During the Axis occupation of Greece, the communist-dominated EAM-ELAS had become the major organization within the Greek Resistance movement. By the summer of 1944, with an estimated membership of between half and two million, and disposing of some 150,000 fighters, it dwarfed its nearest non-communist rivals, EDES and EKKA. Mounting tensions between itself and the other rival groups, sparked by ideology as well as EAM-ELAS' ambition to be the sole instrument of "national liberation", led to repeated clashes in 1943–44, in what was later termed the "first phase" of the Civil War. At the time of Greece's liberation in October 1944, EAM-ELAS dominated the country except for the major cities, especially Athens, where British forces supported the returned Greek government in exile. As from the return of the exiled government, a new headed by Georgios Papandreou was established in Greece, with the participation of EAM and KKE, according to the Caserta Agreement. The internal disagreements of the government, resulted in the withdrawal of the EAM ministers. The dormant rivalry between the Papandreou's government, backed by the British, and EAM-ELAS, resulted in the Dekemvriana clashes in Athens, where EAM-ELAS was defeated, and the disarmament of the organization in the Treaty of Varkiza.
White Terror and outbreak of the Civil War
With EAM-ELAS neutralized, its members became easy prey for persecution by various right-wing groups in retaliation for the preceding "Red Terror". These ranged from former members of the collaborationist Security Battalions to the government's paramilitary security services, chiefly the Greek Gendarmerie and the National Guard, acting with the government's tacit support. Thus, as Polymeris Voglis points out, "hereas elsewhere in Europe prisons were flooded with fascists and their collaborators, in Greece most of the prisoners were members of leftist resistance organizations": according to the British Legal Mission in Greece, of the 16,700 prison inmates on 1 October 1945, 7,077 were common law criminals, 6,027 were left-wing prisoners imprisoned after the Dekemvriana, and only 2,896 were collaborators. The campaign of persecution lasted through 1945 and much of 1946, and was a critical element in the radicalization and polarization of the political climate in the country; it led to the formation of leftist self-defence troops, the Left's boycott of the 1946 election, and finally the resumption of warfare with the outbreak of the third, or main phase, of the Greek Civil War in spring 1946. In the period between the Treaty of Varkiza and the 1946 election, right-wing terror squads committed 1,289 murders, 165 rapes, 151 kidnappings and forced disappearances. 6,681 people were injured, 32,632 tortured, 84,939 arrested and 173 women were shaved bald. Following the victory of the United Alignment of Nationalists on 1 April 1946 and until 1 May of the same year, 116 leftists were murdered, 31 injured, 114 tortured, 4 buildings were set aflame and 7 political offices were ransacked.
