Editing Crete (section)

===Civil War===
In the aftermath of the [[Dekemvriana]] in Athens, Cretan leftists were targeted by the right-wing paramilitary organization National Organization of Rethymno (EOR), which engaged in attacks in the villages of Koxare and Melampes, as well as Rethymno in January 1945. Those attacks did not escalate into a full-scale insurgency as they did in the Greek mainland and the Cretan [[ELAS]] did not surrender its weapons after the [[Treaty of Varkiza]]. An uneasy truce was maintained until 1947, with a series of arrests of notable communists in Chania and Heraklion. Encouraged by orders from the central organization in Athens, KKE launched an insurgency in Crete; marking the beginning of the [[Greek Civil War]] on the island. In eastern Crete the [[Democratic Army of Greece]] (DSE) struggled to establish its presence in [[Dikti]] and [[Psilorites]]. On 1 July 1947, the surviving 55 fighters of DSE were ambushed south of Psilorites, the few surviving members of the unit managed to join the rest of DSE in [[Lefka Ori]].{{sfn|Margaritis|2006|pp=441–447}}

The [[Lefka Ori]] region in the west offered more favourable conditions for DSE's insurgency. In the summer of 1947 DSE raided and looted the [[Maleme Airport]] and motor depot at Chrysopigi. Its numbers swelled to approximately 300 fighters. The rise of DSE numbers compounded with crop failure on the island created serious logistical issues for the insurgents. The communists resorted to [[Cattle raiding|cattle rustling]] and crop confiscations which solved the problem only temporarily. In the autumn of 1947, the Greek government offered generous amnesty terms to Cretan DSE fighters and mountain bandits, many of whom opted to abandon armed struggle or defect to the nationalists. On 4 July 1948, government troops launched a large scale offensive on [[Samariá Gorge]]. Many DSE soldiers were killed in the fighting while the survivors broke into small armed bands. In October 1948, the secretary of the Cretan KKE Giorgos Tsitilos was killed in an ambush. By the following month only 34 DSE fighters remained active in Lefka Ori. The insurgency in Crete gradually withered away, with the last two hold outs surrendering in 1974, 25 years after the conclusion of the war in mainland Greece.{{sfn|Margaritis|2006|pp=447–452}}