During the last months of the German occupation, Walter Blume, the head of the German security police (SD) developed the so-called "chaos thesis", involving not only a thorough scorched earth policy, but also encouraging the slide of Greece into civil war and chaos. While Blume's more radical proposals concerning the elimination of the (mostly anti-communist and pro-British) pre-war political leadership were halted by more sober elements in the German leadership, as they withdrew from the Peloponnese in early September, the Germans destroyed bridges and railway lines and left weapons and ammunition to the Security Battalions, laying the groundwork for a civil war with ELAS.
