![]() ![]() The Greek government in exile opposed the EAM, as did the collaborationist government, which organized well-manned and equipped security battalions. Eventually the communists coalesced with other factions into the National Liberation Front (EAM) and its formidable National Popular Liberation Army (ELAS.) The ELAS wiped out numerous rival opposition groups even as they fought the Axis. By 1942, however, Greek resistance groups, including supporters of the deposed regime of Ioannis Metaxas and other conservatives and leftist radicals, especially communists, had begun fighting the occupiers-and each other. Resistance had begun slowly against German, Italian, and Bulgarian troops and interests. During the Axis occupation of the country from 1941–1944, nearly 100,000 people died of starvation. These dramatic events marked the culmination of three long years of suffering for Greece. Courtesy of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 251010_NA1903. British paratroopers, ordered not to intervene, watched these events nervously from nearby.ĮLAS fighters in mountainous Greece. Civilians fell screaming-12 dead, more wounded-and others fled. Panic-stricken, police steadily pulled back until an armed man in uniform rushed out of the station, yelled “Shoot the bastards!” and dropped to one knee, then opened fire on the crowd. ![]() Later, a crowd waving Greek, Soviet, British, and American flags assembled outside a police station. The premier cowered in his bedroom until his armed guards drove the attackers back outside. A grenade exploded in the crowd as enraged demonstrators stormed the building. Police tried to block them, but their barricades collapsed as the demonstrators-many of them women-swarmed through the central square and converged on Premier George Papandreou’s apartment building. Shortly after sunrise, angry civilians marched toward the city center. Now, weak British forces and Greek police struggled to maintain order in a city rife with suffering and discontent. German forces had evacuated Athens just six weeks earlier. In Athens, Greece, the bloody events of Sunday, Deceminitiated a brutal civil war, worse than anything the continent would see for another half-century. As the battle lines converged on Berlin in the waning days of World War II, fighting and violence erupted at several points across liberated Europe.
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