3 DECEMBER
28 CIVILIANS SHOT DEAD IN ATHENS BY BRITISH ARMED NAZI COLLABORATORS
Winston Churchill’s legendary qualities of courage and defiance are often celebrated. It is taken for granted that he was motivated primarily by a moral repugnance to Nazism. But if so it’s difficult to understand his decision in 1944 to release around 12,000 Nazi collaborators from the prisons in Athens and have them uniformed and armed so that they could eliminate the threat of left leaning partisans who had driven the German army from the city’s streets. One appalling consequence was that, on 3 December 1944, 28 demonstrators in Athens, including women and children, were shot dead. Even reading the account of the massacre in the pro-Empire Daily Express, it appears clear who was responsible.
“They (the crowd of several thousand) were entirely unarmed. Outside the US embassy they paused and shouted “Long Live Roosevelt.” But later “the police armed with Bren rifles and tommy guns opened fire at some instances at 50 yards range and without warning……..There was no provocation. The crowd was peaceful which was demonstrated by the presence of many women and children, even babies……(but as) a second body of E.A.M. (National Liberation Front) demonstrators came down the street policemen increased the intensity and range of their fire, using heavier weapons, probably mortars and light anti-tank guns.”[1]
The only possible mitigation suggested by the Express reporter was that “the police had served both (the dictator) Metaxas and the German invaders and are probably somewhat frightened.” Yet, Churchill was so keen to protect the former quisling agents of the Nazi regime that he insisted on “reserving judgement” on the incident.[2]
HIDING THE BRUTAL TRUTH ABOUT BRITISH COLONIAL RULE IN KENYA
3 December 1963 – Just nine days prior to Kenya being granted independence, hundreds of files of documents were packed into four large wooden packing crates and loaded onto a British United Airways flight to London’s Gatwick Airport. They related to Britain’s colonial administration of the country during the brutal crushing of the Mau Mau anti-colonial insurgency. Some of those who knew about the transfer assumed these were files the British government considered to be too sensitive to be left behind. Others spoke about files being dumped from aircraft into the dark depths of the Indian ocean.(3)
Two and a half years earlier, on 3 May 1961, Colonial Seretary Iaian Macleod had decreed that certain categories of documents must be prioritized for removal back to Britain, prior to granting Kenya independence. These were to include anything that might embarrass or shame the British government, damage the reputation of the police, army or civil servants or compromise informers or other sources of intelligence. These files, which detailed the close involvement of British officials with torture, abuse and extra-judicial killings on a near industrial scale, were then hidden away in London until legal action against the British government by Mau Mau claimants forced their disclosure. (4)
FOOTNOTES
- “Royalists Battle with Reds”, The Daily Express, 4 December 1944 p1 and p4. For Churchill’s role in masterminding the crackdown and sending Sir Charles Wickham to Athens oversee the recruitment of collaborators see Ed Vulliamy and Helena Smith “Athens 1944. Britain’s Dirty Secret”, The Guardian, 30 November 2014.
- “Royalists Battle with Reds”, The Daily Express, 4 December 1944 p4.
- Ian Cobain (2017), “The History Thieves: Secret, Lies and the Shaping of a Modern Nation,” Portobello Books, London p105 and p116
- Ian Cobain (2017), Ibid, p112.