The Battle of Meligalas () took place at Meligalas in Messenia in southwestern Greece, on 13–15 September 1944, between the Greek Resistance forces of the Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS) and the collaborationist Security Battalions.
During the Axis occupation of Greece, ELAS partisan forces began operating in the Peloponnese from 1942, and in 1943 began to establish their control over the area. To confront them, the German occupation authorities formed the Security Battalions, which took part not only in anti-guerrilla operations but also in mass reprisals against the local civilian population. With the liberation of Greece drawing near in 1944, the Security Battalions were increasingly targeted by ELAS.
Following the withdrawal of German forces from the Peloponnese in September 1944, a part of the collaborationist forces in Kalamata withdrew to Meligalas, where a force of about 1,000 Battalionists gathered. There they were quickly surrounded by ELAS detachments, some 1,200 strong. After a three-day battle, the ELAS partisans broke through the fortifications and entered the town. The ELAS victory was followed by a massacre, during which prisoners and civilians were executed near a well. The number of executed people is variously estimated at between 700 and 1,100 on different counts. After news of the massacre spread, the leadership of ELAS and of its political parent group, the National Liberation Front (EAM) took steps to ensure a peaceful transition of power in most of the country, limiting reprisal occurrences.
During the post-war period and following the Greek Civil War, the ruling right-wing establishment immortalized the Meligalas massacre as evidence of communist brutality, and memorialized the victims as patriotic heroes. Following the Metapolitefsi, the official support of this commemoration ceased. The massacre continues to be commemorated by the descendants of the Battalionists and their ideological sympathizers in the far right and remains a point of reference and an antifascist rallying cry for the far-left in Greece.
Political and military background
Emergence of the Resistance in occupied Messenia
Following the German invasion of Greece in April 1941, Adolf Hitler desired to quickly extricate German forces for the impending invasion of the Soviet Union. As a result, the largest portion of the occupied country, including the Peloponnese, came under Italian military control. Western Thrace and eastern Macedonia came under Bulgarian control, and various strategically important areas (notably Athens and Piraeus, Crete, and Thessaloniki with Central Macedonia) remained under German control.
In the Kalamata Province, the nascent communist-led National Liberation Front (EAM) began its activity in 1942, promoting passive resistance to the unpopular confiscation of crops by the Italian military authorities, and began the first steps to form partisan troops. The first left-wing groups formed across the Peloponnese; their engagements were limited to skirmishes with the Greek Gendarmerie and the Italian Army, and by late 1942 they were almost all either destroyed or forced to evacuate to Central Greece. In April 1943, when the Peloponnese was considered "partisan-free" by the occupation authorities, the wing commander Dimitris Michas, who had previously been imprisoned by the Italians, formed a new partisan group on orders from EAM. Following his first successes, and with the arrival of reinforcements requested from the mainland, the group grew and began openly attacking Italian soldiers and their Greek informants. By June 1943, the number of Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS) partisans in the Peloponnese reached about 500 men in total. Due to the lack of a central command and the difficulties of communication, they were dispersed and operated as quasi-autonomous groups. In August 1943, according to a German intelligence report, partisan activity spiked in the mountainous areas of Messenia, where 800 men under Kostas Kanellopoulos operated.