The E.L.A.S. and E.D.E.S. collaborated for the first and last time in the brilliant Operation Gorgopotamos, in which 160 Greek partisans, under the leadership of British officers parachuted into Greece, blew up a viaduct over which passed the railway crossing Greece from north to south. The feat of “Gorgopotamos” encouraged other Resistance fighters to spring into action, but it also made E.A.M. that he could not seize power in Greece without a struggle. From that moment, operations against the Axis forces passed into the background of the concerns of the E.A.M. and its armed bands, which made up the ELA.S. :priority was given to the elimination of partisans belonging to political groupings. rivals. One such gang was attacked in March 1943 and its leader, Colonel Saraphis, an officer who had been busted before the war for participating in a Republican coup, agreed to take command of the E.L.A.S., giving thus to the communists the support of a regular officer and a respectable political cover.
It is impossible to fix a precise date at the beginning of the civil war. Indeed, it was preceded by sporadic violent clashes between E.L.A.S. and other supporter groups. The capitulation of Italy in September 1943 marked a decisive turning point, because it offered E.L.A.S. the unexpected windfall of a rain of arms and ammunition. It also brought the prospect of imminent liberation, and by October 12 the movement felt strong enough:the time had come for a massive attack on rival groups. The E.L.A.S. did not, however, succeed in crushing them all, but his action provoked a German offensive against the Resistance movements:this offensive had the result of ending the struggle between the Greeks – a success that was nothing short of advantageous for the Germans. A truce was concluded between the various partisan organizations and took effect on February 4, I 944.
The Communists had failed to eliminate all those who could challenge them for power and they had revealed their true intentions as well as the methods they were prepared to employ. As a result, they changed their course and moved towards a policy of infiltration rather than direct confrontation.
On March 26, as a first step in this new line, the Communists founded the Political Committee for National Liberation (P.P.E.A.), a rival body to the government in exile. The members of this committee represented a wider political spectrum than that of the E.A.M., but it was nevertheless dominated by the Communists. These knew how to play the old quarrels between republicans and monarchists; if some Greeks (and some Britons) had understood that the real problem was between Communists and non-Communists, the majority of Greeks still considered the political struggle under its old aspect. This explains why, when a mutiny broke out in April 1944 in the Greek armies under British command in the Middle East, army and navy officers declared that they belonged to the P.P.E.A. Largely as a result of this mutiny, Tsouderos was succeeded by George Papandreou as prime minister, and in May, at a conference held in Lebanon, Papandreou succeeded in getting politicians from different persuasions to sign, including to the communists, an agreement that all underground forces would be placed under the command of a government of national unity and that free elections would be held as soon as Greece regained its independence.
The Gestapo was the secret police that existed in Nazi Germany, being created by the initiative of Hermann Göring and Rudolf Diels. It was the function of the secret police to investigate all opponents of the Nazi regime. The Gestapo was used to persecute socialists, communists, Jews and anti-fascis