As the first proxy war between the superpowers the greek civil war became the first hot zone of the cold warin red acropolis black terror historian andre gerolymatos recounts the full history of this divisive conflict exposing old wounds that still fester beneath the surface of contemporary greek society he tells the stories of ordinary greek men women and children caught up in turbulent times and by powerful foreign forcesin many ways the greek civil war heralded americas future . Red acropolis black terror the greek civil war and the origins of soviet american rivalry 1943 1949 by andre gerolymatos new york basic books 2004 pp xix 300 2750. As the first proxy war between the superpowers the greek civil war became the first hot zone of the cold warinred acropolis black terror historian andre gerolymatos recounts the full history of this divisive conflict exposing old wounds that still fester beneath the surface of contemporary greek society he tells the stories of ordinary greek men women and children caught up in turbulent times and by powerful foreign forcesin many ways the greek civil war heralded americas future . Red acropolis black terror looks at the greek civil war following world war ii and how that fit into the overall context of the cold war from the british collaborators to the german sympathizers and the eventual rise of the communist this book carefully assesses the major players and how they fit into the larger picture the various forces and the political terror they achieved through violence much of the time is still felt today in greece and there are many parallels that . From 1944 to 1949 tens of thousands of greek soldiers and guerrillas fought and slaughtered each other and thousands of innocents in a civil war of unrelenting and shocking savagery in the wake of the allied liberation of greece the fighting transformed into a civil war pitting soviet backed communists against us and british backed government forces