National Union of Greece
The National Union of Greece was an anti-Semitic nationalist party established in Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1927.
Registered as a mutual aid society, the EEE was founded by Asia Minor refugee merchants. According to the organisation's constitution, only Christians could join. Its members were opposed to Thessaloniki's substantial Jewish population.
It was led by Georgios Kosmidis, a banking clerk.
The party's leaders were the main defendants in the trial held after the Campbell Riot of 29 June 1931, in which Greek nationalist mobs attacked the Jewish "Campbell" settlement in the city.
Estimates put the party's strength at 7,000 members in 1932; by 1933, it had 3,000 members march to Athens, in apparent imitation of Benito Mussolini's 1922 March on Rome. However, it polled miserably in the 1934 city elections in Thessaloniki, and in 1935, the party imploded as a result of in-fighting. It was revived by the German occupation authorities in 1942, during the Axis Occupation of Greece; many members of EEE became prominent collaborators of the Nazis, and many more joined the Security Battalions and helped in the identification of Greek Jews.
Owing to its paramilitary uniforms and organisation, the party was commonly referred to as "The Three Epsilons" or "The Steelhelmets", in allusion to the German paramilitary Der Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten.
