There he presented himself as Major of Artillery (for gaining extra prestige among the villagers) with the nom de guerre of Aris Velouchiotis (from Ares, the Greek god of war, and Velouchi, a local mountain) and proclaimed the existence of the Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS).
An EAM-ELAS partisan during the resistance to the Nazi occupation in World War II, Florakis was on the losing side of the Greek Civil War that followed the liberation of the country, and subsequently left the country.
On December 1, 1944, the Greek government of "National Unity" under Georgios Papandreou and Gen. Scobie (British head of the Allied forces in Greece at that time) announced an ultimatum for the general disarmament of all guerrilla forces by 10 December, excluding those allied to the government (the 3rd Greek Mountain Brigade and the Sacred Squadron) and also a part of EDES and ELAS that would be used in Allied operations in Crete and Dodecanese if it was necessary.
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The killings ushered a full-blown armed confrontation between EAM and the British, under General Ronald Scobie.
In this capacity, he was directly involved in the coordination of the rival ELAS and EDES partisan groups for the destruction of the Gorgopotamos viaduct in November 1942 (Operation Harling), and for the British destruction of the Asopos railway bridge on 21 June 1943 as part of Operation Animals.
EKKA became the third major resistance group after the communist-led Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS) and the republican National Republican Greek League (EDES), with its own armed force, named after the famed 5/42 Evzone Regiment, being established on 20 April 1943.
In May 1945, 4,650 Greek refugees, mostly male members of ELAS, settled in the Maglić village with the help of Yugoslav government.
Levy explains that MIT housed an early IBM 704 computer inside the Electronic Accounting Machinery (EAM) room in 1959.
In September 1943, when the Nazis took over, head rabbi Pessah worked with Archbishop Ioakim and the EAM resistance movement to find sanctuary for the Jews in Pelion.
In Athens, the leadership of EDES passed to the prominent Venizelist generals Stylianos Gonatas and Theodoros Pangalos, who, fearing the rise of the communist-dominated National Liberation Front (EAM), quickly became involved in collaboration with the occupation authorities.