On the wings of Hermes: SOE and OSS operations in Greece 1940-1945

Abstract

The clandestine campaign in Greece during the Second World War is an example of the change in warfare throughout the remainder of the Twentieth Century. The primary emphasis would shift from the conventional battlefield to guerrilla warfare, and information would achieve a primacy not seen in previous conflicts. The two principal Allied agencies charged with the conduct of the effort in Greece during the Second World War were the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). In addition to providing Allied Forces Headquarters-Mediterranean with vast amounts of intelligence regarding German and Italian dispositions and intentions in Greece during 1940¿1944, these forces trained, equipped, and directed the badly fragmented Greek Resistance against the Axis occupation forces. The Germans took the lead against this responding to it with a variety of conventional and unconventional military operations. In 1943 these almost succeeded in breaking the Greek insurgency but they failed to make effective use of such intelligence assets as they possessed. Greece then became the first of many guerrilla conflicts during the 1946¿1991 Cold War and set a precedence for the foreign policy of both the Western and Soviet powers.