Home front during World War II

Greek authorities have recently intensified efforts to prepare for potential threats in the wake of escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine. One of the primary responses has been the adaptation of underground tunnels in Athens into bomb shelters. The move, part of a broader European initiative to bolster civil defense, comes as the fear of a nuclear strike grows.

The Nordic nation of 5.5 million people has some 50,500 bomb shelters that can fit…4.8 million inhabitants in them, in case of an emergency or an attack!

A network of thousands of underground spaces are scattered beneath Athens. Pedestrians hurry past them, not suspecting that the metal lid of a manhole they have just stepped on is one of the gates to a vast web of spaces, which for decades has been sealed in silence and oblivion.

General Ioannis Metaxas' regime (1936-41) built some 400 bomb shelters in Athens, while it imposed by law the creation of a shelter in every new building, raising the number to 5,500 from 1936 to 1940, author and researcher Konstantinos Kyrimis, who has been recording them for over a decade, tells Kathimerini, citing an official Hellenic Army report.

On the morning of Wednesday, October 5, at 11 am in the morning, the Civil Defence sirens sounded for about 5 minutes in an exercise simulating a mock air raid.