Red Acropolis, Black Terror: The Greek Civil War And The Origins Of The Soviet-american Rivalry,1943-1949 [Hardcover]

Andre Gerolymatos (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 6, 2004

From 1944 to 1949, tens of thousands of Greek soldiers and guerrillas fought and slaughtered each other and thousands of innocents in a civil war of unrelenting and shocking savagery. In the wake of the Allied liberation of Greece, the fighting transformed into a civil war, pitting Soviet-backed Communists against U.S.- and British-backed government forces. As the first proxy war between the superpowers, the Greek Civil War became the first hot zone of the Cold War.In Red Acropolis, Black Terror, historian Andre Gerolymatos recounts the full history of this divisive conflict, exposing old wounds that still fester beneath the surface of contemporary Greek society. He tells the stories of ordinary Greek men, women, and children caught up in turbulent times and by powerful foreign forces.In many ways, the Greek Civil War heralded America's future involvement in Vietnam: Not only did it mark the first time the U.S. used napalm, but it convinced U.S. policymakers that counterinsurgency operations were winnable.Red Acropolis, Black Terror unflinchingly presents the personal horrors of this brutal war, while exploring the global issues that make this "little" conflict so significant.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Andre Gerolymatos holds the chair of Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. His previous books include Guerrilla Warfare and Espionage in Greece, 1940-1944, Espionage and Treason in Classical Greece, and The Balkan Wars. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1St Edition edition (July 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465027431
• ISBN-13: 978-0465027439
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,116,376 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars REVIEW OF RED ACROPOLIS, October 7, 2011

By 

Sophocles A. Vitakis "PAPYRUS" (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Red Acropolis, Black Terror: The Greek Civil War And The Origins Of The Soviet-american Rivalry,1943-1949 (Hardcover)

The author has done a good research in writing the book about the turmoil years 1943 to 1949 in Greece.
A good description of the bloody events,that took place in Athens & the interferance of the communists, before And after the withdraw of the German forces from Greece. A book to be read by those who lived in Greece during these events and by those who were young then.

3.0 out of 5 stars Good addition to Cold War historiography, August 27, 2011

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Lehigh History Student (Bethlehem, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Red Acropolis, Black Terror: The Greek Civil War and the Origins of Soviet-American Rivalry, 1943-1949 (Hardcover)

Red Acropolis, Black Terror looks at The Greek Civil War following World War II and how that fit into the overall context of the Cold War. From the British collaborators to the German sympathizers and the eventual rise of the communist this book carefully assesses the major players and how they fit into the larger picture. The various forces and the political terror they achieved (through violence much of the time) is still felt today in Greece and there are many parallels that can be seen. Two complaints are that it is written in a dry manner and can be a struggle to get through at times. Secondly it is missing a list of primary people which makes learning names that very few people would be familiar with difficult. Overall though it is still a valuable addition to the scholarship on both Greece and the Cold War.

15 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting book with several flaws, February 20, 2007

By 

Seth J. Frantzman (Jerusalem, Israel) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Red Acropolis, Black Terror: The Greek Civil War And The Origins Of The Soviet-american Rivalry,1943-1949 (Hardcover)

The Greek Civil war that began after the Second World War is still being felt today. This book explores it, beggining with the OSS intervention in Greece and the resistance to Nazism in Greece and follows the conflict up to modern times through interviews with normal people and history of the various governments and the coup.

This is an important contribution to cold war studies and regional history and squarely places the Greek Civil war in the context of the Cold War, the realm of 'small wars', great power politics and the Balkan region. This leads to one of the great drawbacks of the book: its over-emphasis on the role of the U.S and Russia, when we know that both played a far smaller role than credited. Stalin didnt support the Greek rebels and the U.S maintained mainly an economic support as well as using the Mediteranean fleet and a CIA office to support the Greek government. THe second major flaw is the emphasis on the "Black terror" which is mostly a canard. The Communist Greeke rebels murdered ten times the number of civilians as the government ever did. But somehow in this book that is called 'political terror'. One wonders if it had been the other way around if the murder of villagers by the 'Black terror' would have been called 'political' and not murder.

Seth J. Frantzman