However, unaware of the secret Anglo-Soviet agreements concerning the Balkans, the Greek Communist leaders continued to hope that, once victory was within their grasp, the "Great Stalin" would not turn his back on them. Furthermore, the situation emerging in Greece's neighboring states also appeared to favor a Communist takeover in Greece. The newly established communist regimes in Yugoslavia and Albania-and then also in Bulgaria, in October 1944--gave every indication that they would support an attempt to bring Greece into the communist camp.
The official position of the United States regarding the situation in Greece during the years 1943-44 was at best ambivalent and confusing. Traditionally, the American government had regarded the Balkans as lying outside its area of immediate concern and had wanted to avoid at all costs any entanglements in that region. Soon after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt agreed with Churchill that Britain would remain responsible for military operations in Southeastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. Accordingly, and in the interest of interallied harmony, American officials felt compelled to remain largely silent on Greek issues. Nevertheless, the State Department missed no opportunity to make clear its own view that Greek problems were for Greeks alone to settle.
The American Approach
Specifically, the department objected to what it perceived as British attempts to have King George return to Greece right after liberation. In this, the department's attitude echoed the sentiments of most Greek Americans, who were strongly antiroyalist. But it also represented the considered opinion of well-informed American officials, including Lincoln MacVeagh, the American ambassador in Athens since 1933 and a highly respected observer of Greek political affairs.
After leaving occupied Athens in June 1941, MacVeagh had informed his superiors that Greeks of every political persuasion had told him that King George, tainted by his collusion with the Metaxas dictatorship, could not go back to Greece prior to a properly conducted plebiscite and had begged him to urge the Roosevelt administration not to allow the British to reinstall him in Athens, whatever Churchill's personal attachment to the king. Indeed, MacVeagh predicted that, after the war, the Greeks would freely choose a republican form of government modeled after the American. [5]
In October 1944, while preparing to leave Cairo for recently liberated Athens, MacVeagh refused to accompany the newly formed "Government of National Unity" under Prime Minister George Papandreou because it was being escorted by British troops. The ambassador actually wrote Roosevelt to express his concern that the British were mishandling the Greek political situation. He quoted from a report of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) according to which EAM was leading a full-fledged social revolution that was too powerful to be suppressed. MacVeagh thought that the most that could be hoped for was a compromise settlement between EAM and its rivals.
In short, at the moment of liberation, American officials appeared willing to accept the fact that EAM was emerging as the dominant political force in Greece. Moreover, they saw no reason to be seriously alarmed by this development. Nonetheless, the Roosevelt administration would not take an official stand on this matter.
This ambivalence extended to the state of affairs prevailing in the Greek mountains. In their dealings with the Greek resistance, OSS officers loyally supported their British counterparts who, in any event, commanded the teams of the Allied Mission in occupied Greece. However, in their reports to their own superiors in Cairo, OSS officers often expressed strong criticism of British attempts to manipulate Greek developments. During the first phase of the civil war many OSS officers (as well as some among their British colleagues) had requested that they be withdrawn from Greece, arguing that the continuous fighting between resistance bands had made their work impossible.
Especially critical of the British were the reports of one intelligence-gathering OSS mission, code-named Pericles, that had sought to conceal from the British its presence in Greece and had recommended the creation of a network of direct American assistance to EAM/ELAS--in effect, bypassing the British--in exchange for EAM support of purely American intelligence operations. The idea was quietly dropped for fear that it would antagonize both the British and the Greek government-in-exile.
When, in May 1944, Churchill first proposed to Moscow a deal to divide responsibility in the Balkans--the Red Army was about to invade Romania--the Kremlin asked if the Americans had been consulted. This forced the British to raise the question in Washington. Secretary of State Cordell Hull rejected the proposal in the strongest terms and Roosevelt warned Churchill against creating "exclusive spheres." But as the Soviet advance into the Balkans continued, Churchill sent a personal appeal to Roosevelt arguing that an Anglo-Soviet understanding over the Balkans would prevent friction between the Allies in the critical period that lay ahead. He also pointedly reminded the president that Britain had raised no objections to American predominance in the Western Hemisphere. This time Roosevelt gave in. But at the insistence of Hull and of Harry Hopkins, the president's personal adviser, FDR limited American approval to the period of military operations and repeated American objections to the creation of "any postwar spheres of influence." [6]
This qualification was, of course, purely cosmetic. When Churchill met Stalin in Moscow in October 1944, nothing was said about American reservations concerning the proposed Anglo-Soviet agreement under which Greece would be in Britain's zone of responsibility and Romania and Bulgaria in the Soviet zone, while influence over Yugoslavia and Hungary would be divided equally between London and Moscow. On the contrary, when Stalin indicated that he assumed that Churchill was speaking for the Americans as well, Churchill's evasive response appeared to satisfy the Soviet leader on that crucial point. In short, the United States remained a passive observer during most of the First Round of the civil war. Although American officials remained unhappy with the British handling of the Greek situation, wartime priorities dictated that there be no open opposition to what was happening in Cairo, or in the Greek mountains, under British initiatives.
Without doubt, the most important external factor during this entire period was Britain's far-reaching involvement. Yet it is worth remembering that the ability of the British authorities to influence the situation in the Greek mountains was itself severely limited by the absence of a significant military force under actual British control.
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