17 - Wartime occupation by Italy

Summary

This chapter discusses the stories of Second World War resistance, collaboration and liberation in Greece and Yugoslavia. The rise of the resistance was, in part, an attempt to fill the vacuum of political representation, to speak for Yugoslavs and Greeks. The organized state, including its most recent interwar Greek and Yugoslav manifestations, had always had a weak impact on the impoverished rural and mountainous Balkan interior. Axis occupation policies did not appear to be any different. Following their lightning invasion in April, elite German units were promptly withdrawn to take part in Operation Barbarossa. Collaboration is ultimately an 'occupier-driven phenomenon', as historian Jan Gross described it. The willingness of the occupiers to permit collaboration in Greece and Yugoslavia was also, to a certain extent, 'resistance-driven', and herein lies the amplified contribution of the harried resisters to Axis occupational policies in the Balkans.