FOR ALL THE rising drama surrounding the creation of Israel and their warring Arab neighbors, events in the Balkans remained the Truman administration’s top international concern.
Despite Great Britain’s withdrawal of economic support, they still maintained a small troop presence in Greece, which provided added insurance against a feared Soviet invasion. Attlee’s strapped British government wished to withdraw even this small military presence, which would have been dangerously destabilizing. Another British retreat would force the Greek army to bear an even greater share of the burden and the conflict would be reframed as a showdown solely between America and the communist world. Acheson had assured Congress that American troops would not be deployed to Greece, but now congressional leaders rightly feared that the threat of British withdrawal would lead to that US deployment. Postwar demobilization had reduced US troop strength by 90 percent and any military presence in Greece and Turkey would strain America’s already challenged military readiness. Even if there were troops to be spared, the risks of such a deployment were substantial; what if American and Soviet troops came to blows? The consequences were too grim to contemplate. That may be why the Joint Chiefs of Staff initially supported an American military intervention, but demurred after examining more closely the events on the ground. The chiefs concluded that in its demobilized state, the US military was not even in a position to defeat “the combined forces of Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria; most emphatically not if these countries receive either covert or active Soviet support.”
Then as now, the “special relationship” between America and Britain was as vital, regardless of Great Britain’s weakened state. Fortunately, swift and effective American diplomacy kept the British committed, though discussions about increased American military intervention would persist for a time. Both Truman and Attlee’s governments understood that a British withdrawal and an American entry into the conflict would have thrown off the delicate balance between economic and military aid that was the heart of the Truman Doctrine, and possibly provoke a Soviet response.
The maintenance of that balance, and the combined British military and American economic presence in the country, began producing the desired effect: Stalin soon began viewing the guerrilla insurgency as hopeless and refused to become more directly involved. By the winter of 1948, the Soviet leader was ready to cut all support for the DAG:
They have no prospect of success at all. What, do you think that Great Britain and the United States—the United States, the most powerful state in the world—will permit you to break their line of communication to the Mediterranean? Nonsense. And we have no navy. The uprising in Greece must be stopped, and as quickly as possible.
The Truman Doctrine had achieved its central purpose—making Soviet interference in the Greek Civil War politically and economically unwise. Stalin’s strategy developed into an exercise in finding vulnerable countries where he could expand the Soviet’s reach without tempting a direct conflict with the United States. America’s economic and military aid—not to mention the deployment of American military advisers—took Greece off of the Soviet Union’s “wishlist.”
But Tito’s government, increasingly determined to show its independence from Moscow, maintained support of the Greek insurgents. Thus in the winter of 1949, the agony of Greece continued into yet another year. On February 5, correspondent Anne O’Hare McCormick reported in the New York Times, “The Greek war has reached a point where resistance is in danger of collapsing if it is not strengthened.” She related the disturbing message the minister of war delivered to parliament: “At no moment since the Communist attacks against Greece started was the situation as critical as it is now.” In words that may resonate to US soldiers stationed in Afganistan, a Greek army commander lamented to McCormick, “We are fighting a shadow army whose aim is not to conquer and occupy but to loot, destroy and move on to the next point of attack. We are fighting terror.”
The Times article noted that without the aid bill, “Greece would long ago have gone the way of countries in the Soviet orbit,” but that victory was still elusive. McCormick described the conflict as “a new kind of war . . . against America and American aid.” But she concluded that, if “we are prepared for greater costs and greater risks . . . Greece . . . is a manageable problem. It is not beyond our means and has only to be understood and talked about seriously to be solvable.” Of the Greeks, she wrote admiringly, “No one who has watched these people through the darkest days of this bitter winter can believe their fortitude will not carry them further.”
Some of that fortitude was on display later in that year when in June, the Greek National Army attacked guerrilla strongholds across northwest Greece. The operation proved to be a resounding success, in large part because the army finally adopted the strategy of surrounding and capturing guerrilla forces, rather than simply driving them over the border into Yugoslavian sanctuaries. It was the same strategy that America’s Union army leadership belatedly adopted during the Civil War, much to the frustration of President Abraham Lincoln, whose grasp of strategy often seemed superior to that of his generals. A rebel army prevails by simply surviving; chasing insurgents away to fight another day proves to be useless.
American aid remained crucial, but the greatest hope for ending the ongoing warfare was the acrimonious split between the two communist titans, Stalin and Tito. The Yugoslav strongman declared in the spring of 1948, “No matter how much each of us loves the land of Socialism, the USSR, he can in no case love his country less.” Tito had his own regional ambitions that Stalin could not tolerate, and Tito found it wiser to keep a safe distance from the Soviet tyrant, while holding out the possibility of courting US aid. (Dean Acheson, who by this time had become secretary of state, would later write of the American rapprochement with Tito, “It would be bad politics and bad morals to represent him as an ally of the West. He was and would long remain a staunch Communist and the dictator of a police state. This honest attitude, however, raised difficulties in Congress, where Communists belonged to a genus without subordinate species.”)
On June 28, 1948, at Stalin’s direction, the Cominform (Communist Information Bureau), an international organization of communist parties, expelled Yugoslavia. Displaying more ideological zeal than common sense, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) took Stalin’s side in his split with Tito. Yugoslavia, already tiring of the ongoing struggle and unwilling to fund the guerrillas much longer, retaliated by reducing its support. In July 1949, Tito closed the border with Greece. One guerrilla leader raged, “Tito has joined the imperialist camp. Yugoslavia’s policy is treachery.” To an Associated Press reporter, Tito “denied Greek communist accusations that he was ever in league with Greek Government forces. He said the gradual closing of the frontier would ‘safeguard the lives of our working men.’” The Greek guerrillas were consequently starved of aid and cut off from their safe haven across the northern border. As one historian of the conflict has observed, “The rank and file of the KKE, and in particular its leaders, were expendable. Without a trace of compunction, Stalin let them go to their doom.”
A delicate diplomatic dance ensued. The United States, after initial caution, began making diplomatic overtures to Yugoslavia in a successful attempt to increase Tito’s separation from Moscow. At the same time, the US State Department quietly exerted pressure on the Greek government to both refrain from accusing Yugoslavia of complicity in the pedhomazoma and ease some of its more repressive policies.
Still the war continued; the Greek army progressed against its enemies by fits and starts. Truman’s administration was confident of eventual victory and was already beginning to focus on other Cold War priorities. Pressure was building to reduce the level of aid to Greece and consequently the size of its army since Greece was but one battleground in the growing Cold War. With tensions rising in Berlin and elsewhere, American leadership soon concluded that it was necessary to begin reallocating resources to other foreign hot spots. Despite General Van Fleet’s organizational and inspirational leadership through the crisis, it was important to Truman and Congress that he continued to be seen as an observer. Both he and Truman’s State Department knew that if the civil war were to end, it would require something not yet witnessed in the war: decisive Greek leadership.