Gorgopotamos On a night in September 1942, a small group of British
SOE officers parachuted into Greece near Mt. Giona. This group, led by Brigadier
Eddie Myers, had been tasked to blow up one of three bridges (
Gorgopotamos, Papadia or Asopos) of the country's main railway line, and to get the two main, but competing, guerrilla groups of ELAS and
EDES to cooperate. After much deliberation, the Gorgopotamos bridge was chosen due to the difficulty of making repairs to the structure.
Dimos Karalivanos, an ELAS guerrilla, was the first guerrilla the British found. At the end of October a second group of British officers were parachuted into the Greek mountains. Their leaders were
Themis Marinos and Colonel
Christopher Woodhouse. Their mission was to locate the guerrillas of EDES and their leader
Napoleon Zervas, who were friendlier to the British
Middle East Command than ELAS, and co-operate with them. The two Greek groups eventually agreed to collaborate. The British did not favour the participation of ELAS, because it was a pro-communist group, but the forces of ELAS were larger and better organised, and without their participation, the mission was more likely to fail. On November 14, the 12 British saboteurs, the forces of ELAS (150 men) and those of EDES (60-65 men) met in the village of
Viniani in
Evrytania and the operation started. Ten days later, they were at Gorgopotamos. On the night of November 25, at 23:00, the guerrillas started the attack against the Italian garrison. The Italians were startled, and after little resistance, were defeated. After the defeat of the Italians, the saboteurs set the explosives. ELAS forces had placed ambushes on the routes towards the bridge, to block the approach of Italian reinforcements. The explosion occurred at 03:00. Afterwards, the guerrillas' forces returned to Viniani, to celebrate the success of the mission. The destruction of the Gorgopotamos bridge was, along with the
Norwegian heavy water sabotage in Rjukan, one of the two biggest guerrilla acts in occupied Europe. The blowing up of the bridge disrupted the German transportation of ammunition via Greece to
Rommel's forces for several weeks, taking place at a time when the
Afrika Korps in
North Africa, retreating after the defeat of
El Alamein, were in need of supplies.
Expansion of ELAS The blowing up of Gorgopotamos bridge favored ELAS. Soon, many of the inhabitants of the villages of
Central Greece became members of ELAS. Furthermore, people sympathised with the ELAS guerrillas because they weren't helped by the British in contrast with EDES. When 25 guerrillas deserted from ELAS,
Aris Velouchiotis went to Epirus to threaten
Napoleon Zervas not to come in touch with them. Later, the 25 deserters were arrested and executed in the village of Sperhiada. The winter of 1942, ELAS groups were formed in other Greek regions, like
Thessaly and
Macedonia. In Central Greece,
Aris Velouchiotis succeeded to form a powerful semi-conventional army which could attack German and Italian forces. Aris became a legendary figure who imposed an iron discipline in ELAS. At the same time, some members of ELAS (Periklis, Tasos Leuterias, Diamantis, Nikiforos, Thiseas, Dimos Karalivanos, and Belis) have been distinguished during the battles. Aris Velouchiotis formed a group of 30–35 men, called "Mavroskoufides" (the "black caps"), who were his personal guards. During the winter of 1942–1943, new units of ELAS were composed in many regions of Greece. Some areas in the mountains of Central Greece passed from the control of
Axis forces to that of ELAS. The leadership of ELAS followed a triadic form, from its top down to platoon level: the captain (
kapetánios), elected by the men and the overall leader of the unit, the military specialist (
stratiotikós), usually a regular army officer, responsible for tactical planning and training, and the political leader (
politikós), usually a KKE member, as EAM's representative. At its top, the General Headquarters of ELAS, these positions were filled by Aris Velouchiotis, Stefanos Sarafis and
Andreas Tzimas (
nom-de-guerre: Vasilis Samariniotis). Two events of great importance took place in this period. KKE, after passing great difficulties, succeeded in reorganizing its groups destroyed by Metaxas. Many members were recruited and with the help of ELAS, which became the largest partisan army in Greece, EAM became the largest mass political organization in Greek history, claiming over 1.5 million members, enlisted in organizations that covered every neighborhood in every village. The second great event was the foundation of the
United Panhellenic Organization of Youth (EPON) (). In 1943, a small naval auxiliary navy, the
Greek People's Liberation Navy (ELAN) was also founded. Two years after its foundation, ELAS' military strength had grown from the small group of fighters in Domnitsa to a force of some 50,000 partisans (estimates of the British government) or even as many as 85,000, according to EAM sources; EAM itself, and its associated organizations, had grown to a membership of anywhere from 500,000 to 750,000 (according to
Anthony Eden) up to two million, in a country of 7.5 million inhabitants. ELAS was thus one of the largest resistance groups formed in Europe, similar to the French
Maquis, the
Italian Resistance and the Yugoslavian
Partisans, but smaller than the Polish resistance. ==The "Mountain Government"==