jul 1, 1940 - Greek Civil War - Two-stage conflict - LUCY

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(December 1944–January 1945 and 1946–49).
During this two-stage conflict, Greek communists did not succeed with gaining control of Greece. In the summer of 1943, Italy collapsed, and in September 1944, German forces started to leave Greece. Anti-communist groups came together to fight their shared foe as they departed. Only a few months before Nazi Germany's occupation of Greece came to an end in October 1944, the civil war's first phase broke loose. Two main Greek guerrilla groups, the communist-run (EAM-ELAS) and the Greek Democratic National Army (EDES), had battled the German occupation. Early in 1944, the Greek Democratic National Army established a provisional government in the Greek mountains that implicitly abandoned both the Greek king and his government-in-exile after removing all of its political enemies save the Democratic Army.
On December 3, a fierce civil war broke out in Athens, which the British military forces only just managed to put an end to after EAM-ELAS had essentially taken over the entirety of Greece except Athens and Thessaloniki. The rebels finally broke after several weeks of bloody fighting and retreated across the Albanian border. The last members of the rebel army were wiped off during the final assault on Mount Grammos, which was assisted by Helldivers raining napalm. After, the fighting swiftly subsided after Stalin gave the Greek communists the command to declare a cease-fire.
From 1946 and 1949, Greek Government forces likely suffered 48,000 casualties while their opponents suffered about half as many. Thousands of civilians were killed by death squads on both sides, and many others perished from violence, disease, and malnutrition. The civil war may have caused a total death toll of about 158,000 Greeks. The Marshall Plan would sow the seeds of resurrection and healing—still in need of completion—from the most horrific civil wars of the twentieth century in Greece, despite the country's entire economic destruction.

“The Greek Civil War, 1944-1949: The National WWII Museum: New Orleans.” The National WWII Museum | New Orleans, https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/greek-civil-war-1944-1949.

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