Abstract
Even today, echoes of the propaganda used during the civil war in Greece in the 1940s are influencing the current political turmoil in Athens. The dividing lines between communists and the Greek government were so sharply drawn that they have never really disappeared from the social and political consciousness.
The outbreak of the civil war in Greece in 1946 and the propaganda used by both sides during the struggle cannot be properly understood without realising that Greece was then on the frontline of the developing Cold War.
The United States was worried about Soviet expansion outside eastern Europe and into the Mediterranean area, so the Greek Communist Party and its military wing the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) were considered a real danger.
Britain, which had carried the economic and political burden of supporting the Greek government against the communists was now concentrating on rebuilding itself after the war, so it was left to the US to undertake the role of strengthening the Greek National Army, under the the Marshall Plan.
As violence escalated after 1947, distrust was the main ingredient of communicating any political message. As thousands of prosecutions, executions, and violent relocations took place, propaganda in the civil war did not leave any room for reconciliation or even second thoughts.
The government side hunted down communists for “delivering” the country to its “northern neighbours”, Slav-Macedonians and Bulgarians, while the DSE said the regime was a “monarcho-fascist army” which was fighting for “an unjust cause for the American dollar men”.
Giorgos Margaritis, professor of modern history at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, told Index: “The government side always declared that a bigger Greece including the Balkans area was desirable. The fact that the National Liberation Front and the Greek People’s Liberation Army (EAM and ELAS), and later on the DSE, were supported by Slav-Macedonians and by the communist states of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania, was a reason for national treason. Nationalists and right-wingers considered communists as non-patriots, as national traitors.”
Polymeris Voglis, assistant professor of modern history at the University of Thessaly added: “The government propaganda emphasised the treacherous character of the communists who aimed for Greece’s partition. Above all though, it did not recognise communists as political adversaries. The regime was always attributing to them characteristics of criminals. Political prisoners, for example, were never acknowledged as such, and they were registered as common law criminals. “In much the same spirit, the DSE denied for a long period that a civil war was being fought. It claimed that it was a national liberation struggle against the British and the Americans. It was like a second resistance after the Nazis”.
COLLAGE
Collage caption 1: Top left, One exhausted guerrilla fighter surrenders to the Greek army during the Greek civil war
Credit: Bert Hardy/ Picture Post/ Getty Images
Collage caption 2: Top right, Refugee children in a filthy cellar at Piraeus during the Greek civil war
Credit: Haywood Magee/Picture Post/Getty Images
Collage caption 3: Bottom, A truck carries a band of government soldiers along a rocky mountain pass during the Greek civil war
Credit: Bert Hardy/ Picture Post/ Getty Images
Even though the illiteracy rates at the time of the war were reasonably high, newspapers, brochures and print material were used widely for propaganda purposes.
ABOVE: A Greek commando during the Greek civil war as captured on the front cover of Picture Post
Credit: Bert Hardy/ Picture Post/ IPC Magazines/ Getty Images
Professor Voglis said: “From 1945 there were repeated government attacks on communist newspapers and printing offices. However, during the civil war the Greek Communist Party (KKE) managed to build a strong network of newspapers and other print material. Apart from the official newspaper of the KKE, The Radical (Rizospastis), which was banned in 1947, there were 10 illegal newspapers and magazines distributed in the areas controlled by the DSE during 1948 and 1949. Communist printing presses became busier as the war escalated. In 1947, between 36 and 39 titles were published by the Greek Communist Party, publications such as instructions for guerilla warfare, short novels and political speeches. In 1949, the number of such books and pamphlets increased to 220.”
By 1949, however, official military censorship was imposed upon any news about the civil war
On the other hand, the government controlled the bourgeois press, including the right-wing and conservative newspapers as well as those with a more liberal centrist orientation. Tasos Kostopoulos, a member of the prominent Greek investigative journalistic team Ios, and an experienced writer on civil war issues, said: “The bourgeois press at the time was perfectly aligned with government interests. In 1946, the Macedonian Comitat, a secret organisation, was used as a mechanism to execute armed communists, and was backed by the managers of three right-wing newspapers Estia, Embros, and Elliniko Aima. It was also used to keep the King-in-exile George II informed, while financing anti-communist units, from the money of local capitalists.”
The polarisation created by the war struggle meant communists were depicted as violent gangsters by the right-wing and conservative press.
Prokopis Papastratis, professor emeritus of modern Greek history at Panteion University of Athens, told Index: “The articles in these newspapers presented the communist guerilla fighters as ‘dirty’, ‘bloodthirsty’, ‘bandits’, ‘mobsters’, and ‘terrorists’. Sometimes there were pictures of hostages and dead fighters with the use of the above stereotypes. Women were also presented in a morally dubious way, as sexual objects being exploited by the leadership of DSE.”
Buying a newspaper at the time was quite costly, and newspapers were dependent on a poor railway infrastructure for distribution, so radio had a stronger influence on people. It was instant and not dependent on literacy. Radio had already been used for propaganda purposes during the occupation a few years before: the first radio broadcast in Athens took place in 1938, during the Metaxas’ dictatorship (1936-41) and under the auspices of the puppet government which ruled occupied Greece from 1941 until the end of the war.
George Pleios, professor at the department of communication and media studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, gave Index a detailed analysis of the role radio played in civil war propaganda.
“From the government side in 1948 there was the Athens radio station as well as the armed forces radio station. On the other hand, DSE’s radio station was Free Greek Radio (Eleftheri Ellada),” said Professor Pleios.
He went on to explain the content of the broadcasts and the discourses that were produced. “From 1946 onwards, the Athens radio station stopped broadcasts for the British forces and launched new ones for the American forces. The armed forces radio station had a popular entertainment programme with a very small news section. The government’s broadcasts were characterised by anti-communist propaganda where DSE fighters were portrayed as ‘mobsters’ and as ‘agents of the enemies’ who conspired to obtain part of the Greek territory. On the other hand, Free Greek Radio was totally under the control of DSE. Some of its broadcasts were entertainment programmes designed to boost the morale of the guerilla forces. Interestingly, the broadcasters read articles from the government-controlled press and they would comment on them. At the heart of their propaganda remained the government dependency on the British or the Americans: most of the time they could not escape simplifications in building an unprecedented anti-Americanism. Also, their discourse included references to a class struggle: they spoke of a war motivated by plutocracy.”
At the time, several commercial films were censored because the government suspected they negatively depicted the Greek army. However, the DSE managed to use its own visual material for internal propaganda.
Professor Margaritis said: “There was a special agency within the DSE. There was an organised film crew that showed speeches and pictures from the guerilla forces. Because of the constant relocation, internal propaganda was carried out at places that had already been ‘captured’. Bear in mind that every piece of propaganda material, such as newspapers, and pamphlets were strictly forbidden.”
As the war escalated in 1948, news appeared only in the back pages of the bourgeois press. The newspapers in Athens under-reported the conflicts and consequently undermined the war which was mainly fought in the periphery. By 1949 however, official military censorship was imposed upon any news about the civil war.
Professor Voglis said: “From 1948 onwards, the country was in a ‘state of siege’. Civil war news was systematically under-reported and, following a huge wave of violence, officially censored in 1949. If someone read newspapers like Vima, Kathimerini or Acropolis, he wouldn’t properly understand that a civil war was going on. However, we should note that DSE forces never really captured any big city. It only controlled remote and mountain areas.”
In order to fully understand the limits of political expression at the time a legal perspective can be very useful. Christos Papastylianou, associate professor of law at the University of Nicosia explained that there was a continuity in legislating before and during the civil war; a continuity that suggests the political intentions of those in power.
“On July 1945, the emergency law 453 on hunting down bandits essentially identified common law criminals with communists. In the history of law, 453 is a foreshadowing of what lay ahead. One year later, on May 1946, the government issued a decree authorising administrative deportation without judicial decision. Any person suspected of acting against social order or national security was punished by exile. The emergency law 509/1947 seemed to complete the sequence by forbidding one political party, the Greek Communist Party for the first time in history. It gave the green light to the government to arrest, execute and hunt down those fighting for the DSE and their sympathisers.”
Indicative of the government strategy combined with the use of legislative power was the fact that even after the end of civil war and the defeat of the communists, the government insisted on propagating “national unity” and punished and tried to re-educate anyone (dissidents, communists) who failed the “patriotism” test.
Professor Papastylianou explained: “The island called Makronisos which was used as a place of imprisonment for dissidents, was created on a legal basis. The aim was to ‘educate’ its inmates to become nationalists.”
Approaches to the civil war’s historiography vary, according to political inclinations and access to sources. The main propaganda pattern around “the nation” and all the consequent recriminations however continue today. The rhetoric of the current right-wing government and the neo-fascist Golden Dawn as well as of Syriza’s opposition party, reflect the old political contradictions. It can also be observed in the political discourse of non-parliamentary political groups, anti-authoritarian collectives and anarchists.
“The left says that the military part of the civil war ended in 1950,” said Professor Pleios, referring to the non-stop political persecutions against the left, until the end of the military junta period in 1974.
“However, I think that the political substance of what was at stake during the conflict never came up. To an extent, no side managed to clearly explain its social and economic model for the future. There were probably two conflicting models: the bourgeois democracy and liberal economy model, essentially capitalism, and the Soviet model representing communism. However, what finally prevailed was a war climate with accusations of national treason.”
Professor Margaritis agreed, offering his explanation from a class-struggle point of view: “In reality there were two production models conflicting at the time. The one that could be based upon farmers, proletarians and other working class people and the other based on a ‘local’ capitalism model built upon international subsidies. The second model prevailed. While guerilla forces were winning in the countryside, the Marshall Plan subsidies helped the supremacy of the national army while building urban economies. Local elites profited out of the war. A middle-class was under formation while proletarians were being squeezed in the cities and in the countryside. Constant relocations meant many of them often found themselves working for nothing.”
Propaganda techniques and patterns were used according to the capacity of the conflicting sides and the means available to them.
The supremacy of the government was obvious. It was supported by the mainstream press and used a strong army to attack the communists’ infrastructure.
As a way of intimidating and incriminating the enemy, propaganda was used intensively on both sides to present what they saw as the “real danger”, but propaganda was also based on the real struggle between nationalists and the dissidents, namely communists.
A legal framework was set up that allowed the Greek state and the larger right-wing to suppress communist supporters, to put them in exile, and consequently built the narrative of being the civil war winners.
From a moralist’s point of view, one can find truth in the discourses and the arguments produced. Judging by what political activists say today, the rhetoric used now carries on the old divisions: nationalists versus dissidents, capitalists versus workers, elites versus the poor. It is as if those old propaganda dividing lines never ceased to exist.
A major challenge, for all of us, is to see beyond the rhetoric and understand the intentions of political adversaries.