An account of wartime Greece, exploring the impact of Nazi Occupation upon the lives and values of ordinary people. It seeks to offer a vividly human picture of resistance fighters and black marketeers, teenage German conscripts and Gestapo officers, Jews and starving villagers.



This gripping and richly illustrated account of wartime Greece explores the impact of the Nazi Occupation upon the lives and values of ordinary people. The first full account of the experience of occupation, it offers a vividly human picture of resistance fighters and black marketeers, teenage German conscripts and Gestapo officers, Jews and starving villagers.

"Fascinating. . . . [Mazower] succeeds in getting under the skin of the occupation. . . . [This book] conjures up, in vivid detail, life under an occupation that had shattered old certainties and replaced them with painful choices, cynical compromises, and hopes undercut by the daily death toll." —Mark Almond, New York Times

"A vivid picture of the German occupier’s mind and actions. . . . Mazower’s arguments are always fair." —Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A superb book on the horrors afflicting wartime Greece. . . . [Mazower] has done vast archival research and emerged with a gripping, readable and human account, setting every moment of a tragic period in appropriate context." —Fritz Stern, Foreign Affairs

"[A] sensitive, illuminating and richly textured account of painful, complex experience." —Richard Overy, Observer
Mark Mazower is professor of history at Birkbeck College, University of London, and author of Dark Continent.