Mark Mazower (επιμ.), After the war was over: Reconstructing the family, nation, and state in Greece, 1943 · 1960

If any era deserves the epithet 'tragic' then it is the 1940s in Greece. Conquered in spring 1941, its people were subjected to a brutal occupation regime, enduring famine, forced labour, deportation and terror. In 1942, armed resistance to the occupying powers of Germany, Italy and Bulgaria and the collaborationist government began in earnest. The main resistance movement, the National Liberation Front (EAM), was essentially a creation of the Greek Communist Party (the KKE) which also dominated its military wing, the National People's Liberation Army (ELAS). From 1943, large parts of Greece saw fierce fighting as EAM/ELAS established its ascendancy over other resistance organisations and engaged with the Wehrmacht and quisling Security Battalions. When Axis forces withdrew in the autumn of 1944, EAM/ELAS effectively controlled most of the country, in parts of which it had implemented popular government with progressive social policies, even if elsewhere it was viewed as a repressive military occupier. Arguably, EAM/ELAS could have seized power after the German evacuation, but instead participated in a British-backed government of national unity largely composed of bourgeois conservative politicians returning from wartime exile.