Dr. Alex Bebler
It is generally admitted that the national uprising of the Greek people, under the leadership of the Provisional Greek Democratic Government headed by General Markos, has spread during the last year throughout all Greece and has also intensified. Today, even the highest American official representatives in and outside Greece admit that the Greek democratic forces are today more numerous, stronger, and a more serious force than they were at the beginning of the huge so-called American aid to Greece. This is admitted by the Athens Government, by the General Staff and by the press of the world. Thus the New York Times of October 17 cites the announcement of the Greek General Staff that more guerrillas are now in the field against the government than sixteen months ago when American aid started.
Even the head of the Delegation of the Athens Government, Mr. Tsaldaris, was obliged to admit this fact in the course of general debate at this Assembly, making the statement, unique in military history, that "despite brilliant victories won by the Greek army...the situation has become extremely difficult." (Press release, P/PM/38).
But facts remain facts. Resisting ever increasing foreign intervention and the ruthless interferences of the United States of America in the internal affairs of Greece, resisting the furious mass terror of the Athens Government, the Greek people have stiffened their struggle both at the front and in the rear, the struggle for an independent, free and democratic Greece. The national uprising has spread to all parts of the country, to the Peloponnesus and to northern Greece, to the central regions and the islands, even - according to the Greek press - to the Dodecanese, and other regions where previously there was little or no fighting. The people's uprising is becoming ever more national in character, and has limited the authority of the Athens Government to the larger towns and major lines of communication. Thus at a press conference in Athens on August 12, 1948, Lieutenant Colonel Dzovaros, spokesman for GHQ, enumerated the following zones of military operations in Greece;
The area of Evros; region of Kantia-Komotini; region of Drama; mountain range Boz-Dagh; mountain range Beles; area north of Seres; region of Migrita-Halkidic; region of Kaymakchalan-Paiko; area of Vermion; region of Pieris-Olympus in the area of Vitsi Mountain; region of Siniatsiko Mountain; region of Murgana; region of Grammos; region of Pogoni; region of Suli; region of Drumerka-Peristeri-Kozaka; Hassia Mountain; Ortis Mountain; region of Lake Kinias; region of Ghion-Vardusia; the islands of Euboea, Sarnos, Mitelene, Keffalonia and Crete, and the Peloponnesus.
The rightist newspaper Elephieria of January 7, 1948, admitted the failure of the strategy of the Greek General Staff and its foreign "advisors" in the struggle against the irresistible surge of the national uprising of the Greek people, and wrote that there are today in Greece "as many fronts as the enemy desires."