IN HIS SEMINAL work A New Kind of War, diplomatic historian Howard Jones explains the central dilemma faced by the United States in effectively executing its aid program with Greece: The Greek leadership “understood that, even though they were recipients of American aid, the Truman administration regarded Greece as vital to American security and would give in to many of their demands. In this instance, the tail wagged the dog, making a clash all but inevitable not only between the Greeks and the Americans, but among the Americans themselves.”
During the months that Washington politicians were debating the fine points of the Truman Doctrine, Greece was dissolving further into civil war. While the legislation’s passage may have heralded a new day in US foreign policy, it did little in the short term to ease the miseries of the Greek people. It soon became apparent that the military dimension of the Truman Doctrine would loom far larger moving foward than the administration had ever suggested to Congress. The deteriorating situation, exacerbated by both relentless guerrilla attacks and a listless Greek response, raised another set of uncomfortable questions in Washington. The stated fears by many isolationist Republicans and progressive Democrats in Congress that American servicemen could end up involved in a foreign civil war quickly proved to be justified. Without direct American involvement, the communist insurgents were looking as if they could still topple the government, with the millions in American aid going to waste.
Truman found himself yet again in a difficult position brought on by the seemingly endless crisis in Greece. He could not deploy American troops to that country in significant numbers without incurring the wrath of Congress and political blowback that could threaten the entire program. But if Washington did nothing to aid the Greek army, an even graver danger loomed. The dilemma was made more complicated by the fact that the United States knew very little about Stalin’s intentions; the “Iron Curtain” that Churchill foresaw in his Westminster College speech the previous year was proving to be a nearly impenetrable fortress regarding intelligence gathering. For many in Greece, America’s outreach seemed motivated by their own Cold War interests, and not what was best for their own country. One Greek officer observed to an American journalist, “This war in Greece is a battle between the United States and Russia. It happens that it’s being fought here. That is our bad luck. But you can’t expect us to fight your battle single-handed—at least not with the old spirit.”
After months of deliberation, the administration opted to send an advisory and planning group of nearly two hundred military personnel under the authority of the US aid administrator. These officers and enlisted men would advise Greek army leadership on strategy and tactics; they were among the first American “military advisers” that would play a decisive role in future Cold War conflicts. The danger then as well as later was this: What if American personnel were injured or killed during engagements with the enemy? What if their “advisory” capacity turned into something more direct and dangerous?
The risk to these US troops was grave. A captured guerrilla fighter told a New York Times reporter in February that he and his compatriots were directed: “You must kill Americans and drive them away because they are the conquerors of Greece. You must shoot Americans whenever they interfere with operations.”
The already complicated Greek crisis took a more ominous turn when the communist insurgents, who had already demonstrated extraordinary brutality against the people they were trying to “liberate”, adopted a new and disturbing strategy: The kidnapping and removal of thousands of children to camps across the border in Yugoslavia. The Greeks called it pedhomazoma, “the stealing of the children.” Communist propaganda called it an act of liberation; as Howard Jones relates, “One communist publication contained a story of two exhausted boys over the caption: ‘The first picture of persecuted children of democratic Greece shows two of these courageous young comrades who had to flee their homeland before monarchic terror. Entirely without means, they are dependent on international solidarity of people’s democratic and progressive countries.’”
The images of young children being torn from their parents and put in camps to be trained as guerrilla fighters inflamed worldwide opinion. The New York Times reported in a front-page story that the kidnapping was an attempt to “de-Hellenize Greek children,” and “has the long range idea of building up a future ‘Slavophone’ for Greece indoctrinated with new ideologies.” The American government now found itself in yet another difficult position, under pressure to act against these savage tactics but unwilling to antagonize the Yugoslav government, which might then be pushed into Stalin’s camp. This was an opportunity for the United Nations to carry out the sort of work for which it was founded, so the international organization dispatched inspection teams to the region. The results were mixed, with information predictably hard to come by. Many Greeks were fearful of further antagonizing the guerrillas and would not speak to inspectors, and others had willingly sent their children away, hoping to save them from years of chaos brought on by a Nazi occupation and endless civil war. The vapid, bloodless UN report ultimately concluded:
The American government feared the truth was far worse, even if the removals did not rise to the level of “genocide” as the Greek government claimed. Truman knew that the only way to save the “liberated” children of Greece, and to bring a degree of stability to the region, was to increase America’s focus on the goal of bringing the civil war to an end. While direct military intervention was off the table, a more serious effort to provide leadership and training for the Greek army was essential. A strong leader was needed to change the course of events in Athens, and soon that leader was found.
The appointment of Lieutenant General James A. Van Fleet to lead the Joint United States Military Advisory and Planning Group in Greece proved to be a turning point. Born in New Jersey and raised in Florida, Van Fleet won an appointment to West Point, graduating with the famous class of 1915, the “class the stars fell on,” which included Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, and fifty-six other future generals.
As a first lieutenant, Van Fleet joined the 16th Machine Gun Battalion of the 6th Division and saw action on the Western Front in the First World War. Between the wars, he was an instructor and football coach, and like so many of his fellow officers, he found his military career stagnating while serving in the ever-shrinking American army. But the coming of the Second World War saw Van Fleet promoted to colonel and given command of the 8th Infantry Regiment.
The colonel led the 8th Regiment onto Utah Beach on D-Day, and he was soon promoted to brigadier general and given command of the 90th Division, leading his troops across Western Europe and through the German frontier. He ended his wartime service with III Corps, which plunged into the heartland of Nazi Germany and helped capture the Ruhr Valley. He was an imposing six feet two inches tall and 220 pounds, and his quiet competence earned him the respect of his soldiers and superiors. President Truman hailed him as the “finest combat soldier in the U.S. Army,” and he was swiftly confirmed for his new position by the Senate on February 18, arriving in Greece less than a week later.
General Van Fleet led a team of 450 military advisers, all of whom were ordered to serve only in an advisory capacity. But the risks of injury and death remained ever present, and the threat of an international incident erupting remained great. Still, the new reality on the ground in Greece was that this large group of US “advisers” were playing a more direct role in bringing the bloody civil war to an end.
Van Fleet initially took a dim view of Greece’s military leadership: “Greek commanding officers are intensely politically conscious to the extent that they are reluctant to relieve obviously incompetent officers.” Lamenting their “lack of offensive spirit,” he sacked many of the more inadequate officers, and worked tirelessly to fashion the troops into a more capable fighting force.
The general was a hands-on commander willing to get into the mud with the men he led. His performance proved the perfect rebuttal to the sardonic observations of a British reporter the previous year, who lampooned the inflated expectations the Greeks had of the Americans: “Morale in the army? They would stiffen it with American officers, not sitting on their rumps at a headquarters desk, but slogging it right up there with the front-line fighters.” In fact, under Van Fleet, they did just that.
General Van Fleet also pushed for an increase in the number of advisers under his command and streamlined communications with the British. The general’s progress with the Greek army was only hampered by political constraints in Washington: The repeated assurances to Congress from the administration that no combat troops would be sent to Greece limited his ability to assign troops to smaller Greek army units that might encounter enemy fighters. Every unarmed American adviser could potentially face grave danger—and was a flash point in what the government still feared could evolve into a proxy war with the Soviet Union.
The American general was well regarded by the Greek government and particularly admired by the king and queen. But his relationship with Ambassador Henry F. Grady—Griswold’s successor—was as strained as that of Griswold’s with MacVeagh. Grady enjoyed summoning Van Fleet to his office and forcing him to stand and wait as the ambassador sifted through paper on his desk. He chastised the general for spending too much time with Greek royalty, and criticized him in his communications with Washington. Even Truman, who had effusively praised him on his appointment, was now questioning if a replacement was needed “who gets along better with the other American officials and who does not just run a one-man show.” But Secretary of War Kenneth C. Royall gave Truman direct (and prescient) advice: “Just leave Van Fleet alone, and—ambassador or no ambassador—he’ll win this war.”
Meanwhile, the Democratic Army of Greece (DAG) began changing tactics. The guerrillas continued carrying out a blend of their usual unconventional attacks coupled with conventional, large-scale military operations. But the DAG, unsuited for such operations, met repeatedly with failure. This strategic miscalculation in fighting tactics led to the guerrilla’s rout in towns across the north of Greece.
DAG leadership then decided to abandon completely their successful guerrilla tactics, and a more concerted effort began to capture and hold territory. In December, the Greek communists declared the establishment of a rival government and promptly assaulted the town of Konitsa, a strategic location near the Albanian border where they sought to establish a rival capital to Athens. But these aggressive advances were met with increased American military aid and Van Fleet’s steadying leadership; the Greek National Army was quickly becoming a more professional fighting force. Fortified with American weapons, and fearing the catastrophic consequences of a communist victory, the Greek army fought back with renewed vigor that helped in repulsing the guerrillas. Hundreds were killed on both sides, but the battle proved to be a more stinging defeat for the communists.
Still, the civil war continued to drag on. Greek expectations of what American aid could help them achieve had been exceedingly high, as were American expectations for a swift defeat of guerrilla forces by the Greek government. Short-term disappointment weighed heavily on both the Greek and American governments. Truman faced increased pressure from the left as government officials in Athens executed large numbers of guerrilla fighters and employed other inhumane measures against its enemies. The American journalist John Gunther observed the civil war’s personal and political impact:
Let nobody write about Greece lightly. Here is one of the most tragic and painful situations in the world. What is going on in Greece today is real war, though the fighting is desultory and the casualties comparatively light—what is worse, civil war, the most ravaging of all kinds of war. Moreover this is not merely a Greek war but an American war; it is the Americans who make it possible to fight it. Athens is almost like an Anglo-American (mostly American) armed citadel, and neither the Greek army nor government could survive ten days without aid—concrete military aid—from the United States. Not one American citizen in a thousand has any conception of the extent of the American commitment in Greece, the immensity of the American contribution, and the stubborn and perhaps insoluble dilemma into which we—the United States—have plunged ourselves.
Another American journalist’s plunge into the Greek Civil War had fatal results that caused further complications for Truman. CBS journalist George Polk, a Texas native and a descendant of President James K. Polk, was a graduate of the University of Alaska and a foreign correspondent. He enlisted in the navy in the Second World War and served as a pilot in the Pacific theater, where he was badly wounded at Guadalcanal. Polk recovered from his injuries and later reported from the war crimes trials in Nuremberg. He was then appointed a radio correspondent for the Middle East, based in Athens.
On May 17, 1948, his bound and blindfolded body was found in Salonika Bay, in northeast Greece. Polk, thirty-four years old, had been shot in the back of the head. He and his young wife were to have left Greece the following week, so that he could take up a new position in Washington. The murdered CBS newsman had been a vociferous critic of the Greek government, shining an uncomfortable spotlight on the corrupt and repressive tactics of government leaders that had driven much of Capitol Hill’s opposition to the Truman Doctrine. The Greek government blamed the murder on the communist guerrillas, but most journalists and war observers suspected the government had been involved.
Weeks went by without an arrest. In an attempt to shift suspicion away from themselves, Greek authorities even questioned Polk’s widow, suggesting that she had plotted with a lover to kill her husband. Finally, the police arrested a suspect, Gregorios Stachtopolis, who confessed his involvement and named two accomplices, both communists. Another witness testified that the murder had been an elaborate intelligence operation carried out by the guerrillas in order to cast suspicion on the government and convince the Americans to withdraw their aid. Stachtopolis himself testified, “Polk’s ghost pursues me night and day. I see him crumpling dead to the bottom of the boat.”
Stachtopolis was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment, and the United States declared itself satisfied with the outcome. But many covering the war remained convinced that the Greek government had murdered Polk and then perpetrated a cover-up. Howard Jones quotes Polk’s CBS colleague Alexander Kendrick, who remembered later, “It was sometimes hard to figure out whether this was a trial for the murder of Polk or a trial of Polk and of other foreign correspondents who have tried to report the Greek story objectively. . . . The most shocking thing about some of the testimony was the undercurrent of feeling that the United States had nothing to complain about, because only one American correspondent had been murdered, whereas several others might have been and perhaps should have been.” Stachtopolis served a decade in prison and later recanted his confession, claiming that Greek authorities had forced him to claim responsibility for the murder.
THE TRAGIC KILLING of the CBS newsman was the first of many reminders that fighting in the shadows of the Cold War would exact both financial and moral costs on US leaders executing that strategy. Greece would be the first of many repressive regimes that were both anticommunist and oppressive to basic freedoms within their own countries. Throughout the Cold War, the United States would support a number of regimes that failed to live up to America’s stated standards of freedom, but that served as bulwarks against the spread of an even more malignant ideology. Foreign policy is often a choice between several bad options. But the staggering human costs of the Soviets’ bloody seventy-four-year reign made the difficult path chosen by Harry Truman the only viable option for America and the Western world.