The Improbable Heroine : Lela Karayanni and the British Secret Services in World War II Greece

This is the first biography in English of a World War II heroine of the Greek resistance, who joined the British secret intelligence services (SIS) shortly after the German occupation of Athens and was betrayed, arrested and executed one month before the Germans’ departure. She was a prosperous housewife with seven children, who had no experience in politics or military affairs, and yet she managed to build a formidable escape, espionage and sabotage organization that interacted with the highest levels of SIS agents in Occupied Greece. (https://youtu.be/69QgXPl5tDI) Book Presentation with Prof. Stylianos Perrakis (Concordia University), Prof. Stathis Kalyvas (University of Oxford), and Prof. Gonda van Steen (King’s College London) Foreword Acknowledgments Contents List of acronyms 1 Prologue 2 The troubled country: Greece in the early twentieth century 3 The making of a heroine: Lela Karayanni, 1898–1941 4 The British secret services in Greece at the beginning of the war 5 Greece at war: October 1940–May 1941 6 Lela Karayanni, resister and secret agent I: Mana Karayanni 7 The Kokkinia escapes 8 Disaster in the Aegean 9 The smuggler the famine, and the rise of EAM Illustrations 10 Lela Karayanni, resister and secret agent II: Spies and saboteurs, 1941–1942 11 Thurgoland and Harling 12 From Prometheus to Apollo and the Lela connection 13 Armed resistance, collaboration, and the politics of Dr. Frankenstein 14 Lela Karayanni, Righteous Among Nations 15 Apollo wounded 16 The Grand Scheme and Lela’s arrest 17 The heroic deaths 18 Liberation and aftermath 19 Epilogue: Lela Karayanni, the armed resistance and the politicization of memory Chronology of the main WW II events in Greece List of photography sources Bibliography Index This is the first biography in English of a World War II heroine of the Greek resistance, who joined the British secret intelligence services (SIS) shortly after the German occupation of Athens and was betrayed, arrested and executed one month before the Germans'departure. She was a prosperous housewife with seven children, who had no experience in politics or military affairs, and yet she managed to build a formidable escape, espionage and sabotage organization that interacted with the highest levels of SIS agents in Occupied Greece.