Greek Civil War, The by Close David H

Author:Close, David H.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-317-89851-1
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

LIBERATION

German troops began to withdraw from the south and Aegean islands at the start of September 1944, and the last of them crossed the northern frontier on 4 November. Their withdrawal was accompanied by the descent of ELAS forces from the mountains in order to harass the German retreat and to occupy the plains and towns. They proceeded to destroy what vestiges remained of the traditional state, dissolving the gendarmerie and burning police archives in the towns, and establishing EAM government in all its ramifications. EAM authority was also established at this time in several Aegean islands. The Communists kept the provisional government in existence until early November; and elections were held for its local authorities late in October as decreed by Siantos as its Minister of the Interior.71

A similar process was occurring almost simultaneously in the rest of the Balkans. On 20 August the Red Army launched an offensive against Romania, and in the next two months liberated that country, as well as Bulgaria and – in cooperation with Tito’s Partisan forces – eastern Yugoslavia also. Romania and Bulgaria thus fell under the effective control of the Soviet forces, while Yugoslavia and Albania were taken over by Communist-dominated front organizations commanding guerrilla armies similar to ELAS. The Communist parties of all those countries grew rapidly, and began to harass and persecute other parties. Thus was demonstrated the truth of Stalin’s remark to Tito in April 1945: ‘This war is not as in the past; whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. It cannot be otherwise.’72

In Greece, it was not clear to anyone, during the German retreat, that the Red Army would halt at the Greek frontier, or that the British would dispatch substantial forces. Thus the obvious course for the Communist leaders was to consolidate their power, regardless of their agreement with Papandreou’s government in exile. Immediately after their central committee meeting of 28–9 July they ordered an intensified campaign of assassinations and arrests in the capital, trying thus to ensure that their most dangerous opponents were cowed or put out of action before the Germans departed.73 They were opposed by Venteres’s colleague Colonel Panagiotes Spiliotopoulos, who on 1 August secretly assumed the post of military governor of Attica on behalf of Papandreou’s government, and appointed as his chief of staff the leading officer in the Military Hierarchy, Theodoros Gregoropoulos. Both were respected by regular army officers in active status, and secured the cooperation of about 3,000 of their colleages, and of the anti-Communist organizations, in their preparations to hold the capital after the Germans’ departure. The public officials of Ralles’s quisling government also prepared to transfer loyalty to Spiliotopoulos. As the gendarmerie were divided and discredited by their collaborationist activities, Spiliotopoulos relied especially on the chief of the city police, Evangelos Evert. On 23 September and again early in October Spiliotopoulos’s supporters, notably members of X, evaded EAM patrols in order to bring into Athens shipments of arms that had been organized by Venteres overseas.

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