(COLD WAR: 1945-49 – continued)
COLD WAR: 1945-49 (2 of 8)
In September, 1944, after Germany's withdrawal from Greece, British troops landed there. Greeks sniped at British soldiers, and the British arrested what was said to be 15,000 people and shipped them to a camp in a desert area in Eritrea. The Greek resistance retaliated by kidnapping 15,000 monarchists from Athens and marched them out of the city. Roughly 4,000 of the monarchists died during the march, and the Resistance lost support.
Greece emerged from German occupation and British intervention with a civil war. Britain and the US supported Greece's monarchical government. The rebels on the other side of the civil war included Communists. Greece's king since 1947, Paul the First, was a determined enemy of the Communists, and he had the support of moderates.
The war began winding down in 1948. The Communists in Greece were split between Stalinists and supporters of Yugoslavia's Josip Tito. Stalin, meanwhile, was giving the resistance hardly any material support. He was unenthusiastic about the rebel cause in Greece – in keeping with an agreement between Stalin and Churchill during the world war. By September 1949 most of the rebels surrendered or escaped over the border into Albania, and the Albanian government, presumably with Soviet approval, prohibited the Greek rebels from launching military operations into Greece. The civil war had ended.
Writes Elena Panaritis in 2011:
It was the bloodiest and most devastating war in the history of Greece considering the number of lives lost. The death toll reached nearly 10% of the Greek population. note72
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