Partisan Warfare in Greece 1941–44

This fully illustrated study examines the German, Italian and Bulgarian occupation forces in Greece during 1941–44, as well as those of the two Greek Resistance organisations.

Italy’s failed invasion of Greece in 1940–41 led to the German invasion of Yugoslavia in the spring of 1941, which extended into Greece. After the fall of Athens and Crete in April and May, the country was divided under German, Italian, and Bulgarian occupation. The royal government and army survivors withdrew to British-ruled Egypt, but resistance organisations of differing political character soon sprang up at home, forming guerrilla forces that exploited Greece’s rugged terrain and limited communications.

The strongest resistance force was the Communist-dominated National Liberation Front (EAM) with its partisan Greek Popular Army (ELAS). Agents of the Western Allied powers had only brief success in mediating cooperation between the mutually hostile EAM/ELAS and the National Republican Greek League (EDES) with its EOEA. Foreshadowing the Greek Civil War that would follow liberation, ELAS and EOEA clashed amid their separate operations against the Axis occupiers.

Drawing upon a wide range of sources, Phoebus Athanassiou charts the development of the fighting in occupied Greece: a struggle as ferocious as that fought in neighbouring Yugoslavia. This conflict cost both the resistance and the Axis forces some 15,000 men killed.

Partisan Warfare in Greece 1941–44 provides insight into a tumultuous period that was a prelude to the Greek Civil War, shaping the future of Greece in the years that followed.