In the closing months of the Second World War, Greece was on the brink of liberation. Nazi German forces, facing defeat on all fronts, began withdrawing from the country. Yet in the Peloponnese and other regions, their presence was maintained through the actions of local collaborators: the Security Battalions (Tagmata Asfaleias). These battalions—composed of Greeks—had fought not against the occupiers but against their own people. Armed, trained, and supported by the Nazis, they were tasked with crushing the communist-led resistance.
The German occupation of Greece (1941–1944) was truly devastating. Entire villages were burned, tens of thousands were executed, and famine claimed countless lives. In this nightmare, the KKE-led National Liberation Front (EAM) and its military wing, the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS), rose to lead the resistance. At its height, EAM-ELAS mobilized hundreds of thousands of Greeks, liberated vast rural areas, and became the backbone of the anti-fascist struggle.
But the occupiers had local allies. The Security Battalions were formed in 1943 with the blessing of the collaborationist government and under German supervision. These battalions were composed of men who chose to fight against the Resistance rather than against the Axis. They became notorious for terrorizing villages, executing suspected partisans, and enforcing Nazi control in the countryside.
To the liberation movement, these men were not simply political opponents. They were traitors who had betrayed Greece in its darkest hour. The Resistance viewed their elimination as a national and moral necessity.
The town of Meligalas in Messinia became the stronghold of the Security Battalions in the Peloponnese. There, the 3rd Battalion of Kalamata and local collaborationist authorities concentrated their forces. For years they had persecuted the surrounding villages, raiding homes, arresting civilians, and participating in executions under German orders.
When the Wehrmacht began its retreat, Meligalas remained a fortified pocket of collaborationist power. To leave it untouched would mean leaving a dagger at the heart of the liberated Peloponnese.
The Battle: 13-15 September 13–15 1944
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| A security battalion member bearing the swastika |
On September 15, ELAS forces stormed the town. The Security Battalion collapsed. Dozens were killed in the fighting, and hundreds were captured. To the people of the region, this was liberation—not only from the Germans, but from their Greek accomplices who had enforced Nazi rule.
The punishment of the collaborators took on a symbolic form that would etch itself into the memory of generations: the well of Meligalas. Into this deep well were thrown many of the captured battalionists and collaborators, men whose crimes against the people had made them despised across the region. The well became more than a place of execution—it became a monument of people’s justice, a site where the traitors were cast down, literally and historically, into the abyss they had dug for the nation. For the oppressed who had suffered under their terror, the sight of the traitors being hurled into the well was not cruelty but vindication, the visible proof that fascism and treason meet their rightful end.
The aftermath of Meligalas has been the subject of falsification and propaganda by the bourgeois historiography and more specifically, by far-right groups and parties. Anti-communist narratives speak of a “massacre,” presenting the collaborators as innocent victims of communist violence. The reality is starkly different.
For the Resistance, those executed after the battle were not innocents. They were armed collaborators whose hands were stained with the blood of Greek civilians. They had burned villages, executed prisoners, and terrorized the countryside. Their punishment was the inevitable result of their treason.
In the days after the battle, ELAS organized guerrilla tribunals to judge collaborators. While wartime chaos meant that not all punishments followed formal procedures, the guiding principle was clear: there can be no reconciliation with traitors. Revolutionary justice was not an excess, but a necessity—both for the honor of the Resistance and for the security of a liberated Greece.
The Necessity of Revolutionary Justice
Why was this justice necessary? The answer is clear: Yes, it was, for the following reasons:
— To cleanse the nation of treason. Fascist collaborators could not be allowed to survive politically or militarily.
— To honor the sacrifices of the people. Tens of thousands had died resisting the occupiers. To forgive collaborators would mock their martyrdom.
—To secure liberation. Without punishing traitors, Greece would risk sliding back into the grip of reaction and fascism after the German withdrawal.
Thus, Meligalas must be remembered not as indiscriminate vengeance, but as a decisive break with collaboration—a warning that siding with fascism carries consequences.
Today, more than 80 years later, Meligalas remains a symbol of people’s justice. In people's memory, it embodies the principle that liberation requires not only the defeat of foreign occupiers but also the elimination of domestic betrayal. They gather each year to mourn those who wore the Nazi uniform, who murdered Greeks on German orders. This is not memory, but provocation. For decades, far-right groups have attempted to transform Meligalas into a shrine to “martyrs,” presenting the collaborators as victims of communist terror.
The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) consistently exposed this distortion, reminding the public that the men executed in Meligalas were not innocents, but Nazi collaborators.
The struggle over memory reflects a deeper struggle over the meaning of Greece’s wartime past: was liberation the work of the Resistance, or was it a tragedy distorted by the so-called “red terror”? History is clear—without the Resistance, there would have been no liberation, and without revolutionary justice, fascism would never have been truly defeated.
The Battle of Meligalas was the triumph of the people over treason. It was the righteous vengeance of the Resistance against the butchers of the working class. It was the cleansing of the Peloponnese from the stench of fascism.
In Meligalas, the Greek people showed that their liberation was not only from the foreign occupier, but also from the domestic traitor. This was, and remains, the essence of revolutionary justice.
* Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of In Defense of Communism.
