The most complete information guide about Athens, Greece
HISTORY
OF ATHENS
Greek
Civil War
Civil War
1946 -1949
Fighting resumed in March 1946 when a gang of 30 ex-ELAS members,
most of whom were persecuted, attacked a police station in the
village of Litohoro. Armed gangs of ELAS veterans infiltrated
into Greece through the mountainous regions near the Yugoslav
and
Albanian borders. They now were organized as 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 and who was sent by the
KKE to organize already existing troops.
By
late 1946 DSE could deploy about 10.000 partisans in various areas
of Greece, mainly in the northern mountains. According to the
DSE, its fighters, "resisted the reign of terror that the
right-wing gangs conducted all over Greece".
The
Greek Army numbered about 90.000 men and gradually was being put
on a more professional basis. The task of re-equipping and training
the army had been carried out by its Western Allies but by early
1947 Britain, which had spent 85 million pounds in Greece since
1944, no longer could afford this burden. President Truman announced
that the United States would step in to support the government
of Greece against communist pressure. This was the start of a
long and troubled relationship between Greece and the United States.
For several decades the American Ambassador advised the King about
important issues such as the appointment of the Prime Minister.
Through
1947 the scale of fighting increased. DSE launched large-scale
attacks on towns across northern Epirus, Thessaly and Macedonia,
provoking the army into massive counter-offensives, which then
encountered no opposition as the DSE pulled 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.
In
September 1947, the KKE’s leadership decided to move
from guerrilla tactics to full-scale conventional war despite
the opposition of Vafiadis. In December the KKE announced
the formation of a Provisional Democratic Government with
Vafiadis as Prime Minister. This led the Athens government
to finally ban the KKE.
The
new strategy led the DSE into costly attempts to seize a major
town to be the seat of its government. In December 1947 1.200
DSE men were killed at a battle around Konitsa. This strategy
forced the government to increase the size of the army. Controlling
the main cities, the government cracked down on KKE members and
sympathizers, many of whom were imprisoned on the island of Makronisos.
Despite
setbacks such as the fighting at Konitsa, the DSE reached the
height of its power in 1948, extending its operations to the Peloponessos
and even to Attica, within 20 km of Athens. It had at least 20.000
fighters and a network of sympathizers and informants in every
village and suburb. It has been estimated that out of DSE's 20.000
fighters, 14.000 were of Slavic Macedonian origin.
Western
Allied funds, advisers and equipment were flooding into the country
and, under Western Allied 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 defeats on the DSE.