Inside Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44

In April 1941 the German army invaded Greece, leading to four years of hideous barbarism and to a civil war that tore the country apart. Inside Hitler's Greece explores the impact of the Occupation upon the lives and values of ordinary Greeks. Drawing on a wealth of first-hand accounts and previously untapped archival sources Mark Mazower offers a vividly human picture of the experiences of resistance fighters and black marketeers, teenage German conscripts and Gestapo officers. He shows how war threw traditional family roles into question as women became breadwinners and children took up arms. The moral complexities of life under foreign rule are linked to the unfolding political tragedy that brought the civil war. The book describes the economic exploitation of Greece and the resulting famine - the disintegration of an entire society and the origins of mass resistance. It offers an unsentimental account of the realities of guerrilla life in the mountains, covering the psychological as well as the material effects of total war. But the war is also seen through German eyes: soldiers, diplomats, and SS officials speak in their own words, allowing us to understand the beliefs and values that underlay Nazi policies of violence, terror, and extermination. From staff officers like the young Kurt Waldheim to ordinary Bavarian conscripts, the German Occupation apparatus is brought to life in unprecedented detail. A world of ruined villages and stirring revolutionary utopias, abandoned Jewish homes and starving islanders - the world of Hitler's New Order - is comprehensively analyzed and set in its historical context.