12/03/2025
On this day, 3 December 1944, British-trained and -equipped Greek police, alongside N**i collaborators, fired on an anti-N**i demonstration in Athens, killing 28 people, while US and British troops watched
On this day, 3 December 1944, British-trained and -equipped Greek police, alongside N**i collaborators, fired on an anti-N**i demonstration in Athens, killing 28 people, while US and British troops watched.
Previously British forces had attempted to disperse the crowd and shot tracer fire over the heads of demonstrators, to no avail.
One protester, Titos Patrikios, recalled to the Guardian newspaper: “I can still see it very clearly, I have not forgotten the police firing on the crowd from the roof of the parliament at the top of Syntagma Square in Athens. The young men and women lying in pools of blood, everyone rushing down the stairs in total shock, total panic.”
The demonstrators were supporting anti-fascist partisans, and were brandishing US, UK and Soviet flags, and chanting in support of the leaders of those countries, which were allied against N**i Germany: “Viva Churchill, Viva Roosevelt, Viva Stalin”.
The backbone of the partisan resistance were communists, and so British prime minister Winston Churchill decided to switch allegiances in Greece from the resistance, to the N**i collaborators and pro-fascists. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had previously agreed with Churchill that Britain could be the dominant post-war power in Greece, in return for unchallenged Soviet influence in Romania.
The day after the shootings, British troops began full-scale military operations against Greek partisans, and British warplanes began attacking left-wing neighbourhoods in Athens.
What is referred to as a “civil war” resulted, fought between former N**i collaborators, backed by the UK and US, and the resistance, which eventually resulted in the victory of the right. A brutal dictatorship was later implemented, in 1967, which remained in place until being overthrown in 1973.
More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10167/greek-anti-nazis-killed
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