Ali Zahid considers the involvement of Greek seafarers in the Spanish Civil War and describes how British veterans interceded on behalf of one of them, Nikos Karagiannis, who was interned by the British at the end of the Second World War as Greece was plunged into civil war.

Growing up in a working class family in the port city of Piraeus, Nikos Karagiannis seemed destined to earn his trade as a seafarer. 

In 1923 at the young age of 16, Karagiannis joined the Maritime Union of Greece. Rapidly climbing the ladder of a union that had close ties to the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), Karagiannis’ work eventually led to his promotion onto the executive of the Hellenic Shipping Federation. Nevertheless, his work would be drastically transformed by the spread of fascism in Europe.  

With many Greeks envisaging a dictatorship on the horizon, the KKE adopted the Popular Front strategy in 1935, and, given his prominent role, Karagiannis was assigned the dual role of representing the Popular Front in Greece between 1934 and 1936.

Nikos Karagiannis.

Rumours of a slide to totalitarianism were confirmed with the imposition of the Ioannis Metaxas dictatorship on 4 August 1936. With the new government swiftly introducing laws to ban the KKE and the Maritime Union, Karagiannis and other union members reacted by transferring their headquarters to Marseille. 

With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, a nucleus of 17 Greeks, led by Karagiannis, travelled to Valencia to establish a base to facilitate the arrival of additional volunteers to fight the fascist-backed revolt. Alongside the KKE branches in Marseille and Paris, the Maritime Union played a pivotal role sending members to Republican Spain. Of the 400 Greek fighters who joined the various units of the International Brigades, 64 were seafarers.¹

Having earned a reputation in Greece for being a ‘combatant, [a] polemical interlocutor and [a] demagogue like few others’, Karagiannis’s rank as a sergeant and commissar in the Balkan Battalion of the 129th Brigade is unsurprising. For reasons and motives still unknown, however, the highly regarded volunteer was tracked down and arrested. Nonetheless, to avoid alienating one of the leading figures among the Greek volunteers, Karagiannis was spared from receiving severe punishment. Hence he was transferred to the Dimitrov Battalion, in which he served as a soldier from 10 November 1937 until the end of the civil war.

Like many of the Greek volunteers, Karagiannis fought in numerous bloody battles. Though perhaps the costliest was the Battle of Belchite. Characterised by intense urban combat, with heavy artillery and aerial raids, of the 75 Greeks who fought only 17 survived the Republican offensive of the summer of 1937.² 

With Franco’s rebels continuing to gain ground in crucial regions, the Spanish Republic ultimately fell in March 1939. Karagiannis had, however, already left Spain in November 1938. Thereafter he rejoined the Maritime Union in Marseille. Despite this, the Greek remained inactive. After the capitulation of France in the summer of 1940, the Maritime Union was relocated to New York. For Karagiannis and the other seafarers whose ‘ultimate goal was to reach Greece’, the move was a severe blow to morale.³

Things took an even greater turn for the worse when Nazi Germany invaded Greece in April 1941. Playing a waiting game, many seafarers continued their revolutionary work in scattered ports around the world. A significantly large proportion of Greeks were based in British ports such as Cardiff and Liverpool. Being in a foreign country did not daunt them. In Liverpool, for instance, the Greek seafarers organised a strike in 1940 that was also supported by the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). So impressed were the CPGB, that they agreed to contribute to the formation of the Union of Greek Seamen of Great Britain.

Greek volunteers in Spain.

After its liberation, many seafarers felt compelled to return. Nonetheless, fearing a potential power grab by the wartime National Liberation Front (EAM), the British conspired with the Greek government to repress the resistance and their sympathisers. Karagiannis was in Cairo, working with the Federation of Greek Maritime Organisations, when tensions finally erupted in Athens in December 1944. Using his support of EAM as a pretext, the Greek government chased him down and arrested him along with 2,000 other comrades.

Fortunately for the British, Karagiannis and other ‘undesirables’ were not that far from one of the many concentration camps that had been established during the Second World War. Karagiannis’s incarceration would, however, have severe consequences on his mental health.⁴ News about the situation was particularly worrying for the International Brigade Association (IBA) in London. As a result, Nan Green, the IBA Secretary from 1943 to 1950, decided to send a letter to Parliament claiming that:⁵

We have just learned from an Athens cable that Nikos Karagiannis, formerly member of the International Brigades, who fought for two and a half years in Spain and was twice wounded, is in serious danger of his life in the Sudan. Karagiannis was Secretary of the Middle East Section of the Greek Maritime Union, and last summer was arrested and taken to a concentration camp in the Sudan. No charge was made against him, and he has had no trial… We feel seriously alarmed lest such a thing should happen to him… We are writing to ask if you would help by adding your name to a cable to the Greek Premier, M. Voulgaris, and to the British Foreign Office, seeing that he is in British hands though under so-called Greek protection. The cable which we suggest sending is the following: Urge proper trial or immediate release of Nikos Karagiannis. Former International Brigadier and Secretary of Middle East Section Maritime Union at present detained in Sudan concentration camp.

Having fought together in Spain and collaborated to mobilise workers in ports such as Cardiff and Liverpool, the IBA could not remain indifferent to the fate of one their most active comrades. Finally, therefore, and as a result of their efforts, Karagiannis was released in 1945.

Nonetheless, when Greece was plunged into a bloody civil war, the former International Brigader found himself thrust into the firing line yet again. Compared to the Spanish Civil War, the Greek conflict was an entirely different beast. Simultaneously engaged in the Cold War, the Americans piled everything into ensuring the victory of the Greek government. Possessing inferior equipment and manpower, the Democratic Army of Greece eventually conceded defeat; retreating into neighbouring Albania in 1949, before taking refuge in the Soviet Union. 

Highly aware of Karagiannis’s popularity, the KKE tasked him with organising the exiles in Hungary in 1949. At the same time, however, disagreements within the party triggered a witch-hunt to assign responsibility for the defeat in the civil war. Finding himself on the wrong side of the dispute, Karagiannis was sent to Cluj, in Romania. Very little is known about how he fared, however. In his personal diary Karagiannis merely states that:⁶

Those who had to be isolated from the rest of the political refugees were sent to the city of Cluj. About fifty were isolated there. The causes of the isolation of each one were different, but they all had a common denominator: their opposition to the leadership of the KKE on some specific issue.

Nan Green's letter about Karagiannis.

Karagiannis was not the only former International Brigader to be affected. A fellow member of the Greek Maritime Union, Yiorgos Ermidis, was sent to Tashkent, in Uzbekistan. Having fought alongside Karagiannis in Spain and Greece, Ermidis protested against the decision. Despite his appeal, Ermidis was put on trial for anti-Soviet conduct and was imprisoned in the Alexandrov Prison for five years. Twenty other maritime workers met a similar fate; serving time in various Soviet prisons.⁷

It was, therefore, the end of the road for many of the veterans of the Spanish Civil War. Fighting Franco had undeniably paved the way for their resistance to fascism in Europe during the Second World War and the Greek Civil War. Nonetheless, despite their efforts to recover from the loss, the Greek communists faced inescapable tensions due to the challenges the party faced adapting to conditions in exile.⁸

1 Rizospastis, ‘I protopora symvoli tou KKE stous agones ton naftergaton kai oi theseis tou Kommatos gia ti naftilia’ [The KKE’s pioneering contribution to the seafarers’ struggles and the Party’s positions on shipping]. 1 December 2015, pp. 11–14. 

2 Tsermegas, S. (1987). No Pasaran: Greek Antifascist Volunteers in Spain. L. Tsirmirakes, Athens, p. 43. 

3 Kokkinos, K., Lampatos, G. & Athanasopoulou, A. (eds.) (2008). I mataiomeni outopia: Giannis Gavriilidis, Nikos Karagiannis kai alloi syntrofoi [The Futile Utopia: Giannis Gavriilidis, Nikos Karagiannis, and Other Comrades]. Taksideutsi, Athens, p. 235. 

4 Fytili, M. (2021). ‘La tercera muerte de los brigadistas griegos: historia y memoria de una militancia internacionalista’ [The Third Death of the Greek Brigades: History and Memory of International Militancy]. Historia del presente, 37(2), p. 70. 

5 Archives of the Trades Union Congress; Spanish Rebellion: International Brigade 1942–1954; Issuing organisation: Ref: 292/946/35/77(i); Author: Green, N.; Date: 25 April 1945. 

6 Gritzonas, K. (1987). Oi Ellines naftergates stin politiki prosfygia [Greek Seamen in Political Exile]. Epikairotita, Athens, p. 90. 

7 Giatroudakis, S. (1995). Taskendi, 30 Chronia Prosfygia [Tashkent, 30 years as Refugee]. Diogenis, Athens, pp. 339–40. 

8 Karpozilos, K. (2014). ‘The Defeated of the Greek Civil War: From Fighters to Political Refugees in the Cold War.’ Journal of Cold War Studies, 16(3), p. 75.