Blood and Tears: Greece 1940-1949: a Story of War and Love

Washington: American Hellenic Institute Foundation, 2005 Book. New Book from Publisher. Hardcover. 1st US Ed... A powerful autobiography set in the turbulent decade of 1940s Greece. Through the eyes of an impressionable and intelligent young man who came of age in a time of world war, foreign occupation, resistance, and civil war, we witness the tragedy and trauma suffered by Greece. While uniquely personal, this is also the story of young Greeks cast unwillingly into the ambivalences and horrors of WWII.The authors descriptions are vivid and convincing. Against a rigorously researched backdrop of the key historical events, we see youthful idealism being forcibly reconciled to the realities of hunger, brutality, dissension, and death. With a keen eye for detail, and reflecting on the mundane as well as the profound, we watch as Greece patriotically fends off foreign invasion and survives years of harsh occupation, but gullibly and disastrously succumbs to the blandishments of utopians..