Spetses 1943-1944: Occupation, Resistance, and Terror in Reality and Fiction

This paper is a local study of the widespread civil conflict that took place in the last year of the German occupation of Greece. In it I focus on the events in Spetses, from March to June 1944, in which a number of kidnappings and executions by the communist-led resistance were followed by massive collaboration of the locals with the Germans in their subsequent anti-resistance operations. Drawing on primary sources such as trial transcripts, unpublished reports, and interviews, I describe a morally ambiguous sequence of events, in which communist violence against perceived local opponents was avenged by collaboration with the Germans, inspired and led by the victims' relatives. I also discuss the fictionalized version of these wartime events in John Fowles's novel The Magus and argue that this version is based on misleading information transmitted to the author during his stay in Spetses.