For 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)<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
A 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".<p>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.<p>For countries lying directly on each side of the Iron Curtain, that war was not very cold.
What 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.<p>>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.”<p>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.<p>Ultimately one of the most important events that led to the end of the civil war was the split between Tito and Stalin (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito%E2%80%93Stalin_Split);" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito%E2%80%93Stalin_Split);</a> 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.<p>The idea that this military organization, allied with and directed by two communist dictators, had any interest in a democratic state is insane.
"The strong allegation that British troops fired on demonstrators was based on recollections, recounted as fact"<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/28/readers-editor-on-athens-44-british-army" rel="nofollow">http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/28/readers-editor-...</a>
Slightly 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).<p>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).<p>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".
This 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.