On October 28, 1940, Athens responds with "No" to Mussolini's request for troops to pass through Greek territory. Ohi Day is celebrated by all Greek communities around the world with military parades, and in Greece there are lavish parades in the capital Athens and in Thessaloniki.
The decision to attack Greece was taken on October 15 by the fascist forces, but Hitler and his advisors did not consider the country a difficult target. "Our only obstacle is its muddy roads" they say without hesitation. For this reason, the day of the attack was moved to October 28, recalls the academy "Olympia".
The ultimatum was presented at dawn after arguments at the German embassy in Athens by the Italian ambassador in Athens, Emanuele Grazi. The ultimatum demanded that Greece either allow Axis troops to enter Greek territory and occupy “strategic positions“, or else war be declared.
The answer is short: όχι (pronounced ohi and meaning No). On the morning of October 28, the Greek population, regardless of their politicians, took to the streets, chanting “Ohi“. Since 1942, this day has been celebrated as Ohi Day.
In response to the refusal of Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas, Italian troops stationed in the territory of Albania, which was already occupied by Italy at that time, attacked Greek border posts at 05:30 in the morning.
On the morning of October 28, 1940, Athens woke up to the sound of air defense sirens and all Greeks chanted the categorical «όχι». At 9:30 in the morning, the first air bombings were carried out in Piraeus without consequences, while there were deaths in Patras. The Corinth Canal and the Preveza naval base were also bombed. On the afternoon of October 28, Mussolini proudly informed Hitler of the attack on Greece.
Initially, the Italian army achieved success, advancing on Greek territory, but they were subsequently defeated and pushed out of Epirus, and the hostilities were transferred to Albanian territory. This forced Hitler to intervene on the side of his ally Mussolini.
After the Greeks managed to repel Mussolini's army, in the spring of 1941, Britain decided to support them further, sending an expeditionary force to the country, consisting mainly of New Zealand and Australian soldiers. Thus, the final defeat of Italy seemed almost inevitable, recalls "Deutsche Welle".
This danger, but also the fear that the British could bomb the oil fields in Romania, which were so important for the attack on the USSR, from Northern Greece, pushed Hitler to decide to start a war that he did not really want. On April 6, 1941, German troops attacked Greece and (for other reasons) Yugoslavia. Greece was divided into three occupation zones. Athens, Thessaloniki, Eastern Thrace, Crete, which was conquered by the landing troops, and several islands in the Aegean Sea fell to Germany, whose troops in the Balkans consisted mainly of Austrian soldiers. The eastern part of Greek Macedonia, as well as almost all of Thrace, were occupied and annexed by Bulgaria. The rest went to Italy.
All occupation troops committed crimes, but the Bulgarians and the Germans were particularly cruel. Sofia pursued a violent policy of Bulgarization and relied on systematic expulsions, with the aim of populating the occupied territories with Bulgarian peasants. Entire books could be written about Bulgaria's war crimes in Greece. And even more about German atrocities. The SS and Wehrmacht units carried out numerous mass massacres, the most famous of which were in Komeno, Kalavrita and Distomo. In the Komeno massacre in August 1943, the Nazis killed over 300 people, including many women and children. In December 1943, SS soldiers killed almost 500 men in Kalavrita, and in June 1944, over 200 men, women and children were executed in Distomo.
The massacres in Komeno, Kalavrita and Distomo were intended as revenge for previously committed partisan attacks against German soldiers. For example, in Kalavrita, partisans executed over 80 captured German soldiers, to which the Nazis responded with a massacre in December 1943.
But not all the destruction in Greece was the work of the Germans. A small British special unit is known for its numerous sabotage actions, mainly directed against the Thessaloniki-Athens railway line, which was of crucial importance for the supply of the African Corps. At the end of 1942, the British, together with local partisans, carried out one of the largest sabotage actions during the war - they blew up the famous bridge over the Gorgopotamos River, which is perceived as a symbol of the beginning of the massive Greek resistance to the occupiers.
During the war years, Greece suffered not only because of the atrocities committed by the occupiers. The British naval blockade and German looting led to mass starvation. Over 100,000 Greeks died of starvation during the first winter of occupation alone. Under pressure from the United States, the British were forced to loosen the blockade, which enabled the Swiss Red Cross to deliver food to Greece. The number of victims of hunger decreased significantly, but when the Wehrmacht withdrew from Greece in October 1944, it left behind another war - the Greek Civil War, which brought new destruction and death, ending only in 1949.