During the course of the Second World War, the Axis Powers occupied Greece for just over 4 years, beginning with the Italian and German invasion of April 1942 and commencing with the surrender of German troops on Crete in June 1945.
A combination of Nazi, Fascist Italian and Bulgarian forces carried the occupation. After June 1941 the occupiers were more or less fully installed. King George II then fled the country and the Nazis, who were in charge of Greece’s major territories, including Athens and Thessaloniki, set up a puppet regime in the capital.
Although Greece’s ruling ‘4th of August’ regime was a right wing dictatorship, its leader, Ioannis Metaxas, was loyal to Great Britain. Metaxas died less than three months before the Axis invasion and the Nazis installed General Georgios Tsolakoglou as the first prime minister of the collaborationalist government.
