SPRINGTIME IN GREECE IS PRECIOUS. Clear blue skies and sparkling cobalt water. Roses, oleander, bougainvillea, and a splash of scarlet poppies. The fecund soil, aromatic citrus trees, and other scents enhance “rosy-fingered” dawns and the soul-lifting warmth of morning sunshine. But in 1941 the sensual attractions of the country’s natural beauty were suffused with the sounds, sights, and stench of war.
In January, Greece, grossly underestimating German troop strength in Romania, refused British offers of an expeditionary force as not worth the risk of alienating Hitler.1 Unbeknownst to Greece, Hitler had already signed a directive to invade. By early February, following the sudden death of General Metaxas and a growing unease that neither Turkey nor Yugoslavia could withstand a German invasion, Greece concluded it had to take some action. King George, then effectively in charge, asked for British anti-aircraft and anti-tank support, but was still reluctant to accept troops or RAF squadrons. At the same time, his new government overruled defeatist generals, officers, and politicians who proposed seeking a peace agreement with the Axis rather than fighting.2
In early March, the Italian offensive again failed to break through the Greek lines. Harsh spring weather and the wretched conditions of roads and bridges provided an added defense. But Greece lacked the guns and ammunition to mount a serious counteroffensive. Finally, the king turned to Britain.
Churchill’s first priority had been the protection of his home front, which had been battered by air raids. His second priority was the campaign in North Africa. But with the situation calming in England, and recent military successes in Egypt and Libya, he considered transferring an Allied expeditionary force, mainly New Zealanders and Australians, from Egypt to Greece. The British War Cabinet’s decision to provide troops was not an easy one. Churchill himself equivocated in the face of pressure from Antipodean leaders fearful of their troops being slaughtered in an ill-planned campaign. Quarter-century-old memories of the vast casualties at Gallipoli still haunted the Allies. But there were strategic reasons to get involved, from control of the Eastern Mediterranean to the possible opening of a Balkan front. Furthermore, Churchill was an unabashed champion of British imperial grandeur and by extension Greece’s King George II, who was related to the British royal family.
In Berlin, war planning focused on Operation Barbarossa, the massive invasion of Russia. News from Greece about the travails of the faltering Italians was an unwelcome distraction, but it also convinced the Germans that mounting the Russian campaign with an exposed southern flank was too risky. They had no choice but to delay Operation Barbarossa and come to the aid of their embarrassed Axis partner. Rather than occupying Greece, the German high command expected to win decisively and then share the follow-on administrative responsibilities with the Italians and Bulgarians.
The Demetracopoulos family, like their neighbors, waited anxiously in anticipation of a German onslaught. Kathimerini publisher George Vlachos, in a March 8 front-page open letter, proudly declared Greek independence and appealed to Hitler not to invade. The letter concluded: “…this land which may be small but is also great. This land that taught the world to live will now teach it how to die.” Elias and his parents were moved by the message, but such nationalist paeans were no match for armored steel. On Sunday April 6, panzer and infantry units of the German Twelfth Army attacked Greece and Yugoslavia from Bulgaria, overcoming resistance, and circumventing the vaunted Metaxas Line.
With lightning speed, they moved south. Defenses quickly fell apart. Three days later Thessaloniki, the country’s second largest city, fell to the invaders. Other areas followed, isolating the Greek Army. British forces withdrew from strategic Thermopylae, not wanting to become trapped in the narrow pass as Leonidas and the 300 Spartans had 2,000 years before.
More than 15,000 Greek and 3,700 Allied soldiers were killed. Many others were taken prisoner. More than 50,000 British, Australian, New Zealand, and Free Polish divisions and brigades, in hasty retreat, evacuated the country under Luftwaffe fire. Allied soldiers left to fend for themselves turned to locals for help escaping.3
The roar of gunfire over Athens shattered the morning quiet of Easter Sunday, April 20, as German Stukas dive-bombed the city.4 Messerschmitts, flying terrifyingly low over rooftops, strafed nearby towns and ports, their machine guns drumming densely populated areas. People ran for cover where they could. Some went to nearby shelters. Most simply cowered in their homes. Athens looked abandoned. Meanwhile, the government vacillated.5 More than a few Greek generals and high officials viewed armed opposition as suicidal, but King George, in a response long appreciated by Churchill afterward, urged the Greek army to fight as long as possible.6 It was a noble gesture, but too little too late. The demoralized Greek prime minister, Alexandros Koryzis, committed suicide.
On April 20, Greek Army Corps Commander Lt. General Georgios Tsolakoglou offered the Army’s unilateral surrender to the Germans. Tsolakoglou acted quickly to avoid the greater dishonor of surrendering to the Italians. An enraged Mussolini insisted that the surrender ceremony be repeated three days later with Italians included.7
On Sunday, April 27, 1941, the conquering Germans entered Athens with an imposing display of tanks, trucks, motorcycles, and armed troops on horseback. Believing classical Greece to be the progenitor of the Third Reich, and Greek soldiers “the valorous descendants of Alexander’s hoplites,”8 Hitler praised the non-Aryan Greek fighters for their bravery and ordered honorable armistice terms.9 Keeping the structure of the Metaxas regime, the Germans established a puppet government in Athens, with General Tsolakoglou as the quisling prime minister.
During the first agonizing hours of occupation, 12-year-old Elias had hundreds of questions. Though he never imagined his own death, he fantasized dark and fearful images of his parents being tortured and killed, his neighborhood and country destroyed. He felt the urge to resist but had little idea of exactly what that meant.
Some families made plans to send their children to stay with relatives in rural villages or the islands, or even out of the country, where they might be safer. There were no such discussions in the Demetracopoulos household. Elias always thought his father to be a “tough fellow” and “not a pushover,” but didn’t see him rush to take arms or join a group. Neither did he see his other relatives act. His mother fretted about the situation and worried that her strong-willed son would behave precipitously. Knowing he would not spend all his days at home, his parents cautioned him to think carefully before acting.
Surprisingly, Elias’s mother was one of the first to take decisive action. Two days before the Easter surrender, at about seven o’clock on Good Friday morning, she went to meet several friends to prepare garlands to decorate the makeshift wooden “tomb” outside her beloved St. Nicholas church. Coming down the church steps were some black-clad women, jabbering nervously. They told her to go inside. There they pointed out two gangly, hungry, scared Australian soldiers who had been hiding in the sanctuary. The soldiers knew only a few phrases of Greek, and the ladies collectively knew little English. Germans were out to capture or kill enemy Allied soldiers left behind. The apolitical Panagiota Demetracopoulos took charge. She directed a friend to “find Elias quickly” and, tell him, without explaining the reason, that his mother wanted him in church tora (right now). School cancelled; Elias had been at home reading. He came immediately to serve as interpreter, interviewer, and information broker.
The Aussies wanted to join their comrades on Crete but didn’t know how to do it. They did not want to wander the streets of Athens in their uniforms. Elias first found someone who had civilian clothes that would fit. Then, with the help of Dr. Giannatos, he contacted people helping to smuggle Allied soldiers out of the country. He was proud, scared, excited, and still only twelve years old.
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THE GREEK FLAG was still flying at the eastern end of the Acropolis when the occupiers rolled into Athens and ordered that it be replaced by the German swastika. To fiercely proud Greeks, there could not have been a greater affront than hoisting and unfurling at the Parthenon an enormous red-and-black Nazi flag. To a man like Panagiotis Demetracopoulos, who had spent much of his life studying and teaching others about Greece’s greatest achievements, this gesture, symbolizing rape and domination, evoked humiliation and outrage.
Panagiotis and his archaeologist colleagues reacted differently to the occupation. The director of the Acropolis resigned in disgust and was soon in the mountains looking to organize a resistance. Others, scared silent, remained at their posts. Many German officers expressed their reverence for ancient Hellas. A highly idealized understanding of classical Greek culture, literature, and artistic creations was an essential part of German education.10 They made it a point on their arrival to visit major ancient historical locations and pose for photos as war tourists. Some requested personally guided tours of the Parthenon and other sites at the Acropolis. When asked to provide such a service, Panagiotis Demetracopoulos refused, went home, and did not return to the Acropolis until after the war.
Late on Friday night, May 30, two eighteen-year-old Athens University freshmen climbed up the eastern side of the Acropolis and tore down the fluttering swastika flag. Under the cover of darkness, they fled with it to safety, burying it in an Acropolis well. Word of the act was disseminated through drippingly sarcastic editorials in the censored press “condemning” the “despicable seizure” of the German flag, which everyone knew was a “symbol of the New Reich, created by the mind of the genius Adolf Hitler,…the flag of a great nation,…symbol of the restoration of an era of peace, as a symbol of justice, the rule of law and civilization.”11 The two leftist students were never caught. Elias understood the irony in the editorial message and marveled at the power of the press to make its point, even under oppressive circumstances. Word of the flag caper spread rapidly and inspired some Greeks to discuss making other dramatic gestures of “heroic madness,”12 but young Elias, however self-confident and prideful, did not see the point of taking on the Nazis singlehandedly.
Residents were put on notice that harsh punishments would be imposed for unlawful assemblies and organizational memberships, strikes and demonstrations, possession of firearms and short-wave radios, listening to foreign broadcasts, distributing anti-German propaganda and sabotage. Some locals spontaneously cheered and tossed precious cigarettes to British prisoners being convoyed across Athens, and others painted graffiti on walls or punctured tires of occupier vehicles, but overt acts of resistance were few and scattered. The conquerors did not sense much antagonism. An unusually eerie calm prevailed.
The occupiers jettisoned their initial restraint, confiscating homes and automobiles. German reverence for Greek antiquities gave way to pilferage, looting, and destruction.13 Soon people realized that the token amounts Germans made for purchases were in worthless currency. Greek patients were discharged from hospitals to make space for Germans. Despite the harsh heat of summer, shutters were ordered closed. The curfew forced people indoors from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. Stories of random acts of cruelty, such as breaking a little girl’s forearm as punishment for taking bread, became common.
The spirit of national unity that had prevailed during the Italian invasion soon fractured. The dominant mood in Athens was one of disillusionment, bitterness, resignation, and private recrimination. Few took immediate action, although some politicians followed King George into exile, first to Crete, then to Cairo or London. They sought to create a government-in-waiting, prepared to build international support for the Greek cause and then, after the war, return to power. Meanwhile, the king and his initial government-in-exile cautioned those left behind against “involvement in politics,”14 a directive interpreted as not advocating resistance. In a prescient analysis, Ambassador MacVeagh warned Washington that the Greek people would long remember the King’s role in the Metaxas dictatorship, and his flight from the country. MacVeagh sensed that the King’s return after the war, even with the support of the British, would not be a simple matter.15
Some Athenians left the city for isolated mountain encampments and from there, in the following months, joined with small bands of guerrillas. Other Greeks chose to collaborate to various degrees with the occupiers for personal gain. Most people simply stayed home, unsure of what else to do. It took months before the antartes (resistance fighters) came together under the banner of a National Liberation Front and its military arm ELAS, and to a lesser extent the anti-Communist EDES.16 There were also smaller groups, in Athens and elsewhere, tied to the secretive British MI6 and MI9.17 The resistance of these units largely took the form of intelligence-gathering, facilitating propaganda, organizing escape networks for Allied operatives and prisoners of war, and engaging in small acts of sabotage. For much of the war, this was Elias’s world.
Shortly after the April invasion, Peiramatikon was taken over by the Germans and used for administrative offices, and the school was forced to scatter its students to various places, with Elias’s classes moved across the street to the St. Denis Church. The school let out early for summer vacation. When lessons resumed in October, all grades were crowded into the church annex, a little house located just behind the sanctuary. Only four rooms were available, so the school operated in shifts, with classes limited to about two hours each and the curriculum dramatically reduced. Because of the lack of wintertime fuel, schools would operate only in the autumn and spring months until liberation.
Elias had time to find a resistance group. He sought out Dr. Giannatos, who told Elias about OAG, a relatively small group operating early in Athens.18 Its acronym stood for Organosis Anastaseos Genous, roughly translated as Organization for the Resurrection of the Race, with the last word having cultural Hellenistic rather than genetic implications.19 Giannatos explained to Elias that he, his brother, and his sister-in-law were part of the group. With a touch of clandestine excitement, he introduced his young friend to some OAG members and later, in his book-lined Kolonaki study, encouraged Elias to join. Not insignificantly, he also tried to allay the concerns of Elias’s anxious parents.
In the ideological taxonomy of Greek politics, OAG was “a group of the Right,”20 deeply conservative and staunchly anti-Communist, composed largely of professionals such as doctors, lawyers, journalists, Greek military officers, and English expatriates. Though some were republican, most were unabashed royalists and sympathetic to the king’s plight while he was in exile. Dr. Giannatos advised Elias to keep his anti-royalist reservations to himself. The organization was headed by Ioannis “John” Bobotinos, a chemistry teacher and decorated army officer from Kalamata who had recently fought the Nazis in Crete,21 and previously served in the Asia Minor Wars. For Bobotinos, a fierce nationalist, defending the homeland was tantamount to a religious obligation. He was never interested in being part of the National Liberation Front (EAM) and its army (ELAS) because of the paramount roles played in those organizations by the KKE, the Greek Communist Party. And he viewed EDES, which at the beginning of the war espoused republicanism, as also too far to the left.
The world of OAG became Elias’s new classroom. The boy fast became an active, albeit entry-level, member. His new mission was helping his comrades, whose identities were often unknown to him, with intelligence-gathering and sabotage. His English was not especially good at this point, but it was better than that of most in the group. Bobotinos welcomed the young recruit and came to praise him for his energy, honesty, and reliability.
At the beginning, he was simply a gatherer of general information, picking it up from different vantage points by unobtrusive observation. Then he became an active intelligence source, who could elicit the answers to assigned questions quickly and pass on the responses. Bobotinos later claimed that OAG was the first of the resistance groups to focus on sabotaging military targets and had done such jobs well before EAM and ELAS. Disabling the military airport at Tatoi, north of Athens, was an early objective. Six members conducted surveillance and then blew up the airfield’s underground gas storage facility along with 15 airplanes. Others cut telephone lines in the Irakleio area to block communications between Tatoi and Nazi headquarters in downtown Athens. Another OAG cell committed daytime sabotage at the Maltsinioti munitions factory and repeatedly raided Chasani Airport at night. Escapes were harrowing. The Germans retaliated brutally, sometimes torturing and murdering someone who merely looked like an OAG member. Elias often collaborated with a member named Angelos Barkas and his brother, carrying incendiary devices, lighting fuses, and acting as their lookout.
Elias still met with his old friends and joined in family routines, but his life had changed dramatically.22 He would go to local movie houses or open-air theaters and watch German propaganda newsreels and films that were not banned. But traveling to beaches on hot days and taking other day trips outside Athens were pleasures of the past. His customary practice was to stay close to his house, reading and listening to outlawed broadcasts, waiting for someone to send a courier to tell him he was needed at a particular place, usually without delay. Not infrequently he was out all night, since he did not want to risk returning home during the curfew.
Disregarding the immediate danger to his life, the boy repeatedly talked his way into opportunities to gather secret information. Elias learned quickly how to ferret out actionable intelligence and developed a nose to distinguish fact from fiction, reliable sources from blowhards. With just a few carefully crafted questions, a thoughtful cultivation of active listening skills, and knowledge gleaned from picking up salient nonverbal cues, he was usually able to discern whether a would-be informant was telling the truth, did not have any useful answers, or was leading him astray. He learned how to acquire the “who, what, when, and where” of newsgathering under the pressure of tight deadlines and pass the news on to his handlers. And, like the good reporter he would one day become, he cultivated a widening network of reliable contacts. Many of Elias’s school friends were involved to varying degrees in different resistance activities, but they regarded Elias as the most close-lipped. He never revealed anything about his exploits.23
One of his proudest activities was making the nearly 300-mile trip from Athens to Salonika (Thessaloniki) with OAG confederates in early August 1943 to help with the escape logistics, burials, and language needs of some English-speaking fliers. The airmen had been shot down in the daring and disastrous tree-top-level Allied bombing raid on the oil refineries in Ploesti, Romania, a mission in which 177 planes left from Benghazi, Libya, and only eighty-eight returned.
Elias’s parents thought of themselves as patriotic, but they were not among the rare Greek families who made their homes safehouses or otherwise provided shelter for Allied soldiers in hiding. Their greatest risk, until Elias started storing guns and ammunition at home, was listening to prohibited BBC and other Allied broadcasts on their outlawed shortwave.
They gathered each evening around the radio and strained to hear the BBC Greek broadcast signal through German jamming devices. The transmission began with the four opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony—mimicking the “dot, dot, dot, dash” sound of the Morse code letter V, the symbol adopted for “victory.” Before the news came the prologue: “Greeks. Our thoughts are near you. You are the heroes who said the big ‘No’ to a strong enemy. You are the ones who offered the first victory to the Allies. We admire you and we are grateful. The time is approaching when your country again will be free and glorious. Our struggle continues until the final victory…”24
The broadcasts carried Allied propaganda, coded operational messages from British intelligence, and brief communications from loved ones in London and Alexandria. As one Athenian remembered the experience, the broadcasts filled “us with hope […] The radio broke our isolation, animated our spirit of national pride, and reinforced our souls’ resistance.”25 With strict press censorship, accurate news was hard to come by. Great dangers lurked for people caught reading or simply having banned papers at home. People met in parks and other public places to exchange a blend of facts and rumors. Panagiotis and Panagiota were frequently more pessimistic than hopeful. For the most part, they just kept their heads down and tried to survive. Elias’s father withdrew into his world of books. Elias’s mother had her beloved church. Both were proud of their only child and understood why he wouldn’t share the details of his activities with them. They worried about his safety, but never tried to stop or discourage him. His mother gave him a medallion to wear that depicted St. Barbara, the protector of those who work with artillery and explosives.26
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IN ATHENS, THE increasingly strict rationing became painful. But then things got worse. Winter 1941–42 was brutal. For most Greeks who lived through the era, the very word katochi (occupation) still evokes dreadful memories of the privations of war and the pains of oppressive foreign occupation. Elias Demetracopoulos, who only reluctantly shared stories of the years of subjugation, was no exception.
There had been food in the countryside, but much of that, along with raw materials and cash reserves, was forcibly requisitioned for the Reich. Resources that made it to Athens, from olive oil to pack animals, were confiscated or purchased with nearly worthless currency by the occupiers. The Germans also imposed “forced loans” and levied an onerous taxation scheme that forced the locals to pay for their own occupation.27 To make matters worse, peasants played their own games with the food supply, and the quisling government lacked the competence and integrity to handle the overall logistics. On top of all that came a disastrous British blockade that diverted wheat and other necessities.
The breakdown of food transportation and distribution hit Athens the hardest. Rationing and long queues for scant foodstuffs set the stage for an active black market. Buses stopped running. Everyone walked. Refugees huddling in the slums and shantytowns on the outskirts of the city bore the brunt of the famine. It was unusually cold, with snow in the streets of Athens. Houses went without heat. Food rations disappeared altogether. Stray dogs and cats were hunted for food; then rodents, which were skinned and sold as “rabbit.” Bread was made from lupine, and coffee shops brewed ground chickpeas. Per-capita nourishment dropped to between 400 and 800 calories a day.28
The acute food shortage led to malnutrition and starvation. Cadaverous children, with festering sores, bulging eyes, threadbare clothes, swollen feet and stomachs, scavenged scraps from rotting garbage. People collapsed and died from hunger and disease. Municipal trucks would drive by to pick decaying corpses off the streets or from underground air-raid shelters. Some families intentionally left their relatives’ bodies stripped of identification in cemeteries or parks, so they could keep their ration cards—but there were no longer any rations.
Signs of deprivation were everywhere. Men without jobs turned to peddling used clothing and household items or simply begging. Women went without food to provide for their children, turning to soup kitchens serving watery gruel. Others gathered and boiled wild grass and weeds to feed their families. An estimated 300,000 people died of hunger and related causes in the Great Famine of the first winter, between 40,000 and 100,000 in Athens alone.29
