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On October 28, 1940, Benito Mussolini issued an ultimatum to Greek dictator General John Metaxas, demanding passage through Greek territory. Although Greece was in many respects itself a country ruled by fascism, acquiescence to the ultimatum would have been a major humiliation. Metaxas's reply, a simple and resounding "no," is still celebrated as a national holiday in Greece. The Italians attacked. They expected an easy time of it but were soon pushed back into Albania, where winter weather led to a stalemate. Unwilling to let that result stand, Germany invaded Greece on April 6 of the following year and entered Athens on April 27. King George II and the government of Emmanuel Tsouderos (Metaxas had died in January) fled to Crete. When the Germans invaded Crete by air on May 20 and captured the island, the Greek government took refuge in Egypt. Keeping for themselves the larger centers of population like Athens and Thessalonika and various other key locations like Crete, the Germans turned the occupation of much of the country over to the Italians, until the fall of Mussolini later in the war.

The occupation was severely punishing to Greek citizens in a variety of ways. While in rural Greece it was usually possible to find something to eat, in the cities, particularly Athens, famine was devastating. A black market was necessary, but the greed and self-interest of those who profited from it brought another dimension of pain to the situation. Inflation was rampant; modest quantities of basic foodstuff could cost millions of drachmas.

Although Greece had its collaborators and Nazi sympathizers, resistance was widespread. A month after the German victory, two Greek teenagers snuck past guards and lowered the swastika that had been raised over the acropolis. In addition to many anonymous acts of resistance, there were guerrilla movements. In 1941, the KKE (Communist Party of Greece) created EAM (National Liberation Front) and its military arm, ELAS (National Popular Liberation Army). The EDES (National Republican Greek Army), monarchist, or at least anticommunist, in its leanings, was a smaller resistance force. In spite of the inherent hostility between ELAS and EDES, in 1942 they cooperated with the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), Britain's behind-the-lines presence in occupied Europe, and Colonel C. W. Myers to accomplish one of the single most noteworthy acts of sabotage of the war. Under the leadership of EDES general Napoleon Zervas, they blew up the viaduct at Gorgopotamos, disrupting the flow of German supplies to North Africa.

The Germans responded to resistance with reprisals that involved executions, razing of villages, and horrific massacres at such places as Kalavryta, Komeno, Klisura, Distomon, Khalkis, and Hortiati. Large-scale killing took place chiefly in the villages, where guerrillas operated, but in some urban areas as well: In Athens as many as 200 hostages were shot in a single day. As for the 80,000 Greek Jews, in spite of a generally sympathetic attitude on the part of Eastern Orthodox Greeks, who in many individual instances hid and saved Jews, and even of the Athenian police, who issued fake identity papers to protect others, all but about 5,000 were deported to concentration camps and killed. The gendarmerie in general, however, along with "Security Battalions," substantially composed of fascistically inclined thugs, were responsible for bloody incidents near the end of the occupation.

One of the crueler ironies of the occupation is that when the Germans were finally chased from Greece, rather than having the opportunity to recover and rebuild in peace as was the case elsewhere in Europe, Greece found itself already involved in the Greek Civil War, which would plague the country until 1949...

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