Greece

Abstract

Despite the existence of a vigorous and powerful Communist Party Greece alone of the countries of Eastern Europe was not taken over by the Communist in the post-war period.¹ In trying to explain why the Greek Communists failed to achieve power between 1943 and 1949 we have to try to answer four basic questions. First: Why did E.A.M./E.L.A.S., the Communist-dominated resistance movement in wartime Greece, fail to achieve the kind of almost total control of active resistance achieved by Tito and the Partisans in Yugoslavia and Enver Hoxha and the L.N.C. in Albania? Second: Why did E.A.M./E.L.A.S., having none the less secured control of much of the country by the time of its liberation in October 1944, not seize power as the Germans withdrew and present the Western allies with a fait accompli which, given the existing state of public opinion in Great Britain and the United States, Churchill and Roosevelt would have been unable to counter decisively even had they been so inclined? Third: What did the Communists hope to achieve in the ‘Second Round’, the Communist insurgency in Athens in December 1944, and if this insurgency did represent a serious bid for power, why did it fail? Fourth: Why did the last and least ambiguous Communist bid for power, the civil war of 1946–49, known as the ‘Third Round’, end in ignominious defeat for the Communist Party of Greece (K.K.E.).