Foundation and political aims The organization was founded in October 1941 by a
Chiot Air Force Lieutenant,
Kostas Perrikos. Perrikos was a fervent
Republican who had been dismissed from the Air Force after the failed
Venizelist coup attempt in March 1935. In June 1941, he was a founding member of the "Army of Enslaved Victors" (Στρατιά Σκλαβωμένων Νικητών, SSN), one of the first resistance groups to spring up after Greece was
overrun by the Germans in April 1941. However, Perrikos was dissatisfied by the SSN's neutrality on the crucial issue of the post-war regime (monarchy or republic), and together with a number of others, split off to form the PEAN. The founding members of PEAN were, aside from Perrikos, lawyer Athanasios Dimitrios Skouras, who was chosen as president of the Governing Commission, the lawyers Ioannis Katevatis and Georgios Alexiadis, the merchant Dionysios Papavasilopoulos, the doctor Nikolaos Ailianos and Konstantinos Eleftheriadis. Some of them were members of
Panagiotis Kanellopoulos' , and Kanellopoulos himself would become the group's political mentor. Through Kanellopoulos, PEAN would develop close cooperation with another organization, the "Sacred Brigade" (Ιερά Ταξιαρχία, ΙΤ).
The ESPO bombing and aftermath , formerly used a hideout for the organisation PEAN published a number of newspapers, most important of which was
Doxa (Δόξα, "Glory"), first published in April 1942, The attack was widely publicized and praised by Allied radio stations, and marked the end of the ESPO and of German attempts to recruit Greeks into the
Wehrmacht. The Germans initially blamed EAM for the act, but after the betrayal of the group by
gendarmerie officer Polykarpos Dalianis, on 11 November they managed to arrest PEAN's core group, including Perrikos, and on 31 December, a
court martial condemned the arrested to death. Perrikos was executed at
Kaisariani on February 4, Ioulia Bimba was executed by beheading on 26 February 1943 in Vienna, Galatis' sentence was commuted to a life sentence, while Mytilinaios managed to escape and flee to the
Middle East. Four others, Th. Skouras, Ioannis Katevatis, D. Lois and D. Papadopoulos, although found not guilty, had been executed as a
reprisal act on 7 January. Dalianis would soon be executed by fighters of the right-wing "
Omiros" organisation, which members included later Junta officer
Stylianos Pattakos.
Later history In September 1943, PEAN, the Athenian wing of
EDES and the Sacred Brigade formed the People's Liberation Union (LAE) an alliance of Venizelist resistance organizations. The arrest of its leadership was a critical blow to the PEAN, which had never been very large, and severely limited its abilities. It did however carry on, in a purely political role, continuing to publish
Doxa, and gradually moving to a more conservative stance, particularly through its rivalry with EAM. Its armed wing was reactivated only from March 1944 onwards, when it carried out a number of sabotage attacks on the Germans. During the
December events of 1944, PEAN sided with the right-wing groups, the British and the government of
George Papandreou against the forces of
EAM-ELAS. ==Notes==