Georgios Poulos

Who is Georgios Poulos?

Colonel Georgios Poulos was a Nazi collaborator during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II. A longtime ultra-nationalist, Colonel Poulos was fanatically anti-monarchist and anti-communist. In 1943, he organised and led the Poulos Verband, the most feared collaborationist death squad in occupied-Greece. During 1944, his forces were reinforced by the Jagdkommando Schubert, a paramilitary unit raised in Crete by the notorious Friedrich Schubert.

Poulos participated in Sonderkommando 2000, a German counter intelligence unit which aimed at infiltrating the Greek resistance movement. Poulos also worked for the National Union of Greece, an antisemitic party sponsored by the SS. He and his forces organised and committed many crimes in the rural areas of Greece; the most notorious was the attack on Giannitsa in September 1944, during which about a hundred peasants were executed. The aim of the executions was to instill terror into the supporters of the left-wing EAM/ELAS, as Giannitsa was considered an important resistance centre. However, Poulos and his men killed in an indiscriminate fashion and it is probable that most of the victims had little to do with the Resistance.