Athanassiou, Phoebus/Hook, Adam (Illustr.) Partisan Warfare in Greece 1941-44

The failed Italian invasion of Greece in 1940/41 led to the German invasion of Yugoslavia being extended to Greece in the spring of 1941 and, after the fall of Athens and Crete in April and May, the country was divided up under German, Italian and Bulgarian occupation. The royal government and the survivors of the army retreated to British-ruled Egypt, but resistance organisations of various political persuasions soon formed at home, taking advantage of Greece's rugged terrain and limited communications and forming guerrilla forces. The strongest resistance force was the communist-dominated National Liberation Front (EAM) with its partisan army ELAS (Greek People's Army). The representatives of the Western Allies were only briefly successful in mediating co-operation between the mutually hostile EAM/ELAS and the Greek National Republican League (EDES) with its EOEA. In anticipation of the Greek civil war that was to follow the liberation, ELAS and EOEA clashed against the background of their separate operations against the non-European occupiers. Using numerous sources, Phoebus Athanassiou traces the development of the fighting in occupied Greece: a battle that was fought just as bitterly as in neighbouring Yugoslavia and which cost both the resistance and the Axis powers around 15,000 lives.