The Prelude to the Truman Doctrine: British Policy in Greece, 1944-47 (review)

Abstract

132 Reviews REFERENCES 1. / Tetárti Avgústu (The Fourth of August). Athens, 1975. 2. / epangelia tis adinatis epanástasis (The Promise of the Impossible Revolution) Athens, 1976. 3. Penguin Books, 1969. 4. Thanos Veremis, /epemvásis tu strata stin ellinikÃ-politiki, 1916-1936 (The Interventions of the Army in Greek Politics, 1916-1936). Athens, 1977. 5. I.A. Peponis, Nikólaos Plastirasstagegonóta, 1909-1945 (Nicholas Plastiras in the Events, 1909-1945), 2 vols. Athens, 1948. 6. Meleiimatayiro apo ton Venize'lo ketin epohitu (Studies on Venizelos and His Times), ed. O. Dimitrakopoulos and Th. Veremis. Athens, 1980. 7. See, for instance, a series of articles on the National Schism of World War I, in Kathimerini of 1934-1935, and particularly the concluding articles. 8. The Journal of Modem History, 54:4 (Dec. 1982), 746-65. 9. The American Historical Review, 84:2 (Apr. 1979), 367-98. 10. Greece and the British Connection, 1935-1941. Oxford, 1977, 59. 11. Ofasismós ke i Tetárti Avgustu (Fascism and the Fourth of August). Athens, 1977. George Alexander. The Prelude to the Truman Doctrine: British Policy in Greece, 1944-47. New York: Oxford University Press. 1982. $46.00. Mr. George Alexander is a counter-revisionist on the subject of Anglo-Greek relations at the end of the second world war. The revisionist thesis, which has held the field for many years, may be summarized thus: that EAM was a genuinely democratic organization, which happened to include a minority of Communists; that its armed force, ELAS, was solely concerned with resistance to the German occupation; and that Churchill (and later Bevin, the Labour Foreign Secretary from 1945) ruthlessly crushed them both in order to reimpose the unpopular monarchy of George II, supported by a tyrannical right-wing government. Mr. Alexander rejects this account both of the nature of EAM/ELAS and of British policy. EAM/ELAS, he argues, was the instrument with which the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) sought to obtain its objectives. "Its immediate objective was a multi-party government under communist hegemony; its ultimate aim, a Bolshevist Greece" (p. 8). This claim, which was the basis of British policy forty years ago, is Reviews 133 not easily proved even now, since KKE records are only selectively available and Soviet records not at all. But leading Communists have published reminiscences which tend to support this rather than the revisionist view. Mr. Alexander quotes Ioannis Ioannidis, writing in 1979, to the effect that the KKE's object in 1944 was to convince the British that "we were not intending to seize power by violence in order that they should not bring . . . their troops to Greece and so we would catch them sleeping and not them us" (p. 46). A number of similar remarks could be cited. With regard to British policy, it is not necessary to have recourse merely to inferences from reminiscences, because virtually all the relevant documents are now open for examination in the Public Record Office. Mr. Alexander has made very thorough use of them. His conclusion is exactly what British policy-makers would have hoped and expected: that the intention was not to crush a popular movement or to impose a monarchy by force, but "to produce a friendly, stable and democratic ally" (p. 251). Given this moderate objective, a clash with the revolutionary aims of the KKE is seen to have been inevitable. On the question of the restoration of the King, Mr. Alexander shows that neither British officials nor the Foreign Secretary (Anthony Eden) were committed to a policy of restoring him if the Greek people did not want him. Sir Rex Leeper, the Ambassador to the Greek government-in-exile, was impressed in 1943, soon after taking up his post, "by the strength of republican feeling in the cabinet" (p. 10), which reflected the even stronger feeling in Greece. Eden said in 1944 that there was "no question of our forcing any particular form of government on the Greeks . . . nor were we in any way committed as regards the position of the King" (p. 48). Churchill was more ardent than in his colleagues in hoping that the King would be restored, but had no...