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This was a particularly complex case of guerrilla warfare. On the Greek side there were two main resistance groups – ELAS and EDES. On the Axis side there were Italian, German and Bulgarian occupation forces and Greek collaborationists.
We start with a brief introduction, which includes details of the three-way split of Greece between the three occupying forces. There is then a brief look at Greek traditions of irregular warfare, which really amounts to a tradition of banditry in the countryside. However this section does also list three advantages the Greeks had at the start of their struggle – good supplies of weapons and ammo hidden by the Greek army after their surrender, good morale because of their defeat of the Italian invasion, and the experience of the Greek Communist Party (the KKE).
At the start of the struggle the two main resistance groups appeared to both be relatively moderate. ELAS was the armed with of a coalition of left wing parties (EAM), although the KKE was the dominant force. EDES was originally a Republican group formed by political and military figures in Athens. However as the struggle went on both moved towards the extremes. What is interesting is that EDES’s shift from Republican to Monarchist was done to satisfy the British, who supported the government in exile of King George II of the Hellenes (also supported by the Greek government-in-exile). The two resistance groups soon ending up fighting each other as well as the occupation force, even leading to the need for official armistice negotiations between the two groups!
We then move on to the individual groups themselves, starting with ELAS. The evolution of this force is interesting – it started as a grouping of small scale guerrilla bands but its structure slowly evolved to match that of a conventional army, complete with divisions, regiments and battalions, a discipline code and a system of awards. This didn’t alter the reality of the guerrilla war that much – most of the strength of ELAS was dispersed into smaller units scattered across the countryside, but it did allow it to organise larger forces when needed. At its peak it may have had around 60,000 men in the field. ELAS was also determined to become the only resistance group, and had eliminated two smaller groups, AAA and EKKA, absorbing many of their men (including the command of AAA, Sarafis, who became the military commander of ELAS).
EDES was the smaller of the two main forces. Like ELAS the adopted a formal military structure, but they never reached the scale of ELAS, with a maximum size of 12,000. They also came under attack from ELAS, and it was British support that kept them going. Somewhat embarrassingly, from October 1943 to June 1944 EDES almost certainly had a truce with the Germans.
The section on training, tactics and operations makes it clear how different the Greek partisans were to our more familiar picture of the French resistance. The Greek countryside was rugged enough to allow both partisan groups to carry out four week long training courses for new recruits, with small arms handing, demolition and mine laying part of the course. We look at their standard tactics – a mix of ambushes and sabotage of communication links. Bigger missions tended to be prompted by SOE. These were often connected to wider events – Operation Animals in the summer of 1943 was part of the deception operations around the invasion of Sicily, Operation Noah’s Ark was an attempt to disrupt the retreat of German troops from Greece.
We then move onto the occupation forces. Although the Germans had led the conquest of the country, they hadn’t wanted to occupy much of it – only key strategic points, leaving the rest to Italy and Bulgaria. This changed after the Italian armistice, at which point the Germans had to take over the Italian held areas. By this point the original German tendency to use a lighter hand in Greece than in Slavic areas had worn off, and the occupation was brutal. The Germans had to post around 100,000 to 140,000 men in Greece, although not all of them were combat ready troops. Structure was over-complex, as almost always the case with the Nazis, with an army group and two army corps involved, as well as the SS. We see the Germans carrying out a mix of small scale ‘hunting’ parties and larger scale encirclements, both of which were capable of inflicting heavy losses on the Partisans but not eliminating them.
After the Greek surrender the Italians occupied the largest part of the country, including most of the mainland, the south Aegean and the Ionian Sea. Their aim was to slowly convert the islands into Italian territory, and their occupation was just as brutal as the Germans. However it was far less effective, and by the time of the Italian armistice at least 70% of their occupation zone was actually controlled by the partisans.
The least familiar part of the story is the Bulgarian occupation of eastern Greece. After the Greek defences collapsed, the Bulgarians occupied and annexed several eastern prefectures, giving themselves access to the Aegean Sea. The Germans kept Thessalonica and the area facing Turkey. The Bulgarian occupation had a clear aim – the Bulgarianization of the area, with the locals being given the choice of becoming Bulgarian or leaving. Around 200,000 Greeks left or were forced out before the Bulgarians themselves had to flee. This led to inevitable uprisings in the area, which were followed by Bulgarian atrocities.
We also get a brief look at the complex issue of Greek collaborators. The first formal pro-Nazi Greek collaborationist force wasn’t formed until May 1943, and the scale of them only really expanded after the Italian surrender. Most of the resulting forces were tightly controlled by the Germans, although we also see some more independent militias in the north of the country. In at least one case we see an independent militia formed to protect a local area forced into the arms of the Germans by the actions of ELAS, once again determined to eliminate any rival partisan forces.
We finish with a look at the impact of the partisans. The occupying forces appear to have lost around 15,000 dead, 8,000 wounded and 3,000-5,000 captured, a serious drain on their strengths. As many as 27 Axis divisions were involved in the occupation, although only two of them were front line German units. Even so, this was a diversion of strength that could have been used elsewhere. The acts of sabotage helped the Allied struggle in North Africa – the destruction of the Gorgopotamus River railway bridge cut off one supply route to North Africa for nearly six weeks.
We stop at the end of the German occupation, so don’t cover the civil war that followed.
This is a good overview of a big topic, covering who was involved rather more than what they actually did. We thus get decent introductions to the two main resistance organisations, and to the three occupation forces and the collaborationists, but there isn’t the space to detail the actual partisan war itself, other than as a few examples.
Chapters
Greece’s Traditions of Irregular Warfare
Resistance in Greece
Chronology
ELAS: The Pan-Hellenic Resistance Army
EDES: The Junior Resistance Army
Guerrilla Training, Tactics and Operations
German Occupation Forces
Italian Occupation Forces
Bulgarian Occupation Forces
Collaborationist Forces
The Reckoning
Author: Phoebus Athanassiou
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 48
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2025