In this book, we follow the political, economic, and armed collaboration with the occupier, as it manifested in the region of Attica. Through the study of archives that are being published for the first time, the actions of those who collaborated are described, the reasons and mechanisms for the development of the collaboration phenomenon are examined, as well as the political and economic conditions that favored its emergence. The policies followed by the three Greek occupation governments, the role of merchants, industrialists, civil engineers, and others in economic transactions with the occupiers, the actions of the Greek Royal Gendarmerie, the Security Battalions, the Greek agents of the SS, and others, who formed the armed wing of the collaboration, and their judicial treatment after the end of the occupation, are at the center of this study.
Collaboration with the occupier characterized everyday life throughout occupied Europe. Politicians, military personnel, businessmen, mayors, judges, priests, journalists, collaborated closely with the occupation authorities, for many different reasons. The initially apparent victory of Germany in the war, anti-communism, the acquisition of quick and easy wealth, ideological alignment with National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy, the need for survival, were some of them. In Greece, although 80 whole years have passed since the end of the occupation, the issue of collaboration with the occupier continues to be a taboo subject. This is the result of the political oblivion followed by all post-war governments, in their attempt to manage the political consequences of the unprecedented, in intensity and extent, collective trauma caused to Greek society by the collaboration. Collaboration with the occupier was the starting point of the new division, which, with the contribution of other factors, led to the civil conflicts of the occupation, the Dekemvriana, and ultimately to the civil war of the 1940s.
