GREECE - HELL FOR UTOPIA
Wambaugh, Sarah
Greece — Hell for Utopia By Sarah Wambaugh ACOMMUNIST, according to a recent definition, "wants to set up Hell today for the sake of a doubtful heaven in a distant future." There could be...
...A year later, a guerilla foi recalled ELAS was added to it...
...For the American Mission for Aid to Greece has cleared the porta and airfields of rubble, reopened the Corinth Canal, rebuilt the railroads, resurfaced the main highways, replenished the rolling stock, and started irrigation and fertilizer projects...
...She is considered the foremost' authority on International plebiscites...
...If we did, we would find that Moscow's plot to seize Greece dates back to as early as 194...
...And at the same time, it was the Communist workers who were about to start a nationwide strike...
...Spirited but desperate, these 700,000 refugees, herded together in cramped quarters, seem the most pathetic people in Europe...
...Everyone not in ELAS was ;• reactionary The purpose <>f ELAS \va.» npt so much to fight the Germans .1to advance the ideology of Communism...
...The Russians refused to take part...
...Today we have at last threaded oui way through the Communist vocabulary: we know they mean Communist when they say "democratic...
...and cut down vast numbers of trees...
...In the plebiscite of September 1947, the majority again voted for the restoration of the monarchy...
...TO THIS PICTURE of ruin and agony, the EAM-ELAS added, in thenrevolt of December 1944, more thousands of murders and the destruction of hundreds of other villages, farms, olive groves, and tobacco fields...
...There the Corninform— hoping' either to establish a Communist Revolutionary Utopia, or at least to sway Greece and Turkey into the Soviet orbeit—uses the Greek guerillas to wreck Greek economy and morale, all the while promising "a higher standard of living" and "a more democratic economic system...
...It slates openly that it—the KKE—led the re- - volt of 1944, and that it leads the one raging since 1946...
...makes it plain that both revolts are part of the continuous Communist revolution...
...There could be no better illustration of this than in Greece...
...T,he great number of non-Communists in EAM-ELAS was confusing not only to foreign observers, but also to many Greeks, who, seeing their friends in it, refused to believe charges of Communsit domination...
...AS THE EAM-ELAS became the chief resistance army, thousands of Greeks of, alL...
...and the driving of countless thousands to the forlorn existence of dependent, homeless refugees...
...LT...
...expropriated all the wheat, tobacco, raisins,'and cotton...
...Although the Communists and Socialists abstained from voting, 60 per cent of the registered electorate voted and gave a considerable majority to the Royalist party...
...using sincerely democratic officers and men, staged Us mutinies among the Greek forces Vin Egypt in 1943...
...destroyed virtually all agricultural and industrial equipment...
...it succeeded in making us think that these were justified rebellions on the part of democratic Greeks against a "fascist" regime, father" than Communist-inspired effJljtSj to seize the army and navy of By the time EAM-ELAS staged its seoond revolt, in December, 1944, the German, Bulgarian and Italian occupation armies had managed to annihilate, about eight percent of the population This was the highest percentage of any of the allies...
...As for the epithet "monarcho-fascist," there has been no excuse for fastening it, on any Greek government since the Second World War} however backward or inept these governments may have appeared...
...C. M. WOODHOUSE...
...The ELAS, by its numerous and • terrible atrocities in the December '44 uprising, was the largest single factor in bringing about a more favorable climate for the monarchy...
...It is more probable that he objected to the Moscow plan to hand over Greek Macedonia to a Bulgariandominated "Balkan federation...
...THE COMMUNIST POLICY of death and destruction goes on, but the Communist leaders in Greece are beginning to question its efficacy in gaining followers...
...And, in the service of the Allies, Greece lost three quarters of her shipping, which had ranked ninth in the world...
...t * IF CONGRESS, IN MAY 1947, had not adopted the Truman Doctrine, there is little doubt that the guerillas would have swept Greece into the Communist fold...
...Not only have they deliberately destroyed great numbers of agricultural machines, livestock, forests, factories, public works, bridges, railroads, rolling stock, highways, and trucks...
...In two and a half years they have burned hundreds of more towns and villages, killed thousands of civilians as "enemies of the people," kidnapped great numbers of young men and women, and added new thousands of refugees to those already homeless...
...MARKOS WAS ELIMINATED, it is said, for rebelling against the terroristic policy...
...Thus when EAM...
...And what of the 25,000 Greek children seized by the guerillas to be reared as Communists behind the Iron Curtain...
...They did not . suspect that a Communist revolution would be the EAM's first move after the expulsion of the Germans...
...The general feeling among many who were staunch republicans was that Greece had to have as strong a government as possible to prevent another Communist revolt...
...th> EAM and ELAS did not view the war as one between national groups, but between two rival ideologic.-.—the "iv representing Progress, the other Reaction...
...But today, the KKE no longer uses the camouflage of the EAM...
...So efficient was EAM propaganda, that many people believed that the Communists had no hand in the revolt...
...But we have not revieved the events which took place in Greece during our period of innocence...
...wiped out cattle and livestock...
...They had abducted from Greece more than 85,000 hostages...
...The murders, they thought, could not be attributed to the ELAS, that noble "democratic army fighting against monarcho-fascism...
...They had caused 1,200,000 refugees to seek shelter in the already over-crowded cities of Athens and Salonika...
...They had bombed to uselessness the Corinth Canal, Greece's eight airfields, and countless railroads, ports, bridges, and roads...
...In this atmosphere, the elections of March, 1946, were held, under the observation of an American-BritishFrench mission...
...Monarcho-fascist" is just another of those many Communist epithets which have gained credence by constant repetition...
...women and children...
...made the pattern very clear...
...In an article published in the journal of the Cominform on December IS, 1948, Nicholas Zachariades, secretary-general of the KKE...
...They hate all dictatorships Many' of them could not forgive the King for breaking his oath to uphold the constitution...
...According to Col...
...They therefore favored the king's return...
...Woodhouse...
...the razing of hundreds of villages...
...When King George IJ sot up the Metaxas dictatorship, it was the sixteen Communist deputies in the National Assembly who held the balance of power between the Conservative royalist and the Republican center groups and made parliamentary government Impossible...
...Although Greece was invaded early in 1941, it was not until September that the Greek Communist Party—the KKE —set up the National Resistance Front —EAM...
...They had started a serious inflation of the currency...
...parties—including royalists—flocked into it...
...In spite of our material assistance and »technical' advice, the guerillas — enjoying aid from their Slav Communist neighbors — have managed to push their policy of death and destruction to terrible lengths...
...Or so the confused minds had it...
...Woodhouse was commander of the Allied Military Mission to the Greek guerillas (during die war against Germany...
...THE GREEKS ARE traditionally democratic...
...Then plan for a popular uprising has failed dismally...
...If Moscow would-call off her guerilla forces, and stop aid from her, Slav •satellites, order would be quickly restored, jobs would be plentiful and;the Mission would not only be able'to raise the country to its pre-war''state but could improve it to such a degree that ravished Greece, today., so tragic and distraught in its ageless beauty, would feel that it had indeed exchanged Kelt for Utopia, GREEK CIVIL WAR REFUGEES For Them the Millenium Hat Nat Arrived Sarah Wambaugh was formerly •ptclal adviser to the chief of the U. S. mission to observe the Greek •lections...
...they were the work of government and British troops...
...in his book "The Apple of Discord...
...The truth Is that the only Greek government which might conceivably be called "monarcho-fasclst" was the Metaxas dictatorship, which ruled from August 1936 until 1941...
...Additional thousands of refugees fled their ruined homes and swarmed into Athens and Salonika...
...At once the EAM ordered its guerilla bands "to the mountains...
...The Axis armies had destroyed, by bombardment or fire, 3,700 towns and villages in whole or in part...
...The mission estimated that only 15 per cent had abstained for political reasons...
...To the Greek masses, Soviet iaid means destruction, American aid means construction...
...In any case, it is plain that Communist policy still is to create Hell to gain Utopia...
...To confuted mindi abroad, such promises fully justify the killing of thousands of innocent men...
...Zachariades in his book, Et'erjyoiie to Arms, All for Victory, admits for the first time that the policy of terror has hampered rathei than helped recruiting...
...Her book, "Plebiscites Since .the World War," Is accepted as the authoritative work on the subject...
...The 90,000 children among them are certainly the most pathetic of all...
...Stalin today would have been at the Dardanelles, a stone's throw from Istanbul...
Vol. 32 • April 1949 • No. 17
