Greek Resistance

Resistance to Axis occupation developed through intelligence gathering, escape networks, sabotage, strikes and armed partisan groups. The largest organisations included the communist-led EAM–ELAS and the republican EDES, alongside smaller regional and political movements. Mountainous terrain and support from sections of the population allowed guerrilla forces to challenge occupation communications.

The resistance was divided by ideology and competing plans for postwar Greece. Groups sometimes fought one another as well as German, Italian and Bulgarian forces, and occupation authorities answered attacks with executions, village destruction and hostage-taking. These conflicts helped prepare the divisions that would lead to the Greek Civil War.

Fiction about the Greek Resistance often concentrates on local communities caught between partisans, collaborators and occupying troops. Hearts of Stone follows young Greeks drawn into resistance while a former friend serves in the German army. The setting supports stories about clandestine work, betrayal, reprisals, competing political loyalties and the moral difficulty of resistance conducted among civilians.