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Greek resistance hero tells how the Athens bomb he planted nearly killed ChurchillManolis Glezos crept through sewers to plant dynamite beneath British HQ in Athens. But the order to detonate never came...the Athens bomb plot was in a league of its own. The would-be attack, barely two months after the Germans had retreated from Greece, came as the country was hurtling headlong into civil war. Athens had been racked by violence after the British army alongside Nazi collaborators – in one of the most controversial episodes of the second world war – opened fire on a crowd of unarmed civilians demonstrating in support of the partisans in Syntagma Square.After the bloodletting in Syntagma, Churchill had ordered that British troops should seize the city “as if under occupation”, with RAF aircraft strafing working-class neighbourhoods beneath the Acropolis that were known to be leftwing strongholds.Long before the end of the war, the prime minister had fretted about a Russian takeover in Europe, telling his personal physician, Lord Moran: “Good God, can’t you see that the Russians are spreading across Europe like a tide? They invaded Poland, and there is nothing to prevent them from marching into Turkey and Greece.”That the British army would secure the help of collaborators – members of the infamous Security Battalions which had served under German command during Hitler’s brutal occupation of Greece – in successfully keeping communism at bay is a little-known story.
Athens 1944: Britain’s dirty secretWhen 28 civilians were killed in Athens, it wasn’t the Nazis who were to blame, it was the British. Ed Vulliamy and Helena Smith reveal how Churchill’s shameful decision to turn on the partisans who had fought on our side in the war sowed the seeds for the rise of the far right in Greece today
There was a change of mayor in the eastern Athens suburb of Kaisariani on Sunday after fresh elections were held following an appeal against the original result in May’s local elections.Communist Party-backed Ilias Stamelos took control of the municipality from Giorgos Kontostavlos, who was supported by SYRIZA. Stamelos won the election by 205 votes but the turnout was only 33 percent.
I have recently been reading about the Greek civil war and Churchill's attacks on the EAM and ELAM, the left wing movement and resistance that had done so much to fight against the Germans. I have never thought of Churchill in the romantic way most of the British seem to but having read of his part in what happened to Greece after WW11 I can only think that the strain of the war had sent him mad otherwise he wasn't any better than Hitler or Stalin. The rosy spectacled view of him is just another instance of history being written by the victors.
Budgie trainer and pig sketcher: auction reveals the family life of Winston ChurchillSir Winston Churchill trained his pet budgie to use a salt spoon and signed his family letters with a pig picture
How Churchill Broke the Greek ResistanceHow Winston Churchill and the British government attacked the Greece Resistance and sowed the seeds of civil war.