National  Resistance

The Greek Resistance (Greek : Εθνική Αντίσταση, i.e., "National Resistance") is the blanket term for a number of armed and unarmed groups from across the political spectrum that resisted the Axis occupation of Greece in the period 1941–1944, during World War II.

The blasting of the Gorgopotamos railway bridge

Operation Harling, also known as the Battle of Gorgopotamos (Greek: Μάχη του Γοργοπόταμου) in Greece, was a World War II mission by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), in cooperation with the Greek Resistance groups EDES and ELAS, which destroyed the heavily guarded Gorgopotamos viaduct in Central Greece on 25 November 1942. This was one of the first major sabotage acts in Axis-occupied Europe, and the beginning of a permanent British involvement with the Greek Resistance.

Background

Operation Harling was conceived in late summer 1942 as an effort to stem the flow of supplies through Greece to the German forces under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in North Africa. To this end, the Cairo office of the SOE decided to send a sabotage team to cut the railway line connecting Athens with Thessaloniki. Three viaducts were considered as potential targets, all in the Brallos area: the Gorgopotamos, Asopos and Papadia bridges. The destruction of the Asopos viaduct was preferable, since it would take longer to rebuild, but the choice would be ultimately left to the mission's leader. The team would be under the command of Lieutenant Colonel (later brevetted to Brigadier) E. C. W. "Eddie" Myers of the Royal Engineers, "the only parachute-trained professional sapper officer in the Middle East", according to his second-in-command, Major (later brevetted to Colonel) Chris Woodhouse. After completion of the mission, the British team would be evacuated, leaving only Woodhouse, the Greek 2nd Lieutenant Themis Marinos and two radio operators to establish a liaison with the fledgling Greek Resistance movement.

In Greece meanwhile, the first attempts at armed resistance in Macedonia were quelled in the summer of 1941 by the Germans and Bulgarians. The spring and summer of 1942 however saw the birth of the first armed guerrilla units in the mountainous interior of Central Greece and Epirus. From the beginning, the largest among them was the Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS), founded by the communist-led National Liberation Front (EAM) and headed by Aris Velouchiotis. The second largest were the forces of the National Republican Greek League (EDES), headed by Colonel Napoleon Zervas.[5][6] The Harling mission's British officers were largely ignorant of the realities on the ground in occupied Greece, or of the precise nature, let alone the strength and political affiliation of the emerging resistance groups.