Nazi invaders left 250,000 dead

GREECE suffered one of the most brutal Nazi occupations. The Third Reich overran the country in a matter of weeks in April 1941 after it had held out for months against Fascist Italy.

Some 250,000 died, mainly of starvation after the Nazis requisitioned raw materials and food. Tens of thousands of civilians were also executed, nearly 900 towns and villages burned down, and huge sums of money looted from the Greek central bank.

A collaborationist Greek government set up ‘security battalions’ of soldiers to help the German Army suppress the resistance. One of the most infamous examples of their brutality was the Distomo massacre on June 10 1944, when the Waffen SS looted and burned the village executing 218 people.

Greek Communists played a leading role in the fierce resistance against the Nazis, carrying out guerrilla attacks against the invaders. However, after the war they were defeated by the Greek government in a civil war which raged for three years.

Syriza, although it is a new party, is rooted in this legacy. On the day he was elected, new prime minister Alex Tsipras visited a famous memorial to the resistance at Kaisariani, in an Athens suburb, to commemorate the 200 political activists, mostly Greek Communists, shot at dawn by Nazi forces in 1944.

Shortly after the Nazi occupation, a young man in Athens, Manolis Glezos ripped down the swastika which had been hung from the Acropolis. The 94-year-old, who was subsequently imprisoned and tortured by the Germans, is now a Syriza MEP.