Madam, – Michael J Stokes’s recent letter (May 20th) regarding Winston Churchill and his actions in regards to wartime Greece deserves some clarifications.
Churchill was a man of his time and his support for the British empire should not be a surprise to anyone. It may be obsolete but that did not stop the dominions, South Africa, Australia, Canada, India and indeed a large portion of Irishmen standing shoulder to shoulder alongside Britain in its bitter fight against Fascism.
I fail to see how the intervention of Britain and its allies in the civil war following the Soviet coup was unjustifiable in its correct historical context. The allies had lost their eastern allies following the Germans’ decision to allow Lenin et al access to Russia. It is unfortunate that this intervention was not properly supported, as it could have prevented the following 70 years of totalitarian terror committed against the eastern states.
Stalin, having established himself as a dictator, agitated throughout the 1930s for world domination. Your writer forgets that Churchill, unlike FDR, always saw Stalin for what he was. He fails to point out that Churchill did not want a Europe shaped by an American “Big Picture”, without regard for its consequences, as had happened after the first World War. The Americans argued at the Tehran conference that France, for example, should not be as Churchill wanted reconstituted as a strong nation because France, as FDR saw it, was not fit to be strong.
Churchill did not want to support resistance groups less concerned with fighting the Germans during the war than with seizing power after it. This was the whole point of the Soviets’ endgame, to seize as much of Europe as possible. Mr Stokes fails further to point out that Josep “Tito” Broz successfully fought the Germans and then, with British support, resisted any Soviet threats to Yugoslavia. Tito, of course was a communist, but went on to lead a successful post-war country.
Greece did very nearly fall under the control of the communist Elas guerrillas, but Churchill’s prompt intervention prevented this happening. Indeed, Winston Churchill came under fire in Athens in December 1944. This action, however condemned by your writer, achieved Churchill’s aim: the Americans’ policy changed from appeasement of Stalin’s land-grab to standing up for those countries fighting the axis powers. This aim came to full fruition with Harry Truman’s address to congress in March, 1947, announcing Britain could not sustain its commitments to Greece. What became known as “The Truman Doctrine” went on to state that it “was the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures . . .”
This declaration would lead eventually to the fall of Soviet Russia and the freedom of its conquered satellite states and would be led, aptly I feel, by two avowed Churchillites, Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher. – Yours, etc,