Cretan resistance

The Cretan resistance (Greek: Κρητική Αντίσταση) was a resistance movement against the occupying forces of Nazi Germany and Italy by the residents of the Greek island of Crete during World War II. Part of the larger Greek Resistance, it lasted from May 20, 1941, when the German Wehrmacht invaded the island in the Battle of Crete, until the fall of 1945 when they surrendered to the British. For the first time during World War II, attacking German forces faced in Crete a valiant resistance from the local population. Cretan civilians picked off paratroopers or attacked them with knives, axes, scythes or even bare hands. As a result, great casualties were inflicted upon the invaders, which made Crete the swansong of German paratroopers.

Development
The Cretan resistance movement was formed very quickly after the Battle of Crete, with an initial planning meeting on 31 May 1941. It brought together a number of different groups and leaders and was initially termed the PMK (Πατριωτικó Μέτωπο Κρήτης – Patriotic Front of Crete), but later changed the name to EAM (Εθνικó Απελευθερωτικó Μέτωπο – National Liberation Front) like the principal resistance movement on the mainland. The primary objective of the movement on the one hand was to support the Cretan people under occupation by boosting morale, providing information, and distributing of food at a time of great deprivation (due to confiscations by the Germans and Italians), and on the other hand to undertake certain operations against the Germans, including a number of sabotage operations. A notable success was the battle to prevent the destruction of Kastelli airport by the Germans as they were leaving eastern Crete.

Three Ierapetra villages – the testimony of Vangelis Grassos
"“Pano Chorio, Kato Chorio and Episkopi […] formed a small community of 3000 people, positioned 7 km from Ierapetra, in the middle of the plain in a prominent position connecting the Ierapetra area with the Sitia mountain range. They were the strongest and most important base of EAM groups in Yerapetra-Siteia and were also the base for Italo-Germanic operations during the time of the German-Italian occupation. “Vassilis Grassos writes:

“[Our area] was the bastion of the Italians and the Germans and for this reason the occupiers put pressure on the local inhabitants through forced labour and beatings, purely to crush their spirit. They had taken the houses, the livestock and the livelihoods of everyone. Many left to live in makeshift huts in the surrounding mountain villages, in Thrifi etc. “So it was essential for everyone to organise themselves, in order to be able to confront the occupation. This was not an easy task, right in the lion’s den. And yet the first cell began to be organised up in Pano Chorio […] and in the other villages around. All these cells began to work feverishly to communicate with each other. So began the first sabotage against the occupation, despite the forced labour.

“We organised the wonderful EPON [EAM youth movement] [….]. Slowly the national liberation movement began to grow - EAM which embraced everyone. With the help of Major Ioannis Frantzeskaki and other key figures we managed to find a radio and to hear the political news, especially what was happening on the Russian front. The news bulletin, which was written by Vangelis Grassos, was taken by the EPONites and distributed to personnel in the surrounding villages, who read it to the members and so fired up their enthusiasm and their self-confidence for the final battle. We founded a branch of National Solidarity [EAM social welfare organisation] […].

“In 1944 the groups of andartes were increasing in the mountains of Malon-Selakano. […] At the time of the liberation there were two camps of andartes from ELAS Yerapetra-Siteia, with Vardakis Filoktitis as captain. The andartes captured Dr. Lavetzis, collaborator with the Germans, who had become the tormentor and the terror of the villages. It was he who organised the forced labour gangs and also dealt in foodstuffs on the black market. Some of the councillors who opposed his actions were denounced by him to the Italians, who arrested them and sent them to the prison camp of Moni Kroustallenia in Lasithi. [Two of these] were sent to Germany and died in the terrible German concentration camps. This traitor was tried by the andartes court and executed. […]

“Our group took part in all the missions of ELAS in eastern Crete up to the liberation of Heraklion and the establishment of normality. […] It reached a strength of 150 men, until it was dissolved after the Varkiza agreement.”"

Leading figures in the EAM resistance movement included Yiannis Podias, Miltiades Porfirogenis, Manolis Pitikakis, Nikos Samaritis, Nikos Raiinos, Emmanuel Manousakis, Rousos Koundouros and Mitsos Pappas. Well-known leaders of the EOK movement included Petrakogiorgis and Manolis Bandouvas, who was a prominent figure in EAM from 1941 to 1943, and joined EOK from 1943.

The Role of the British
Cretans and the Cretan resistance worked closely with the British, firstly when they aided the allied forces firstly in escaping from Crete and secondly when they worked together on acts of sabotage while Crete was a launching pad for German operations in Africa. This involved the British agents who remained on Crete, such as Patrick Leigh Fermor, Tom Dunbabin, Sandy Rendel, John Houseman, Xan Fielding, Dennis Ciclitira, Ralph Stockbridge and W. Stanley Moss. The New Zealander Dudley "Kiwi" Perkins became a legend for his courage, and after he was killed the Cretans kept his grave covered with flowers. The British formed a large number of isolated cells scattered throughout the mountains, with good communications between them. Attached to these cells were Greeks who otherwise tended to have no involvement with the main Cretan resistance movement, but worked very closely with the British agents, such as Leigh Fermor’s runner George Psychoundakis and Kimonas Zografakis, who was a member of the British Force 133 and involved in several operations. The British agents were responsible for some famous moments included the abduction of General Heinrich Kreipe led by Leigh Fermor and Moss, the battle of Trahili, the sabotage of Damasta led by Moss and the airfield sabotages of Heraklion and Kastelli.

The Cretan resistance movement had the support of the British while Crete had strategic importance for the North Africa campaign. However once that campaign had been successful, British activity in Crete focused on the second plank of its policy in Greece, i.e. to undermine the left-wing resistance movement. The British agent Patrick Leigh Fermor, for example, was instrumental in splitting Cretan resistance by setting up an alternative movement in 1943, funded and supplied by the British, to which they attracted figures such as Manolis Bandouvas. As on the mainland, the British launched an aggressive campaign of anti-EAM and anti-communist propaganda. Cretan writers such as Manolis Kokolakis have suggested that Bandouvas’ murder of two German soldiers in EAM territory was on the suggestion of British agents, who may have hoped that the ensuing bloodbath of German reprisals (the Holocaust of Viannos) would deal a blow to the left-wing movement. It is, furthermore, the view of Kimonas Zografakis, who took part in the abduction of Kreipe, that the kidnapping of the General was carried out for the same reason.

Sanoudakis argues in his article "Leigh Fermor was a classic agent" that "Patrick Leigh Fermor was neither a great philhellene, nor a new Lord Byron for Greece who fought and loved at the same time. Fundamentally he was a classic agent who served faithfully the interests of Britain and as a cultivated gentleman wrote good travel books. Anything else that the people of Greece attribute to him derives from either ignorance or innocence or anglophilia, ignoring the terrible sufferings he caused our country at that time".

The Cretan population paid a high price for its involvement and support of the resistance. In reprisal, the German occupation forces proceeded to numerous brutal attacks against local civilians. Standing out among the list of atrocities, are the holocausts of Viannos and Kedros in Amari, the destruction of Anogia and Kandanos, and the massacre of Kondomari. In several documented reprisal executions carried out during the occupation, 3,471 Cretans lost their lives.

Even crueller was the growing sense of betrayal on the part of their presumed allies, the British. The British were reluctant to arm the left-wing resistance movement, even confiscating ammunition intended to go to resistance groups under siege. Perhaps most incredible was the British decision, after the Germans surrendered to the British in May 1945, that the Germans be permitted to keep their arms and given the task of ‘keeping order’ in the city of Hania. As a consequence of the authority given to the Germans Cretans continued to die even after German capitulation. Hagen Fleischer terms this period the joint Anglo-German rule, while Stavros Blontakis speaks of the Anglo-German occupation.

According to the Cretan resistance fighter Michalis Kokolakis: “Crete saw with her own eyes and through her own bloody experience the meaning of British suzerainty. The English overlords prevented her from organising and arming herself for the battle of Crete. At the critical hour of the Battle of Crete they betrayed her and left. As long as Crete was of vital strategic importance for the campaigns in Africa in 1941-42, she saw all her resistance organisations without distinction working together on sabotage missions. And when after 1942 Crete lost her strategic value, she saw the British working to split the resistance movement, issuing anti-EAM propaganda and, with Glücksberg [the king], preparing fascist solutions for our country.

“She saw the British openly collaborating with the Germans when they had concentrated in Hania, and, after their capitulation, giving them the responsibility for keeping order in Hania.

“She saw their recommendations, when the Italians capitulated, not to give their weapons to the Greek people, to the resistance, but to the Germans, even though the Germans were their common enemy.

“She saw the British allies take as spoils of war the 10,000 vehicles which the Germans had amassed in Hania and throw them into the sea, even though Crete was lacking in transport.

“She also saw them claim as spoils of war the 5 million litres of oil that the Germans had requisitioned from the people of Crete. And saw the rule of law they imposed after the Treaty of Varkiza [i.e. the White Terror], and the civil war.”

The Aftermath
Because of their collusion with communist forces in trying to detach Macedonia Greece, no members of ELAS/EAM were accepted for the new Greek army. While it was a condition of the Varkiza agreement that collaborators would be brought to justice, in practice it was far more likely for communist sympathizing resistance members to be persecuted, imprisoned or executed.

Vangelis Grassos continues:

"The Kazantzakis and Grassos families suffered the greatest oppression and had the greatest number of victims of the post-December regime (see The Dekemvrianá). At the demonstration in Yerapetra of 23/3/1944 [sic - actually 1945] were killed Xenoula Grassos, 19 years old, Efthymia Kazantakis, aged 65, and Yiannis Grassos, aged 30.  Among the injured were Michalis Grassos and Nikos Dermitzakis, along with many others.

"In 1947 the Kazantzakis and Grassos families and Georgia Frantzeskaki were exiled to Krousta. They were imprisoned and tortured in order to force their brother Dimitris Kazantzakis to give himself up after the defeat of the Podias company in Psiloritis. "They burnt the house and business of Vangelis Grassos and took his car and driver’s license. This is the way our country rewarded us for what we did for her freedom." In 2005, a documentary was released titled The 11th Day: Crete 1941, which relates events of the Cretan resistance through various eyewitnesses.