In April 1941 the German army invaded Greece, leading to four years of
hideous barbarism and to a civil war that tore the country apart. Inside
Hitler's Greece explores the impact of the Occupation upon the lives and
values of ordinary Greeks. Drawing on a wealth of first-hand accounts
and previously untapped archival sources Mark Mazower offers a vividly
human picture of the experiences of resistance fighters and black
marketeers, teenage German conscripts and Gestapo officers. He shows how
war threw traditional family roles into question as women became
breadwinners and children took up arms. The moral complexities of life
under foreign rule are linked to the unfolding political tragedy that
brought the civil war. The book describes the economic exploitation of
Greece and the resulting famine - the disintegration of an entire
society and the origins of mass resistance. It offers an unsentimental
account of the realities of guerrilla life in the mountains, covering
the psychological as well as the material effects of total war. But the
war is also seen through German eyes: soldiers, diplomats, and SS
officials speak in their own words, allowing us to understand the
beliefs and values that underlay Nazi policies of violence, terror, and
extermination. From staff officers like the young Kurt Waldheim to
ordinary Bavarian conscripts, the German Occupation apparatus is brought
to life in unprecedented detail. A world of ruined villages and stirring
revolutionary utopias, abandoned Jewish homes and starving islanders -
the world of Hitler's New Order - is comprehensively analyzed and set in
its historical context.
