Triumph and Tragedy (The Second World War) (58 page)

Earl of Halifax to

8 Dec. 44

Prime Minister

Harry and Jim Forrestal have just telephoned
enthusiastic approval of your speech on Greece, which
they both think will have done immense good. I am sure
they are right.

Prime Minister to Mr.

9 Dec. 44

Harry Hopkins

I am very glad you were pleased by my speech. I
was much upset by the last sentence of the Stettinius
Press release,
7
which seemed to reflect on the whole
of our foreign policy in Belgium, where we acted under
your orders, and in Greece, where our action was fully
approved at Quebec. Naturally the prolongation and
severity of the fighting in Athens with E.L.A.S. causes
me anxiety.

Every good wish.

And again the same day:

I hope you will tell our great friend that the establishment of law and order in and around Athens is
essential to all future measures of magnanimity and
consolation towards Greece. After this has been
established will be the time for talking. My guiding
principle is “No peace without victory.” It is a great
disappointment to me to have been set upon in this
way by E.L.A.S. when we came loaded with good gifts
and anxious only to form a united Greece which could
establish its own destiny. But we have been set upon,
and we intend to defend ourselves. I consider we have
a right to the President’s support in the policy we are
following. If it can be said in the streets of Athens that
the United States are against us, then more British
blood will be shed and much more Greek. It grieves me
very much to see signs of our drifting apart at a time
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when unity becomes ever more important, as danger
recedes and faction arises.

2. For you personally. Do not be misled by our
majority yesterday. I could have had another eighty by
sending out a three-line whip instead of only two. On
Fridays, with the bad communications prevailing here,
Members long to get away for the week-end. Who
would not?

Every good wish.

British troops were still fighting hard in the centre of Athens, hemmed in and outnumbered. We were engaged in house-to-house combat with an enemy at least four-fifths of whom were in plain clothes. Unlike many of the Allied newspaper correspondents in Athens, our troops had no difficulty in understanding the issues involved.

Papandreou and his remaining Ministers had lost all authority. Previous proposals to set up a Regency under the Archbishop Damaskinos had been rejected by the King, but on December 10 Mr. Leeper revived the idea. King George however was against it, and we were reluctant at the time to press him.

Amid these tumults Field-Marshal Alexander and Mr.

Macmillan arrived in Athens. We received the first reports of their mission on December 11. Our plight was worse than we had expected. Alexander telegraphed, “The British forces are in fact beleaguered in the heart of the city.” The road to the airfield was not secure. We were not in control of Piræus harbour, so no ships could be unloaded there.

Only six days’ rations and three days’ reserve of ammunition were left for the troops fighting in the city.

Alexander proposed to clear the port and the road to Athens at once, bring in immediate reinforcements from Italy, and build up supply dumps, and, “having linked up securely both ends of the dumb-bell, to undertake the

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necessary operations to clear the whole of Athens and Piraeus.” He also pressed Leeper’s proposal to appoint the Archbishop as Regent, and asked for stern measures against the rebels and permission to bomb areas inside Athens.

On December 12 the War Cabinet gave Alexander a free hand in all military measures. The 4th British Division, on passage from Italy to Egypt, was diverted, and their arrival during the latter half of the month turned the scale. I told Alexander that the Greek King would not agree to the plan for a Regency. The suggestion that the Archbishop should be called upon to form a Government satisfied no one. The political reaction at home to these events showed a clearer and calmer view.

At this moment an astonishing leakage of official secrets occurred. The reader will remember my telegram to General Scobie dispatched at 4.50 A.M. on December 5.

This had been marked “Personal and Top Secret. From Prime Minister to General Scobie. Repeated to General Wilson,” and of course was in cipher. A few days later an American columnist was able to publish practically an exact copy of it. All our communications were menaced thereby.

I learned on inquiry that all messages sent through General Wilson’s Supreme Headquarters in Italy were communicated to several personages, including the American Ambassador in Rome, unless they bore a special restrictive marking. On reading the text of my message sent before dawn on the 5th to General Scobie the American Ambassador repeated its substance to the State Department. He was fully within his rights in doing this.

What happened after his paraphrase reached the State

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Department has never been discovered, or at any rate made known, but on the 11th the American journalist made public what might well have been, at that time, an awkward bombshell. It happened that the next day the Trades Union Congress was to meet in London. There was naturally much anxiety about our policy in Greece and Left Wing forces were astir. It seemed probable that the publication of the drastic terms of my message to General Scobie would produce a bad impression. However the matter was not mentioned at the Trades Union Congress, nor indeed did it attract any attention in Parliament. Mr. Bevin represented the War Cabinet at the Congress, and with characteristic loyalty and courage he defended and vindicated our policy in Greece. He carried the whole conference with him, and by an overwhelming majority the trade unions gave their support to the Government and proved once again their stable and responsible qualities in great matters.

I had meanwhile received a most kindly worded telegram from the President.

President Roosevelt

13 Dec. 44

to Prime Minister

I have been as deeply concerned as you have
yourself in regard to the tragic difficulties you have
encountered in Greece. I appreciate to the full the
anxious and difficult alternatives with which you have
been faced. I regard my role in this matter as that of a
loyal friend and ally whose one desire is to be of any
help possible in the circumstances. You may be sure
that in putting my thoughts before you I am constantly
guided by the fact that nothing can in any way shake
the unity and association between our two countries in
the great tasks to which we have set our hands.

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As anxious as I am to be of the greatest help to you
in this trying situation, there are limitations, imposed in
part by the traditional policies of the United States and
in part by the mounting adverse reaction of public
opinion in this country. No one will understand better
than yourself that I, both personally and as Head of
State, am necessarily responsive to the state of public
feeling. It is for these reasons that it has not been
possible for this Government to take a stand along with
you in the present course of events in Greece. Even an
attempt to do so would bring only temporary value to
you, and would in the long run do injury to our basic
relationships. I don’t need to tell you how much I dislike
this state of affairs as between you and me. My one
hope is to see it rectified so that we can go along, in
this as in everything, shoulder to shoulder. I know that
you, as the one on whom the responsibility rests, desire
with all your heart a satisfactory solution of the Greek
problem, and particularly one that will bring peace to
that ravished country. I will be with you whole-heartedly
in any solution which takes into consideration the
factors I have mentioned above. With this in mind I am
giving you at random some thoughts that have come to
me in my anxious desire to be of help.

I know that you have sent Macmillan there with
broad powers to find such a solution, and it may be that
he will have been successful before you get this. I of
course lack full details and am at a great distance from
the scene, but it has seemed to me that a basic reason

— or excuse perhaps — for the E.A.M. attitude has
been distrust regarding the intentions of King George II.

I wonder if Macmillan’s efforts might not be greatly
facilitated if the King himself would approve the
establishment of a Regency in Greece and would make
a public declaration of his intention not to return unless
called for by popular plebiscite. This might be
particularly effective if accompanied by an assurance
that elections will be held at some fixed date, no matter
how far in the future, when the people would have full
opportunity to express themselves.

Meanwhile might it not be possible to secure general
agreement on the disarmament and dissolution of all
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the armed groups now in the country, including the
Mountain Brigade and the Sacred Squadron, leaving
your troops to preserve law and order alone until the
Greek national forces can be reconstituted on a non-partisan basis and be adequately equipped?

I shall be turning over in my mind this whole
question, and hope you will share your thoughts and
worries with me.

This however did not give me any practical help. I replied:
Prime Minister to

14 Dec. 44

President Roosevelt

I will send you over the week-end a considered
answer to your telegram, for the kindly tone of which I
thank you. I hope that the British reinforcements now
coming steadily into Attica may make a more healthy
situation in Athens. You will realise how very serious it
would be if we withdrew, as we easily could, and the
result was a frightful massacre, and an extreme Left
Wing régime under Communist inspiration installed
itself, as it would, in Athens. My Cabinet colleagues
here of all parties are not prepared to act in a manner
so dishonourable to our record and name. Ernest
Bevin’s speech to the Labour conference won universal
respect. Stern fighting lies ahead, and even danger to
our troops in the centre of Athens. The fact that you are
supposed to be against us, in accordance with the last
sentence of Stettinius’ Press release, has added, as I
feared, to our difficulties and burdens. I think it probable
that I shall broadcast to the world on Sunday night and
make manifest the purity and disinterestedness of our
motives throughout, and also of our resolves.