 dead. [citation needed] After the mutiny the economic help from the Allies to the National Liberation Front almost stopped. In certain cases, such as Volos, some RAF units even surrendered equipment to ELAS fighters. These resistance groups launched attacks against the occupying powers and set up large espionage networks. Background. Spyros Kotsakis, Captain in ELAS First Army (1986). [citation needed] EAM-ELAS in particular controlled most of the country's mountainous interior, while EDES was limited to Epirus and EKKA to eastern Central Greece. The EAM called for a general strike and announced the reorganization of the Central Committee of ELAS, its military wing. [citation needed] After 50 years, some of these children, given up for adoption to American families, were retracing their family background in Greece. It was expected that it would be the generals; however, it was three lower-ranking officers who took everyone by surprise when, in the space of one day, they took over power. In November of 1973, a few hundred students and other Greek citizens, fed up with the repression of the regime, occupied the building of the National Technical University of Athens and called for the colonels to leave power. The king's return to Greece reinforced British influence in the country. Despite setbacks, such as the fighting at Konitsa, the DSE reached the height of its power in 1948, extending its operations to Attica, within 20 km of Athens. For other uses, see, Egypt "mutiny" and the Lebanon conference, From the Lebanon conference to the outbreak, Communist evacuation of the children and the Queen's Camps. [22] Sarafis never admitted this incident, and in his book on ELAS[23] makes special reference to the letter that he sent all officers of the former Greek army to join the ranks of EAM-ELAS. They provided them with ammunition, supplies and logistical support as a way of balancing ELAS's increasing influence. DSE divisions conducted guerrilla warfare across Greece; III Division, with 20,000 men in 1948, controlled 70% of the Peloponnese politically and militarily; battalions named after ELAS formations were active in northwestern Greece, and in the islands of Lesvos, Limnos, Ikaria, Samos, Creta, Evoia and the bulk of the Ionian Islands. 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