Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World

by Suzy Hansen

One of the less famous examples of Nazi horror during World War II was its occupation of Athens. During their three-year occupation of the country, the Nazis wreaked havoc on Greek society, subjecting the population to starvation, torture, imprisonment, and death, and forever rending the bonds among the Greek people. Inevitably, the terror gave way to an insurgency by Greek rebels who were, to varying degrees, leftists and Communists. When the war ended, those who organized the leftist resistance continued fighting with the royalist Greek army that had tolerated, and at times collaborated with, the Nazis. It was, as the Greek novelist Nikos Kazantzakis, put it, a fratricide. The Greek Civil War was also one of the first battles of the Cold War.