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THE FINAL PHASE OF THE CIVIL WAR 1946-1949 |
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Fighting resumed in March 1946 as armed gangs of ELAS veterans infiltrated into Greece through the mountainous regions near the Yugoslav and Albanian borders. They were now called the Democratic Army of Greece (Dimokratikos Stratos Elladas, DSE), under the command of the ELAS veteran Markos Vafiadis (known as General Markos;), who operated from a base in Yugoslavia. Both the Yugoslav and Albanian Communist regimes, which had come to power through their own efforts, supported the Communist fighters, but the Soviet Union remained ambivalent. It was not part of Stalin's strategy to conduct openly a war against a British-supported government in Greece, and the Soviets gave little direct support to the KKE campaign. The soviet help was directed through Bulgaria where threre were also DSE bases near the Greek-Bulgarian frontiers. |
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The first attack was made (March 1946) against the police station of litochoron a village at the footsteps of mount Olympus. Most of the policemen and soldiers who were greatly outnumbered were killed during the battle. The few who surrendered were slaughtered by the partizans. By late 1946 the DSE could deploy about 10,000 partisans in various areas of Greece, mainly in the northern mountains. |
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The Greek Army now numbered about 90,000 men and was gradually being put on a more professional basis. The task of re-equipping and training the Army had been carried out by the British, but by early 1947 Britain, which had spent 85 million pounds in Greece since 1944, could no longer afford this burden. Also there were many disagreements on the tactical doctrine of the new Greek army between Greek officers and British advisors. The British insisted on a more mechanized scheme which the Greek officers considered improper for the mountainous terrain of Greece. The National Greek Army managed to controll the cities but could not eliminate the partizans who were using hit and run tactics. The usual method of the communist partizans was the following. They were choosing a minor city as a target. They gathered forces at the surrounding mountains. They attacked during the night when the Royal Hellenic Airforce could not intervene. With the help of communist informers inside the city they usually managed to enter the city using the blank spots of the Army's bunkers. They were executing their political opponents while the battle was still going on. Finally they were kidnapping most of the young men in order to create more partizans. Then they withdrew. |
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Through 1947 the scale of fighting increased. The DSE launched large-scale attacks on towns across northern Epirus, Thessaly and Macedonia, provoking the Army into massive counter-offensives, which then encountered no oppposition as the DSE melted back into the mountains and into its safe havens over the northern borders. Army morale remained low and it would be some time before the support of the United States became apparent. Then President Harry S. Truman announced that the United States would step in to support the governments of both Greece and Turkey against Communist pressure. |
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Then the communists did the great mistake. In September 1947, the KKE leadership decided to move from guerilla tactics to more conventional ones, despite the opposition of Vafiadis who was the military expert . This desicion gave the opportunity to the Greek army to find and fight with partizan units. Although the army suffered certain defeats also the things were going better for the democratic government of Athens anymore. In December the Communist Party of Greece announced the formation of a Provisional Democratic Government. This decision untied the hands of the government to ban the KKE and its press. No foreign government recognised the communist government. The new strategy led the DSE into costly attempts to seize a major town as they desperately needed a capital. In December of 1947 1,200 DSE men were killed trying to capture the town of Konitsa. The government took precautionary meters and arested KKE members and sympathisers, many of whom were sent to fulfill their military obligations on the remote island of Makronisos. Thus they could not help the partizans or join them. |
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Despite major defeats such as the battle of Konitsa, during 1948 the DSE could still be a great threat. Although in 1948 the army managed to clear Peloponnese the DSE was still a formidable opponent. It had at least 20,000 fighters and a network of sympathisers and informants in every village and every suburb. The DSE tactic of attacking and burning villages and kidnapping citizens (mostly children) created many enemies, but also created a refugee problem for the government and kept the Army spread thin defending mountain villages. On the other hand, the Army tried to take counter measures organising safe villages near big cities depriving the DSE of support. |
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American funds, few advisors and a lot of equipment were now flooding into the country, and under American guidance a series of major offensives were launched in the mountains of central Greece. Although these offensives did not achieve all their objectives, they inflicted some serious damage on the DSE. Army morale rose, and the morale of the DSE fighters, many of whom had been conscripted at gunpoint, fell correspondingly. |
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The End of the War: 1949 |
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The fatal blow to the DSE, was given only when Prime Minister Tito of Yugoslavia (spring 1949), who had been the KKE's strongest supporter since 1944 decided to close the border line with Greece. The DSE could still operate from Albania and Bulgaria, but this was a poor substitute. The split with Tito also set off a witch-hunt for Tito's followers inside KKE, leading to disorganisation and demoralisation inside the DSE and a loss of support for the KKE in urban areas.
The Greek communist party remained loyal to Stalin and created a new government in which one of the ministers was Bulgarian but it didn't helped very much |
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At the same time, the Army had at last found a talented commander in hthe face of General Alexander Papagos. In August 1949 he launched a major offensive, Operation Torch, against DSE forces in northern Greece. The DSE was no longer able to mount sustained resistance and by September most of its fighters had surrendered or escaped over the border into Albania. In September the Albanian government, announced to the Greek Communists Greek that it would no longer allow military operations from its territory.
On October 16, Zakhariadis announced a temporary cease-fire. This marked the effective end of the Greek Civil War. |
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In the United States and Western Europe the end of the civil war was seen as a victory in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. The paradox of this was that the Soviets never publicly supported the KKE's efforts to seize power in Greece, and at the crucial moment at the end of 1944, when ELAS controlled most of the country, intervened decisively to restrain the KKE, in the interests of the Soviet Union's larger strategy. The KKE's major supporter and supplier was always Tito, and it was the rift between Tito and the KKE which marked the real demise of the party's efforts to seize the power by force. |
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The Civil War left Greece in ruins and in even greater economic distress than it had been in 1945. It created a permanent division among the greek people. Many Greek communists were sent to exile. Many thousands more flew to Communist countries, afraid to return since they had commited serious crimes when they were in power. The rural country was devasted.
Many Greeks emigrated to Australia, Germany, USA and other countries. The polarisation of Greek politics was a major contributor to the political instability of the 1960s. Right-wing extremist orginizations played an important role in politics, leading to the murder of the communist politician Grigorios Lambrakis in 1963. On the other hand covered pro communist organizations were always trying to create an unrest feeling. The Communist Party of Greece was re legalized in 1974.
Even nowadays the division remains. |
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Further reading |
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W. S. Churchill, The Second World War
Reginald Leeper, When Greek Meets Greek: On the War in Greece, 1943-1945
C. M. Woodhouse, Apple of Discord: A Survey of Recent Greek Politics in their International Setting, London 1948 (Woodhouse was a member of the British Military Mission to Greece during the war)
E. C. W. Myers, Greek Entanglement, London 1955
Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, New York 1948.
W. Byford-Jones, The Greek Trilogy: Resistance-Liberation-Revolution, London 1945
R. Capell, Simiomata: A Greek Note Book 1944-45, London 1946 |
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