Today Germany is scheduled to kick Greece out of the Euro.
Euro 2012 that is, in a clear case of football imitating life?
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| The Great Synagogue Danzig - demolished by the Germans in 1939 |
And this match too takes place in the historic Hanseatic
Free City of Danzig (Gdansk) where World War II began when the German forces attacked
the Polish Post Office on September 1, 1939.
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| Danzig (Gdansk) Post Office |
The Free City was created on 15 November 1920 and included the city of Danzig and over two hundred nearby towns, villages, and settlements. In 1933, the City's government was taken over by the local Nazi Party and the democratic opposition was suppressed. After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the Free City was abolished and incorporated into the newly formed Reichsgau of Danzig-West Prussia. Widespread anti-Semitic and anti-Polish discrimination and organised murder followed.
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| The defenders of the Polish Post Office in Danzig being led away - they were later executed by the Germans |
38 of the defenders of the Post Office, mainly Polish postal
workers who had military training, who survived the battle were executed by firing squad as
"illegal combatants" (sounds familiar?). The two German commanders
responsible for this, the first War Crime of WW11 were never punished, were conveniently "de-Nazified" by the American occupying forces after WW11 and went on
to have careers as lawyers in West Germany before dying of natural causes in
the 70's.
The Axis occupation of Greece during World War II began in
April 1941 after the Nazi German and Fascist Italian invasion of Greece.
Germany withdrew from mainland Greece in October 1944. German garrisons
remained in control of Crete and other islands until May and June 1945. Increasing
attacks by partisans in the latter years of the occupation resulted in a number
of executions and wholesale slaughter of civilians in reprisal. In total, the
Germans executed some 21,000 Greeks, the Bulgarians 40,000 and the Italians
9,000. After the war Greece and its economy were left destroyed and the country
never recovered because of the bitter civil war which followed. Germany has
never paid reparations to the Greek people for the suffering and damage it
inflicted and for its many war crimes including the genocide of the Greek
Jewish population and the massacres of the Italian garrisons on Cephalonia and Kos.
The Greek Civil War was fought from 1946 to 1949 between the
Greek government army - backed by Britain and the United States - and the
Democratic Army of Greece (DSE), the military branch of the Greek Communist
Party (KKE), backed by Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania. It was the result of a
highly polarised struggle between leftists and rightists that started in 1943
and targeted the power vacuum that the German-Italian occupation during World
War II had created. One of the first conflicts of the Cold War, according to
some analysts it represents the first example of post-war British and American
interference in the internal politics of a foreign country.
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The photo depicts a defining moment in modern Greek history,
the beginning of the "Dekemvriana", at the moment Greek and British
troops starting shooting unarmed Athenian demonstrators (c. 300.000); just 3
months after the Germans had retreated from the country, on 3 December 1944.
This episode was the major cause of the 3-year Greek Civil War that followed
some 1 and half years later.
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The civil war left Greece with a vehemently anti-Communist
security establishment, which would lead to the establishment of the Greek
military junta of 1967–1974 and a legacy of political polarisation that lasted
until the 1980s. Greece is probably the only country where those who fought so
bravely against the Nazis were executed, exiled and criminalised after the war
whilst those who collaborated went on to rule the country.
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| A German Army photo of one of the many Greek resistance fighters executed by the collaborationist Security Brigades |
Even to this day a
Greek village, no matter how small will have two Kafeoin (bars) as those who
fought on different sides in the civil war and their descendants will not drink
together. With the restoration of Greek democracy in 1974 many Greeks felt they were “owed” to redress the injustice
of what went before, hence the woes of modern Greece shoehorned into a Eurozone
of Germany’s making.
“Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I
assure you, it's much more serious than that.”
Bill Shankly, Manager of Liverpool FC
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