More Feared Than the Nazis: When Greek SS Collaborators Paid JJ
April 1941, Greece. German forces launch a sudden invasion of the country, sending tanks and aircraft deep into Greek territory while paratroopers seize key bridges and airfields. Within weeks, the Greek army collapses, and the country falls under Axis occupation. What follows is a repressive occupation regime based on fear.
Even as German authorities carry out collective reprisals against civilians suspected of supporting the resistance, guerrilla movements continue to expand across the mountains of Greece. Villages provide them with food, shelter, and information, making entire communities targets for German retaliation. As the occupation continues, the German authorities increasingly rely on local collaborators to gather intelligence, hunt resistance fighters, and participate in anti-partisan operations. Greek volunteers are recruited into collaborationist
formations that fight alongside the Nazis, taking part in arrests, executions, and the destruction of villages across the country. One of the most notorious criminals of the German occupation of Greece is Lieutenant Colonel Georgios Poulos. Georgios Poulos was born in 1889 in Romania to a Greek family originating from the village of Platanos in western Greece.
He later settled in the city of Thessaloniki and pursued a military career in the Hellenic Army. During the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, Greece attempted to expand its territory into Asia Minor following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The campaign ended in military defeat, forcing hundreds of thousands of ethnic Greeks to flee what is now western Turkey.
Poulos reportedly served during the conflict, although little is known about his role. By 1935, Georgios Poulos had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel. That year, he took part in the failed Venizelist coup attempt of 1 March, an uprising launched by supporters of the former Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos to prevent what they believed was the growing restoration of the monarchy and the weakening of Greece’s republican system. The coup collapsed within days.
Following its failure, Poulos was dismissed from the army and forced into retirement. The Second World War began on 1 September 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. The early stages of the war saw rapid German advances in Europe, with the fall of Poland, the invasion of France, and the evacuation of Allied forces from Dunkirk in 1940.
Following the successful campaign in France, Hitler set his sights on the Soviet Union. However, before he could launch Operation Barbarossa, the codename for the invasion of the Soviet Union, he needed to secure the southern flank to protect crucial supply routes and prevent any interference.
Therefore, on 6 April 1941, Germany invaded Greece with rapid and coordinated assaults. The German 12th Army, consisting of around 680,000 troops and spearheaded by armoured divisions, quickly overwhelmed Greek and British Commonwealth forces. Key locations such as Thessaloniki fell swiftly, and German paratroopers played a crucial role in securing strategic positions. By 27 April 1941, Athens had fallen, and mainland Greece was under Axis control.
After the German occupation of Thessaloniki, Poulos attempted to establish himself as a political leader under the protection of the occupation authorities. He assumed leadership of the National Union of Greece, an ultranationalist organization that he reorganized as the National Socialist Party of Greece.
Through leaflets, newspaper announcements, and public propaganda, Poulos openly promoted cooperation with Nazi Germany while denouncing communists and the Allied powers. Despite his enthusiasm, however, the Germans regarded his political ambitions with suspicion. The German military command in Thessaloniki repeatedly demanded that his organization be dissolved, and by the autumn of 1941 it had effectively ceased to operate.
Poulos nevertheless remained a valuable collaborator. During the summer of 1941, he supplied the occupation authorities with lists containing the names of suspected left-wing activists and Freemasons in Thessaloniki. On 5 July 1941, German authorities arrested 278 people believed to be connected with resistance activities.
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Now, let’s get into today’s story. After the dissolution of his political organization, Poulos continued working for the Germans in a different capacity, becoming an informant for the German counterintelligence unit the Sonderkommando 2000.
Throughout 1942, he gathered intelligence on resistance networks and became one of the occupation authorities’ principal Greek collaborators in northern Greece. He also published pro-German articles in the collaborationist newspaper Nea Evropi under the pseudonym “A True Greek.” His activities soon made him a target of the Greek resistance.
On 31 August 1941, members of the Communist Party of Greece attempted to burn down his headquarters but were discovered before they could carry out the attack. Three months later, on the night of 23 December, resistance members attempted to assassinate Poulos by bombing his house in Thessaloniki. He survived both attacks, and the German authorities subsequently moved him to a new residence under their protection.
Having failed to establish himself as an influential political figure, Poulos turned his attention to building an armed collaborationist force. In early 1943, he entered negotiations with the German military administration in Thessaloniki. The agreement was finalized in May, allowing him to organize a volunteer battalion that would operate alongside the Wehrmacht, the German Army, in anti-partisan operations.
The formation became known as the Poulos Verband, the collaborationist unit that would soon earn a reputation for brutality across northern Greece. The battalion never exceeded approximately 300 men. British and Greek intelligence reports described many of its members as criminals, adventurers, fanatical anti-communists, and individuals of questionable reputation.
Others joined after suffering at the hands of the communist-led resistance, while some enlisted because of poverty or promises of regular pay, food, medical care, and protection for their families. Poulos’s wife also participated in recruiting volunteers by distributing written invitations to prospective members.
The Germans equipped the battalion with weapons, uniforms, and supplies. Its members wore German military uniforms bearing the insignia of the so-called Hellenic National Army and fought under German command. In September 1943, the SD, the intelligence agency of the SS, formally incorporated the unit into its organization in Greece and provided it with offices and training facilities.
During the same month, the battalion was subordinated to the 2nd Brandenburg Regiment and established its headquarters in and around the town of Ptolemaida. From there, Poulos created a network of outposts across western Macedonia to support German anti-partisan operations. Although presented as a military formation fighting communist guerrillas, the Poulos Verband quickly became notorious for its treatment of civilians.
Rather than distinguishing between armed resistance fighters and the local population, its members frequently carried out collective reprisals against entire communities suspected of assisting ELAS, the communist-led Greek People’s Liberation Army. Villages were raided, homes searched, and civilians arrested with little or no evidence of collaboration with the resistance.
Looting soon became one of the battalion’s defining characteristics. During operations, Poulos’s men systematically confiscated livestock, grain, clothing, jewellery, money, and other valuables belonging to villagers. Houses were frequently set on fire after being robbed, leaving entire families without shelter or food. Reports from occupied northern Greece described widespread theft and intimidation accompanying almost every operation in which the battalion participated. Violence against civilians escalated even further.
Witnesses accused members of the battalion of executing villagers without trial, carrying out reprisal killings after attacks by the resistance, and murdering civilians encountered during sweeps through the countryside. Women were subjected to sexual violence, particularly during operations in the city of Veria, while arbitrary arrests, beatings, and torture became common methods of intimidating the local population.
The Poulos Verband rapidly acquired a reputation throughout northern Greece, that according to many contemporary accounts, exceeded even that of the German occupation forces. The battalion also suffered losses. In April 1944, ELAS attacked one of Poulos’s formations, reportedly killing 83 of his collaborators.
Instead of weakening the battalion’s resolve, these losses intensified the cycle of reprisals against civilians suspected of supporting the resistance. Among the worst atrocities associated with Poulos’s unit was the massacre of Hortiatis on 2 September 1944. Acting alongside German forces commanded by the notorious war criminal Fritz Schubert, members of the Poulos Verband surrounded the village near Thessaloniki after resistance fighters had attacked German personnel.
During the operation, around 150 civilians, including women and children, were murdered. Many victims were locked inside buildings that were then set on fire, burning them alive. Less than two weeks later, on 14 September 1944, Poulos’s battalion participated in another massacre, this time in the town of Giannitsa.
Approximately 120 civilians were killed. Numerous homes were burned, women were raped, and many of the male victims were forced to dig their own graves before being executed. By this stage of the occupation, the name Poulos had become synonymous across northern Greece with collaboration, terror, and indiscriminate violence against civilians.
As German forces began withdrawing from Greece in the autumn of 1944, Poulos and his battalion retreated alongside the Wehrmacht rather than surrendering. Crossing into Yugoslavia and later Austria, they continued fighting with German forces against communist partisans until the final months of the war, remaining loyal to the collapsing Third Reich even as Germany faced inevitable defeat.
The Second World War in Europe ended on 8 May 1945. Poulos and his men were eventually captured by the US 7th Army, which later handed them over to Greece. Georgios Poulos was convicted of treason and collaboration with the German occupation authorities before being executed in Athens on 11 June 1949. He was about 60 years old.
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