23 Facts About Evripidis Bakirtzis

Evripidis Bakirtzis, born in Serres, Ottoman Empire, was a Hellenic Army officer and politician.

Evripidis Bakirtzis later joined and was a prominent member of the National Liberation Front and its military wing the Greek People's Liberation Army.

Evripidis Bakirtzis served as head of the Political Committee of National Liberation, a government of Greek Resistance-held territories called the "Mountain Government", from 10 March to 18 April 1944.

Evripidis Bakirtzis was nicknamed "the Red Colonel", from his pen name in the newspaper of the Communist Party of Greece, the Rizospastis.

Evripidis Bakirtzis was found dead in 1947 in exile, during the later Greek civil war, in Fournoi Korseon.

Evripidis Bakirtzis was the son of the secretary of the Greek consulate of Serres Christos Bakirtzis and the teacher, Efthalias Zaka, of the well-known family of Grevena, with a military tradition in the Greek War of Independence.

In 1911, Bakirtzis was admitted to the Hellenic Army Academy and participated in the First Balkan War, in 1912, as a sophomore.

Evripidis Bakirtzis signed with the Venizelos officers of the National Defense, assuming command of artillery and then commander of artillery squadron.

Evripidis Bakirtzis was one of the first defenders and distinguished himself in the battle of Skra, winning the British military medal.

In 1926, as a lieutenant colonel, he was arrested and sentenced to death, as one of the leaders of the military coup of Tzavela-Evripidis Bakirtzis, but was not executed.

Evripidis Bakirtzis returned to Greece and took over the management of the 2nd Staff Office of the General Staff.

Evripidis Bakirtzis served as chief of staff of the 3rd Army Corps.

Evripidis Bakirtzis was arrested and sentenced to death for the second time, but his sentence was eventually commuted to deportation from the army and exile to Agios Efstratios.

Evripidis Bakirtzis was later demoted to the rank of ordinary soldier and exiled to Antikythera, where his detention conditions were very bad and dangerous to his health.

Evripidis Bakirtzis refused and was allowed to leave for Bucharest immediately, without having the right to move from there.

In Bucharest he wrote three excellent studies that were first published in the book by Euripides Evripidis Bakirtzis, published by Epikairotia, under the supervision of his exile detainee, Nikos Margaris.

Toward the beginning of the war, Evripidis Bakirtzis joined the Greek resistance and one of his first missions included sabotage of Italian forces in Albania which was intended to garner more widespread support for resistance from the left and the right of Greece.

Evripidis Bakirtzis was the first military liaison between the British and the Greeks, during the Occupation, he led an operation codenamed Prometheus I Evripidis Bakirtzis led a 50-man unit of trained saboteurs under the command of General Alexander Zannas and they were to receive wireless sets to receive instructions from a British SOE agent in Turkey but the Greek ship transporting them was sunk by enemy action.

Alexandros Svolos, a law professor at the University of Athens took over as the head of the PEEA on April 18,1944, and Evripidis Bakirtzis took a lower position within the organization.

On October 30,1944, ELAS units, led by Markos Vafeiades and Evripidis Bakirtzis, liberated Thessaloniki from the Germans.

Around this time Evripidis Bakirtzis was leading a division of the ELAS called the Divisional Group of Macedonia.

Evripidis Bakirtzis remained in Northern Greece until the surrender of the weapons and for a time in Thessaloniki.

In September 1946, Evripidis Bakirtzis was arrested as a leftist along with other ELAS leaders and exiled to Agios Kirikos, the capital of Icaria.