Aris Velouchiotis Ares or Aris Velouchiotis ( ) , the " nom de guerre " of Athanasios ( Thanasis ) Klaras ( Latinised Claras ) ( , August 27 , 1905 – June 16 , 1945 ) , was the most prominent leader and chief instigator of the Greek People ' s Liberation Army ( ELAS ) , the military branch of the National Liberation Front ( EAM ) , which was the major resistance organization in occupied Greece from 1942 to 1945 . Aris Velouchiotis was appointed military leader of ELAS at the beginning of the Resistance Movement , by the EAM leadership , being at the same time a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece . Early years . Athanasios Klaras was born in Lamia , Greece in 1905 , in a family of the upper urban class . His father was a well - known lawyer in the area . As a youth , he studied for a while as a journalist and later attented and graduated with enough effort ( due to a vagrant youth ) from the Geoponic School of Larissa . He participated in the leftist and antimilitary movement and later became a member of the Communist Party of Greece ( KKE ) . During the 20s and 30s he was jailed several times for several offenses . During the Ioannis Metaxas dictatorship ( 1936 – 1941 ) , he was arrested also for his communist ideas and jailed in Aegina prison . He was tortured and there are rumors that since then he had problems with his sexual ability . During his trial he escaped ( one of his many escapes ) , but he was arrested again in 1939 and was sent to Corfu prison . He remained there until he signed a " statement of renouncement " of the Communist Party , a very humiliating act for a communist at the time . World War II . During World War II , he was drafted as reserve officer of the Hellenic Army but due to indisciplined behavior he was degraded and sent to serve as a corporal to a disciplinary squad of Artillery at the Albanian front ( 1940 – 1941 ) against the Italian army , until the German invasion in April 1941 and Greece ' s subsequent surrender and occupation . After Germany ' s offensive campaign in the Soviet Union , the Greek Communist Party championed the creation of the National Liberation Front ( EAM ) , and Klaras was sent to Central Greece ( Greek Roumeli ) to assess the potential for the development of a guerrilla movement against the occupation forces . His proposals were adopted by the party , and in January 1942 , Klaras moved to the mountains to start setting up guerrilla groups . The first appearance of the partisans organised by Klaras occurred on June 7 , 1942 in the village of Domnista in Evrytania in Central Greece . There he presented himself as Major of Artillery ( for gaining extra prestige among the villagers ) with the nom de guerre of " Aris Velouchiotis " ( from Ares , the Greek god of war , and Velouchi , a local mountain ) and proclaimed the existence of the Greek People ' s Liberation Army ( ELAS ) . Initially , he collected also the traditional local mountain living bandits in order to create a small group of experts in guerilla fighting . Velouchiotis as a leader applied steely discipline and managed to have under his commands a considerable number of guerillas . Starting with only 15 men , ELAS ' power finally seized up to 50 , 000 guerillas . One of the most important early operations of the Greek resistance movement ( in which Velouchiotis and his fighters , after long negotiations with the British , finally agreed to participate alongside Napoleon Zervas ' s republican EDES resistance forces and twelve British saboteurs under the leadership of Major E . C . W . " Eddie " Myers ) , was the blowing - up of the Gorgopotamos railway viaduct , south of Lamia , on November 25 , 1942 ( Operation Harling ) . The destruction of the viaduct cut the single Thessaloniki - Athens rail line , thus the line connecting the Balkans with southern Greece , but did not disrupt any supply lines - as would have been the case had it happened , as the British intended , two months earlier - for Erwin Rommel ' s German forces in Northern Africa because it took place one month after the commencement of the El Alamein battle on October 23 , 1942 , in which Rommel was badly defeated by the British . The destruction of the Gorgopotamos viaduct was to be the last operation where the communist - influenced ELAS organisation fought alongside with Greek Republican resistance forces , such as the EKKA ' s 5 / 42 Evzones Regiment ( military arm of EKKA ) and EOEA ( National Groups of Greek Guerillas , " Εthnikes Omades Ellinon Antarton " , military arm of EDES ) . But despite the signing of an agreement in July 1943 between the three main Resistance groups ( EAM / ELAS , EDES and EKKA ) to cooperate and to subject themselves to the Allied Middle East High Command under General Wilson ( the " National Bands Agreement " ) , in the political field , the mutual mistrust between EAM and the other groups escalated . EAM - ELAS was by now the dominant political and military force in Greece , and EDES and EKKA , along with the British and the Greek government - in - exile , feared that after the inevitable German withdrawal , it would try to dominate the country and establish a soviet regime The rift ultimately led to a mini - civil war in late 1943 and early 1944 , in which ELAS attacked EDES , EOEA and destroyed EKKA ' s 5 / 42 Evzones Regiment , savagely executing its leader Col . Dimitrios Psarros . Liberation and expulsion from the Communist Party . In October 1944 , the Nazis evacuated Greece and a new government was formed under Georgios Papandreou , the leader of the Greek National Unity Government which was established following the Treaties of Lebanon and Caserta . When the Varkiza agreement was signed to end the Dekemvriana fighting between EAM forces and governmental / British forces in Athens ( in which Velouchiotis did not participate ) , he vehemently refused to comply regarding the agreement as a betrayal of the simple guerillas . The Communist Party leadership ( Nikos Zachariadis ) consequently accused him of treachery , of being a " suspicious and adventurous element " and spurned him as a member of KKE . The Communist Party was always suspicious of Klaras ' actions since he was a simple member , and even when he founded ELAS , partly cause of his nationalistic speech and his fickle character . Death . Velouchiotis moved again to the mountains of Central Greece in order to start an insurgency ( see Greek Civil War ) against the new government and the British allies who supported them ( considering them worse than Germans ) . He was reported to have denounced the sell - out to the British in the " Varkiza Agreement " to lay down the National Resistance arms ; particularly moving was the sight of his elite massed Mavroskoufides ( Black Berets ) openly mourning . He was outmanoeuvred by the KKE leadership and resolved to leave Greece ; he repeatedly requested permission from the party to be allowed to be left to depart , but was refused . His intention was to create a new ELAS and a " National Independence Front " ( MEA ) . Though most of his associates abandoned him , he was reported to have continued to conduct guerrilla activities until June 1945 . He was denounced by the KKE Central Committee and increasingly isolated , until he was ambushed with his unit in the mountain of Agrafa ( some say that he was set up or even betrayed by KKE contacts ) by para - military groups controlled by the Athens government . Although many members of the Security Battalions and the organisation " X " ( leader of the " X " team was the Colonel , at the time , Georgios Grivas ) , who had collaborated with the German occupying forces , were rounded up and detained in prison , the majority of their officers were allowed to join the new Greek police force , organised by the British . Aris and his second in command , Leon Javellas , were isolated by the main unit and finally he committed suicide with his comrade , either by a hand grenade or by a bullet . Rumors want him to " commit suicide with his commander Javellas when his thoughts were that there is no better future for his revolution " . The corpses of Velouchiotis and Javellas were subsequently decapitated , and the heads displayed , hanging from a lamp post in the central square of the town of Trikala . When British Labour government members of Parliament objected to the barbarity of the operation , they received the reply that the display was in accordance to an " ancient Greek war custom " . Following the rehabilitation in Greece of the EAM / ELAS and subsequently of the Communist party itself ( after the end of the Greek military junta ) , busts and statues of Aris Velouchiotis have been erected in his native town ; recently the KKE moved discreetly for Velouchiotis ' rehabilitation , following in turn the expulsion of the KKE ' s wartime leader ( who had denounced him ) , Nikos Zachariadis . Cousinage with Zervas . In a game that only blind luck plays , in an extraordinary coincidence , the two leaders of the Greek Resistance were distant cousins . Zervas was descendant from the famous Souliote clan of Zervades , who after the destruction of Souli by the Ottomans fled to Aitoloakarnania , while Klaras ' mother was of Souliote descent , from a family related to Zervades . However , Zervas had never before seen Velouchiotis before their first meeting during the Resistance era . Legacy . Velouchiotis is one of the most controversial and tragic figures of modern Greek history . His personality and action was mythologised during his life and after his death . Supporters consider him a symbol of Greek resistance against the occupying powers , the founder and creator of the biggest guerilla army in the Greek history ( ELAS ) and a hero of the communist cause . Critics see him as a perpetrator of atrocities and murders against rural people who were perceived as opponents of communism ; a basic instigator of the Red Terror . Velouchiotis is responsible also for the massacre of some one thousand captives , collaborators from the Security Battalions , in Meligalas ( a village in south - western Peloponnese ) in October 1944 , right after the German retreat from that part of Greece . His involvement in attacks against non - communist Greek resistance forces and insurgency against the post - liberation government also draw criticism : C . M . Woodhouse , the Second - in - Command of the Harling Force , remarked that Velouchiotis " fought Greeks more often than he did Germans " . In his memories he appreciates his military abilities , he describes him also as ruthless and " occasionally homosexual " . However , he was a man of strong communist and patriotic beliefs . He was especially cruel to the Greeks who sought collaboration with the occupying forces , with his companions who broke the organized discipline , and people who sought the British help and involvement in Greek politics because he considered the British a threat of the communist and patriotic cause of the Resistance .