Liberation Day | Fanatical to the end

On the evening of May 9, 1945, the "Reichssender Flensburg" broadcast the final report from the Wehrmacht High Command. "Just yesterday," East Prussia was "valiantly defended" to the very end, the loudspeakers proclaimed. "Imperishable glory" had been earned in six battles, and a "premature surrender" had been rejected. Then the focus turned to the south and north of Europe: "Far from home," the message continued, "the defenders of the Atlantic bases, our troops in Norway, and the garrisons of the Aegean islands, with obedience and discipline, upheld the honor of the German soldier."

October 1944 is generally considered the month of Greece's liberation. Athens was liberated on October 18, 1944, followed by Thessaloniki on October 30. But in some Greek regions, German soldiers remained for more than six months, defending the "honor of arms" for the "Führer" who had already fled. German soldiers remained on western Crete, Kos, Leros, Rhodes, smaller islands like Tilos, and also on Milos until the Wehrmacht's unconditional surrender. The Cycladic island of Milos was occupied on May 9, 1941. Developed as a fortress in the summer of 1943, it was stubbornly defended against British troops and Greek resistance fighters until May 9, 1945. Senseless gunpowder fumes, suffering, fear, and terror, countless deaths.

Thirty years ago, Yiannis Mikhail Chalkoutsakis's report, a firsthand account and a dense chronicle, was published posthumously: "Milos Under Occupation." The author was a soldier and eventually a lieutenant colonel, born on Milos in 1913 and died in Athens in 1993. During the occupation, he took a job on his home island in an office where the fortifications for the German invaders were planned and organized. This enabled him to obtain precise site plans, gather information, and pass it on to the military resistance. In 1944, he joined the "Holy Brigade," Ieros Lochos, a Greek partisan group.

The Cycladic island lies halfway between Piraeus and Crete, strategically important for the German war effort, serving as a bridgehead, stopover, and supply base for aircraft and ships. In February/March 1943, the defeat at Stalingrad marked a turning point in the German war of conquest. On February 18, 1943, Propaganda Minister Goebbels delivered his infamous speech at the Berlin Sportpalast: "Do you want total war?"

At the end of June 1943, the Germans conducted a census on Milos, registering all men between the ages of 18 and 55. Afterward, more than 500 men were forced to perform forced labor, along with 35 women. Milos was transformed into a fortress: radar installations, bunkers, trenches, minefields, anti-aircraft guns, and artillery. Ruins of these structures can still be found scattered across the island today. "Fortunately for Milos," writes Chalkoutsakis, "the real Gestapo never came." Massacres like those on Crete, for example, never occurred on Milos.

But by mid-1943 at the latest, Milos became a war zone. In the autumn, bombings intensified; all roads on the island were monitored; barbed wire and minefields protected the stationed German soldiers. At the turn of the year 1943/44, a radar station was installed in the southwest of the island: Topakas. In the letters of the German medical officer Hans Löber, something of the suffering and death there flared up. "This week, a vicious shooting," Löber wrote in mid-January 1944, "four Greeks wounded, one so seriously that he died after a day." At the end of July, he wrote: "Many wounded..., often in a hopeless state... Yesterday... a Greek walked into a minefield and his left lower leg was torn off. I amputated it immediately."

In August 1944, most of the German soldiers were evacuated from Milos to Paros. However, around 600 remained on the island because the transport routes were no longer functioning. In the autumn of 1944, the bombings intensified. At the end of September, the German medical officer Löber wrote: "Many wounded, most of them quite seriously wounded..., three men alone had to be amputated by me... Those were truly turbulent weeks. ... On top of that, we were under artillery fire from the sea, bombs from the air, and onboard weapons fire from low-flying aircraft. "

In September 1944, the Germans began demolishing fortifications. In October 1944, Stalin and Churchill conferred in Moscow about the future of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Churchill declared his willingness to largely renounce influence in Bulgaria and Romania; in return, the Soviet Union renounced its influence in Greece . British aircraft dropped a proclamation over Milos calling on German soldiers to surrender. Fanatical German commanders rejected the offer.

In mid-November 1944, British soldiers attempted to storm the radar station in the southwest of the island, Topakas. Four British soldiers were killed, and the attack was called off. Three days later, the Germans blew up the station and retreated into the interior of the island, to Kaminia. There were assassination attempts by Greek resistance fighters, and Löber was also killed.

In mid-January 1945, the anti-aircraft position in the Bay of Milos (Corfou) was bombed and abandoned by the Germans by the end of the month. An ammunition depot exploded, reportedly killing 80 German soldiers. However, at the end of April 1945, the German commander on the island, Georg Knauer, distributed a proclamation threatening draconian punishments for German defectors and Greek helpers. As a reward, the fanatical Nazi was promoted to major on Easter Sunday, May 6.

Only after the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht in Berlin-Karlshorst did the guns fall silent on Milos, which has been celebrated on this Greek island every first Sunday after May 9 since 2004.

Recommended reading: Gerhard Paul: May 1945. The Absurd End of the "Third Reich." How and Where Nazi Rule Really Ended. Theiss-Verlag, 336 pp., hardcover, €28.

On Milos, too, the guns only fell silent after the capitulation in Berlin-Karlshorst.

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