155 Athens, After the Battle, After the Battle(1)
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//-->ATHENSDECEMBER 1944No. 155£4.25NUMBER 155© CopyrightAfter the Battle2012Editor: Karel MargryEditor-in-Chief: Winston G. RamseyPublished byBattle of Britain International Ltd.,The Mews, Hobbs Cross House,Hobbs Cross, Old Harlow,Essex CM17 0NN, EnglandTelephone: 01279 41 8833Fax: 01279 41 9386E-mail: hq@afterthebattle.comWebsite:www.afterthebattle.comPrinted in Great Britain byWarners Group Publications PLC,Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PH.After the Battleis published on the 15thof February, May, August and November.LONDON STOCKIST for theAfter the Battlerange:Foyles Limited, 113-119 Charing Cross Road,London WC2H 0EB. Telephone: 020 7437 5660.Fax: 020 7434 1574. E-mail: orders@foyles.co.uk.Web site: www.foyles.co.ukUnited Kingdom Newsagent Distribution:Warners Group Publications PLC,Bourne, Lincolnshire PE10 9PHAustralian Subscriptions and Back Issues:Renniks Publications Pty LimitedUnit 3, 37-39 Green Street, Banksmeadow NSW 2019Telephone: 61 2 9695 7055. 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E-mail: si@sipublicaties.nl5th PROOFA rare photo of a group of EDES and ELAS guerrillas posing in harmony.The causes of the civil war that ravagedGreece between 1943 and 1949 trace back tothe country’s political, social and economicdevelopments in the 19th and early 20th cen-tury. The events in Athens in December1944, which are commonly labelled the ‘Sec-ond Round’ of that war, and which sawBritish troops pitted against an attemptedCommunist take-over of the country, hadtheir immediate origin in developments dur-ing the preceding three years of Axis occupa-tion of Greece.PRELUDE: THE FIRST ROUND OF THEGREEK CIVIL WAR (1943-44)In October 1940, Fascist Italy invadedGreece from Albania. To the general sur-prise, the Greek Royal Army held its ownand threw the invaders back. However, theGreeks’ right flank was turned in late April1941 by German troops who poured downfrom Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, and defeatedboth the Greeks and the Anglo-ANZACforces sent to support them. Remnants of thedefeated armies withdrew to Crete where inMay they were narrowly but decisivelybeaten by a German airborne invasion (seeAfter the BattleNo. 47). King George II,Prime Minister Emmanouil Tsouderos andseveral other important Greek politicianswent into exile to Egypt, allowing the Ger-mans to set up a collaborationist puppet gov-ernment in Athens under General GeorgiosTsolakoglou.Opposition against the Axis occupationstarted spontaneously and grew quickly.Bands of Greekandartes(guerrillas) soonsprang up and began fighting a partisan waragainst the foreign oppressors. By 1942Greek resistance had developed into severalrival organisations. The most important ofthese were:EAM (Ethnikon Apeleftherotikon Meto-pon — National Liberation Front).Set up bythe Greek Communist Party, the KKE(Kommounistikon Komma Ellados), on Sep-tember 27, 1941, EAM was nominally acoalition of the KKE and five other left-wingparties, calling upon all Greeks to rally inopposition against the occupiers. Adopting aprogramme of national independence, demo-cratic liberties and opposition to the Axis, itpurported to be a nationwide group strug-gling for a free Greece. However, in reality itwas just a front for the secretive and gener-ally unpopular KKE and firmly controlled bythe Communists.ELAS (Ethnikos Laikos ApeleftherotikosStratos — National Popular LiberationArmy).Set up by the EAM on April 10,1942, as its military wing it was, like theEAM, completely Communist-controlled.Although ostensibly focused on fighting theAxis, its real and final aim was to seize powerover the country and set up a Communistregime under the umbrella of the SovietUnion. From its very beginning, ELASsought to absorb or eliminate the other resis-tance groups. Taking over many weakerguerrilla bands by persuasion or outrightthreat of annihilation, its fighting strengthgrew rapidly from a few hundred in 1942 to5,000 in the spring of 1943 to 50,000 by Octo-ber 1944. However, many of the ELAS’srank and file had been recruited against theirwill or joined the organisation without realis-ing they were fighting for a Communistcause. Originally led by a man known as ArisVeloukhiotis (real name Athanasios Klaras;nom de guerre ‘Aris’), an avowed Commu-nist, by October 1944 command of ELAShad diverted to Colonel Stefanos Saraphis(‘Saraphis’), a regular army officer, with Arisas his so-called ‘Kapetanios’. (All ELASunits down to company level had three lead-ers: a military commander (usually a formerregular officer or NCO); a kapetanios (com-monly the leader who had originally formedthe guerrilla band), and a political commissar(always an avowed Communist). Thekapetanios and political commissar wereoften combined in one person. The kapetan-ios, appointed by EAM, was effectively theunit leader since any decision taken by themilitary leader had to be approved by him.)EDES (Ethnikos Dimokratikos EllinikosSyndesmos — National Democratic GreekLeague).Formed in Athens on September 9,1941, EDES was thoroughly republican, liberaland anti-monarchist in doctrine although it didattract a few monarchist and other right-wingfollowers. Many of its members were formerregular soldiers of the pre-war Greek Army.Led by Colonel Napoleon Zervas, its guerrillabands had their heartland in the mountains ofEpirus in north-west Greece. Soon surfacing asthe main rival of the left-wing ELAS, both theGreek Government-in-exile and Britain werewell-disposed towards EDES, hoping it wouldprovide some counterweight to ELAS. From afirst nucleus of about 100, and with British sup-port, it grew to a fighting strength of some4,000 armed fighters in March 1943 to some12,000 by October 1944.CONTENTSATHENS, DECEMBER 1944FROM THE EDITORIT HAPPENED HEREThe Murder ofCountess Teresa Lubienska24252Front Cover:Fighting in Athens in December1944. A Sherman tank from the 46th RoyalTank Regiment and paratroopers from the 6thParachute Battalion pictured at the inter-section of Athinas and Sofokleous Streets inthe centre of Athens during a foray to cleanout ELAS rebels on December 18. (IWM)Back Cover:The Monument of NationalReconciliation in Klafthomonos Square(Square of Grief) in central Athens. Sculptedby Vassilis Doropoulos, it was erected in1989 to commemorate the 40 years from theend of the civil war. As such, it covers thewartime First and Second Rounds and alsothe post-war Third Round of the conflict.Acknowledgements:The Editor would like toextend his special appreciation to KostasAlexopoulos who over the course of severalyears supplied us with invaluable material onthe December 1944 fighting in Athens andlocated and matched up the wartime picturesof that battle. He thanks Gail Parker for theadditional comparison photography. Forfurther help with the story he is thankful toJiannis Gkenidis, Ilonka Weijenberg andHans Houterman.Photo Credits:BPK — Bildarchiv PreussischerKulturbesitz (Bildagentur für Kunst, Kulturund Geschichte), Berlin; CWGC — Common-wealth War Graves Commission; IWM —Imperial War Museum, London; USNA — USNational Archives.25th PROOFIn December 1944, the British liberationforces in Greece found themselves invol-untarily and unhappily involved in the vio-lence and hatred of the Greek Civil War.Having landed in Greece the previousOctober, believing their mission would belimited to supporting the legal Greek Gov-ernment in setting up its administrationand to helping in relief work, they becamethe target of the Communist-controlledguerrilla forces of EAM/ELAS, whichendeavoured to take over the country byforce of arms. The fighting was mostlylimited to Attica — Athens and the port ofPiraeus — the British units stationed inother parts of the country managing tomaintain an uneasy peace with ELAS. Thesmall British garrison in Athens initiallyhad a very difficult time, being cut off andsurrounded in a tight perimeter in the cen-tre of the city, besieged by superior andwell-armed rebel forces. It took five weeksof brutal and bitter street-fighting againstan elusive opponent, and the arrival ofconsiderable reinforcements from over-seas, before the British were able to breakthe siege and drive the ELAS insurgentsout of the city, a final truce coming intoeffect on January 15, 1945. One of theepitomising pictures to come out of theDecember fighting in Athens was this shottaken by Lieutenant Morris of the ArmyFilm and Photo Unit (AFPU) of three para-troopers, most likely from the 5th Para-chute Battalion, lying in position behindcover on a corner in the centre of Athenson December 6. Note the KKE (GreekCommunist Party) slogan on the wallabove their heads.ATHENS, DECEMBER 1944Both ELAS and EDES were armed andtrained by the Allies. In early October 1942,the Special Operations Executive (SOE)sent in its first sabotage team to Greece,which on the night of November 25/26 in ajoint operation with ELAS and EDES guer-rillas successfully blew up the importantGorgopotamos railway viaduct — a vital linkin the German supply line to North Africa.The success of this operation promptedBritain to form a British Military Missionwith the Greek guerrillas and to start sendingin British Liaison Officers and droppingweapons and supplies to both ELAS andEDES, in order that they could fight theGermans. However, soon and increasingly soin 1943, the two guerrilla organisationsturned to fighting each other.In the autumn of 1943, in the mistakenbelief that the collapse of Fascist Italy andthe Allied landings in Sicily and southernItaly foreshadowed the early liberation ofGreece, the Communists decided to attemptto seize power by force before it was too late.On October 12, 1943, the 8th (Epirus) Divi-sion and other ELAS elements struck againstEDES units in the mountains of Thessaly,beginning what came to be called the ‘FirstRound’ of the Greek Civil War. With a four-to-one superiority in manpower and theadditional advantage of having capturedlarge amounts of Italian arms, ammunitionand equipment after the capitulation of Italyjust the previous month (seeAfter the BattleNo. 152), ELAS achieved a good deal of suc-cess against EDES, pushing its forces backinto Epirus.The British Military Mission (by nowrenamed Allied Military Mission), fearing atotal victory of ELAS, increased its supportto EDES. The influx of arms and moneyenabled Zervas to mount a counter-offensiveand by February 1944 he had regained muchof his territory. At the insistence of theAllied Military Mission, representatives ofELAS and EDES met at the Plaka Bridgeover the Arakhtos river in Epirus to discuss atruce. The resulting Plaka Bridge Agree-ment, signed on February 29, provided forthe establishment of well-defined zones ofoperation for each group in the fight againstthe Germans, a vow by each group to refrainBy Karel Margryfrom infringing on the other’s assigned terri-tory, and a further promise that all futureefforts would be directed against the Ger-mans rather than against each other.Although it looked good on paper, the Plakapeace would prove to have only a very lim-ited tenability.It was taken on the corner of Panepistimiou (now known as Eleftheriou Venizelon)and Kriezotou Street, one block north of Syndagma (Constitution) Square. The oldbuilding has been replaced by a modern office block of the ATEbank (AgriculturalBank of Greece). Comparison photography in Athens today is not made easy due tothe constant streams of traffic and parked cars.3GAIL PARKERIWM NA205155th PROOFprovided for the reorganisation of the armedforces outside and inside Greece, the end ofthe reign of terror in the mountains, therelief of hunger and other needs, the restora-tion of order and liberty in collaborationwith Allied Forces, the punishment of collab-orators, and the post-war satisfaction ofGreece’s economic and territorial needs.Again, it looked good on paper and raisedhigh expectations; but its implementationwould not be as simple and undisputed, aslater events were to prove.On September 2, as a belated result of theconference, six prominent members of EAMjoined Papandreou’s Cabinet (five as Minis-ters and one as Under-Secretary), allowingthe latter to transform it into a Governmentof National Unity. This was a major break-through because, with EAM Communistsforming part of the legal government, thereseemed less risk of them planning to over-throw it by use of force.A serious problem remained on the consti-tutional side. Except for a strong and influen-tial minority of monarchists, few in Greecewanted King George II to return from exileafter the liberation. Even before the war,large segments of the Greek political spec-trum — Republicans, Populists, Commu-nists, etc — had doctrinally been opposed tothe monarchy. His reinstatement to thethrone by a disputed plebiscite in 1935; hisassociation with the pre-war dictatorship ofGeneral Ioannis Metaxas (1936-41), and hisflight from the country in 1941, had all seri-ously damaged the King’s popularity withthe Greek public, giving ample fuel to anti-royalist feelings. However, George II hadfamily ties with the British Royal Family, andthe British Government, particularly PrimeMinister Winston Churchill and the ForeignOffice, remained a firm supporter of theexiled King.Nonetheless, the Greek Government-in-exile had from 1942 begun to put pressureon the King not to return to the countryuntil after a plebiscite had been held show-ing that the majority of the people wantedhim. Even though George II had on severaloccasions doggedly refused to agree to thisrequest, on June 12 Papandreou publiclyannounced that the King would only returnafter a positive outcome of a referendum. Ithad long since been suggested that in theinterim a Regency be set up, but there wasstill discussion about this. ArchbishopDamaskinos of Athens was proposed as theRegent, but neither the King nor Papan-dreou was in favour of him.In the early autumn of 1944, as an Axiswithdrawal from Greece became more likely,the British sponsored a meeting of the princi-pal Greek factions at Allied GHQ at Casertain Italy to co-ordinate military activities andestablish the ground rules for political activ-ity in Greece when the liberation took place.Taking part were Saraphis for ELAS andZervas for EDES (both now promoted togenerals), as well as Papandreou and four ofhis cabinet ministers. In the resulting CasertaAgreement, signed on September 26 aftermuch argument and with deep reservationson all sides, both EDES and ELAS, as wellas the Greek Government-in-exile, agreed toplace their forces under the command ofLieutenant-General Ronald Scobie, theBritish officer designated to represent theAllied High Command in Greece, for thepurpose of driving the Axis forces out ofGreece. ELAS and EDES also agreed toallow the landing of British forces in Greece,to refrain from any attempt to seize poweron their own, and to support the return of theGreek Government of National Unity. Theyalso accepted that the city of Athens was outof bounds for guerrillas and promised not tosend any of them into the capital, leavingGreek command there in the hands of a sep-arate military governor to be appointed bythe Greek Government.SALONIKAPATRASATHENSPIRAEUSWhen planning the liberation of mainland Greece, the British intended first to occupyAthens and the port of Piraeus, then establish themselves in a few vital port towns —notably Patras in the Peloponnese and Salonika in Macedonia — and from theredistribute themselves over the rest of the country to help in relief and reconstruction.As the war went on, the resistance move-ment lost much of its popularity with theGreek population. The brutal reprisalactions against innocent civilians taken bythe Germans after partisan attacks; theinternecine battles between the guerrillamovements, and the terror, confiscation andblackmail imposed by the andartes on theordinary people in the mountains seriouslydiscredited the Resistance, especially ELAS,with the Greek populace.In late 1943 the German occupying forcesset up the Greek Security Battalions (Tag-mata Asfalias), an armed militia force whosemain task was to hunt down and eliminateguerrillas. Due to the reign of terror insti-tuted by ELAS in the mountains, and thefood and pay provided for the new force, theSecurity Battalions gained a certain popular-ity in early 1944, leading to an influx of newrecruits, and they grew to a strength of some15,000. Soon, ELAS was spending more timefighting the Security Battalions than the Ger-mans — which added a new dimension to thecivil war. ELAS regarded all members of theSecurity Battalions as traitors and collabora-tors, and they would become a prime targetof their hatred and vengeance after libera-tion.In April 1944, the position of the GreekGovernment-in-exile in Cairo suffered badlywhen a wholesale mutiny broke out amongthe Greek troops in Egypt. It began amongsoldiers of the two Greek Army brigadesencamped near Alexandria on the 8th andthen spread to sailors on Greek Navy ships in4the ports of Alexandria and Port Saïd. Themutineers declared in favour of a republicand demanded the resignation of the existinggovernment of Prime Minister EmmanouilTsouderos. The rebellion came at a veryunfortunate moment as the Greek units wereeagerly awaited to reinforce the Allied frontin Italy. The British authorities took a verystrong line and British troops suppressed thetroubles in the army brigades, while loyalGreek navy forces did the same on the ships,the final mutineers not surrendering untilApril 28. Ring-leaders were arrested and, ina subsequent screening of all personnel,every soldier suspected of anti-monarchist orEAM sympathies was rooted out and theremaining men were reformed into the 3rdGreek Mountain Brigade.On April 13, as a direct consequence of themutinies, Prime Minister Tsouderos resignedand on the 26th the King appointed GeorgiosPapandreou, a leading republican politicianand leader of the Social Democratic Party,who had just evaded from occupied Greece,as the new Prime Minister. Despite being ananti-Monarchist and anti-Communist,Papandreou sought to form a representativegovernment and he called all concerned par-ties to a national conference in the Lebanon,which was held on May 17-21. Representa-tives of most of the old political parties —including the KKE — and of the main resis-tance groups — EAM, ELAS and EDES —participated and after three days of stormydebate a document known as the LebanonCharter was signed by all those present. It5th PROOFThe Allied liberation plan for Greece,known as Operation ‘Manna’, was hurriedlyprepared after the Caserta conference. Thedesignated landing force was small in sizeand had few heavy weapons, being moreintended as a ‘take-over’ force than for dri-ving out the Germans. It comprised twoBritish brigades (the 2nd Parachute and the23rd Armoured, both in an infantry role), afew commando and special forces units andtwo units of the Free Greek army (the GreekMountain Brigade and the Greek SacredRegiment), plus three aircraft squadrons(two RAF and one Greek). Assigned to helpin the distribution of food, clothing and med-icine to the starving and destitute populationby the UNRRA (United Nations Relief andRehabilitation Agency) and the Red Crossand in reconstruction work, it had a largenon-combatant administrative complement.General Scobie’s instructions were toestablish his GHQ in Athens, to maintainlaw and order, and to help the PapandreouGovernment set up its administration. Hewas not to interfere in local politics. How-ever, it was considered vital that Britishtroops occupy Athens as soon as possibleafter its evacuation by the Germans to pre-vent Greek guerrillas from establishingthemselves in the city and thus in all proba-bility provoking civil war. Put differently, hewas topreventa Communist coup d’étatrather thancounterit. Unfortunately but per-haps understandably, Greek Communistsand anti-Royalists would come to regard theBritish presence in Greece as having as pri-mary aim to bring back the monarchy andrestore King George II to the throne.The vast majority of the British soldierswho came to Greece as part of the BritishLiberation Force had no inkling of the intri-cacies of Greek politics or any idea that theywere arriving in a country on the verge ofcivil war. They regarded the Greeks asfriends and expected to be greeted as such.They loved the Greek people for their affa-bility and generous hospitality, and admiredthe Greek partisans for their courageousstruggle against the Axis. To most Britishsoldiers it seemed inconceivable that largesegments of Greek society would come toregard them as occupiers rather than libera-tors and that they would eventually end upfighting the Greeks in a brutal, nasty conflict.On October 12, 1944, the British 2nd Parachute Brigade landed in a strong wind on theairfield of Megara, 45 kilometres north-west of Athens, its mission being to advance tothe capital and secure it as soon as possible. First to drop was C Company of the 4thParachute Battalion, but due to the continued bad weather the rest of the brigade didnot come in until later, the remainder of the 4th Battalion and the 6th Battalion land-ing on the 14th, the 5th Battalion on the 15th and the brigade’s glider element only onthe 16th. By then, the 4th and 6th Battalions had started on their way towards Athens.LIBERATION OF MAINLAND GREECEIn mid-September 1944, prompted by theSoviet Red Army advance into Bulgaria andtowards Yugoslavia, Hitler decided to with-draw his troops from Greece, first from theAegean islands and the Dodecanese andthen from the mainland. The Peloponnesewas the first part of the mainland to be evac-uated and, with the spectre of EAM/ELASseizing power in the vacuum created, theBritish were stirred to go into action there.On the night of October 3/4, 58 para-chutists of the Special Boat Squadron (SBS)dropped to seize Araxos airfield in the north-west Peloponnese as the vanguard of a 950-strong task force under Major Earl GeorgeJellicoe — ‘Bucketforce’ — which furthercomprised a squadron of the Long RangeDesert Group (LRDG), two infantry compa-nies of Highland Light Infantry, a few RoyalMarine commandos and No. 2908 Squadronof the RAF Regiment. They landed unop-posed and received a terrific welcome fromoverjoyed Greek civilians. Following theparachute drop, the main force landed atKatakolon on the west coast of the Pelopon-nese. The vital port of Patras, 30 kilometresaway, was still held by a German garrison ofunder 1,000 and some 1,600 men of the localGreek Security Battalion but entirely sur-rounded by ELAS guerrillas under Aris. Byquickly switching his SBS patrols from onearea to another, Jellicoe created the impres-sion of much greater strength, as a result ofwhich the Security Battalion, whose mem-bers feared that they would be murdered astraitors by the ELAS forces, keenly surren-dered to him. Meanwhile, the majority of theGermans evacuated by the port and Patraswas captured with the harbour still intact.However Aris’ forces had already carried outhorrifying massacres at nearby Kalamata andPyrgos, butchering Royalists, bourgeois,Security Battalion men and anyone else sus-pected of being anti-Communist.From the Peloponnese, liberation movedfirst to Athens and then to the north. TheGermans did not attempt to defend the capi-tal, only holding the approaches to the city sothat their evacuation could go as smoothly aspossible. The small number of SBS, LRDGand commandos moving from the Pelopon-nese to Athens found that the hospitality ofthe Greeks slowed them down much morethan German opposition.On October 12, in Athens, the Swastikaflag was taken down for the last time beforethe last German units withdrew from thecity. A small group of ELAS fighters pre-vented the Germans from destroying theelectric power station and the MarathonDam on the outskirts of town just beforethey pulled out.That evening (October 12), a companyfrom the 2nd Parachute Brigade (BrigadierCharles Pritchard) was dispatched to seizethe airfield at Megara, 45 kilometres north-west of Athens, thus to secure a landing zonefor the rest of the brigade, prior to anadvance on the capital. C Company of the4th Parachute Battalion (Lieutenant-ColonelVic Coxen) took off from Brindisi in Italyand, after a very bumpy flight, dropped onthe airfield. They landed in a very strongwind, which caused three men killed and 40injured. The prevailing weather conditionsforced the abandonment of further para-chute operations and it was not until twodays later (October 14) that the rest of thebrigade (less the 5th Parachute Battalion)arrived. The Germans had blown up the roadto Athens but every form of local transportwas commandeered and the 4th and 6th Bat-talions entered the city on October 15, onlyto find that other British troops had beatenthem to the goal: Lord Jellicoe and about 55men from the SBS had already reached thecapital and installed themselves in the besthotel, the Grande Bretagne overlookingConstitution Square; and ‘Foxforce’, com-prising No. 9 Commando (Lieutenant-Colonel Ronnie Tod) with a detachment5IWM CNA3182
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