Liberation That Never Was
FRANGOS, GEORGE
Liberation That Never Was THE SWORD'S FIERCE EDGE: A JOURNAL OF THE OCCUPATION OF GREECE, 1941-1944 Vanderbilt University Press. 131 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by GEORGE FRANGOS Department of History...
...And the carabinieri look at them respectfully...
...Thirty-one months ago, an unrepresentative element of the extreme Right managed once more to destroy the moderate Center...
...They succeeded, and the result was political polarization and a reactionary-dominated government throughout the 1950s...
...Although eam-elas had been established by the Greek Communist party, the vast majority of its membership was non-Communist Left and Center...
...The Sword's Fierce Edge was not written with eventual publication in mind...
...Their dreams, however, proved illusory-liberation was immediately followed by civil war...
...Nicknamed the "British Golden Brigade," it was formed late in the War to counter the influence of the National Liberation Front-National Popular Liberation Army (eam-elas), which by 1944 had virtual control of the entire country...
...But despite her sympathy, there remained a distance between Mrs...
...In the morning, newly shaven, with fresh linen, they sit chatting and smoking, and might almost be at the Club...
...Of her close friends who have been arrested she says: "These days the best people are to be found in Averoff Prison-Some important officers and many other excellent Greeks...
...Tsatsos and those to whom she directed her aid...
...Some readers will also be interested to learn that the Archbishop "saved" Greek Jews from the Nazis by baptizing them in secret...
...What she neglects to point out, after clearly acknowledging its British support, is that ekka was actually London's creation...
...Mrs...
...Indeed, the several resistance organizations that sprang up during the occupation fought not only against the invaders but for a freer homeland than the one they had known...
...Tsatsos would have us believe that the resistance organization with which she was associated, the National and Social Liberation (ekka), was of major importance...
...In simple, direct, yet often eloquent language, Mrs...
...While working closely with Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens to assist poor families, for example, she remarks that she is "cheered by this regular contact with simple people...
...They were very different from those of most other Greeks, and herein lies the special interest of her book...
...It managed to attract millions who sincerely believed a freely elected postwar government would, in the spirit of national unity, generate a reformation and modernization of Greek society...
...Not until the early years of the current decade did a coalition capable of leading Greece out of its backwardness begin to develop...
...Thus The Sword's Fierce Edge commemorates a liberation that still has never been fully achieved...
...Nevertheless, even the occasional attempts to inform the reader of certain events, and to identify particular people and organizations, are too often incomplete and misleading-as are the notes added for publication...
...The familiar gap between city and rural village was at least momentarily bridged, and sophisticated upper-class Athenians who preferred French or German to their native language accepted their "Balkan" peasants as fellow countrymen...
...She shared, though not always directly, the anguish of those who suffered starvation, imprisonment, torture, and the loss of close relatives in German reprisals...
...Reviewed by GEORGE FRANGOS Department of History Columbia University Mussolini's invasion of Greece in 1940 marked the first time in the country's modern history that it responded to an event as a unified nation...
...But instead of supporting the non-Communist elements in eam-elas, and thereby insuring the development of a broad-based, democratic political party-a phenomenon virtually unknown in Greece-the British worked for its complete demise...
...Tsatsos (wife of a prominent Greek academician and sister of the Nobel laureate for literature George Seferis) set down her personal experiences...
...Moreover, the atmosphere in' Greece today is much like the one described by Jeanne Tsatsos in The Sword's Fierce Edge, a private journal kept during 1941-44 and now published in English to commemorate the liberation...
...In the face of a common enemy, it seemed possible to resolve the political, regional and class antagonisms that had led to the establishment in 1936 of the still dominant Rightist Metaxas dictatorship...
...Along with many upper-class women, she courageously engaged in philanthropic work and used her position to help thousands of less fortunate fellow citizens...
...Even after the 1941 defeat at the hands of Hitler's divisions, for many Greeks this patriotic solidarity provided the hope that a "new Greece" would emerge following liberation...
...its personal and spontaneous impressions, the author tells us, were intended for her children...
...Further, while few will deny that Archbishop Damaskinos, a major figure in the journal, bravely stood by his people, many will take issue with his and the Greek Church's political role in the circumstances that led to civil war...
...To add to the irony of this year's 25th anniversary of the occupation's end, celebrated last October 12, it came at a time when the country once again found itself ruled by a dictatorial regime...
...Tsatsos was in intimate contact with the leadership...
...Mrs...
...For it honestly, if unintentionally, reflects the class antagonisms that were briefly eclipsed, but eventually led to the Greek civil wars of 1944-49...
...It may be unfair, therefore, to expect an accurate or complete picture of the political situation in Greece during the occupation...
...Her descriptions of human suffering and degradation at the hands of a ruthless enemy are powerful and moving...
Vol. 52 • November 1969 • No. 21
