Greek Sergeant Dimitrios Itsios fought bravely in the war against the Nazis. He and five comrades eliminated 232 German soldiers.

The story of Dimitrios Itsios has become a legend. As a sergeant in the Greek army, Itsios fought in World War 2 in the battle to defend his homeland against the Nazi invasion. He eliminated 232 German fascist soldiers in this war.

Born in 1906 in the village of Ano Poroia in Macedonia, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire, Itsios’s childhood was intertwined with war. During World War 1 (1914 – 1918), Itsios’s village was occupied by Bulgarian forces. At the end of the war, peace was reestablished throughout the area.

As an adult, Itsios married a girl from the same village named Anna K. Nanopoulou. The couple had two children. In the late 1930s, Greece began building a series of fortifications along its northern mountainous border, known as the Metaxas Line, for defense in case of war with Bulgaria.

When World War 2 broke out in 1939, the fortifications along the Metaxas Line were still incomplete. Even when Nazi forces marched into Greece in April 1941, the construction of the Metaxas Line remained unfinished. One of the reasons was that Greece had been fighting Italian forces since October 1940.

When the Nazis began their invasion of Greece on April 6, 1941, Sergeant Itsios was commanding a 5-person combat team at a location along the Metaxas Line. As a sergeant, he was assigned the task of providing fire support for the Greek army.

However, Sergeant Itsios decided to stand up against the Germans. When facing the numerous Nazi forces, Sergeant Itsios and his comrades fired approximately 33,000 rounds at the enemy. They eliminated 232 Nazi soldiers.

After running out of ammunition, Sergeant Itsios ordered his comrades to retreat to safety. Two comrades decided to stay and fight to the last breath with Itsios. Afterward, Lieutenant Itsios and his two comrades were captured by the Nazi forces.

While being interrogated by German General Ferdinand Schörner, Sergeant Itsios stated that he was the commander of a small Greek unit and had inflicted heavy casualties on the German forces. Therefore, General Schörner ordered Itsios’s execution.

Sergeant Itsios’s example of brave fighting in the war against the Nazis became a Greek hero of World War 2, remembered by future generations.