The paper focuses on a parallel examination of A. Kotzia's "Siege" (1953) and N. Kasdaglis' "The teeth of the millstone" (1955), which address the combustible subject of civil conflict within the German Occupation and lead postwar prose to a realistic shift with direct references to naturalistic poetics. The two novels not only share a common theme but also show analogies concerning the form and the representation of characters and society. The two novelists depict the reality of the Occupation period and the infringing conduct of members of paramilitary organisations by photographing violent scenes in order to capture the power of instincts that drive people into an inescapable deadlock. This way, both Kasdaglis and Kotzias succeed in shaping representative figures, mostly negative, to demonstrate the brutalisation of people and the deterministic course of their heroes, criticising the ideological polarisation of their time.