This book offers a new, original perspective on the highly debated subject of the National Resistance and the Occupation Civil War, focusing on the most important but least studied aspect of this period: the ordinary fighters of the resistance armies of EΔΕΣ and ELAS.

Using a vast amount of primary material and dozens of interviews, historian Spyros Tsoutsoumbis answers for the first time a series of crucial questions that have been sidelined or ignored: Who were the ordinary guerrillas? What led them to enlist? How did they experience the war? What was daily life like in the guerrilla armies, and how did they relate to the societies they had sworn to protect? What was their contribution to the Allied effort?

Through the testimonies of the ordinary protagonists, the drama and tension of the resistance struggle are vividly revived, offering a fresh, well-researched account that takes the reader to the heart of these events and opens a new dimension to this thorny period of our history.