All That Grief: Migrant Recollections of Greek Resistance to Fascism 1941-1949
Compiled by Allan and Wendy Scarfe
Hale & Iremonger, 1994. 256 pp., $29.95 (pb)
Reviewed by Phil Shannon
The stories of 12 Greek migrants to Australia, who were members of the anti-fascist resistance in Greece during and after World War II, as collected by Wendy and Allan Scarfe, is the story of the real meaning of fascism and the hollow commitment to freedom and democracy of the political leaders of the Allied countries in the fight against fascism.
Greece was occupied by the German Nazis from 1941 to 1944. Almost 8% of its population perished. Mass killings and random executions, combined with economic pillage which caused mass starvation, provoked a spontaneous popular resistance movement against the Nazis and their Greek fascist collaborators.
The National Liberation Front (EAM), politically led by the Communist Party of Greece, had up to 2 million members by 1944, and its military wing (ELAS) had more than 50,000 fighters in Athens alone. When British troops entered Greece in 1944, they found a country already liberated from the Nazis by Greek workers and peasants.
Churchill then showed his true, ruling class, colours. Worried by the prospect of a socialist Greece, and the example this might set for other countries in England's imperialist bailiwick, Churchill bluntly stated his policy: "the clear objective is the defeat of EAM".
For 33 days the British bombed and machine-gunned partisan-held Athens, rearmed the Greek fascists and ordered ELAS to disarm. EAM directed ELAS to obey the British order, which, with some resistance, the partisans did. The predictable result was that the Greek fascists ran riot and plunged Greece into a civil war which lasted five years.
All the horrors of German Nazism were replayed. People ate grass to keep starvation at bay. Captured anti-fascist fighters were murdered, decapitated and their severed heads displayed to whole towns. Executions, exilings, imprisonment in slave labour camps and torture were routine. Martial law banned opposition meetings and newspapers, and punished striking unionists with death.
The British government supported the white terror. Both the Tories and the newly elected Labour government kept the 40,000 British troops on, at one stage offering a bounty of Lstg1 for each beheaded partisan. When the British left in 1947, to be replaced by the new world superpower under President Truman, the carnival of reaction intensified. Napalm was one of the military marvels used in an early demonstration of "the opulence of America at war".
All the contributors to the book, including those who were CP members, are critical of the CP leaders for allowing the resistance to be disarmed and outmanoeuvred by the British. The CP leaders were naive, and the popular front of EAM was politically hampered by the illusions of its middle-class members. Most contributors, however, defend the role of Stalin. Yet it was Stalin who did as much in Greece as in Italy and France to snuff out the revolutionary socialist promise of the anti-fascist liberation movements.
In 1944, Churchill and Stalin had made one of their mobsters' deals over postwar territory. With Roosevelt, they had agreed that if Stalin ceded Greece to Western capitalism, then Stalin would have a free hand in Romania. The Greek CP loyally followed Stalin's policy, laid down its arms and paid the price for allowing fascism to rise from the ashes. Wasiliki Gounaridis is one contributor to partially recognise this: "Stalin didn't want Greece to endanger what agreements he could manage to make in Europe".
Stalin betrayed the heroic struggle of the Greek resistance. The outcome could have been so different. Wasiliki Gounaridis epitomises the commitment of the resistance — a political organiser with the youth arm of EAM at 17 years old, she printed newspapers and ran raffles to raise funds for the partisans, all under constant danger from the Nazis and informers. She was a member of an ambush and sabotage squad during the civil war, before escaping to Albania, Poland and finally Australia.
After facing all the danger of imprisonment, torture and death, Wasiliki comments that "mine is a very ordinary story"! So it was, in a way. It was the story of many "ordinary" people in Greece, and elsewhere, who showed extraordinary courage and made huge sacrifices to defeat fascism and build a democratic socialist future for humanity. We can continue their struggle with the advantage of knowing that the Stalinist travesty of socialism and the capitalist ruling classes of the world are not on our side.