Drama uprising: Difference between revisions

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Drama uprising
Part of Axis occupation of Greece
Monument to the victims in Drama
Date 28–29 September 1941 Location Drama Result Rebellion suppressed, massive reprisals by the Bulgarian Army
Belligerents
Bulgaria	Communist Party of Greece (KKE) Greek communists
Commanders and leaders
M. Michailov	Pantelis Chamalides Apostolos Tzanis
Strength
Unknown	1200-1300 (in Pangeo and Lekani Mountains)
Casualties and losses
104 dead and 107 injured[1]	~2,140 dead (armed and civilian)[2][3]

The Drama uprising (Greek: Εξέγερση της Δράμας, Bulgarian: Драмско въстание, Dramsko vastanie) was an uprising of the population of the northern Greek city of Drama and the surrounding villages on 28–29 September 1941 against the Bulgarian occupation regime. The revolt lacked organization or military resources and was swiftly suppressed by the Bulgarian Army with massive reprisals. The revolt had guidance from the Communist Party of Greece (KKE).

Both, Benito Mussolini's plan and Adolf Hitler's planned occupation activities that were involving Bulgarian troops on their own side. At a meeting held by Mussolini at the Palazzo Venezia on October 15, he requested an assistance from Bulgaria to attack Greece and therefore regain an outlet to the Aegean Sea. However Tsar Boris III, rejected this offer expressing the fear that he had by the Turk reaction.^[4]

Hitler, on the other hand, defined Bulgaria's role through the "Marita" military plan, according to which Bulgarian divisions would be engaged in securing the Bulgarian-Turkish border in case Turkey oppose to Germany.^[4] In western Thrace, a small area near the Maritsa River was declared a neutral zone by Germany and at the same time occupied by German troops. The central part of Aegean Macedonia (west of the river Struma, all the way to Florina in the west), fell under German occupation, while the western part of Florina, including the town of Kastoria up to the Albanian border, was occupied by Italian forces.^{[citation needed]}

Towards the middle of April 1941, the German forces, which first entered Eastern Macedonia and Western Thrace after breaking through the front, gradually withdrew, placing the Bulgarian armies in their positions. The Bulgarian government's attempts to win the loyalty of the local Slavic population and recruit collaborators among them did see some success, with the Bulgarians were greeted as liberators.^[5] The Bulgarian Tsar Boris III personally visited Drama and Alexandroupoli and gave speeches in order to reassure the local Greek and Bulgarian population.^[6]

The Bulgarian Army entered Greece on 20 April 1941, at the heels of the Wehrmacht's invasion of Greece, and eventually occupied the whole of northeastern Greece east of the Strymon River (eastern Macedonia and Western Thrace), except for the Evros prefecture, at the border with Turkey, which was occupied by the Germans. Unlike Germany and Italy in their respective occupation zones, Bulgaria officially annexed the occupied territories, which had long been a target of Bulgarian irredentism, on 14 May 1941.^[7] A massive campaign of Bulgarisation was launched, which saw all Greek officials (mayors, school-teachers, judges, lawyers, priests, gendarmes) deported. A ban was placed on the use of the Greek language, and the names of towns and places changed to the forms traditional in Bulgarian. In addition, the Bulgarian government tried to alter the ethnic composition of the region, by expropriating land and houses from Greeks in favor of Bulgarian settlers, and by the introduction of forced labor and of economic restrictions for the Greeks in an effort to force them to migrate.^[7]

The cities of Drama and Kavala were a strong nucleus of the labor movement of Greece. Proof of this are the municipal elections in 1935, when Parcalidis was elected mayor of Kavala and in Serres Menichtas, both members of the CPG. The most active town was Prosochen (Prosotsani), in whose district there was a strong network and party organization. After 22 June 1941, when Nazi Germany attacked the USSR the CPG Provincial Committee for Macedonia and Thrace decided to form partisan units and start an armed struggle, which was a small harbinger of the Drama Uprising.^{[citation needed]}

Immediately before the uprising, the activity of the teacher Thanasis Genios from the village of Irakleia was noticed, who later became known as the commissioner of the 11^th division of ELAS under the name "Lasanis". In August 1941, he appeared as the leader of a partisan detachment "Odysseus Andruzos", in Mount Kerdilia. While in Kilkis, another group appeared under the name "Athanasios Diakos". The "Odysseus Andruzos" detachment carried out sabotage attacks on police stations in the villages of Efkarpia and Mavrotalasa. A second major operation was carried out on September 22 1941, when a German convoy was attacked near the town of Lachanas. This was followed by a strong response from the German forces, due to which the detachments almost disbanded.

Their restoration took place almost in parallel with the occupation of this territory. Thus, at the initiative of Gianis Apostolos, Paraskevas Drakos, Arampatzis and Lambros Mazarakis, the brothers Petros and Argyris Krokos, Petros Pastourmatzis, Gjorgji Bonchev, Nikolaidis, Atanas Karamurogi and others. The CPG Drama Committee will soon start publishing and distributing the illegal newspaper "Neos Dromos" in Greek, while leaflets have occasionally been published in Macedonian language as well.^{[citation needed]}

On August 20 1941, the speech of Petar Pastramdzi, was recorded at the first plenum of the CPG District Committee for Drama region, where he informed that a headquarters was already formed which needed fighters who did not have families on their own. According to the testimony of one of the participants in this uprising, Gjorgji Bonchev, from the partisan headquarters on Mount Makros, an order was given to launch attacks on the municipality buildings, police stations and army objects in order to paralyze the occupier. The date set for the start of these actions was the night between September 28 and 29, 1941 at 23:00.^{[citation needed]}

In this situation, a revolt broke out on 28 September 1941 under the guidance of the Communist Party of Greece.^[8] The uprising initially broke out in Doxato, where local Greeks attacked the police station and killed six or seven Bulgarian policemen. In another village, Choristi, a second group was recruited and moved to the mountains.^[9]

Parallel to the events in Doxato, the group from Prosochen attacked the municipality with 9 fighters, the police division with 20 fighters, while the army garrison with the rest 18 fighters. Next morning of September 29, in the town of Prosochen, a people's government was declared. Gjorgji Bonchev addressed this rally in Macedonian, while the proclamation for the uprising in Greek was read by Antonios Nikolaidis.

The same day, they faced a strong attack by the Bulgarian army including two planes. The fighters managed to repel them until nightfall, when the Bulgarian troops received strong support from mortars and artillery, after which a real massacre of the population began. A dozen fighters died in these battles: Ivan Veljanchev, Vasil Shapkov, Hristo Europov, Gjorgji Shapera, and Ifandopoulos. While Prokop Karaivanov was beaten to death, Hristo Boludzievski, Dimitar Rosilovaliev, Gjorgji Pejkov and two fighters from the village of Volak were sentenced to death and shot.^{[citation needed]}

The uprising was brutally suppressed by the Bulgarian occupation authorities. The following day, 29 September, all leaders were either killed in battle or in their attempt to escape to the German occupation zone.^[9] However, Bulgarian retaliations were not limited to the rebels.^[9] Bulgarian troops moved into Drama and the other rebellious cities to suppress the uprising and seized all men between 18 and 45. They were reported to have executed between 360 and 500 people in Drama alone.^[10] An estimated 2,140 Greeks were killed by Bulgaria's occupation army during the next few weeks and in the countryside entire villages were machine-gunned and looted.^[11] Most of the members of the Communist Party of Greece were slaughtered by the Bulgarians, except for one member.^[12] In the villages of Doxato and Choristi a total of 485 men were executed оn September 29.^[9]

The main commanders and actors of these massacres are the Bulgarian and military persons, Colonel Mihailov, Major Pecev, as well as the Commander of the Police, Stefan Magelanski.

Bulgarian carnage and terror spread beyond the Drama District. The largest massacre took place on Mount Pangeon, near the monastery of the Holy Mother of God (Iconosafinisa), where several hundred people were slaughtered.^{[citation needed]}

The massacres precipitated an exodus of Greeks from the Bulgarian into the German occupation zone in Central Macedonia. Bulgarian reprisals continued after the suppression of the uprising, adding to the torrent of refugees. Villages were destroyed for sheltering “partisans” who were in fact only the survivors of villages previously destroyed. The terror and famine became so severe that the Athens government considered plans for evacuating the entire population to German-occupied Greece.^[13] By late 1941, more than 10,000 Greeks had been fled the region in fear of reprisals.^[14]

• Mazower, Mark (1995). Inside Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941–44. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-08923-6.
• Mazower, Mark (2000). After the War was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation, and State in Greece, 1943-1960. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-05842-9.
• Miller, Marshall Lee (1975). Bulgaria during the Second World War. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-0870-8.