EDES

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The usually with the abbreviation EDES called National Republican Greek League ( Greek Εθνικός Δημοκρατικός Ελληνικός Σύνδεσμος , Ethnikos Dimokratikos Ellinikos Syndesmos , abbreviated ΕΔΕΣ) was a Greek resistance group during the occupation of Greece by the German Wehrmacht in World War II . As the largest non-communist resistance group, they competed with the much larger communist -controlled Greek People's Liberation Army ELAS ( Greek Ελληνικός / Λαϊκός Απελευθερωτικός Στρατός Εθνικός ΕΛΑΣ Ellinikos / Ethnikos laikos Apelevtherotikós Stratos ) and concentrated their military activities in Epirus . From 1943 onwards there was a confrontation with ELAS as the beginning of a series of internal conflicts that led to the Greek civil war .

Napoleon Zervas (2nd from left) with other EDES officers

Foundation and ideology

The EDES was founded on September 9, 1941 by the former officer Colonel Napoleon Zervas .

The political orientation of the EDES was initially republican , marked by a strong aversion to the exiled King George II , with some vague left / socialist tendencies. After the years of the right-wing Metaxas regime, which was massively supported by the king , the monarchy enjoyed little popular sympathy, while left and social ideals were highly valued by the various resistance groups. The founding charter of the EDES called for the "establishment of a republican government of a socialist kind in Greece", the "revelation [...] of the betrayal of the former King George II and the ties of the August 4th dictatorship", and a thorough cleansing of the Greek state and the public life of all "who had not demonstrated a national, republican [and] socialist consciousness by the act". The Charter, still no reference in the text to armed resistance against the occupation forces, called the in exile in Nice located venizelistischen General Nikolaos Plastiras than nominal political head, but without his knowledge or even consent. At the same time, however, Komninos Pyromaglou , a friend and assistant of Plastiras, had traveled from Nice to Greece. He was commissioned by Plastiras to form a republican organization with a socialist character in his name, which was to turn both "against the occupiers" and against a return of the monarchy. After arriving in Athens, Pyromaglou made contact with republican circles and was finally convinced by Zervas to join the EDES. In October, a board of five members was formed, of which, in addition to Pyromaglou as general secretary, Zervas was a member.

The organization contacted the UK headquarters in Cairo for funding, weapons and guidance. In response to pressure from the British, who were firmly committed to the Greek monarchy, Zervas quietly sent an address of loyalty to the king in March 1942. With this tacit break with the aggressively anti-monarchist attitude of the past few months began a slow but steady turn of the EDES towards a pro-British and monarchist attitude, which also came into direct confrontation with the largest resistance movement, the left-wing National Liberation Front (EAM). led.

Armed resistance

Like most similar groups, the EDES was initially limited to Athens, but received support from numerous prominent Venizelian and Republican military. EDES got in touch with the National Liberation Front EAM ( Greek Εθνικό Απελευθερωτικό Μέτωπο Ethnikó Apelevtherotikó Métopo ) and tried to organize some kind of cooperation. The negotiations failed because of the communists 'call for a merger of EDES and EAM and their distrust of Zervas' pro-British stance.

Under British pressure, Zervas, accompanied by Pyromaglou and a few companions , went to the Valtos Mountains in Aetolia on July 23, 1942, more than a month after the Greek People's Liberation Army ELAS , the military wing of the National Liberation Front EAM, first appeared -Akarnania , an area with a long guerrilla tradition from the Ottoman period . From this point on, Epirus remained the primary operational area of ​​the EDES guerrillas until the end of the occupation.

The Gorgopotamos operation

Supported by British parachute drops, EDES quickly gathered around 100 fighters. The first major EDES operation was Operation Harling , which increased the destruction of the Gorgopotamos railway viaduct by a joint force of the British SOE command and forces of EDES and EAM on November 25, 1942. The successful implementation of one of the largest acts of sabotage in occupied Europe increased strong the reputation of the emerging resistance, but also led to a considerable gap between EDES and EAM: The British loudly and praising Zerva's role in the action, disregarding the - numerically far larger - contribution of the left-wing forces of ELAS / EAM.

Operations in Epirus

After the Gorgopotamos action, Zervas moved to Epirus with his people and the British liaison officers. The resistance movement was very popular and committed numerous acts of sabotage; Numerous former officers in particular joined the EDES, so that by the end of 1942 it had grown to around 600 men. In the spring of 1943 it received a further influx, grew to 3,000 men, and by July 1943 EDES had 8 to 10 units of two regiments each with two battalions and a total strength of 7,000 men.

In the further course, the EDES controlled the western part of the liberated Greek areas, while the ELAS had control of the eastern part and was active in the entire rest of Greece. The Pindos Mountains served as the border , but ELAS units also operated east of it. The area controlled by EDES should never have been larger than 40 by 60 kilometers. It was only able to assert itself because of the support from the British.

The EDES carried out numerous attacks, particularly on the supply routes of the Italian and German troops. From July 1943, the EDES had the 1st Mountain Division of the Wehrmacht, which had been relocated to Epirus, as an enemy. The partisan's actions were met with ruthless reprisals against the civilian population. The Kommeno massacre in August 1943 represented such a reprisal . Lieutenant Colonel Josef Salminger , the Gebirgsjäger commander, who was jointly responsible for this war crime , was shot on October 1, 1943 by EDES members. This in turn led to "expiatory measures" in which numerous civilians were murdered and the mountain village of Lyngiades was burned down.

Resistance and civil war

The British managed at times to coordinate the activities of ELAS and EDES by means of a joint headquarters. However, the conflicts caused by rivalry between resistance groups eventually escalated into civil war . In October 1943, ELAS attacked EDES in the Thessalian mountains. The attacks initiated the "first round" of the civil war, which lasted until February 1944.

From October 1943, when Zervas first made contact with the German occupying forces, he agreed several times through intermediaries with General Hubert Lanz a temporary truce, which on the one hand allowed him to spare his units in the area he controlled and to bring in supplies, including retaliatory actions by the Wehrmacht against the civilian population, which on the other hand enabled the occupying power to concentrate on the fight against ELAS. In addition, EDES was supported by the Wehrmacht in the fight against ELAS with weapons and equipment. The EAM, the strongest resistance group to which ELAS belongs, accused the EDES of collaborating with the Axis powers , knowing that the Allies would soon invade and gain control of Greece.

At the beginning of August 1944, the EDES resumed fighting against the German occupying forces near Parga , apparently to prepare the coastal area for an Allied landing. However, the Wehrmacht responded with a counteroffensive.

End of war

In September 1944 the Wehrmacht began to withdraw. The EDES advanced to the evacuated areas in north-west Greece, with the Germans sometimes leaving behind light weapons and ammunition.

Some of the numerous Çamen of Albanian origin who settled in the coastal plain of Epirus had collaborated with the Italian and German occupation forces. Zervas used this as an opportunity to collectively expel a large part of the remaining Albanians to Albania , with many victims also among the civilian population. On September 26, 1944, when the liberation of Greece from German occupation was within reach, EDES, ELAS and the Greek government-in-exile agreed in the Caserta Agreement to land the British in Greece and place their armed forces under the British command of General Scobie to.

As it after the entry of the British in December 1944 to conflicts over the disarming of the guerrillas came associations and communist uprising and in Athens and Piraeus fierce fighting raged, ELAS continued to destruction blow to the British by the absence of replenishment weakened EDES. Under strong attacks by the ELAS advancing over the Pindos Mountains, the troops, which had shrunk to around 2000 men due to losses and desertions, were forced to give up the fight and to be evacuated from the Greek mainland to Corfu by the British Navy in the last days of 1944 , where she was disarmed and disbanded.

In April 1945 EDES was formally dissolved.

literature

  • Mark Mazower: Greece under Hitler. Life during the German occupation 1941-1944 , S. Fischer Verlag Frankfurt 2016, ISBN 978-3100025074 .
  • Christopher Montague Woodhouse: The struggle for Greece 1941–1949. C. Hurst & Co London, 1976 (reprint 2002), ISBN 1-85065-487-5 .
  • Hagen Fleischer: In the cross shadow of the powers: Greece 1941-1944 (occupation, resistance, collaboration) , 1986, ISBN 978-3-820-48581-3 .
  • Hagen Fleischer: Στέμμα και σβάστικα - Η Ελλάδα της κατοχής και της αντίστασης 1941–1944, Stemma kai Svastika - I Ellada tis Katochis kai tis antistasis (1990). ISBN 960-02-0764-X (Greek).
  • Heinz Richter: Greece between revolution and counterrevolution 1936–1946. European publishing house Frankfurt 1973, ISBN 3-434 00193 X .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christopher Montague Woodhouse , The struggle for Greece, 1941–1949, p. 21 .
  2. ↑ Metaxas called his regime after the day he took over the government on August 4, 1936 as the "August 4th regime".
  3. ↑ EDES statutes (English)
  4. ↑ Hagen Fleischer , Στέμμα και σβάστικα - Η Ελλάδα της κατοχής και της αντίστασης 1941–1944, Stemma kai Svastika - I Ellada “tis Katochis kai tis Antistation” 1990 (Greece). ISBN 960-02-0764-X (Greek), p. 150.
  5. ↑ a b Hagen Fleischer, Στέμμα και σβάστικα - Η Ελλάδα της κατοχής και της αντίστασης 1941–1944, Stemma kai Svastika - I Ellada tis Katochis kai tis Antistation in Greece (Resistance in Greece) 1990, ISBN 960-02-0764-X (Greek), p. 154.
  6. ↑ Hagen Fleischer, Στέμμα και σβάστικα - Η Ελλάδα της κατοχής και της αντίστασης 1941–1944, Stemma kai Svastika - I Ellada “tis Katochis kai tis Antistation” 1990 (Greece). ISBN 960-02-0764-X (Greek), p. 388.
  7. ↑ Hagen Fleischer, Στέμμα και σβάστικα - Η Ελλάδα της κατοχής και της αντίστασης 1941–1944, Stemma kai Svastika - I Ellada “tis Katochis kai tis Antistation” 1990 (Greece). ISBN 960-02-0764-X (Greek), p. 238.
  8. ↑ Hagen Fleischer, Στέμμα και σβάστικα - Η Ελλάδα της κατοχής και της αντίστασης 1941–1944, Stemma kai Svastika - I Ellada “tis Katochis kai tis Antistation” 1990 (Greece). ISBN 960-02-0764-X (Greek), p. 241.
  9. ↑ Hagen Fleischer, Στέμμα και σβάστικα - Η Ελλάδα της κατοχής και της αντίστασης 1941–1944, Stemma kai Svastika - I Ellada “tis Katochis kai tis Antistation” 1990 (Greece). ISBN 960-02-0764-X (Greek), p. 247.
  10. ^ Hermann Frank Meyer, Bloody Edelweiss: the 1st Mountain Division in World War II (2008), p. 153 .
  11. ↑ Steven W. Sowards, Modern History of the Balkans (2004), p. 414 .
  12. ^ Hermann Frank Meyer, Bloody Edelweiss: the 1st Mountain Division in World War II (2008), p. 485 .
  13. ↑ Hagen Fleischer, Im Kreuzschatten der Mächte , p. 328.
  14. ^ German Historical Museum : LeMO - 1939–45 Partisan War in Greece
  15. ^ Charles R. Shrader, The withered vine: logistics and the communist insurgency in Greece, 1945-1949, pp. 40 f.