After the Axis invasion of April 1941 Greece was divided into German, Italian and Bulgarian zones, its merchant fleet and transport were destroyed or seized, occupation forces requisitioned food and imposed occupation costs, and the Allied naval blockade cut off the grain imports on which Greece had depended. Mass starvation set in during the winter of 1941-42, worst in Athens, Piraeus and the islands, and estimates of excess deaths across the occupation range from about 100,000 to 450,000, with roughly 300,000 the figure most often cited; Violetta Hionidou's demographic study puts famine deaths at around 100,000-200,000 for the acute period. The Bulgarian administration in annexed eastern Macedonia and Thrace expelled or drove out roughly 100,000 Greeks, and the Drama uprising of September 1941 was suppressed with mass reprisal killings. From 1942 the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Swedish-Swiss Joint Relief Commission ran a negotiated relief operation through the blockade that substantially reduced mortality. The famine is generally attributed to a combination of occupation requisitioning, the collapse of internal transport and administration, hyperinflation and black markets, and the blockade, with historians disagreeing on the weight of each.
German, Italian and Bulgarian occupation authorities requisitioned food and split Greece into zones while an Allied blockade sealed imports
The Greek census of 1940 counted 7,344,860 inhabitants. Famine mortality estimates for the occupation range from about 100,000 for the winter of 1941-42 in Athens and Piraeus to some 300,000-450,000 across the country for the whole occupation, with the largest losses in Athens, Piraeus and the islands.
The low end comes from Violetta Hionidou's demographic reconstruction of registered deaths and reconstructed mortality for the acute famine period; the high end comes from post-war Greek government submissions on occupation damages, which counted a wider range of occupation-related excess mortality. The differences turn on registration gaps in 1941-42 and on which years and causes are counted.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, Greek wartime relief bodies and post-war Greek commissions documented starvation under requisitioning and blockade, and reprisal killings in the Bulgarian zone and in German anti-partisan operations.
Greece