Napoleon Zervas (Greek: Ναπολέων Ζέρβας; May 17, 1891 – December 10, 1957) was a Hellenic Army officer and resistance leader during World War II. He organized and led the National Republican Greek League (EDES), the second most significant (after EAM), in terms of size and activity, resistance organization against the Axis Occupation of Greece.

Zervas was born in Arta, Epirus, but his ancestors came from the village of Souli. After finishing high school in 1910, he volunteered for the 2nd Infantry Division. During the Balkan Wars, he was promoted to the rank of first sergeant. Later he attended the Hellenic Army NCO School and graduated as sergeant major in 1914.

Zervas was a Venizelist, and in 1916 was among the first to join the venizelist Movement of National Defense in Thessaloniki. He served with distinction in many battles of the Macedonian front during World War I, being eventually promoted to major. After the defeat of Venizelos' Liberal Party in the elections of 1920, he fled to Constantinople. He only returned to Athens in late 1922, after the Revolution of September 1922, and rejoined the army.

Three years later, after the establishment of General Theodoros Pangalos' dictatorship (June 1925), he was appointed as garrison commander of the city of Athens and at the same time, took command of the Second Battalion of the Republican Guard. These troops served as the main strongholds of Pangalos' military regime in the capital. Nevertheless, Zervas participated in the coup d'état of 22 August 1926, led by General Georgios Kondylis, that overthrew Pangalos. Zervas, however, confronted Kondylis a month later, when the new strongman sought to disarm and dissolve the Republican Guard. Bloody battles took place in Athens between Zervas' battalion and the governmental forces. After his defeat, Zervas was sentenced to life in prison. However, two years later, the newly established republican government of Eleftherios Venizelos (the Liberals' government of 1928–1932), granted him amnesty and Zervas was named lieutenant colonel in retirement.

In September 1941, a few months after the start of the Axis Occupation of Greece, Zervas, along with other Venizelist army officers and political figures, founded the National Republican Greek League (EDES). The goals of EDES were the fight against the conquerors of Greece, the abolition of the Greek monarchy and the establishment of a republic on social-democratic principles. The two most guiding principles for Zervas was hatred of the House of Glücksburg together with an equally intense hatred of communism. The party platform of EDES talked of a "republic in a socialist form", but the British historian Mark Mazower described Zervas's socialism as "only skin deep". Notably, the platform of EDES did not mention armed resistance, and only after Zervas was bribed with 24,000 gold sovereigns from an agent of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) did he agree to take to the mountains to wage guerrilla war. Obese and a hypochondriac, Zervas was reluctant to take up the arduous life of an andarte (guerrilla), preferring to stay in Athens.

The SOE had a low opinion of Zervas's ability to lead with one agent writing bitterly of his "disregard of even elementary organisation". The same report mentioned that Zervas "hopes for the best but employs a crowd of useless officers, because it would disturb the peace to fire them...As an organiser, his value is NIL". A charming man, described by those who knew him as being like a "bland and easy-going company director", Zervas was primarily a political as opposed to a military leader. Another SOE agent wrote about Zervas that he was like: "the chairman of a provincial tramway company which is boosted and kept going but always has hanging over it the shadow of radical changes to the buses in the dim future. In the meantime, the chairman isn't doing too badly for himself, and if the future isn't too rosy, he himself is well provided for".

In August 1942, with his political advisor and second-in-command of EDES, Komninos Pyromaglou, he went to the mountains of Epirus, where he founded the military branch of EDES, the EOEA (Ethnikes Omades Ellinon Antarton, National Groups of Greek Guerrillas). Upon taking to the mountains of his native Epirus, Zervas relied primarily upon familial connections to recruit andartes. Zervas was very much a traditional guerrilla leader whose status as an archigos (leader) was based upon his charisma, and his political platform was notably vague beyond its call to restore the republic. Pyromaglou summed Zervas's philosophy of EDES as: "Faith in the Leader. All from the Leader. All for the Leader." The EDES-EOEA forces were proclaimed as combatant forces of the Allied Armies by the British General Headquarters of Middle East.

Zervas incorporated not only Republicans but increasingly also royalists into his movement, who saw EDES as the only acceptable alternative to EAM, the Communist-dominated rival resistance movement that had established itself over most of the country. EOEA's activities were largely confined to Epirus, but Zervas had some control of Aetolia-Acarnania, in the Valtos area.