that the Battalions were disrupting their efforts to administer areas peacefully and increasing support for the Greek resistance. However, German policy was to encourage the Security Battalions' brutality in an effort to cow Greek resistance to the occupation. As noted by the historian Mark Mazower, the majority of those killed by the Battalions were not resistance members, but instead killed at random as part of indiscriminate counterinsurgency operations.

With Greece's mountainous terrain favouring