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Athens 1944: Britain’s dirty secret
- kh_hk 11y agoSlightly offtopic: the regime in Spain was taken into discussion during the Potsdam conference with the outcome of not intervening after II WW, being the main expressed motive that Spain was neutral on the war (which is true but biased, since Franco was clearly not neutral to the Third Reich, fascism or sending prisoners to execution camps). Stalin was pro-intervention, at least symbolically, but had cards on the issue having Franco sent volunteers to participate on the Eastern Front with the German army, Truman did not want more war on Europe and Churchill didn't want to hurt the commercial relations with Spain (to say, oranges and wine). My gut feeling says, though, the decision was more on the line of "better an irrelevant regime in Spain that a communist ally on the west".
- doxymoron 11y agoIt needs to be a "secret" because a European nation was involved. Asian and African nations? Those are "open secrets"
- Panos-Vertios 11y agoFor us Greeks, it not a secret. The 1947-1949 Greek Civil war that created a bloodshed between the Greeks who fought the Germans, was all a British creation, just like it has ever been throughout the years in most countries (just read history to see that the British Empire did in Middle East and Far East) Then the Americans came, who saved us from the "communists" and who openly supported dictactorships; dictaroships that challenged the basic human principles such as freedom of speech. Unfortunately, Greece has been for a long time a vassal state, British and American interfering in our political life down to very basic levels. Even today, IMF, which is an American institution promoting privatization and looting of public resources, along with the Nazi like EU, govern our miserable life. You need not go to far. Substitute the British actions of 1946 in Greece with the American actions in Ukraine supporting the puppet nazi government over there or supporting the so called "freedom fighters" of Jihad in Syria who have murdered thousands of innocent civilians. The world would be a better place if England and US had kept to themselves and never interfered in other countries. But that would be asking a wolf to not kill a sheep if the wolf finds one. What is worse, though, is that the British/American public support the governments, thus making them complicit in their crimes against humanity, which in essense, is quite tragic.
- olavk 11y agoThe EU is "Nazi like"? I think you will have to provide some justification for this claim.
- rogeryu 11y agoI think he doesn't have to do that. It's not a comparison he needs to prove for me. Not that I agree, but it shows his feelings, and it probably shows the sentiment of many Greeks.
- mattlutze 11y agoHacker News isn't generally the place for Reddit-style emotion baiting; the request for proof is another way of saying "don't just rant, help us be objective." An opinion isn't of much use if it's baseless and prejudiced. As it is, the comments about British and US interventions in Greece are illustrative of what I'm sure is a modern history of Greece less known internationally and are surely interesting.
- fooballs 11y agoThe EU is certainly extremely undemocratic. We "elect" MEPs, who satisfy the illusion of democracy, but they can't actually do anything apart from rubber stamp the laws made by the unaccountable unelected dictators. And the aims are clear - to unite Europe into one undemocratic state and remove individual countries and cultures. And it appears to be completely controlled and driven by Germany.
- Patient0 11y ago"The strong allegation that British troops fired on demonstrators was based on recollections, recounted as fact" http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/28/readers-editor-on-athens-44-british-army http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/28/readers-editor-...
- simonh 11y agoFrankly, take that part of the article out and it's still a chilling indictment of our treatment of Greece. Clearly this was still one of the more shocking episodes in Britain's 20th century history and one I certainly wasn't aware of.
- peteretep 11y ago> of our treatment Were you politically active in 1944?
- toyg 11y agoA similar situation played out in Italy; however, a combination of American instincts and Italian Communist calculations kept things substantially cooler than they could have been. When the head of the Communist Party was shot, in the early '50s, both sides were ready for the final confrontation; luckily he survived and made a different choice. Ironically, NATO probably owes more to him than to its own "trusted friends". As the Cold War intensified, though, things got very ugly again. NATO was directly or indirectly responsible for literally hundreds of casualties throughout the '70s and '80s, usually by covering far-right groups planting indiscriminate bombs targeting civilians. This was all to contrast the electoral rise of the Communist Party, which was making huge gains thanks to Soviet financial backing and a cadre of skilled administrators forged by resistance movements during the war. Eventually, the communists basically bartered peace for a de-facto acceptance of the fact that they would never rule. New generations saw that as a betrayal, and the party started a slow decline, moving towards social-democratic positions and eventually rebranding completely. For countries lying directly on each side of the Iron Curtain, that war was not very cold.
- samastur 11y agoMind you Italy bordered Yugoslavia which was not part of Warshaw block (it was non-aligned) and did not have Soviet troops either. Agree with everything else you said.
- toyg 11y agoYeah but it sits on the largest border in Europe: the Mediterranean Sea :) that was a Cold War front too, and a big one at that.
- nicolapede 11y agoWould you have any reference about the NATO covering terrorist attacks in Italy, please?
- toyg 11y agoYou can start with wikipedia and work your way up tbh, plenty of material everywhere: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategia_della_tensione_in_Italia https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategia_della_tensione_in_It... Links between the Italian military and secret services, Nato and far-right extremists are there. In particular, look at the spontaneous and legally-irrelevant declarations Vinciguerra made. I mean, the Italian ruling party was directly financed by Americans, who had even fixed the first round of elections (this has been historically accepted); it makes sense that they would help them stay in power in whichever means was necessary. Losing one of the most strategic countries in the Mediterranean to Moscow was simply unacceptable. And of course, there is Ustica -- the fact that it was a NATO job is now historically accepted beyond any reasonable doubt. That's a direct killing of 81 people.
- adamzubi700 11y agohttp://googler700.blogspot.com/ http://googler700.blogspot.com/
- bobcostas55 11y agoWhat an absurd article. Extreme lying by omission. It doesn't even mention Tito and Stalin, the people who were directly controlling the Greek communists. This wasn't about the British vs a genuine Greek uprising, it was simply one of the early proxy battles in the cold war. And the Greeks were extremely lucky that the communists did not win. >But what the freedom fighters wanted, insists Glezos “was what we had achieved during the war: a state ruled by the people for the people. There was no plot to take over Athens as Churchill always maintained. If we had wanted to do that, we could have done so before the British arrived.” What did you need all those weapons for, then? The truth is that ELAS had already taken over of most of the country, and only stopped because Stalin directed them to. Unlike Tito, he wanted to avoid confrontation with the Allies at that point. Ultimately one of the most important events that led to the end of the civil war was the split between Tito and Stalin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito%E2%80%93Stalin_Split); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito%E2%80%93Stalin_Split); Tito had been providing support for DSE (the military wing of the communist party), allowing them free movement in Yugoslavia and setting up training camps, re-supply stations, hospitals, etc. After the split, the Greek communist party sided with Stalin (they didn't even pick the "benevolent" dictator!) and Tito closed the border with Greece. The idea that this military organization, allied with and directed by two communist dictators, had any interest in a democratic state is insane.
- greenonion 11y agoSo since some of the Greek fighters - meaning those who allied with the British against the Nazis, had communist ideals you assume that all they wanted was a violent take over and establishing communism. And based on that assumption you justify the British for (a) arming Nazi collaborators and (b) opening fire against civilians in a peaceful demonstration. Well done!
- mafribe 11y agoStalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's from 1922 until his death in 1953. In the years following Lenin's death in 1924, he became leader of the Soviet Union and the ComIntern. One cannot have been a communist in Europe in these times without being in an active supporter of Stalin. The ComIntern and essentially all European communist parties were under strict control of Moscow/Stalin. Those who opposed Stalin typically faced a violent end. Of course after Stalin's death and the concommitant weakening of communist power, most communists active during Stalin's times lied about their involvement.
- alvarosm 11y agoThis article, as much of what's published in the west nowadays, is a terribly shameful and outright dangerous reinterpretation and re-writing of history from a communist standpoint. Stalin wouldn't have done a better propaganda job.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- toolsadmin 11y agoBritain in 1944, Germany today. The Greek people need to throw off the imperial yoke.