Battle of Meligalas

Following the German invasion of Greece in April 1941, Adolf Hitler desired to quickly extricate German forces for the impending invasion of the Soviet Union. As a result, the largest portion of the occupied country, including the Peloponnese, came under Italian military control. Western Thrace and eastern Macedonia came under Bulgarian control, and various strategically important areas (notably Athens and Piraeus, Crete, and Thessaloniki with Central Macedonia) remained under German control.[3][4]

In the Kalamata Province, the nascent communist-led National Liberation Front (EAM) began its activity in 1942, promoting passive resistance to the unpopular confiscation of crops by the Italian military authorities, and began the first steps to form partisan troops.[5][6] The first left-wing groups formed across the Peloponnese; their engagements were limited to skirmishes with the Greek Gendarmerie and the Italian Army, and by late 1942 they were almost all either destroyed or forced to evacuate to Central Greece.[7] In April 1943, when the Peloponnese was considered "partisan-free" by the occupation authorities, the wing commander Dimitris Michas, who had previously been imprisoned by the Italians, formed a new partisan group on orders from EAM. Following his first successes, and with the arrival of reinforcements requested from the mainland, the group grew and began openly attacking Italian soldiers and their Greek informants.[7][8][9] By June 1943, the number of Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS) partisans in the Peloponnese reached about 500 men in total. Due to the lack of a central command and the difficulties of communication, they were dispersed and operated as quasi-autonomous groups.[10] In August 1943, according to a German intelligence report, partisan activity spiked in the mountainous areas of Messenia, where 800 men under Kostas Kanellopoulos operated.[11]

In early 1943, the "Hellenic Army" (ES), formed by mostly royalist former officers, was established as a Resistance group and formed its own small armed groups, which clashed with the Italians. Initially it declared itself a politically independent and neutral force, but after forging ties with royalist networks chiefly in the area and in Athens, it shifted to an anti-EAM stance by July.[12][11] The British made efforts to unify the local Resistance groups in the Peloponnese, but these failed, and in August 1943 ES clashed with ELAS, while some of its most prominent leaders, such as Dionysios Papadongonas and possibly also Tilemachos Vrettakos, respectively sought collaboration with the Italian and German occupation authorities against ELAS. However, the apparent delay of German assistance, the losses suffered by Vrettakos' men in a clash with a German force at Pyrgaki, Arcadia, and the cessation of Allied air drops to both ES and ELAS, resulted in the defeat and dissolution of the former at the hands of the latter in October. This left EAM/ELAS as the sole organized Resistance force in the Peloponnese.[13][14]

German troops enter the formerly Italian zone, Corfu 1943

In the meantime, after the Italian capitulation in September 1943, the overall command of anti-partisan operations in the southern Peloponnese fell to the German major general Karl von Le Suire, commander of the 117th Jäger Division, which had been moved to the area in July. In October, Le Suire was named the sole military commander in the Peloponnese.[15] The town of Meligalas in northern Messenia, which under Italian occupation had housed a Carabinieri station, now became the seat of two German infantry companies.[16][17] The Italian capitulation led to the immediate and considerable reinforcement of ELAS in morale, personnel, and materiel,[18] and with British support ELAS forces began attacking German targets.[19] In the mountainous districts of the Peloponnese, representatives of EAM/ELAS translated their monopoly of armed resistance into the exercise of authority, but faced difficulties with the mostly conservative and royalist local population.[20][21][22] Peasant disaffection was further fuelled by the requirement to feed the partisans amidst conditions of malnourishment and a general disruption of the agricultural production caused by the mounting hyperinflation and by the large-scale German anti-partisan sweeps (Säuberungen).[23][24] These operations involved reprisals against the civilian population, following a July order of the commander of the LXVIII Corps, Hellmuth Felmy.[25] In the Peloponnese, Le Suire carried these orders out with particular ruthlessness, particularly as the partisan threat mounted, resulting in the Kalavryta massacre in December.[26]

A soldier of the Evzone Security Battalions photographed next to an executed EPON member (Athens, 1944).

In 1943, the German commanders in Greece concluded that their own forces were insufficient to suppress ELAS. As a result, and in order to "spare German blood", the decision was taken to recruit the anti-communist elements of Greek society to fight EAM.[27][28][29] Apart from the "Evzone Battalions" (Ευζωνικά Τάγματα) established by the collaborationist government of Ioannis Rallis, in late 1943 independent "Security Battalions" (Τάγματα Ασφαλείας, ΤΑ) began being raised, particularly in the Peloponnese, where the political affiliations of a large part of the population and the violent dissolution of ES provided a broad recruitment pool of anti-communists — five battalions in total, which were placed under the overall command of Papadongonas.[30][31] After a request of the collaborator prefect of Messenia, Dimitrios Perrotis, the Rallis government ordered in February a municipality-supported Security Battalion to be formed in Kalamata, which merged in March with the Security Battalion under the command of Major Panagiotis Stoupas, that arrived from Athens in Meligalas,[32] a location that controlled the road from Kalamata to Tripolis and the entire area of the south.[33] After all officers of the Military District of Messenia were drafted following Papadongonas's intervention, the Security Battalion of Messenia, having major Panagiotis Georganas as commandant, included five companies, one stationed at Kopanaki, another at Kalamata, which transformed into a batallion with major Antonios Smyrlis as its commander, and three stationed at Meligalas.[34] The Security Battalions were subordinated to the Higher SS and Police Leader in Greece, Walter Schimana, but the development of relations of trust between the individual battalion commands and the local German authorities led to them enjoying a relative freedom of movement.[35][36] The Security Battalions served as garrisons in towns across the Peloponnese, but also increasingly participated in German anti-partisan operations; they chose those that would be executed among prisoners and themselves executed hostages as reprisals for partisan attacks on German targets (as happened after the execution of Major General Franz Krech by ELAS in April 1944),[37][38] gaining a reputation for lack of discipline and brutality.[39] Officers and supporters of the Security Battalion of Meligalas-Kalamata publicly vindicated its actions in anticommunist declarations against EAM, similar in content with the era's Nazi discourse, with antisemitic and anti-slavic references and defending conservative values.[40]

ELAS fighters

After suffering some early blows, ELAS managed to recover its influence, and from 1944 conducted constant sabotage on the supply routes used by the German army.[37][41] In April 1944, ELAS for the first time attacked a town held by a German garrison at Meligalas, but the assault was beaten back.[42] In the same month, EAM leader Georgios Siantos, following reports of indiscipline among the partisan forces in the Peloponnese, sent there Aris Velouchiotis as representative of the Political Committee of National Liberation (PEEA), EAM's newly established parallel government. Velouchiotis' task was to reorganize the 3rd ELAS Division, with a total strength of some 6,000 men.[43][44][45] They were facing 18,000 German soldiers and 5,000 Battalionists.[46] Velouchiotis quickly imposed strict discipline, managing to reverse the decline in partisan numbers and increase the number of their attacks on enemy targets.[47] The deterioration of the military situation led Felmy to declare the Peloponnese as a combat zone in May, which allowed Le Suire to in turn declare martial law, limiting the civilian population's freedom of movement and assembly.[48][49] Nevertheless, the sweeps and reprisals by the Germans and their collaborators were not enough to reverse ELAS penetration of the countryside in Messenia and neighbouring Laconia.[50] In the area of Kalamata, where during the occupation thousands of homes were torched and about 1,500 people had been executed, the reprisals of the Security Battalions continued until late summer.[51] Following the assassination of Georganas by the OPLA of Kalamata in June, Smyrlis executed 27 communists in retribution.[52] In late August, while clashes between the ELAS and the Germans had decreased, those between ELAS and the Security Battalions increased steadily.[53]

In November 1943, the Moscow Conference issued a joint "Statement on Atrocities" by the Allied leaders Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, concerning the prosecution and trial of those Germans responsible for war crimes against occupied nations. This also served as the basis for the condemnation of Axis collaborators in the occupied countries.[55] In the spirit of this declaration, the Greek government in exile announced the revocation of Greek nationality from the members of the collaborationist governments, while PEEA issued a legal act proscribing the death penalty for high treason to those who collaborated with the occupation authorities, including the members of the Security Battalions.[56] However, the burgeoning confrontation between EAM and the government in exile and its British backers, who at least since 1943 began to view EAM as an obstacle to their own plans for Britain's post-war role in Greece, led the British to consider the possibility of using the Security Battalions as part of the planned post-war national Greek army, or at least as a means of applying pressure and getting EAM to agree to support a national unity government. Thus, during negotiations on forming a new government, Georgios Papandreou, head of the government in exile, resisted the pressure of the PEEA delegates to publicly condemn the Security Battalions, arguing that this had already been done in the Lebanon Conference in May 1944, and in June he caused the Allied propaganda against the Security Battalions, both through the dropping of leaflets and through radio emissions, to be suspended.[57][58]

With the Red Army advancing in the Eastern Front and the invasion of Romania, on 23 August 1944 the German command decided to withdraw the 117th Division from the Peloponnese. Three days later the complete evacuation of German forces from mainland Greece was decided.[59][60] The British desired the maintenance of the status quo until the arrival of their forces and the Papandreou government, and above all wanted to avoid German arms and equipment from falling into the hands of the partisans.[61] On the other hand, EAM/ELAS and its supporters were eager for revenge on the remnants of the collaborationist Gendarmerie and the Security Battalions.[61] In his capacity as commander of the General Staff of ELAS, Velouchiotis had sent to the 3rd ELAS Division a plan of action to assume control of cities by people's power after the German withdrawal and the "dissolution of the Security Battalions by any means and with full force."[46] After the German troops withdrew from the Peloponnese, the position of their former allies became highly precarious, and fears of ELAS reprisals spread.[62] On 3 September, the military head of ELAS, Stefanos Sarafis, issued a proclamation calling upon the members of the Security Battalions to surrender with their weapons, in order to safeguard their lives.[63] On the same day the British lieutenant general Ronald Scobie, appointed joint commander-in-chief of all Greek forces, issued an order to his deputy in Athens, the Greek lieutenant general Panagiotis Spiliotopoulos, to recommend to the Security Battalions personnel to either desert or to surrender themselves to him, with the promise that they would be treated as regular prisoners of war. This order, however, either did not apply to the Security Battalions in the Peloponnese or was in the event ignored by them.[64] As EAM had joined the Papandreou government on 15 August, on 6 September a formal declaration of the new national unity government was issued, in which the members of the Security Battalions were designated as criminals against the fatherland, and called upon to "immediately abandon" their positions and join the Allies. At the same time, the declaration called on the Resistance forces to stop any acts of reprisal, insisting that dispensing justice was a right reserved by the state and not of "organizations and individuals", while promising that "the national nemesis will be implacable".[65][66][67]

Men of the Security Battalions rest in the countryside (1943)

During the last months of the German occupation, Walter Blume, the head of the German security police (SD) developed the so-called "chaos thesis", involving not only a thorough scorched earth policy, but also encouraging the slide of Greece into civil war and chaos. While Blume's more radical proposals concerning the elimination of the (mostly anti-communist and pro-British) pre-war political leadership were halted by more sober elements in the German leadership,[68] as they withdrew from the Peloponnese in early September, the Germans destroyed bridges and railway lines and left weapons and ammunition to the Security Battalions, laying the groundwork for a civil war with ELAS.[63]

Based on the denunciation of the Security Battalions by the national unity government, ELAS considered the Security Battalions as enemy formations.[62] At Pyrgos, the capital of Elis Prefecture, the commander of the local battalion, Georgios Kokkonis, announced that he placed his unit under the command of the exiled king George II and the national government. Kokkonis conducted negotiations with ELAS, trying to prevent its entry into the city before the arrival of an official government representative, while ELAS demanded the immediate disarmament of the unit. In the end, ELAS attacked on 9 September and after a bloody struggle seized the city on the next day.[69][70] At Tripolis, the negotiations between Colonel Papadongonas and 3rd ELAS Division quickly broke down. As the partisans surrounded the city, mining the roads and cutting off its water supply, and their own ammunition began to run out, the Battalionists descended into panic. Some defected, but the remainder installed a regime of terror in the city: anyone even suspected of ties to the partisans was imprisoned and Papadongonas threatened to blow them up if ELAS attacked, while his men mined the city and executed people on the streets. Nevertheless, Papadongonas was able to hold out until the end of September, when he surrendered to a British unit.[51]

The Battalionists installed a heavy machine gun in the clock tower of the main church in Meligalas, Agios Ilias, and distributed the c. 50 light machine guns they possessed in houses around the church and in semi-circular ramparts around the paddock of Meligalas.[77] They also fortifed the houses and cleared the surrounding area, hindering ELAS's advance.[75] ELAS forces, numbering c. 1,200 men from the 8th and 9th Regiments, launched their attack at dawn of 13 September.[78] The attack followed a plan laid down with the participation of Giannis Michalopoulos (nom de guerre "Orion") from the staff of the 9th ELAS Brigade: 2/9 Battalion assumed the sector between the Meligalas–Anthousa and Meligalas–Neochori roads, 1/9 Battalion assumed the sector northeast of Profitis Ilias height, 3/9 Battalion the northern sector up to the road towards Meropi, and 1/8 Battalion the eastern plain until the road to Skala. At the Skala heights, ELAS also positioned its sole 10.5 cm gun (lacking a gun carriage), commanded by the artillery captain Kostas Kalogeropoulos.[78] The ELAS plan aimed at the rapid advance of 2/9 Battalion, under Captain Tasos Anastasopoulos ("Kolopilalas") from the edge of the settlement to the main square, so that the Agios Ilias fort could be attacked on two sides.[79]

The attackers, however, encountered a minefield of improvised mines (boxes with dynamite) planted by the Battalionists the previous afternoon and evening, during the negotiations with ELAS.[80] A new plan was made, aiming at the storming of Agios Ilias by a company of 2/9 Battalion under Kostas Basakidis.[81] This new assault forced the Battalionists to dismount the heavy machine gun from the clock tower, while the attack of 1/8 Battalion forced the garrison of the railway station to retreat to the bedesten, where a number of EAM sympathizers were being held hostage,[82] while major Smyrlis was located by ELAS partisans and was executed.[52] From the afternoon to nightfall, the lines of the combatants remained the same, but the losses suffered by the Battalionists led to a fall in their morale and unwillingness to continue the battle.[83] Their commander, Major Dionysios Papadopulos, sent a delegation to request aid from Panagiotis Stoupas in nearby Gargalianoi, but the delegates abandoned their mission as soon as they left Meligalas.[84]

The next day, a British group got ELAS's permission to approach the besieged Battalionsts, to facilitate their surrender, but their proposal was rejected anew.[85] At noon of 14 September, a group of 30 partisans attacked by throwing German Teller mines on the barbed wire protecting Agios Ilias, but was repulsed amidst a hail of fire by the Battalionists. A squad under Basakidis managed to breach the barricades of the defenders, but left without support, they were thrown back in a counterattack led by the sergeant major Panagiotis Benos.[86] Fighting without cover in a plain, the partisans had many casualties.[75] The sight of wounded ELAS fighters, and news of a murder committed by Battalionists, heightened the hostile mood among the civilians observing the battle.[87]

On the morning of 15 September, the leaders of the Security Battalions met in council. Major Papadopoulos proposed attempting a breakthrough in the direction of Gargalianoi, but the council was abruptly interrupted when the house was hit by a mortar bomb. In addition, rumours of the breakthrough plan were spread by Perrotis' men, panicking the wounded Battalionists, but also the imprisoned EAM sympathizers.[88] The council was terminated following a new ELAS attack on Agios Ilias, during which Basakidis' men, using hand grenades and submachine guns, managed to push the Battalionists back. From their new positions, four ELAS partisans began firing with their light machine guns into the interior of the town, while on the sector of 1/8 Battalion, Battalionists began raising white flags in surrender. A few dozen Battalionists under Major Kazakos tried to escape to the south and thence to Derveni, but suffered heavy casualties from the Reserve ELAS, the Mavroskoufides (Velouchiotis' personal guard), and a squad of 11th ELAS Regiment at the heights near Anthousa.[89] Velouchiotis's personal guard and part of the 11th Regiment from Arcadia accompanied Velouchiotis himself, who had issued battle orders, was kept up-to-date for developments via radio and, having been informed that ELAS was winning, rushed to inspect the situation.[46]

The lawyer Vasilis Bravos, head of the ELAS court martial that ordered the executions at the well

The end of the battle was followed by the invasion of Meligalas by civilians, and an unchecked plunder and massacre,[90] by a multitude of relatives of the Battalionists's victims who sought revenge.[91] According to a contemporary report preserved in the archives of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), these were inhabitants of the village of Skala, which had been torched by the German army.[92] Among the captive Battalionists held in the bedesten, Velouchiotis—who arrived at Meligalas shortly after the end of the battle with his personal escort[46]—recognized a gendarme whom he had previously arrested and then released, and ordered his execution.[93] The first reprisal wave, tacitly encouraged by ELAS through the deliberately loose guarding of its captives,[94] was followed by a series of organized executions.[17][93]

A partisan court martial was set up in the town, headed by the lawyers Vasilis Bravos and Ioannis Karamouzis. This court summarily condemned not only the c. 60 officers and other leaders of the Battalions—lists with their names had been provided by local EAM cells—but also many others, including for reasons having more to do with personal differences rather than any crime committed. The executions took place at an abandoned well ("πηγάδα") outside the town.[17][95] According to usual practice, to avoid the executioners being recognized, the executions were carried out by an ELAS detachment from a different area, most likely a squad of 8th Regiment, whose men were from the area of Kosmas and Tsitalia in Arcadia.[96]

Depending on their ideological and political sympathies, sources vary in the way they present the stance of Velouchiotis and his comrades in the events, ranging from hagiographical emphasis on acts of clemency towards civilians until their portrayal as bloodthirsty criminals. On 17 September, Velouchiotis moved to Kalamata,[46] where Perrotis and other collaborationist officials were also brought. At the central square of the city, the enraged crowd broke the ranks of the ELAS militia and lynched some of the prisoners, while twelve of them were hanged from lampposts.[62][51]

The cemetery of the victims of the massacre

In an ELAS communique of 26 September 1944, Major General Emmanouil Mantakas reported that "800 Rallides [the derogatory nickname for the Battalionists, after the collaborationist PM Ioannis Rallis] were killed",[97] a number repeated by Stefanos Sarafis in his own book on ELAS.[98] A Red Cross report, which generally tried to be as objective as possible, stated that the number of dead "exceeded 1,000",[99] while a year later, the team of the noted Greek coroner Dimitrios Kapsaskis reported that it recovered 708 corpses from Meligalas.[100]

The post-war right-wing establishment insisted on a considerably higher tally, with estimates ranging from 1,110 to over 2,500 victims. Thus the National Radical Union politician Kosmas Antonopoulos, whose father had been executed by ELAS, wrote about 2,100 executed people at Meligalas, although he cites data for 699 people.[17][101] In contrast, authors sympathetic to EAM reduce the number of executions considerably: the most detailed account calculates 120 killed in action and 280–350 executed.[17] Ilias Theodoropoulos, whose brother was killed in Meligalas, in his book (distributed by the "Society of Victims of the Meligalas Well") mentions from 1,500 to over 2,000 dead, and provides a list with 1,144 names (of whom 108 from Meligalas) of those killed in action and those executed by ELAS (including some of those lynched in Kalamata, such as Perrotis).[102] Among the victims are 18 elderly,[17] 22 women and 9 adolescents (8 boys and a girl),[102] while all the rest—with some exceptions where age is not mentioned[102]—are men of fighting age.[17][103]