ΟΙ ΔΥΟ ΟΧΘΕΣ 1939-1945.

Μια
προσπάθεια για εθνική
συμφιλίωση (review)

Procopis Papastratis

Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Volume 8, Number 1, May 1990, pp. 164-167
(Review)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/mgs.2010.0266

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/264494/summary

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 164 Reviews

eated in accounting for the resolution of the Greek-Ottoman dispute.

Finally, Wrigley could have enhanced the importance and appeal of
his book by making more of his many revelations, which are so casually
and perhaps cautiously embedded in a narrative rendering of specific
facts that they are likely to elude all but the specialist, who is already
possessed of some larger context which alone makes them easily in-
telligible. For instance, what he shows but never fully states is that,
British philhellenes and their home supporters notwithstanding, a
British policy designed to limit the satisfaction of Greek national as-
pirations and preserve Ottoman territorial integrity to the extent pos-
sible was as characteristic of the 1820s as it was of later decades; that
even then it was prompted more by future threats imagined than by
actual threats entertained; and that nationalist upheaval within the
Ottoman Empire was feared far back for its possible impact on the
colonized populations of the British Empire, not merely for its direct
threat to the strategic balance among the imperial states of Europe.

John A. Petropulos
Amherst College

Alexandros L. Zaoussis, OI ΔΥΟ ΟΧΘΕΣ 1939-1945. Μια

πϕοσπάθεια για εθνική συμφιλίωση. In 3 volumes. Athens: Pa-
pazisis. 1987.

This is a three volume work on Greece during the Second World

War. It covers the period from the outbreak of the war in 1939 to the
Varkiza Agreement in February 1945 signed between the communist-
led EAM (National Liberation Front) on the one hand, and the British
and the Greek Governments on the other, following a bitter confron-
tation in Athens during the previous December. The author, then a
young student involved in the Resistance, is now a successful ortho-
pedic surgeon and author of Memoirs of an anti-hero (Estia: Athens,
1980), which focuses on the same period.
The first volume is a detailed and balanced account of what
became commonly known as the Battle of Greece. This involved the
Greek-Italian War, the valiant and desperate efforts on the Metaxas
Line to repulse the German invasion from Bulgaria, and the Battle
of Crete. In addition, this volume includes a critical examination both
 Reviews 165

of the ongoing vacillations of the political and military leadership in

Athens in view of the forthcoming German invasion, and of the rel-
evant negotiations with the British. The second volume analyzes the
situation in occupied Greece up to the Liberation in October 1944
and the influence it had upon the activities of the Greek Government-
in-exile. The third volume considers events that led up to the civil
confrontation in December of that year and follows their sequence to
the Varkiza Agreement.
Zaoussis' stated aim is to examine this period with impartiality
while offering at the same time his own point of view on the events.
The work is based on secondary sources and numerous interviews,
mainly with members of the smaller nationalist resistance organiza-
tions. This is in accordance with another main intention of the author,
namely, to draw attention to the contribution of individuals—members
of these organizations—who performed acts of unrivaled personal
courage and sacrifice. Despite the fact that the clandestine activities
of these individuals ranged from intelligence work to daring and
successful acts of sabotage, their contributions have remained largely
unknown and unrecorded. Attention to their work, Zaoussis believes,
is long overdue and he does not mince words about it; the discussion
of the Resistance is valuable and moving, and his argument that the
role of small nationalist organizations has not so far been properly
evaluated in the ever-growing historiography of the period is force-
fully put. His approach to the broader questions raised by the events
of the period, however, reveals his selectivity. Whereas he elaborates
on the armed confrontations between the major resistance organi-
zations in trying accurately to apportion blame, he ignores the main
issue around which all other questions revolve: the struggle for po-
litical power in postwar Greece. This struggle was clearly anticipated
and had already been set in motion by the time the fortunes of war
started to favor the Allies. By not taking this issue into account, that
is, in his apparent effort to avoid too close an entanglement in the
political controversies that dominate the period, the author in fact
rejects the actual political framework within which these events can
be seen in their proper perspective. This rejection helps to explain a
number of glaring omissions regarding issues that related directly to
the struggle for postwar political control.
The basic issue in question is the decisive role the British played
in all Greek political and military affairs throughout the period. The
Greek government-in-exile was completely subservient to the British,
nor did the traditional political leadership in occupied Greece fare
any better. Zaoussis is quick to deplore the latter's inertia in regard
to a number of vital issues, and how that played right into the hands
 166 Reviews

of the EAM. After sitting comfortably on the fence for much too long,
they came hurriedly to roost under the protective British wings so
carefully spread out over the Lebanon Conference convened to form
a Government of National Unity in which EAM was expected to—
and finally did—participate as a minor partner. The book also avoids
examining the available evidence regarding a number of additional
issues pertaining to the struggle for post-liberation political control
particularly the controversy over Zervas' collaboration with the Ger-
man authorities against the communist-dominated EAM, and the at-
titude of the Greek and British authorities in Cairo towards the no-
torious Security Battalions on the eve of the Liberation.
These questions, though less important for the long-term de-
velopment of the Greek political situation, are still indicative of the
ethically dubious practices the political protagonists were increasingly
adopting as the German occupation was drawing to a close. The author
is reluctant to depict the politics that knitted all events into a single
whole. This does not mean that the book lacks a precise political point
of view. Quite the contrary, the picture is of EAM poised ultimately
to seize power while all other organizations are fighting for freedom.
EAM therefore stands accused of having sinister ulterior motives.
These motives were allegedly concealed at the time and EAM, helped
by the inertia of the traditional political leadership, exploited the
patriotic fervour of the Greek people to swell its membership.
While the author's intention to remain impartial is clearly dis-
cernible throughout the book, Zaoussis nevertheless presents one-
sided arguments which are problematic in view of the evidence put
forward by the recent historiography on the period. Perhaps the au-
thor's commitment to these arguments can explain his reluctance to
take full advantage of the increasingly rich scholarship that has
emerged since the late 1970s about his period. Monographs by Richter,
Alexander, Hondros, Papastratis, Wittner, Fleischer, and others un-
derline the fact that as the occupation was drawing to a close there
were two distinct and opposing points of view under debate concerning
the direction Greek society would take in the postwar period. This
debate generated a lot of justified uncertainty as to the future of a
country emerging from the ruins of war and occupation. Political
expediency eventually obscured and oversimplified the debate. EAM
used its ever-widening social base to lay the foundations of a political
organization independent of the existing traditional political parties,
thereby promoting an alternative course for Greek society. Traditional
parties abetted by the British were, however, bent on returning Greece
to the prewar fold of a crowned parliamentary republic. This conflict
finally erupted into armed confrontation shortly after the liberation.
 Reviews 167

Any attempt at national reconciliation at the time was doomed to fail.

The stakes were too high on both sides.
Procopis Papastratis
Panteion University of Political and Social Sciences, Athens

Howard Jones, A New Kind of War: America's Global Strategy and the
Truman Doctrine in Greece. New York: Oxford University Press.
1989. pp. xi + 327. $34.50.
The book under review offers a painstaking, pedestrian record
of what American officials had to say about their effort to contain
Communism in Greece between 1947 and 1949. Jones has read widely
in recently declassified documents. He took careful notes, with the
result that his chapters offer a pastiche of quotes from reports written
by the principal American representatives in Greece, supplemented
with other quotes from high Washington-based officials and remarks
by congressmen, newspaper correspondents and other shapers of
opinion. He seldom offers opinions of his own: even his title is bor-
rowed from a despatch by Anne O'Hare McCormick. Yet Jones' gen-
eral tone is up-beat, endorsing the moral and practical worth of official
U.S. actions, as his summation makes clear in the very last sentence
of the book: "America's strategy in Greece exemplified the wisdom
of pursuing a flexible and restrained policy in meeting challenges
posed by a new kind of war" (p. 236).
In view of the criticism of American intervention that has recently
prevailed, especially in Greece itself, it is perhaps appropriate to have
a book that restates and reaffirms the initial intentions, hopes and
fears that pervaded American officialdom at the time. Certainly,
MacVeagh, Griswold, Rankin, Nuveen, Van Fleet and the rest do not
seem particularly wicked when allowed to speak for themselves, as
Jones' way of writing history permits them to do.
Jones also offers scattered information about the frictions and
personal antipathies that racked the official American community in
Athens from the start. But because he relies almost exclusively upon
official documents, his account is broken and fragmented. What the
quarreling Americans chose to write down, usually in reports to su-
periors whom they were trying to win over to their view, is what gets
into Jones' pages. As anyone who has ever written a self-justifying
report will agree, this means that only part of the human reality was
recorded; and since Jones made little effort to supplement official
documentation, his book offers only fractionated insight into the in-
dividual personalities and group dynamics behind the quarrels.