Today marks the 76th-anniversary of the evacuation of Axis occupation troops from Athens during WWII.
German troops began retreating from the Greek capital on the evening of October 11, 1944, with only a handful of remaining Nazis assembling at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, in front of Parliament in central Athens, on the morning of October 12 to lay a wreath — a highly insolent act given the devastation and death toll wrought by three-and-a-half years of occupation.
Many parts of the country, especially mountainous regions, had already witnessed the Wehrmacht’s withdrawal much earlier, in the face of armed resistance and collapsing military fronts in the western and eastern Europe.
