The Greek Civil War

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses the Greek Civil War which, in one form or another, ravaged Greece from roughly 1942 to 1949. In particular, the paper looks at the human and social toll of the war and also the geopolitical and international dimensions of the conflict as it raged on contemporaneously with the Second World War and then, later, with the early years of the Cold War. In the final analysis, the Greek Civil War exacted a terrible toll upon the people of Greece while, at the same time, made Greece one of the "hot-spots" in a much larger war between the world's two reigning superpowers.

From the Paper:

"From a social point-of-view, the Greek Civil War was a tragedy to the people of that land. The war tore apart families, razed villages, literally wiped out some communities, and tore at the fabric binding together Greeks of all political persuasions. More than that, the Greek Civil War, in the years from 1946 to 1949 when the conflict was at its worst - featuring as it did brutal and unrelenting warfare between the communist-controlled Democratic Army of Greece and the British and US-backed Greek National Army - about 80,000 people were killed and approximately 700,000 were forced to flee their homes - all this in a nation of only seven million souls (Clogg, 164). During the final phase of the war, in the late 1940s, Greek citizens residing in Northern Greece - especially along the Albanian and Yugoslavian borders - saw their villages over-run by government forces during the day and by partisans during the night. Furthermore, the Royal Greek Air Force bombed these communities at the same time as inhabitants were forced into the Democratic Army. Needless to say, many of these communities never recovered, with those civilians who survived the bloody warfare escaping to Europe or to North America to find better lives for themselves (Danforth, 174)."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Clogg, Richard. A Short History of Modern Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
• Danforth, Loring M. "'We Crossed a lot of Borders': Refugee Children of the Greek Civil War." A Journal of Transnational Studies, 12.2 (2003): 169-209.
• Gerolymatos, Andre. Red Acropolis, Black Terror: The Greek Civil War and the Origins of Soviet-American Rivalry, 1943-1949. New York: Basic Books.
• Iatrides, John O. (ed.). Ambassador MacVeagh Reports: Greece, 1933-1947. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.
• Iatrides, John O. and Nicholas X. Rizopoulos. The International Dimension of the Greek Civil War. World Policy Journal, 17.1 (2000):

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