Classical Spies: American Archaeologists with the OSS in World War II Greece

12. Liberation and the “Dance of the Seven Veils”

twelve  Liberation and the “Dance of the Seven Veils” as young prepared to leave cairo, the Red Army’s advance catalyzed events in Greece. Word that Soviet troops had trapped the German Black Sea ›eet, captured the Ploesti oil ‹elds, and secured the surrender of Rumania alarmed the Germans. They convinced Hitler to approve a secret withdrawal from Greece before they, too, were trapped. Liberation had begun. The Evros guerrillas declared August 29 their DDay : 10,000 Greeks gathered, and church bells tolled as the guerrillas entered the ‹rst town where women and children disarmed the Germans without ‹ring a shot. Simultaneously, the guerrillas attacked and captured town after town. Gander reported that as throngs shouted “Zeeto Ellas! Zeeto EAM! Zeeto Amerikanoi!” the people of Evros freed an area as large as Normandy.1 Finally, EAM agreed to participate in Papandreou’s provisional government .2 Its delegation ›ew to Cairo, capitulated unconditionally, joined the National Unity government, and moved to Naples. The Bulgarians declared war on Germany as Stalin’s troops crossed the Danube on September 5 and invaded Bulgaria. Young began killing missions and readying the agents who would accompany him on Niki I (Victory), the ‹rst wave of the Young Plan. Leaving Gerald Else in charge of the Greek Desk in Cairo, Young changed his code name from Pigeon to Dove and departed Alexandria on September 5.3 After a rough forty-seven-hour crossing with seasick agents, two jeeps, tons of 213 gas, spare parts, personal gear, equipment, and rations, Young reached Cyprus. There he met with Daniel before they each left for the Aegean. On September 8, a pro-Soviet coup toppled the Bulgarian government, and partisans occupied So‹a. With that, the British of the AML ‹nally implemented Noah’s Ark, the scheme they had devised months earlier to harass the German withdrawal using the united guerrillas of EDES and EAM/ELAS. Worried about creating a military vacuum and unwilling to trade a German occupation for a communist one, the British had consciously delayed engaging the Germans. Instead of uniting the guerrillas, they played the factions off one another, bartered with the enemy and security battalions, and allowed thousands of German troops and tons of matériel to escape Greece. But they were not alone.Young’s agents told how ELAS commissars in Larissa also refrained from attacking the retreating Germans, saving their men and precious tanks for more important battles as Amoss had envisioned two years earlier.4 High in the Pindus Mountains, “the American Lord Byron,” Oliver’s radio operator on the Molossos mission , signaled the German withdrawals on the Albania road, and Noah’s Ark (the guerrillas combined with SOE and OSS Special Operations GreekAmerican groups) streamed into the breach. Moses Hadas (R&A, Cairo) sent a distillation of four months’ observations on Greek affairs to Washington. To arrive at a balanced picture, he polled representatives from a broad spectrum of Greeks in Egypt. Even moderate Greeks resented British interference in their country’s internal affairs and felt that it constituted an “intolerable diminution of Greek sovereignty .” EAM sympathizers accused the British of panicking and arresting persons without charge for “security reasons,” distorting news for press releases under the pretext of desiring “a ‘safe’ Greece,” deleting derogatory comments about Papandreou and any praise of EAM’s achievements while engaging in “extremely severe censorship.” Hadas was concerned about Britain’s “ambiguous attitude toward the Rallides, an indifference to denouncing them, and Papandreou’s silence on the subject.” He perceived a unanimity within American and British circles, deploring British policy on Greece that seemed to “lead inevitably to the chaos and bloodshed of civil war.” When asked by Hadas “how a government could persist in a policy which its competent experts disapproved, they [the British] laid blame on the Foreign Of‹ce.” Overt frictions between the Russians and British had become apparent in late spring. As the Red Army approached, a fear of the “Slavic Peril” and Greece “being surrounded and oppressed by more nu214 • classical spies merous and more powerful Slavic neighbors” increased until the Russian mission to EAM in July fomented concern among Greeks and British about Russian designs on Greece itself.5 Meanwhile,Young spent the night of September 8 at Cape Gelidonya on the south coast of Turkey and the following one at Kastellorizo, where he stopped for a last-minute brie‹ng before entering the Aegean. Delighted to experience...