The occupation of Greece by Nazi Germany began in April 1941 – however, the war between the Axis powers and Greece started in the early morning of October 28, 1940, when Italian Ambassador Emmanuel Grazzi awoke Greek dictator and Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas with an ultimatum. Metaxas rejected the ultimatum and Italian forces from Italian-occupied Albania invaded Greek territory.
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini launched the invasion partly to prove that Italians could match the military might and success of the German Army and partly because he regarded south-eastern Europe as lying within Italy’s sphere of influence.
The Hellenic Army proved to be a formidable opponent, and successfully exploited the mountainous terrain of Epirus on the Greek Albanian border, forcing the Italians to retreat. By mid-December the Greeks occupied nearly one-quarter of Albania, before Italian reinforcements and the harsh winter curtailed the Greek advance. In March 1941, a major Italian counterattack failed as Italian troops only reoccupied small areas around Himare and Grabova. The Greek defeat of the Italian invasion is considered to be the first Allied land victory of World War 2.
As a result of having 15 of the 21 Greek divisions deployed against the Italians, having only six divisions to confront the attack from German troops on the Metaxas Line (near the border of Greece and Yugoslavia/Bulgaria) during the early days of April 1941 caused the defeat of the Greek military within two weeks.
On April 20, after Greek resistance in the north had abated, the Bulgarian Army entered Greek Thrace with the objective of regaining their Aegean Sea outlet in Eastern Macedonia and Western Thrace. The Bulgarian occupation included the territory between the Strymon River and the demarcation line running through Alexandroupoli and to the west of the Evros River.
Despite the help of the British and of other Commonwealth troops, including troops from Australia and New Zealand, the Greek capital Athens fell on 27 April, and by 1 June, after the capture of Crete, all of the Greek mainland was under the Axis powers.
The occupation of Greece was divided between Germany, Italy and Bulgaria. German forces occupied the more strategically important areas, such as Athens, Thessaloniki, Central Macedonia and several Aegean islands, including Crete. East Macedonia and Thrace annexed to Bulgaria came under Bulgarian occupation. The remaining two thirds of Greece was occupied by Italy, with the Ionian islands directly administered as Italian territories. After the Italians capitulated in September 1943, the former Italian zone was taken over by the Germans who often attacked the Italian garrisons.
A collaborationist government in Athens was established immediately after the fall of Greece, but the consequences of the occupation were disastrous for the country and its people.
The economy had already been devastated by the six month conflict additional to the extreme economic exploitation by the Nazis. Raw materials and food were requisitioned, and the collaborationist government was forced to pay the cost of the occupying army, giving rise to inflation. The situation was further exacerbated by a ‘war loan’ which Greece was forced to grant to the German Reich. The ‘loan’ was never paid back and the issue of its repayment by Germany has come back to the political agenda in recent years as a result of the current Greek economic crisis.
Requisitions, together with the Allied blockade of Greece, ruined the country’s infrastructure and saw the emergence of a powerful and well-connected black market, resulting in the Great Famine during the winter of 1941-42, where an estimated 300,000 people perished in greater Athens alone.
The enormous suffering of the people and pressure by the exiled in the Middle East Greek government eventually forced the British to partially lift the blockade in the summer of 1942, allowing the International Red Cross to distribute emergency supplies in sufficient quantities.
The Greek people attempted to fight back against the Nazis almost from the very beginning of the occupation. In September 1941 the left-leaning National Liberation Front (EAM) was formed in Athens and in February 1942, the military arm of EAM, namely the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS), was created, which was the largest but not the only guerrilla tactical force in Greece at the time. The Greek Resistance became one of the most effective resistance movements in Nazi occupied Europe.
The Greek resistance groups established large espionage networks throughout the country, launched guerrilla attacks against the occupying powers, and fought against the collaborationist Security Battalions, but by late 1943 the resistance groups began to fight amongst themselves. When the liberation of the Greek mainland arrived in October 1944, Greece was extremely politically polarised, which very quickly led to the outbreak of civil war.
Furthermore, guerrilla fighting resulted in a number of summary executions and in reprisal, the wholesale slaughter of civilians. It is estimated that in the reprisals tens of thousands of Greek civilians lost their lives.
Some of the most infamous and well known atrocities by the occupying forces are the ‘Holocaust of Viannos’ in Crete on 14-16 September 1943, in which over 500 civilians from several villages were executed. In the ‘Massacre of Kalavryta’ in the Peloponnese on 13 December 1943, Wehrmacht troops carried out the extermination of the entire male population and subsequently totally destroyed the town. In the ‘Distomo massacre’ on 10 June 1944, units of the SS Division looted and burned the village of Distomo in Boeotia, resulting in the deaths of 218 civilians. At the same time, in the course of the concerted anti-guerrilla campaign, hundreds of villages were systematically torched with almost 1,000,000 Greeks left homeless. The German occupation of Greece also resulted in the extermination of almost the entire Jewish community in Greece.
The two other notorious acts of brutality during the German takeover of the Italian occupation areas were the massacres of Italian troops at the islands of Cephallonia and Kos in September 1943.
Even though the Greek capital Athens was liberated on 12 October 1944 and Thessaloniki on 30 October 1944, German garrisons still had control over Crete and other Aegean islands until after surrendering to the Allies in May and June 1945, heralding the end of the Second World War.