Evripidis Bakirtzis

Evripidis Bakirtzis (1944)

Evripidis Bakirtzis ( Greek Ευριπίδης Μπακιρτζής ; * 1895 in Kozani ; † May 9, 1947 on the island of Fourni ) was a Greek officer, politician , resistance fighter and prime minister of the counter-government during the occupation of Greece by the German armed forces (1944).

Officer and revolutionary

As a young soldier, Bakirtzis took part in the Balkan Wars from 1912 to 1913 , the First World War and the Greco-Turkish War .

With the rank of major he took part in the revolution led by Colonel Nikolaos Plastiras in September 1922 , which led to the abdication of King Constantine I and the installation of King George II . In the following period he was a member of several illegal military organizations with political ambitions. In 1926 he was sentenced to death with the rank of lieutenant colonel as the leader of a military movement and discharged from military service.

In 1928 he was accepted back into the army . As a colonel , he participated in a failed coup in 1935 and was subsequently sentenced to death for the second time. This death sentence was also overturned and he himself was dishonorably discharged from the army and banished to the island of Agios Efstratios .

In 1937 he was released from custody by dictator Ioannis Metaxas on condition that he leave Greece immediately.

Resistance fighter and "Prime Minister"

In January 1941 he returned to Greece, after which the impending occupation by troops of the German Wehrmacht became apparent. Soon he was a co-founder of resistance movements against the German occupation forces and the main organizer of the resistance in Macedonia .

On March 10, 1944, after the founding of the Political Committee of National Liberation (Πολιτική Επιτροπή Εθνικής Απελευθέρωσης), he became its interim chairman. The PKNB was a communist counter-government to the collaboration government under Ioannis Rallis in Athens and the government under Emmanouil Tsouderos, recognized by the Allies in exile in Cairo . Colloquially, the government was referred to as the mountain government (Κυβέρνηση του βουνού) because of its hiding places. On April 18, 1944 he resigned from the office of chairman of the PKNB in ​​favor of Alexandros Svolos . He himself remained Deputy Chairman and General Secretary until the mountain government was dissolved on September 2, 1944.

After the liberation of Greece, he was arrested as a leftist and again exiled to the island of Agios Efstratios. In February 1947 he was released from exile and as a member of a UN commission was entrusted with investigating the period of the Second World War .

A few months later, Bakirtzis, who was called the "Red Colonel", was found dead in his apartment with a bullet in his head. The circumstances of the death remained unexplained, but were officially portrayed as suicide.

Web links

• Evi Koukouraki: From the Greek Wars of Liberation to the Present: History of Young Greece. 2003.
• The Second World War 1940-1945. War, Occupation, Resistance, Liberation . Foundation of the Hellenic World