Front Matter

Macedonians and the NOT so Civil War in Greece

The terrible decade 1939-1949

By Risto Stefov

Macedonians and the NOT so Civil War in Greece

The terrible decade 1939-1949

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September 6, 2019

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Preface

What happened to the Macedonian people during the terrible decade 1939 to 1949 was nothing new. They were involved in many conflicts long before that but one thing that remained a constant over the years was their desire to live free and independent. They fought several uprisings against the Ottoman Empire without success. They even lost their chances to assert themselves as a Macedonian nation during the 19th century when new nations were being created in the Balkans. But what happened to them was not entirely their fault.

The aim of including a preface in this book is to give the reader a general high level historic overview of events that took place which explain what happened to the Macedonian people and who was responsible for it.

The Macedonian nation failed to assert itself during the 19th century mainly because the 19th century European monarchies and the European Great Powers did not want a Macedonian state with Macedonian people to exist in the Balkans. This was as much a reality then as it is today. I don’t know for sure why this was but it became obvious after the Russian-Ottoman war ended in 1878 and after Greece, Serbia and parts of Bulgaria were granted their freedom while Macedonia and the Macedonian people were given back to the Ottoman Empire. The decision to free Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria and give Macedonia back to the Ottomans was made by the Great Powers at the Berlin Congress in July 1878. Ever since then the future of Macedonia and the Macedonian people was in question.

After Macedonia was given back to the Ottoman Empire without any guarantees for the safety of the Macedonian people, the Ottomans began to crack down, harder than before, not only because the Macedonians fought on the side of the Russians during the Russian-Ottoman war, but also because the Ottomans did not want to lose more lands to insurrections. As a result the Ottomans placed a tighter grip on Macedonia making the lives of the Macedonian people a lot harder. Not being able to count on the Great Powers for help, the Macedonian people had no other option but to struggle and hope that one day they would free themselves on their own.

To make matters worse, the European monarchies and Great Powers promised to give parts of Macedonia to Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. But since they did not know how Macedonia was going to be divided, it was decided that it would be divided along “Greek, Serbian and Bulgarian national lines”. At that time however no such nationalities existed in Macedonia. So the Great Powers forced the Ottomans to allow Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria to establish churches and schools in Macedonia through which each state could promote its propaganda in an effort to make Greeks, Serbians and Bulgarians out of the Macedonian population. In time their presence created fierce competition between the three states each fighting for the souls of the Macedonian people. The situation got to a point where the Greeks, Serbians and Bulgarians began to bribe, frighten and even torture and kill Macedonians through armed gangs in order to force them to come to their side. So now the Macedonians had not only the Ottomans to contend with but also the Greeks, Serbians and Bulgarian behind who stood their patrons the European Great Powers.

Once the Macedonian people made up their minds to revolt, two trains of thought began to develop. The wisest, which included Gotse Delchev, supreme commander of the Macedonian Liberation Movement, thought that the best way to free Macedonia and keep it intact and outside of the hands of the Greeks, Serbians and Bulgarians was to agitate the Ottoman Empire for Macedonia to become an autonomous Ottoman province… and, of course, over time, independent.

The second train of thought was for Macedonia to seek outside help and fight to gain its own independence. Even though they suspected that the Great Powers had different ideas for Macedonia, some of the Macedonian leaders still believed that there was hope that the Great Powers would come to their rescue if they started a rebellion. One of the Macedonian revolutionary leaders even went to Russia and asked the Russian monarch for assistance but was refused.

Once the Great Powers and their proxies discovered that some Macedonians wanted to seek autonomy and remain inside the Ottoman Empire, they began new preparations to prevent that. They

began to interfere in Macedonian internal affairs through Bulgaria. A second Macedonian revolutionary organization, an external or Supremacist organization, was formed which pretended to work for Macedonian interests but in fact was supporting Bulgarian and Great Power interests.

The idea behind the Supremacist revolutionary organization was to start a massive conflict between the Macedonians and the Ottomans so that both would weaken and become “easy prey” for Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. The Supremacists had to make sure that the Macedonians did not win. A win could be avoided if an uprising was started early before the Macedonian people were fully prepared and before an agreement with the Ottomans was reached for Macedonia to become an autonomous Ottoman province.

The Supremacists accomplished both tasks by making sure the Macedonian people were stripped of their true leaders, except for Delchev, while preparations were made to start the 1903 Ilinden Uprising, an early uprising before the Macedonian people were fully prepared. When Delchev found out about this he called a meeting to call off the uprising but was assassinated on his way there.

The uprising was a catastrophic failure, which not only weakened the Macedonian people and broke their spirits but also stripped them of their true leaders and left them in the hands of the avenging Ottomans. Ten years later, in 1912/1913, Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria invaded, occupied, partitioned and annexed Macedonia and its people and began to turn them into Greeks, Serbians and Bulgarians on mass by force.

Some of the Macedonian leaders suspected that Macedonian territories might be annexed by Macedonia’s neighbours but the “total denationalization and assimilation” of the Macedonian nation into three and later four different parts was not only unexpected but unprecedented. Not even Gotse Delchev predicted that. This, unfortunately, was done to destroy the Macedonian nation and erase it from history.

This, unfortunately, did not end when Macedonian territories and the Macedonian people were annexed but, with Great Power help,

continued into the future reaching the level of genocide several times after that. The reader must remember that nothing could happen in the Balkans without Great Power approval and these genocides were no exception.

Even though similar events took place in Serbian and Bulgarian occupied Macedonia our focus in this book will be mainly on the events that took place in Greek occupied Macedonia.

When the Greeks consolidated their power in Macedonia they told the Macedonian people that this is Greece now and that they were now Greeks, and if they didn’t agree they could pick up what they could carry and leave immediately. Many did just that; they picked up their things and left.

The Macedonian Muslims were all kicked out and so were the Macedonians who insisted on being Macedonian and not Greeks, Serbians, or Bulgarians. Those who insisted too much found themselves with a noose around their necks hanging from a tree.

Sometime later Greece exchanged populations with Bulgaria and got rid of more Macedonians and imported all kinds of non-Greek people from Bulgaria and from the Caucasus’s who claimed to be Greeks.

Before 1913 and before the Greco-Turkish war, the Macedonian people living in Greek occupied Macedonia were a majority with minorities such as Albanians, Vlachs, Christian Turks and others. After Greece occupied Macedonian territories it cleansed itself of non-Greeks; it assimilated everyone it could, evicted those who did not agree with its principles, and jailed and murdered all those who caused trouble.

But those who were assimilated were still Macedonians and still a majority in Greek occupied Macedonia, that is until Greece deposited 600,000 Turkish Christian settlers and colonists it acquired during the population exchange with Turkey by the Treaty of Lausanne. After that Greece published demographic statistics claiming that the population in Greece was 98% pure Greek and 2% Muslim Greek. Ever since then Greece has been covering up the fact

that Macedonians existed in Greece and has been misleading its patrons, particularly the English, about its ethnic composition.

After Greece occupied Macedonian territories it closed all Macedonian language schools and churches and expelled the priests. The Macedonian language and names were forbidden, and the Macedonians were referred to as Bulgarians, Serbians or natives. By law all place names were Hellenized; that is the names of cities, villages, rivers, lakes and mountains were discarded and Greek names put in their place. At the same time the Macedonians were forced to change their first and last names; every Macedonian surname had to end in ‘os’, ‘es’, ‘ou’, or ‘poulos’.

In the years following World War I, the Macedonian people underwent extensive measures of systematic denationalization.

One of the worst Greeks the Macedonian people had to face was Metaxas. Metaxas and his Fascist supporters were extremely anti-Macedonian and wanted everything that was Macedonian erased, including the Macedonian language.

All this was happening under the watchful eyes of the Western Great Powers and nothing was done to stop it. Without a doubt, Hellenization in Greece was taking place with Western Great Power consent.

Greek policemen often stood outside people’s windows just to hear what language they were speaking and fined the entire family if they were caught speaking Macedonian.

After people realized that they would be fined and even physically punished and force-fed castor oil for repeat offences, fear and suspicion began to set in, forcing people to keep silent.

This assimilation-ist policy however was not new. And, as I said earlier, it was started a long time ago and became evident around 1878 when it became clear that Macedonia would not be allowed to become a nation state and would be divided among the other Balkan nations. Ever since then, the practice of denationalizing the Macedonian population has continued all throughout the years and is

continuing to this day with the forceful name change imposed on the Macedonian people in the Republic of Macedonia. Let me be clear on this, the name change imposed on the Republic of Macedonia, aided by the western foreign embassies in Skopje is nothing new, it is a continuation of a Western Great Power policy that was drafted sometime before 1878 to exterminate the Macedonian nation and everything that is Macedonian.

During World War II, when the Western Great Powers thought no Macedonians existed in Greek occupied Macedonia, English spies and military personnel dispatched to Greek occupied Macedonia to monitor the war situation discovered that Greece had been lying to them. Contrary to Greek claims that no Macedonians existed in Greece, a sizable Macedonian population, speaking the Macedonian language and aware of its Macedonian consciousness, was living in its territory. When the British found this out they again resumed their policy of extermination. Some people say the English must have panicked because of fear of Russian influence and the possibility of these people wanting to carve out “Greek territory”, but the truth is England never wanted a Greek Macedonia with Macedonians in it. So the English, as they had done in the past, decided that the Macedonian people had to go by any means possible. This information was later discovered in declassified British diplomatic dispatches in which the English wanted to expel 120,000 Macedonians en masse from their homes in Greek occupied Macedonia (see chronology for details).

In doing this the English requested the assistance of the fascist Yugoslav government before the communists came to power and received a positive response. The fascists agreed to take the Macedonians and resettle them on Yugoslav territory but Yugoslavia fell to the communists before this could happen.

Now let us go back and have a look at the general situation on the ground during the German, Italian and Bulgarian occupation of Greek occupied Macedonia.

In terms of their cultural rights, the Macedonian people found more freedom under the German, Italian and Bulgarian triple occupation than they did under Greek rule. As long as they did not cause trouble

for the occupiers, the Macedonian people were not prohibited from freely speaking their Macedonian language or from calling themselves Macedonians. The biggest trouble they faced came from the Greek fascists, Metaxas’s former supporters who now worked for the occupiers. These people were thugs and criminals and were the first to offer their services to the occupiers as long as they were allowed to rob and torment the civilian populations, especially the Macedonians. After they formed their gangs these fascists began to terrorize the population. They particularly disliked the Macedonian people, especially those who openly spoke their Macedonian language and asserted themselves as Macedonians. The Macedonian people complained to the occupiers but that did not seem to help, except for the Italians, who also disliked the fascist Greeks and allowed most of the Kostur Region villagers to arm themselves and fight back.

After the Bulgarians fascists occupied parts of Macedonia they too attempted to organize and arm Macedonian people under the organization “Ohrana” but for different reasons; to fight for the Bulgarian cause. But all the Bulgarians could attract was the criminal element which was willing to do harm to its own people for any cause as long as it personally benefited.

In the German and Bulgarian occupied parts of Greek occupied Macedonia, having no other option, the tormented Macedonians fled to the mountains to save themselves from the Greek terror. There they organized into groups, armed themselves and fought back for their survival. These small groups often combined together into larger groups to repel Greek fascist attacks on their friends, families and villages.

Not long after the triple occupation of Greek occupied Macedonia, in addition to the foreign occupiers there were Greek fascist criminal gangs working for the Germans and Italians, Macedonian fascist criminal gangs working for the Bulgarians, Macedonian armed groups protecting the Kostur Region villages from all Greeks in general, and Macedonian armed groups in the mountains protecting themselves and their villages from the fascist Greeks.

Sometime in the fall of 1941, the Communist Party of Greece (CPG) began to organize a resistance movement in an attempt to expel the occupiers but was not popular with the Greek people so it created and led a national liberation movement (EAM) that included all the left leaning parties in Greece which were closer to the Greek working class.

There are several reasons why the CPG took the initiative to organize a resistance movement. First, as part of a greater plan it would be able to expand the communist ideology so that communism could take root in Greece. Most people, especially the Macedonians, had had enough of the fascists and wanted change. Second, because it represented the working class multitudes it would be able to harness their power and spill their blood in future revolts, instead of the blood of the bourgeois and their supporters who saw no profit in dying for a cause. Third, because the CPG was the only party to recognize the existence of the Macedonian people in Greece, it would be able to harness their power not only to fight against the occupiers but to also keep them from being swayed by occupier propaganda, especially Bulgarian propaganda which offered autonomy and independence for Macedonia.

But no sooner had the CPG established itself as the leader of the resistance movement in Greece, than England began to worry about losing Greece to the Soviet Union, especially when the Soviets turned the tide on the war with the Germans and began to drive south.

To make sure Greece remained in the English sphere of influence, England began to infiltrate the CPG with its own spies and people. It even managed to infiltrate the top CPG leadership with Siantos, one of its agents, who was appointed temporary Secretary General in charge of the CPG. This way England would be able to control the situation in Greece in the future and make sure things went its way.

After the CPG formed its resistance army called ELAS, it began to disband the Macedonian armed groups in the mountains and made every effort to incorporate them into ELAS. Those who refused were attacked and disbanded by force. When it amassed enough of a fighting force ELAS began to attack the fascist gangs and the

Macedonian bands in Kostur Region but without success. They were simply too powerful. The CPG needed a better plan, especially against the Macedonian bands in Kostur Region, so with Yugoslav help, it came up with the idea of forming a Macedonian organization called Slavo-Macedonian National Liberation Front (SNOF) and its military wing Slavo-Macedonian National Liberation Army (SNOV). The idea behind SNOF was to have the Macedonians fight it out – Macedonians fighting Macedonians - and get the Kostur Region bands to surrender. The plan worked. All the Macedonian bands in the villages, one by one, surrendered their arms and joined SNOF. SNOF’s peaceful tactics of persuasion and its agitation through the Macedonian language press contributed a great deal to not only the surrender of arms but also in convincing members of these bands to join SNOF and even ELAS. After that SNOF was abruptly dissolved and SNOV was disbanded and its fighters were absorbed by ELAS. In other words, SNOF, regardless of what the Macedonian people were told or thought of it, was nothing more than a communist weapon concocted by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) and by the Communist Party of Greece (CPG) to destroy the Kostur Region Macedonian bands.

At the time, on the surface, the CPG looked like and officially acted like any other Balkan communist party, so the general impression was that the CPG would eventually bring socialism to Greece, rights to the Macedonian people, and would look north to Moscow in the future. But deep down the CPG was not like the other Balkan communist parties, at least not at the top level. While the CPG preached a communist ideology it harboured nationalist ideas and made Greece’s sovereignty, with Greek occupied Macedonia in it, its highest priority, something Moscow would not support. Moscow was looking at a communist Balkan federation with Greece in it but without Greek occupied Macedonia. No Greek of any political affiliation was prepared to give up Greek occupied Macedonia for socialism.

As it turned out the West, particularly England, was offering Greece exactly what it wanted and was prepared in time to deliver it. But for the time being the CPG had to act like a communist party in order to prevent the Soviet Red Army from “liberating” Greece and to maintain a lid on the local communists and the Macedonians. In

other words, the CPG’s objectives were to keep the Slav armies from invading Greece, to use the real communists and Macedonians to drive out the occupiers, and to make sure the communists or the Macedonians did not win or take power. This became evident when the CPG started looking to the West.

It began with the signing of the Lebanon Agreement to form a coalition government with other Greek civilian parties, including the political right parties it was fighting against. The Agreement also called for disarming the Macedonian people as a means of destroying the Macedonian national liberation movement which had been building since the start of the triple occupation.

It then signed the Caserta Agreement, requiring all resistance forces in Greece to be placed under English command. After this ELAS was placed under the command of the English supported Greek government in exile which brought into the forefront the question of what to do with the Macedonian forces. The political right, being in direct command of ELAS, did not want Macedonian forces to exist because that would provide undeniable proof that a Macedonian population existed in Greece. Also, the Macedonians posed a danger to Greece’s sovereignty.

Then, after Stalin and Churchill divided the Balkans at Yalta, and Stalin accepted the idea that no socialist system would be implemented in Greece, the so-called “December events” began. Violent acts were staged in Athens in order to vilify ELAS and have it disbanded and give the English reason to enter Greece legally.

After that the Varkiza Agreement was signed which called for EAM to disband ELAS and hold a referendum on the return of the monarchy in Greece. By signing the Varkiza Agreement the CPG basically surrendered power to the political right and the English.

This should give you an idea of how events were developing in Greece during World War Two and the direction the CPG was taking.

But as WW II was winding down communists still existed in Greece, who at the time were a majority, and so were Macedonians

who were promised self-determination by the Atlantic Charter and other consessions by the CPG.

When WW II ended the communists were still there and so were the Macedonians looking for the promised concessions they earned by fighting on the side of the Allies. These unfortunately for the Greek government and for England were unresolved matters which had to be resolved. So once again the CPG’s help was needed. But before anything could be resolved the Greek government in Athens had to be legitimized and take root.

After England installed its agent Zahariadis as general secretary of the CPG, the English turned to the CPG to help them elect the liberal party which, in turn, opened the door for the political right to take power. All Zahariadis had to do was encourage the democratic forces to support the liberals. He told the people to support the liberals in order to keep the “Monarcho-Fascists” from taking power. But then when the liberals took office they opened the door for the “Monarcho-Fascists” to take over.

After the “Monarcho-Fascists” took control of the security forces in Greece they began to torment the democratic forces and terrorize the Macedonian population. They demanded that the Macedonians leave Greece. Unfortunately their tactics did not work because the Macedonians were not going anywhere. So a new plan had to be put in place. If they were not going to leave under duress they would be removed by other means. For example if the Macedonians were to pick up guns and begin to fight against the Greek government, say to carve out Greek territory, then the Greek government would have no choice but to fight back. Its actions would also be supported by its allies England and the United States because their intervention would be deemed of “legal” character because they were there to help the “legally elected government” and the “lawful regime in Greece” against “subversive elements”.

Here again the English and their Western partners turned to the CPY and CPG for help. While the rightists in Greece were tormenting the democratic forces and terrorizing the Macedonian population, the CPY was creating a new people’s liberation movement for Greek occupied Macedonia (NOF). Zahariadis in the meantime was

preparing the democratic forces inside Greece for a new armed struggle. Both Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union agreed to support the CPG in this.

NOF arrived in Greek occupied Macedonia before the new armed struggle, later termed the Greek Civil War, began and started preparations to arm the Macedonian people. But by then WW II had ended and the Macedonian people did not want to fight and refused to join NOF. To make them fight the political right (“Monarcho-Fascists”) began to escalate its terror activities against the Macedonians to unprecedented levels, forcing many Macedonians to run to the mountains and join NOF in order to save themselves.

After NOF established itself on the ground and was ready, the CPY subordinated NOF to the CPG and the CPG used it as an instrument to rally the Macedonian people and initiated the armed struggle.

At first the Macedonian people were told they were fighting to save themselves from the Greek terror, later they were told they were fighting for equality and human rights in Greece, after that they were told they were fighting for a united Macedonia and for independence from Greece. Eventually, as the war became very hot, they were told they were fighting for their survival.

In the meantime, while the English were telling the world a civil war was being fought in Greece - communist Greeks fighting against capitalist Greeks, the Greek population was told that the Greek government was fighting against Slav bandits who, with help from the Greek communists, were trying to steal their Macedonia from them.

There are patterns that show that when the Greek government needed to “do something” against the communists or against the Macedonians in Greece the CPG was there to help. When the Greek government needed to pass an anti-Macedonian law or rally the Greek people to fight in the war against the Macedonian people, the CPG was there to make it happen. In order to upset the Greek people the CPG often offered the Macedonian people concessions like recognition, rights, independence and so on. It was then up to the Greek press to declare these concessions treacherous. These CPG

tactics had a dual effect; they rallied both the Greek and Macedonian people to fight against one another. On the one hand they rallied the Greek people behind their government to fight against the Slavic bandits who wanted to steal their Macedonia from them. On the other hand they rallied the Macedonian people behind the democratic forces which promised rights and self-determination. All the Macedonians had to do was fight and win the war and these concessions would be theirs. All the Greeks had to do was fight and win the war and Macedonia would remain Greek.

On the surface it seemed like the CPG was doing “goods things” for the Macedonian people like allowing them to speak Macedonian, opening Macedonian schools, offering them equal rights, offering them the right to self-determination, etc. But if we dig deeper we will find that all these things were done for ulterior and sinister motives. As history has shown all these concessions were temporary and later withdrawn. In other words, the CPG made these concessions not for the benefit of the Macedonian people but for the benefit of Greece and its patrons England and the United States.

What is interesting here is that the CPG made sure all these offers were made to a phantom people the “Slavo-Macedonians”, who were defined as Slavic speaking Greeks who lived in Greek occupied Macedonia and who had nothing to do with Macedonians in Tito’s Yugoslavia.

But that was not all the CPG did to help the Greek government and its patrons England and the US win the war. Before Zahariadis started the armed uprising in Greece, later termed the Greek Civil War, he did a few things to make sure the Greek government won. First, he agreed to England coming to Greece, in fact he insisted on it. Second, he agreed to form a coalition “unity” government with the rightists, the CPG’s enemy. Third, he refused to expand DAG and turn it into a powerful army when he could have, when the Greek government was weak and when the CPG could have taken power. Fourth, he refused to take part in the March 31, 1946 elections, allowing a rightist government to win and take hold of power. Fifth, he refused to allow independent Macedonian organizations and military formations to exist, which could have helped him win the war. Sixth, he and his top people hand-picked

the battles DAG fought making sure the opponent was prepared to fight and win, like in Konitsa. Seventh, he turned DAG from a successful hit and run mobile army into an unsuccessful stationary army fighting at fronts giving its opponent the ability to target it with its heavy artillery and aviation. Eight, he brought the war north into Greek occupied Macedonia where he had set up free zones and liberated territories. As a result the war brought death and destruction forcing the Macedonian people to leave their homes en masse and head north across the border to save themselves. Nine, he made sure every capable Macedonian was involved in the war effort and as a result became an enemy of the Greek government. Ten, he gave the Greek military enough time to prepare before he ordered the attack on Lerin. Eleven, when the war was escalating and coming to a conclusion he made sure that every Macedonian village was emptied of its people and they were sent over the border into Albania. Twelve, he made no attempt to sign a surrender agreement with the Greek government and safeguard the return of the fighters and refugees. In fact he made sure the refugees were out of Greece, enabling the Greek government to close its borders and permanently exile them with no hope of ever returning.

The Greek Civil War was rigged from the start and was designed to destroy the communists in Greece and get rid of the Macedonians from Greek occupied Macedonia. This is what England and later the United States wanted and this is why they supported the Greek government and the top CPG leadership. The Greek government made it no secret that it wanted the communists destroyed and the entire Macedonian population expelled from Greece. It made that very clear through its newspapers, the Greek media, and by condoning and secretly supporting terrorist activities against the Macedonians and against the democratic people in general. Control of how this was going to be done was left up to the CPG top leaders. For all this to be legal the Greek government had to take a defensive position and only react, that is, fight back to protect Greece’s sovereignty. The CPG had to do the rest. So, to make sure the Greek government met its objectives, the CPG set the conditions as stated above and appointed the “right people” to lead the war. The top CPG leadership made sure these leaders had the most to lose if the communists or the Macedonians won. The English made sure the CPG top leadership was infiltrated by loyal Greeks the likes of

Zahariadis and Vafiadis who had most to lose. Zahariadis and Vafiadis were both Christian Turkish colonists from Asia Minor deposited in Greek occupied Macedonia in the 1920’s and given Macedonian lands and homes for free. These people were told that if the Macedonians won the war they and all the colonists and settlers the Greek government deposited in Macedonia would be thrown out. At the same time, even though the majority of the fighting force in this war was Macedonian, no Macedonians were allowed to lead independently. If the CPG truly wanted to help the Macedonian people it would have allowed the Macedonians to independently create and lead their own organizations and military.

After receiving reports of how badly the communists and Macedonians were treated in Greece with English support, the Soviet Union saw an opportunity to intervene by asking the United Nations to remove the English military from Greece. The UN declined. Like it is today, the United Nations at that time was dominated by Western influence which tended to support England’s interests more than care for the Macedonians or the communists in Greece.

As a counter to this, Greece then sent its own delegation to the United Nations claiming that the war inside Greece was brought from the outside, particularly by the communist parties of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania and supported by the Soviet Union. Greece and its patrons England and the United States, needed to make this war look like it was brought into Greece by outsiders otherwise it would have been difficult to explain why Slav-speaking Greeks would want to carve out Greek territory and give it to Yugoslavia Also, it would later make it easier to explain why Greece exiled all the DAG fighters and would not accept them back. This also explains why the CPG did not negotiate DAG’s surrender and the return of the fighters to their homes in Greece. If the war could be blamed on outsiders then there would be no reason to explain anything.

The United Nations did send an investigative team which conducted an internal and external investigation but its findings were inconclusive. Greece made sure the “right” people were interviewed who gave the investigators false information. Unfortunately the fact

that NOF, AFZH and NOMS were created in Yugoslavia and sent to Greece to start a war did not help the situation. Eventually the United Nations voted in favour of Greece and ordered Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania not to recognize the communists in Greece or to support the war effort. Nothing was done about the Macedonian condition.

Sometime later, realizing that things could get a lot worse in the Balkans, the Soviet Union ordered Yugoslavia to stop supporting the war effort in Greece. Stalin began to worry when there was word that the Greek government was asking the United States to think about using atomic weapons against DAG in the Macedonian mountains. “Look what they did in Japan, thousands of kilometers away… Imagine what they would do here if we continue to interfere in their affairs…” said Stalin to Tito. Unfortunately Tito refused to comply which started the Stalin-Tito feud turning the entire communist block, including the CPG, against the CPY. This was very bad for the Macedonian people who were caught in the middle. The feud left no middle ground; the Macedonian people were forced to decide if they were “for Tito” or “for Stalin”. And if they were for the one that meant that they were against the other. The Macedonian people were split in two and began their own feud calling each other traitors. In fact Stalin was so upset, after attempting to assassinate Tito several times and failing, that he threatened to dismantle Yugoslavia. He told Tito he was going to assemble an army from the Macedonian fighters and send it to carve out the Yugoslav part of Macedonia and create an independent Macedonian state. And that is the reason why the Soviet Union took all the exiled DAG fighters to Tashkent, USSR after the Greek Civil War ended.

Years later, when the fighters began to return to their homeland, not being welcome in Greece, they landed in the Republic of Macedonia. Upon their entry they were sent to a prison for interrogation and asked if they were for Tito or Stalin… and God help those who said they were for Stalin. The Macedonian fighters who fled the Greek Civil War and went to the Republic of Macedonia before the war was over succumbed to CPY propaganda and began to accuse the Macedonians still fighting in the war of being traitors; fighting for the Greek cause. The Macedonian fighters who fought in the Greek Civil War to the end and were sent

to Tashkent succumbed to CPG propaganda and began to accuse the fighters who left during the war of being traitors, deserters and of abandoning their families and homeland.

There were no Macedonian heroes in this war on either side, only villains, blaming each other for losing the war. History took the side of the architects who started this war and placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Macedonian people. They started a feud, Macedonian accusing Macedonian of wrong-doing, which is still ongoing to this day, to cover up the truth. Yugoslavia was very much a part of the conspiracy to get rid of the Macedonians from Greece as much as Greece, England and the United States were.

Details of what was said in this preface can be found in the main body, in the chronology of this book as well as in the books mentioned in the bibliography.