Evripidis Bakirtzis

He was the son of the secretary of the Greek consulate of Serres (in 1895 Serres belonged to the Ottoman Empire) Christos Bakirtzis and the teacher, Efthalias Zaka, of the well-known family of Grevena, with a military tradition in the Greek War of Independence. In addition to his sister, Marika, he had two half-brothers, one of whom was a distinguished Makedonomachos warrior, nicknamed "Nikos o Serraios", and the other was executed by the Bulgarians in Serres in 1916. == Military career ==

In 1911, Bakirtzis was admitted to the Hellenic Army Academy and participated in the First Balkan War, in 1912, as a sophomore. Specifically, he served in the Army of Epirus with the Independent Cretan Regiment, as a sergeant. In August 1914, the outbreak of World War I and the subsequent manifestation of the National Schism, which occurred due to the dispute between Eleftherios Venizelos and King Constantine over the foreign policy pursued, found Bakirtzis serving in Kavala with his rank Artillery. From the beginning of 1916 until the occupation of most of the forts of eastern Macedonia in the same year by the Germans and Bulgarians, with the simultaneous evacuation of the rural areas by the Greek population, Bakirtzis, not tolerating the upcoming surrender of the Fourth Army Corps, decided to fight for the preservation of Macedonia in the Greek national body. He signed with the Venizelos officers of the National Defense, assuming command of artillery and then commander of artillery squadron. He was one of the first defenders and distinguished himself in the battle of Skra, winning the British military medal (Distinguished Service Order). Later, in 1919, he went on a scholarship for three years to France, where he studied at the Higher School of War, leading among 380 distinguished officers from allied countries. Later, he returned to Greece, at war with Turkey, and fought in Asia Minor. In 1922, now in the rank of major, he participated in the Revolutionary Committee of Plastiras that overthrew King Constantine I after the Asia Minor Catastrophe. With the entry of the revolutionary forces in Athens, he went to Evros, collaborated in the defensive line of the front and was the trainer of the famous Evros Army. Later, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, as Chief of the Artillery in Asvestochori, Thessaloniki, dealt with reorganization and reorganization of the Greek Army. In October 1923, when the Leonardopoulos-Gargalidis Movement broke out, Bakirtzis, along with other loyal government officials, such as Georgios Kondylis, Stefanos Sarafis, Dimitrios Psarros, etc., were informed in advance that the movements were the situation in their hands, before the manifestation of the movement in the city of Thessaloniki. They then confronted the military forces led by Colonel George Ziras against the city and forced them to surrender. In 1926, as a lieutenant colonel, he was arrested and sentenced to death, as one of the leaders of the military coup of Tzavela-Bakirtzis, but was not executed. In 1928 he returned to the army and in 1930–31, with the rank of colonel, he served as a military attaché in Sofia and Bucharest. There he was honored with the senior Brigadiers of Bulgaria and Romania. He returned to Greece and took over the management of the 2nd Staff Office (Information) of the General Staff. He also served as chief of staff of the 3rd Army Corps. In 1935, now a colonel, he took part in the Movement of March 1, 1935. He was arrested and sentenced to death for the second time, but his sentence was eventually commuted to deportation from the army and exile to Agios Efstratios (June 25, 1935). He stayed there for a year. He was later demoted to the rank of ordinary soldier and exiled to Antikythera, where his detention conditions were very bad and dangerous to his health. In 1937, he moved to Athens and the Metaxas government asked him to cooperate with the dictatorship and offered him a high position in the General Staff. He refused and was allowed to leave for Bucharest immediately, without having the right to move from there. In fact, he is deprived of his salary and the money of the Share Fund but fortunately his son-in-law, doctor Alexandros Dimitriadis, had support. In Bucharest he wrote three excellent studies that were first published in the book by Euripides Bakirtzis, published by Epikairotia, under the supervision of his exile detainee, Nikos Margaris. These were The Military Value of Greece, The Countries of the Lower Danube and The New Turkey. Especially for the latter, the Turkish ambassador in Bucharest conveyed the congratulations of his government. == World War II and resistance ==

With the declaration of the Greek-Italian War in 1940, Bakirtzis returned to Greece and presented himself at the Military Office of Thessaloniki to join the army with the rank of ordinary soldier, something that was not accepted by the government of Ioannis Metaxas. Toward the beginning of the war, Bakirtzis joined the Greek resistance and one of his first missions included sabotage of Italian forces in Albania which was intended to garner more widespread support for resistance from the left and the right of Greece. He was also the first military liaison between the British and the Greeks, during the Occupation, he led an operation codenamed Prometheus I. He led a 50-man unit of trained saboteurs under the command of General Alexander Zannas and they were to receive wireless sets to receive instructions from a British SOE agent in Turkey but the Greek ship transporting them was sunk by enemy action. On March 10, 1944, the EAM established the PEEA with the goal to counter both the former Greek Government in exile in Cairo and the Greek government which was a collaborationist power for the Axis Powers. Around this time Bakirtzis was leading a division of the ELAS called the Divisional Group of Macedonia (DGM). During this meeting, Soviet officer Nikolai Chernichev told Bakirtzis that refusing to agree to the terms in the Lebanon agreement would be "illogical". Later in 1944, there emerged an ideological split within the ranks of the KKE and Communism as a whole between the Stalinists, led by Nikos Zachariadis and the Titoists, led by Vafeiades and it was described as a purely ideological dispute, mostly in regards to what the strategy of the party should be. Zachariadis and the Stalinists wanted to establish a regular army while Vafeiades and the Titoists favored guerilla-style tactics and this led Vafeiades to often defy party directives and leadership. The Titoists did have an ally in Tito who pushed for intervention in the Greek Civil War but the Stalinists in the party eventually won out but their side ultimately lost the war. It was at one point a bad thing to be called a Titoist within the ranks of the KKE and Vafeiadis denied ever having direct contact with Tito. There was one incident in which Bakirtzis, along with Markos Vafeiades, signed an order to liquidate a number of “Slavo-Macedonian” battalions which had decided to fight for Yugoslavia. Ultimately however, the split had no overall impact on the internal structures of the party and of its leadership, it merely served as a basis to assign blame after the defeat in the war. == Exile and death ==

Permanent officers who had served in ELAS were kept away from the new post-war army. In the summer of 1946, during the second ten days of August, almost all of them were displaced to the Aegean islands. In September 1946, Bakirtzis was arrested as a leftist along with other ELAS leaders (Stefanos Sarafis, Giannis Mousterakis) and exiled to Agios Kirikos, the capital of Icaria. While in exile, the prefect of Attica deemed him a danger to public order and security and ordered his transfer to Fourni, Ikaria. In February 1947, the Greek government allowed him to testify before a United Nations commission investigating the state of the civil war in Greece. Shortly after the visit he received, he was found dead in his room in Fourni, Ikaria, on May 9, 1947, with a bullet in his heart and was buried there. The steps taken by his family and co-exiles to transport his body to Athens to investigate the circumstances of his death and to be buried near his family did not bear fruit. The causes of his death remain unknown. Officially, his death was recorded as suicide. == References ==