[6] On February 2, 1925, the Greek parliament, claiming pressure from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which threatened to renounce the Greek–Serbian Alliance of 1913, refused to ratify the agreement, that lasted until June 10, 1925.

During the Metaxas regime the Greek government began promulgating a policy of persecution of the use of Slavic dialects both in public and in private, as well of expressions of any cultural or ethnic distinctiveness.

This idea was backed by the Comintern, which issued a resolution in 1934, supporting the development of Macedonia as a separate entity and recognizing a Macedonian nationality.

[17] While most of Greece was occupied by Axis Powers in World War II, resistance movements were created by Greeks while the collaborationist Ohrana battalions were constituted from among the Slavophone population.

[7] In the book After The war Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation, and State in Greece, 1943–1960 edited by Mark Mazower and published by Princeton University Press, it is remarked that: The testimonies started to grow more complicated and to reveal the true nature of the problem when the witnesses recounted the activities of an accused prisoner during the occupation who, having been a loyal friend of the Bulgarians in the early years of the occupation, would suddenly appear as a member of Slovenomakedonski Narodno Oslobodaekn Front (Slav Macedonian National Liberation Front).

Before the creation of SNOF, ethnic Macedonian military detachments in Greek Macedonia participated in the National People's Liberation Army.

SNOF started publishing newspapers and booklets on ethnic Macedonian history and engaged a massive propaganda war against the Ohrana.

[11] By 1944 the Slavic-Macedonian National Liberation Front had begun to publish a regular newspaper known as Slavjano-Makedonski Glas (Macedonian: Славјано-Македонски Глас).

[12] After the end of the Greek Resistance against the Axis occupation, the SNOF was dissolved in 1944 on the orders of the KKE Central Committee and through British intervention.

[20][21] Bulgaria was interested in acquiring Thessalonica and Western Macedonia under Axis occupation and hoped to sway the allegiance of the 80,000 Slavs who lived there at the time.

[21] Following the defeat of the Axis powers and the evacuation of the Nazi occupation forces many members of the Ohrana joined the SNOF where they could still pursue their goal of secession.

[23][24] It is estimated that entire Ohrana units had joined the SNOF which began to press the ELAS leadership to allow it autonomous action in Greek Macedonia.

[25] In their book Greece:The Modern Sequel, published by New York University Press Thanos Veremis and John S. Koliopoulos note: In Western Macedonia the German and Italian Occupation authorities gave the exponents of the Bulgarian cause a free hand in their policy of intimidating the local population.

Throughout the war period ELAS resisted Yugoslav pressure to allow the "Slav Macedonian National Liberation Front" to form separate ranks and pursue its own policy in Greek Macedonia.

[14] But while the KKE was negotiating and fighting within the political framework, in northern Greece bands of the former Security Battalions (wartime collaborators) and government forces harassed the ethnic Macedonians, accusing them of autonomist activities.

[citation needed] A number of ethnic Macedonians in Edessa, Kastoria and Florina, Paskal Mitrevski, Mihail Keramidzhiev, Georgi Urdov, Atanas Koroveshov, Pavle Rakovski and Mincho Fotev, formed the National Liberation Front on 23 April 1945.

According to its statute, their objectives were: to resist the "Monarchist-Fascist aggressors", to fight for democracy and a Greek Republic; and the physical preservation of the ethnic Macedonian population.

The ethnic Macedonian KKE members who escaped Greece when the country was liberated started coming back to their homes, and many entered the ranks of NOF.

[16] The NOF and also created regional committees in all areas with compact ethnic Macedonian populations (Florina, Eddesa, Giannitsa and Kastoria).

[20] Soon after the first free territories were created, Keramitčiev met with KKE officials, and it was decided that Macedonian schools would open in the area controlled by the DSE.

[22] In Democratic Army of Greece held territory, newspapers and books were published by NOF, public speeches made and the schools opened, helping the consolidation of Macedonian conscience and identity among the population.

According to information announced by Paskal Mitrevski on the I plenum of NOF in August 1948, about 85% of the Macedonian-speaking population in Aegean Macedonia identified themselves as ethnic Macedonian.

In August 1948, Vafiadis was removed from the position of DSE commander-in-chief and was replaced by Nikos Zachariadis, who changed the whole command cadre to party members with no combat experience.

[27] From the merger in 1946 until the end of the Civil War, the NOF was loyal to the idea of a unified Greece and was fighting for human rights for all groups within the borders of the Greek republic.

But Zachariadis, in order to mobilize more ethnic Macedonians into the DSE, declared on 31 January 1949 at the 5th Meeting of the KKE Central Committee: In Northern Greece the people of Macedonia gave its best for the struggle and fights on an integration of heroism and self-sacrifice that is admirable.

[28]This new line of the KKE increased the mobilization rate of ethnic Macedonians (which even earlier was considerably high), but did not manage, ultimately, to change the course of the war.

Ethnic Macedonian children who fled their homes during the Greek Civil War were permitted to enter Greece for a maximum of 20 days.