Battle of Athens

Battle of Athens

British Sherman tank in Athens

date	December 1944 to January 1945
place	Greece
Casus Belli	Demobilization of the partisan units, which a civil government should make possible
output	Armistice between the EAM and the Greek government

Parties to the conflict
Greek Government Forces British Forces	National Liberation Front (EAM-ELAS) Supported by: Communist Party of Greece
Commander
Ronald Scobie	Central Committee of EAM-ELAS George Siantos Emmanuel Mantakas Michael Hadjimichalis
Troop strength
11,600 (Government Forces) 23,000-25,000 (British Forces)	17,000

The Battle of Athens (better known as Dekemvriana , Greek: Δεκεμβριανά) was an armed conflict between the left-wing resistance organization of the Second World War , the National Liberation Front EAM ( Ethniko Apeleftherotiko Metopo ) and its military arm, the Greek People's Liberation Army ELAS ( Ellinikos Laikos ) one and the Greek government under Georgios Papandreou , Damaskinos Papandreou and Nikolaos Plastiras and British troops on the other.

The trigger for the fighting was the demobilization of the partisan units, which was supposed to enable a civilian government. There was a dispute over the modalities of the laying down of arms, which led to a bloody argument on the occasion of a mass demonstration organized by the EAM on December 3, 1944. The armed conflict did not end until January 11, 1945. The fighting took place mainly in Athens , Piraeus and their suburbs and surroundings. The massive deployment of the British protecting power finally caused the communist leadership to give way. There was an armistice between the EAM and the Greek government or the British troops and on February 12, 1945 the Varkiza Agreement .

According to conventional (prevailing) historical view, the civil war-like conditions of the Dekemvriana are described as the second round of sharp political disputes between the Greek left under the leadership of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and the Greek right with monarchists and nationalists .

Causes and history

In September 1944, the German Wehrmacht began to withdraw from Greece. This ended the period of occupation that began after the German attack ( Company Marita ) at the end of April 1941 (until September 1943 through Germany , Italy and Bulgaria , then only Germany and Bulgaria). Since mid-1942, two Greek resistance groups emerged as the main bearers of the struggle against the occupying powers: the National Liberation Front EAM with its military arm, the Greek People's Liberation Army ELAS, on the one hand, and the National Democratic Greek Confederation ( Ethnikos Dimokratikos Ellinikos Syndesmos , EDES ) on the other. After the communist-controlled ELAS and the initially republican-minded EDES carried out joint guerrilla actions at the end of 1942 (the Gorgopotamos railway bridge was blown up ) under British mediation , the two resistance groups came into open conflict in the course of 1943, which also repeatedly involved armed violence and involved attacks against the unarmed and civilians from both sides. With the exception of Epirus and the Peloponnese, ELAS gained the upper hand in the struggle between the resistance groups and was able to establish exclusively controlled areas, with the exception of the larger cities, especially in northern Greece ( Macedonia , Pindus Mountains, Thessaly ). The EDES had its territory in Epirus. During the ELAS attacks, it reached a ceasefire with the German area commander. On October 12, 1944, the Wehrmacht troops left Athens; immediately thereafter, ELAS took control of the city. British troops under Lieutenant General Ronald Scobie landed on the coast of Attica on October 14, 1944 and advanced into Athens and Piraeus. The Greek government in exile had already called on the citizens of Athens on October 13, 1944 to obey the orders of the Allied Commander in Chief. The first clashes broke out during the liberation celebrations with parades of the armed Greek organizations: On University Street (Odos Panepistimiou) in Athens, the car of EAM supporters was shot at by members of the right-wing resistance organization EASAL. In the subsequent firefight, in which British troops also intervened, 7 people died and 82 were injured.

After the re-establishment of the Greek central government or government in exile under Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou on October 18, 1944, monarchist - nationalist -minded troops of the Greek army in exile, for example the Rimini Brigade , returned to Greece from the fighting of the Second World War. ELAS refused to allow these combat troops to return. Parallel to these developments, a disarmament of all other armed groups was ordered: both the weapons of the communist-controlled ELAS and the weapons of the security battalions ( Tagmata Asfalias , collaborated with German occupation forces in World War II) and the right-wing national " Organization X " should be surrendered . Supporters or members of these organizations should not hold public office. This planned disarmament of the armed organizations of both political wings did not take place until December 2, 1944. There was also no removal of monarchist-nationalist holders of public office. At the same time, police power was to be concentrated solely in the hands of the Greek government: on October 20, 1944, the Allied military commander, in agreement with the Greek government, prohibited so-called irregular arrests by units of ELAS and EAM. In November 1944, the Communist Party of Greece decided to take a tougher course or position vis-à-vis the government on the question of disarming ELAS.

course

British paratroopers in the streets of Athens

The civil war-like conditions were triggered by the instructions of the British military commander General Ronald Scobie and the Greek government in early December 1944, which meant a de facto disempowerment of ELAS and EAM. On December 1, 1944, the Greek government ordered that the EAM police force, the Citizens' Protection (Politofylaki), should cease its activities. From December 1, 1944, the police tasks would be carried out by the new police force, the National Guard (Ethnofylaki); the weapons of the Politofylaki were to be given to the Ethnofylaki. At the same time, the disarming of the previous police was ordered. General Scobie ordered on December 2, 1944 that a) all paramilitary units should be demobilized between December 10 and December 20, 1944 at the latest, giving up their weapons and b) that the new Ethnofylaki police force would take over the tasks of order. The EAM, ELAS and the Politfylaki police force were expressly mentioned in the explanations of this order. No other organizations were mentioned.

From the point of view of EAM or ELAS and the Communist Party that controls them, such disarmament was a one-sided act and was therefore omitted. In response to Scobie's instructions, EAM and ELAS and the Communist Party held a conference on December 2, 1944 and resolved to withdraw their ministers from the Papandreou government on December 3, 1944, and openly objected to any requests to lay down their arms. On the same day an EAM demonstration against the Greek government took place on the central Syntagma Square in Athens, which was first banned by the government and then allowed. During the demonstration, there were exchanges of fire between the demonstrators and the police; It is unclear who started the armed conflict (police or demonstrators). From 3 to 4 December 1944 (hence the name Dekemvriana) fighting broke out over the police headquarters in Athens. The numerous ELAS fighters controlled increasing parts of the city in the following days and successively occupied all police stations.

On December 15, 1944, the British Army under General Scobie, on the direct instructions of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, openly intervened on the side of the Greek central government and fought ELAS.

“Now I got directly involved in directing the matter. When I learned that the Communists had manned almost all of the police stations in Athens and murdered most of the policemen who did not agree with them and were only a little over a kilometer from the government buildings, I gave General Scobie and his five thousand British soldiers - just that ten days earlier had been cheered by the population as liberators - orders to intervene and use gun violence against the treacherous attackers. [Winston Churchill] "

This shifted the military balance in the combat area, Athens, Piraeus and the surrounding area, in favor of the Greek government. In the rest of Greece, some of which were ELAS-controlled in other parts at the time, there were only significantly smaller disputes or no disputes at all. The British troops deployed from December 15, 1944 began to drive the ELAS fighters out of Athens by force of arms. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited Athens at Christmas 1944 and made personal efforts to resolve the conflict in favor of the British-dependent Papandreou government. Communist forces had already pushed ahead with the plan for Christmas to blow up General Scobie and the British headquarters with the Hotel Grande Bretagne , so that tunnels were dug under the building for the demolition. When it was learned that Churchill was in the building, the assassination was refrained from. The communists by no means wanted to eliminate one of the “Big Three” ( Roosevelt , Churchill, Stalin ) of the anti- Hitler alliance. As a result of Churchill's visit and the efforts of others, the Archbishop of Athens , Damaskinos Papandreou, was appointed regent by the Greek king, while the king's return was made subject to a referendum. On January 2, 1945, Archbishop Damaskinos commissioned Nikolaos Plastiras to form a new government , whose cabinet was sworn in on January 3, 1945. The British troops pushed the ELAS fighters back further and further. Favored by this military development, armistice negotiations began between the Greek government under Nikolaos Plastiras on the one hand and EAM or ELAS on the other. After the EAM / ELAS fighters withdrew from Athens on January 6, 1945, these resulted in an armistice of January 15, 1945. The negotiations that were then continued between the government and EAM / EDES led to the Varkiza Agreement on February 12, 1945. At the end of the fighting in January 1945 there were 75,000 British soldiers in Athens and the surrounding area.

To this day it is still a matter of dispute which side took the decisive step towards escalation as an armed conflict. One reason for an escalation on the part of EAM / ELAS could have been that it found that the British and royalists were not relinquishing power. Without the intervention of the British troops, EAM-ELAS and thus the Communist Party of Greece that controls it would have succeeded in taking power in December 1944 by force of arms. Contrary to the Moscow secret agreement of April 9, 1944 between Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin, Greece would have been removed from the British sphere of influence and would have been under Soviet influence with a communist or communist-controlled government . For the British, this possible communist takeover of power was probably a reason for intervention or escalation, as they had been granted Greece as a sphere of interest in the Moscow secret agreement (April 9, 1944) and now saw a favorable opportunity to switch off the communist EAM / ELAS. The "stubborn" adherence to the goal of restoring the pre-war order together with a strong monarch without taking into account the political changes that had taken place in the meantime, especially in the resistance against the occupation in World War II, proved to be a limitation of the political room for maneuver on the British side.

Effects

Despite the armistice and the subsequent “Varkiza Agreement”, the political contradictions persisted: EAM / ELAS wanted a socialist republic of Greece based on the Soviet model and strictly rejected the reinstatement of the Greek King George II . The EDES, on the other hand, fought for a bourgeois-liberal system that did not necessarily provide for the re-establishment of the king. The royalists supporting the EDES (here especially the " Organization X ", the security battalions and the " Rimini Brigade ") demanded the re-establishment of the king and an authoritarian political system. With military support from the British troops, the right-wing forces prevailed. This sovereignty of the right-wing political camp, which was ultimately achieved by force of arms, despite the bourgeois-centrist central government in Athens at the time, further intensified the antagonism between the left and the right . During the Dekemvriana, imprisoned collaborators with the occupying powers were shipped to East Africa for their safety during World War II . Membership in the security battalions, for example, despite statements to the contrary by the Greek government-in-exile in Cairo during the period of occupation , was not considered a criminal offense by the Greek courts in the trials against members of the collaborating governments, including former Prime Minister Georgios Tsolakoglou .

The escalation of violence in this “second round” of the conflict between the Greek right and the Greek left also manifested itself in increasing attacks on sections of the civilian population. During the fighting between British troops and EAM / ELAS fighters, the OPLA police units, controlled by the Greek Communist Party, carried out arrests, murders and kidnappings - in addition to collaborators, innocent or innocent civilians. 15,000 people were arrested by ELAS as prisoners or hostages in camps outside Athens. 12,000 people were captured by British forces and the Greek government; 8,000 of these prisoners are said to have been taken to camps in the Middle East . The Dekemvriana claimed 7,000 lives after 33 days of fighting.

In the wake of the Varkiza Agreement, parts of the ELAS were disarmed, but parts of them hid their weapons from being accessed during the disarming process. The royalist and nationalist weapon-bearing associations were barely disarmed, which in the course of 1945 led to increasing political tensions. With the election boycott proclaimed by the Communist Party of Greece for the parliamentary elections of March 31, 1946, the situation worsened and culminated - also with the right-wing slide in the Greek parliament that was boycotted by the left newly formed government under Konstantinos Tsaldaris - in the Greek civil war from 1946 to 1949.

Although Article III of the Varkiza Agreement stipulated an amnesty for political crimes - with the exception of crimes that were not necessarily politically motivated - 80,000 arrest warrants and 50,000 people were issued in 1945 using the term "not necessarily political crimes" arrested; On October 1, 1945, an official report stated 16,700 prisoners, of whom 2,896 were collaborators with the occupying powers in World War II, 7,077 "common criminals" and 6,027 people who were arrested in connection with crimes during the Dekemvriana.

Footnotes

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Richard W. van Alstyne. Anglo-American Policy in Greece. Current History, 1947 June; 12 (70). P. 545ff
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Amikam Nachmani. Civil War and Foreign Intervention in Greece: 1946-49. Journal of Contemporary History 1990 Oct; 25 (4): p. 489ff
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Julian Casanova. Civil Wars, Revolutions and Counterrevolutions in Finland, Spain, and Greece (1918-1949): A Comparative Analysis International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 2000; 13 (3): p. 515 ff.
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Pavlos Tzermias. Modern Greek history. An introduction. 3rd edition, Francke Verlag, Tübingen 1999. p. 162. ISBN 3-7720-1792-4 .
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Bisser Petrov. Collaboration in the Balkans during World War II - forms, motives and results. Études Balkanqiues 2002; 4.
6. ↑ Newspaper article in the Greek newspaper Eleftheria of October 12, 1944, page 1, leading article (in Greek). Available online through the National Library of Greece. ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
7. ↑ Newspaper article in the Greek newspaper Eleftheria of October 15, 1944, page 1, leading article (in Greek). Available online through the National Library of Greece. ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
8. ↑ Newspaper article in the Greek newspaper Eleftheria of October 14, 1944, page 2 (in Greek). Available online through the National Library of Greece. ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
9. ↑ Newspaper article in the Greek newspaper Eleftheria from October 16, 1944, page 1 and 2 bottom left column (in Greek). Available online through the National Library of Greece. ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
10. ↑ Newspaper article in the Greek newspaper Eleftheria of October 18, 1944, page 1 (in Greek). Available online through the National Library of Greece. ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
11. ↑ Newspaper article in the Greek newspaper Eleftheria of October 18, 1944, page 2 (in Greek). Available online through the National Library of Greece. ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
12. ^ Newspaper article in the Greek newspaper Eleftheria of December 1, 1944, page 2 (in Greek). Available online through the National Library of Greece. ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
13. ^ Newspaper article in the Greek newspaper Eleftheria of December 2, 1944, page 1 (in Greek). Available online through the National Library of Greece. ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
14. ↑ ^{a b c} Pavlos Tzermias. Modern Greek history. An introduction. 3rd edition, Francke Verlag, Tübingen 1999. p. 161. ISBN 3-7720-1792-4 .
15. ↑ ^{a b} Pavlos Tzermias. Modern Greek history. An introduction. 3rd edition, Francke Verlag, Tübingen 1999. p. 164. ISBN 3-7720-1792-4 .
16. ↑ Quoted from: Pavlos Tzermias. Modern Greek history. An introduction. 3rd edition, Francke Verlag, Tübingen 1999. p. 161. ISBN 3-7720-1792-4 .
17. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/30/athens-1944-britains-dirty-secret
18. ↑ Pavlos Tzermias. Modern Greek history. An introduction. 3rd edition, Francke Verlag, Tübingen 1999. p. 165. ISBN 3-7720-1792-4 .
19. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Polymeris Voglis. Becoming a Subject: Political Prisoners During the Greek Civil War. Berghahn Books, 2002. p. 53. ISBN 1-57181-309-8 .
20. ↑ Pavlos Tzermias. Modern Greek history. An introduction. 3rd edition, Francke Verlag, Tübingen 1999. p. 165. ISBN 3-7720-1792-4 .
21. ↑ Pavlos Tzermias. Modern Greek history. An introduction. 3rd edition, Francke Verlag, Tübingen 1999. p. 165. ISBN 3-7720-1792-4 .
22. ↑ Pavlos Tzermias. Modern Greek history. An introduction. 3rd edition, Francke Verlag, Tübingen 1999. p. 162. ISBN 3-7720-1792-4 .
23. ^ ^{A b} Mark Mazower : Three Forms of Political Justice: Greece, 1944-1945. Mark Mazower (Ed.). After the War Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation, and State in Greece, 1943-1960. Princeton University Press, 2000. p. 34. ISBN 0-691-05842-3 .
24. ↑ Pavlos Tzermias. Modern Greek history. An introduction. 3rd edition, Francke Verlag, Tübingen 1999. p. 165. ISBN 3-7720-1792-4 .
25. ↑ Polymeris Voglis. Becoming a Subject: Political Prisoners During the Greek Civil War. Berghahn Books, 2002. p. 57. ISBN 1-57181-309-8 .
26. ↑ Philip Carabott, Thanasis D. Sfikas. The Greek Civil War: Essays on a Conflict of Exceptionalism and Silences. Ashgate Publishing, 2004. p. 145. ISBN 0-7546-4131-7 .