By John Kass | October 27, 2024

Think of a high cold mountain, boulders peeking through the snow, a place for wolves. And men about to kneel in prayer and fear.

In that deep pitch black that comes hours before dawn, a young solider was awake as the wind whistled against his tent. He couldn’t sleep. He was thinking of death. But he wasn’t alone. There were 1,500 other young men with him from his battalion. They were villagers, mechanics, electricians, teachers, bankers, scientists, farmers. Some were politically on the left, others were on the right. But they were all thinking the same thing:

Would they live?

How do I know  this?  My father told me.

He told the story of Oxi Day in the Palikari Project , of that day on October 28, 1940, the day the Greeks said “No” and defied the fascist superpowers and changed the course of World War II.

It is a story in his own words, in his own voice and it is produced by my good friend, WGN radio executive producer Jeff Carlin. I link to it here and I hope you listen and share. Or you can find this oral history–about fighting the fascists and later, the communists–at the top of the johnkassnews.com website.

Outside their tents, in the blackness, the men were preparing for battle. All were afraid. Some were afraid their fear would prevent them from doing what had to be done.  Some had the soft hands and soft faces of politicians, hands adept at holding pencils and pens. Others had hard faces from being in the fields all day, and hard hard hands used to drive mules and plows to break the rocky ground.

“In Albania, they told us before the battle if we wanted to live we better be brave,” said my father in the Palikari Project “On the other side of the hill, we wait. They told us when you see the lights in the air, the flares, when you see the flare in the air you get up and move. I saw the cover we had…I saw about 1500 soldiers, kneeling, making their cross, and those guys back who talked against God, against Christ when they were back in the villages (saying) ‘I don’t believe in those things.’

“But then, the atheists died right there and they became Christians, they became people of God and they asked God right there to help them to be alive.”

Oxi Day will pass in America on Monday without much notice (in America), again this year.

The descendants of soft faced politicians wave their soft hands, and the Democrats among them who pushed their ridiculous and cringeworthy “Bidenopoulos” marketing ploy to bind Biden to Greece is irrelevant now. Biden drools away what remains of his term.  The Biden Harris Democrats play their “fascist” card against the Republicans, insisting that world leaders are terrified of another term by former President Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, Greek American cultural institutions in big blue cities are dominated by the left and so eagerly kiss the hands of Democrat bosses. They curry favor as their kind has always done. They’ve kissed many hands. The hands of pashas, the hands of boss mayors.

In their world, there is no place for my father and his story.

He wouldn’t care. He didn’t seek fame or credit. He had his family, his business and his brother and sisters. He wasn’t about kissing soft hands. As a new immigrant what amazed him about this country is that there was no hand-kissing, at least not back then. That’s why he loved America so much.

But the fate of the world did turn on October 28, 84 years ago on Thursday, when Greece, trembling with fear and pride, said, “No.”

That’s what Oxi, pronounced O-hee, means. It is the Greek word for “No.” It was uttered at about 3 a.m. on Oct. 28, 1940.

And because of it, Adolf Hitler was months late getting to the Russian front. He’d planned to begin Operation Barbarossa in the spring of ’41. But because of Oxi Day, he was delayed, and that delay allowed the snow and cold to swallow his armies. The rest, as they say, is history.

 

 

The great historian Victor Davis Hanson talked of Mussolini on a recent podcast with cohost Sami Winc highlighting the period  between the Battle for Britain and the invasion of Russia in 1940-41.

I’m a yearly subscriber of his website The Blade of Perseus where I find his podcasts. Including Forgotten Battlefields of WWII and Campaign Craziness – Victor Davis Hanson

“Remember right after the battle of Britain, at the end of October, they invaded from Albania—that they had absorbed—they thought the Greeks would be like the Albanians,” said Hanson. “They got bogged down October, November, December, January, February, March, April. Meanwhile the British are fighting the Italian Fascists in East Africa and they’re winning…Mussolini has gone haywire.”

In one of his podcasts I remember that Hanson saying–when he was living in Greece–that he liked sitting with Greek villagers to talk about the war.

I can just see it, the men around the table with their coffees and their smokes talking about that catastrophic war and what came afterwards. The Greeks would have been honored that a professor  would be interested in what they had to say.

My father who would refer to villagers as “villiganeers” would have been honored to speak with him.

In every Greek village there is a social hierarchy. Everyone has an opinion and wants to be heard. The rich man, the police chief, the prosecutor and the mayor might clamor to have their say. But it is the teacher who is given the most respect. This is why education in the Hellenic culture is paramount. Not athletics, not celebrity, not physical beauty. Only the  teachers are respected in this way.

And it is why, a few years later, when the communists took Greece after the war and before men like my father fought them off, that the hard hard left paid special attention to teachers. In some villages they shot the teachers first.

Yet before all that misery, shortly before Oct. 28, 1940, Benito Mussolini had massed his Italian war machine on the Greek border with Albania. He had the heavy armor, the fighter planes and hundreds of thousands of well-equipped troops.

The Greeks were outnumbered about 10 to 1. They had no air force to speak of, no war machine. The dictator’s ultimatum to Greek Prime Minister Ionannis Metaxas was simple:

Allow Mussolini’s troops to come in and occupy Greece, and there would be no slaughter. Oppose Mussolini and he would destroy the country. Metaxas’ reply?

“Oxi,” he said. “No, never.”

Two hours later, Mussolini attacked. There were only 2,000 Greek soldiers covering a front of 37 kilometers. But in those mountains, in the days to come, the vastly outnumbered Greek army streamed into Albania, drove Mussolini’s forces off the snowy mountains and crushed them.

The Greek army starved in those mountains, yes, but they killed in those mountains too. They drove the Italian army off the mountains, cementing one of the worst blunders in military history.

So Hitler was forced to save Mussolini. It took months for the Germans to occupy and subdue Greece, which lost 10 percent of its population during the war.

But many of those lives bought time, and on the Eastern Front, the Russian winter was coming.

The Greek army starved in those mountains, yes, but they killed in those mountains too.

So Hitler was forced to save Mussolini. It took months for the Germans to occupy Greece, which lost 10 percent of its population during the war.

But many of those lives bought time, and on the Eastern Front, the Russian winter was coming.

 

 

So in late October, with so many distractions and barking dogs of politics filling the air, I take a moment for myself and stand apart. I think of those battalions kneeling before battle, praying at dawn.

I can’t help thinking about Oxi Day. And so do most people with a drop of Greek blood in them. Not about what the politicians and their obsequious hand-kissing servants say about the day.

Instead. I think of my father, and all the men like him who refused to kiss the hands of their oppressors, even though there were guns pointed at their heads.

They remember Oxi Day. And I remember and honor it.

The day that the Greeks said “No.”

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Do you really need another note about me? Do I need a trophy or some gold plated dish announcing that Kass Killed Seven Flies With One Blow?

Don’t you know me by now?

I don’t want to tell you about your business, but this is perhaps a better use of your time:

Merch from John Kass News.

Including a plethora of mugs so you might enjoy a good hot cup of Midwestern common sense.

With the November elections and the holiday shopping season just around the corner, why not make it easy on yourself and shop merch at johnkassnews.com with new mugs and ball caps? Order them and have them shipped directly to you. They’re perfect gifts.

Two different No Chumbolone Zone mug sizes: a black 11-oz. coffee mug. and my favorite, a 15-oz. mug—perfect for a tasty and steaming mug of hot-buttered rum, soup or some good Midwestern common sense.

We also have a Golden Moutza cup, commemorating the classic curse of the ancient Hellenes, because there’s nothing like a good Nah! to start your morning.

Also the “Chicago Way” mugs, and as always, you’ll find the classic and stylish black “No Chumbolone” Zone ballcaps, because you’re a reader of impeccable common sense and subscriber to johnkassnews.com, and that means you are no chumbolone.