Military dictator placed in power

Wellred

Core Argument

Here, the article argues that Churchill’s purported “concessions” in Greece were a tactical feint, forced by the unexpected resilience of the Greek masses and the dangerous resentment this provoked among British troops and workers at home. The core narrative thrust is that British imperialism, having failed to crush the Greek resistance quickly, was compelled to install a new puppet regime, exposing the fraud of “representative government” and the depth of its reliance on naked military force.

The key claim is that British bayonets were the sole prop for Greek royalists and fascists. Evidence is marshalled to demonstrate the brittleness of this support: Lord Farringdon’s warning of potential mutiny, the desertion of Ghurkas to ELAS, and the collapse of General Zervas’s lavishly-supplied army, whose remnants were ignominiously evacuated. The article cites The Observer’s admission that victory over ELAS would risk serious labour trouble and break the coalition, and The Times’s stark revelation that fighting was “between British and Greeks,” not Greeks and Greeks. The exposure of the “representative government” is driven home by the example of Rallis, a Nazi quisling and war criminal who, rescued by British troops, appeared as a delegate to the “peace” conference.

The historical context is the immediate aftermath of the Nazi occupation of Greece, with ELAS in a dominant military position. The article draws on the recent experience of the Security Battalions and the Lebanon Agreement. The theoretical context is a Marxist analysis of imperialism, where the British ruling class is forced to shift from direct military suppression to installing a more effective puppet—General Plastiras, a man who had twice been a military dictator.

The polemic is directed at two primary targets. First, British imperialism and Churchill, whose hypocrisy and reliance on fascist collaborators are relentlessly exposed. Second, and more centrally, the Stalinist leadership of ELAS and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The article accuses the Stalinist bureaucracy of betraying the Greek masses by pursuing a policy of compromise and capitulation, temporising instead of seizing power. It argues that Stalin, in return for Churchill’s support in Poland, was prepared to support British reaction in Greece. The article contrasts this treacherous path with the revolutionary socialist policy of the Trotskyist Fourth International, whose members were reportedly still fighting within ELAS, and recalls the pre-war strength of the Greek Trotskyists (“Archivo-Marxists”) who opposed the Comintern line.