Greek King George II and his ministers went into exile in Egypt with the retreating British forces in 1941. Almost immediately, Greek resistance groups formed. Of the various resistance movements that had appeared during the German occupation, the largest was the National Liberation Front (EAM), with the National People’s Liberation Army as its military wing. Relations were poor between it and the National Republican Greek League. Indeed, actual fighting broke out between the two groups in the winter of 1943–1944, although a truce was arranged in February 1944. As in Yugoslavia, the communist-dominated EAM apparently enjoyed wider support than the nationalist underground. When the Germans pulled out of Greece, EAM held the vast majority of the country. Greek society was fractured into three factions: the monarchists, republicans, and communists.

At approximately the same time, in October 1944 Churchill journeyed to Moscow to meet with Soviet leader Josef Stalin. Churchill struck a bargain with Stalin concerning predominance in various Balkan states, under the terms of which Britain was to have 90 percent predominance in Greece. The Greek communists, who had carried the brunt of resistance against the Axis and now controlled the majority of territory, understandably resented this imperial arrangement struck in Moscow and were unwilling to submit to it.

When the Nazis withdrew, George Papandreou, a left-of-center statesman, headed a government of national unity. Fearing the communist underground, however, he requested British troops, who began arriving early in October 1944. When the British called on the guerrilla forces to disarm and disband, EAM quit the cabinet, called a general strike, and held protest demonstrations. In this serious situation, Churchill took the impetuous decision to fly with foreign secretary Anthony Eden to Athens on Christmas Day 1944. Though the government and EAM reached accord early in 1945, it quickly broke down. EAM members took to the hills with their weapons.

#

From the very beginning of the Axis occupation, the Balkans were a theater for guerrilla warfare until the Red Army invaded in August 1944. In both Greece and Yugoslavia, there were Communist and non-Communist resistance groups, which often fought among themselves as well as against their Greek and Italian occupiers. In Greece, the lead was taken by the National People’s Liberation Army (ELAS), which came to be dominated by the Communists, and the National Republican Greek League (EDES). In Yugoslavia, the Chetniks were led by former army officers. Soon, a rival resistance group, known as the Partisans, came to the fore, dominated by the Communists. As in Greece, these two groups would become bitter enemies, even to the point of fighting one another. Ultimately, the British, who oversaw Allied aid to the Yugoslav resistance, decided to back only the Partisans, a decision that helped bring Josip Broz (Tito) to power in Yugoslavia after the war. The Yugoslav resistance largely freed the country from German control.

When Italy left the war in September 1943, Germany had to provide the occupying forces on its own, severely straining resources in men and material. The Allies also conducted a number of commando raids in the Balkans, including the German-occupied islands of the eastern Mediterranean.

In late August 1944, the Red Army’s 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts launched an offensive in Romania against Army Group Südukraine. Romania and Bulgaria soon capitulated and then switched sides, declaring war on Germany. In the case of Romania, these events occurred on 23 August and 4 September, and for Bulgaria, they took place on 25 August and 8 December 1944. In Greece, the Communists made three attempts to seize power: the first came during the 1943–1944 Axis occupation in anticipation of an early end to the war; the second occurred in Athens in December 1944; and the third effort came in the form of a bloody and prolonged civil war from 1946 to 1949. World War II in the Balkans was extremely costly in terms of human casualties, both directly—in actual military losses and civilian casualties resulting from warfare—and indirectly, stemming from shortages of food and other necessities.

In the immediate postwar period, the alignment of the Balkans actually worked out by and large along the lines of the agreement made between Churchill and Stalin at Moscow in October 1944. The Soviet Union dominated Romania and Bulgaria, whereas Greece ended up in the Western camp. Yugoslavia, which was to have been a fifty-fifty arrangement, freed itself from Moscow’s grip in 1949.