Panhellenic Union of Fighting Youths

The Panhellenic Union of Fighting Youths (Πανελλήνιος Ένωσις Αγωνιζόμενων Νέων, Panellínios Énosis Agonizómenon Néon, ΠΕΑΝ, PEAN) was an anti-Nazi and anti-fascist movement that took part in the Greek resistance during the Axis Occupation of Greece in the Second World War. The organization was concentrated in the areas of Athens and Piraeus, and although it never expanded to become a wider movement, it was one of the most active of the multitude of urban resistance groups that sprung up during the Occupation, and one of the first to carry out active resistance, in the form of bombings. The organization was founded in October 1941 by a Chiot Air Force Lieutenant, Kostas Perrikos. Perrikos was a fervent Republican who had been dismissed from the Air Force after the failed Venizelist coup attempt in March 1935. In June 1941, he was a founding member of the "Army of Enslaved Victors" (Στρατιά Σκλαβωμένων Νικητών, SSN), one of the first resistance groups to spring up after Greece was overrun by the Germans in April 1941. However, Perrikos was dissatisfied by the SSN's neutrality on the crucial issue of the post-war regime (monarchy or republic), and together with a number of others, split off to form the PEAN. The founding members of PEAN were, aside from Perrikos, lawyer Athanasios Dimitrios Skouras, who was chosen as president of the Governing Commission, the lawyers Ioannis Katevatis and Georgios Alexiadis, the merchant Dionysios Papavasilopoulos, the doctor Nikolaos Ailianos and Konstantinos Eleftheriadis. Some of them were members of Panagiotis Kanellopoulos' el, and Kanellopoulos himself would become the group's political mentor. Through Kanellopoulos, PEAN would develop close cooperation with another organization, the "Sacred Brigade" (Ιερά Ταξιαρχία, ΙΤ). Politically, PEAN, like most other similar groups formed in that period, was leftist-socialist, advocating "social justice" and state takeover of crucial sectors of the industry, while being vehemently opposed to any return of the monarchy in the person of King George II.