, leader of the military wing of the
EDES, with fellow officers Greece is a mountainous country, with a long tradition in
andartiko (αντάρτικο, "guerrilla warfare"), dating back to the days of the
klephts (anti-Turkish bandits) of the Ottoman period, who often enjoyed folk-hero status. In the 1940s, the countryside was poor, the road network not very well developed, and state control outside the cities usually exercised by the
Greek Gendarmerie. But by 1942, due to the weakness of the central government in Athens, the countryside was gradually slipping out of its control, while the Resistance groups had acquired a firm and wide-ranging organization, parallel and more effective than that of the official state.
Emergence of the armed resistance In February 1942, EAM, an organization controlled by the local Communist Party formed a military corps, ELAS, that would first operate in the mountains of
Central Greece, with
Aris Velouchiotis, a communist activist, as their chief captain. Later, on 28 July 1942, a
centrist ex-army officer, Colonel
Napoleon Zervas, announced the foundation of the
National Groups of Greek Guerrillas (EOEA), as
EDES' military arm, to operate, at first, in the region of
Aetolia-Acarnania.
National and Social Liberation (EKKA) also formed a military corps, named after the famous
5/42 Evzone Regiment, under Col.
Dimitrios Psarros, that was mainly localized in the area of
Mount Giona. ). Until the summer of 1942, the occupation authorities had been little troubled by the armed Resistance, which was still in its infancy. The Italians in particular, in control of most of the countryside, considered the situation to have been normalized. From that point, however, the Resistance gained pace, with EAM/ELAS, in particular, expanding rapidly. Armed groups attacked and disarmed local gendarmerie stations and isolated Italian outposts, or toured the villages and gave patriotic speeches. The Italians were forced to re-evaluate their assessment, and take measures such as the deportation of army officers to camps in Italy and Germany, which naturally only encouraged the latter to join the underground
en masse by escaping "to the mountains". These developments emerged most dramatically as the Greek Resistance announced its presence to the world with one of the war's most spectacular sabotage acts, the blowing up of the
Gorgopotamos railway bridge, linking northern and southern Greece, on 25 November 1942. This operation was the result of British mediation between ELAS and EDES (
Operation "Harling"), carried out by 12 British
Special Operations Executive (SOE)
saboteurs and a joint ELAS-EDES force. This was the first and last time that the two major Resistance groups would cooperate, due to the rapidly developing rivalry and ideological retrenchment between them.
Establishment of "Free Greece" Nevertheless, constant attacks and acts of sabotage followed against the Italians, such as the
Battle of Fardykampos, resulting in the capture of several hundred Italian soldiers and significant amounts of equipment. By the late spring of 1943, the Italians were forced to withdraw from several areas. The towns of
Karditsa,
Grevena,
Trikkala,
Metsovon and others were liberated by July. The Axis forces and their
collaborators remained in control only of the main towns and the connecting roads, with the interior left to the
andartes. This was "
Free Greece", stretching from the
Ionian Sea to the
Aegean and from the borders of the German zone in Macedonia to
Boeotia, a territory of 30,000 km2 and 750,000 inhabitants.
Italian collapse and German takeover By this time (July 1943), the overall strength of the
andartes was around 20–30,000, with most belonging to the ELAS, newly under the command of General
Stefanos Sarafis. EDES was limited in operations to
Epirus, and EKKA operated in a small area in Central Greece. The Germans now took over the Italian zone, and soon proved to be a totally different opponent from the demoralized, war-weary and far less brutal Italians. Already since the early summer of 1943, German troops had been pouring into Greece, fearing an Allied landing there (in fact falling victims to a grand-scale Allied strategic deception operation, "
Operation Barclay"). Soon they became involved in wide-ranging
counterguerrilla operations, which they carried out with great ruthlessness, based on their experiences in Yugoslavia. In the course of these operations, mass
reprisals were carried out, resulting in war crimes such as the massacres of
Mousiotitsa on July 25,
Kommeno on August 16,
Lingiades on October 3,
Kalavryta on December 13 and the
Massacre of Distomo in June 1944. At the same time, hundreds of villages were systematically torched and almost one million people left homeless.
Prelude to Civil War: the first conflicts Despite the signing of an agreement in July 1943 between the three main Resistance groups (EAM/ELAS, EDES and EKKA) to cooperate and to subject themselves to the Allied Middle East High Command under General
Wilson (the "
National Bands Agreement"), in the political field, the mutual mistrust between EAM and the other groups escalated. EAM-ELAS was by now the dominant political and military force in Greece, and EDES and EKKA, along with the British and the Greek government-in-exile, feared that after the inevitable German withdrawal, it would try to dominate the country and establish a soviet regime. This prospect was not only linked with the increasing distrust shown by many conservative and traditional liberal members of the Greek society towards the Communists and EAM, but also with British. The British were opposed to an EAM's after-war dominance in Greece due to their political opposition to communism, while on the logic of the spheres of influence they believed that such a development would lead the country, which traditionally considered belongs in their sphere of influence, to that of the Soviet Union. Finally the conflict of interests between them and the USSR settled after British secured Soviet assent to this in the so-called "
percentages agreement" between
Winston Churchill and
Joseph Stalin in October 1944. EAM on its part considered itself "the only true resistance group". Its leadership viewed the British government's support for EDES and EKKA with suspicion, and viewed Zervas' contacts with London and the Greek government with distrust. , leader of
EKKA At the same time, EAM found itself under attack by the Germans and their collaborators. Dominated by the old political class, and looking already to the oncoming post-Liberation era, the new
Ioannis Rallis government had established the notorious
Security Battalions, with the blessing of the German authorities, in order to fight exclusively against ELAS. Other anti-communist resistance groups, such as the royalist
Organization "X", were also reinforced, receiving arms and funding by the British. A virtual civil war was now being waged under the eyes of the Germans. In October 1943, ELAS attacked EDES in
Epirus, where the latter organization was the dominant resistance group, by transferring units from the neighbouring regions. This conflict continued until February 1944, when the British mission in Greece succeeded in negotiating a ceasefire (the
Plaka agreement) which in the event proved to be only temporary. The attack led to an unofficial truce between EDES and the German forces in Epirus under General
Hubert Lanz. But the fight continued amongst ELAS and the other minor resistance groups (like "X"), as well as against the Security Battalions, even in the streets of Athens, until the German withdrawal in October 1944. In March, EAM established its own rival government in Free Greece, the
Political Committee of National Liberation, clearly staking its claim to a dominant role in post-war Greece. Consequently, on Easter Monday, 17 April 1944, ELAS forces attacked and destroyed the EKKA's 5/42 Regiment, capturing and executing many of its men, including its leader Colonel
Dimitrios Psarros. The event caused a major shock in the Greek political scene, since Psarros was a well-known republican, patriot and anti-royalist. For EAM-ELAS, this act was fatal, as it strengthened suspicion of its intentions for the post-Occupation period, and drove many liberals and moderates, especially in the cities, against it, cementing the emerging rift in Greek society between pro- and anti-EAM segments. ==Resistance in the islands and Crete==