The United States had not anticipated getting involved in Greece. On Friday, February 21, 1947, however, the British ambassador in Washington delivered an important note. Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson read it first and was shocked to learn that as of March 31, Britain would be unable to continue its aid to Greece and Turkey.65 The British economy was in crisis, the population still on wartime rations. The winter was one of the harshest on record, snow and ice stopped industries and jammed roads, and as many as six million people were unable to work for weather-related or other reasons. Under the circumstances, Britain had to prepare for its imminent departure from Greece and Turkey, whose needs were so great.
Acheson immediately ordered the European and Near Eastern experts to work out the political and military implications of the British pullout, including the importance of an independent Greece and Turkey for Western Europe. Specific recommendations had to be readied by early Monday, when the recently named secretary of state George C. Marshall would return to Washington.
The Truman administration was not in a strong political position to handle this emergency. The honeymoon with the president was long over, and his approval ratings had fallen to 32 percent. The Democrats had done poorly in the 1946 elections, losing control of the House and Senate for the first time in fourteen years.
Marshall met Acheson on February 24 and wanted to know what would happen if the United States did nothing. If American military forces were needed, for how long and at what cost? It was assumed that Congress would have to grant funding and authority, and that meant the new congressional leaders would have to be persuaded.
President Truman was far from the cold warrior he is often depicted as being. Almost exactly one year earlier, on March 5, 1946, former prime minister Churchill, at the invitation of the president, gave an address at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. The press hated the talk and among other things called Churchill a warmonger. Legendary columnist Walter Lippmann said that the “iron curtain” speech was an “almost catastrophic blunder.” Truman disavowed the remarks as soon as possible. Far from having made up his mind to fight Stalin, he wrote the dictator to say that “he still held out hope for better relations” and even invited him to the United States to deliver a rebuttal to Churchill.66
Former U.S. ambassador Joseph Davies rushed to the White House to calm the waters. By the time Truman gave his Army Day speech on April 6, delivered from Chicago and broadcast on national radio, he sounded conciliatory. Although he pointed to areas of concern around the globe, none were linked to the Soviet Union. One of the few times that the USSR was mentioned was in connection with Korea. The president stated that the United States was “even now working with our Soviet Allies and with the Korean leadership to create a provisional democratic government.”67
Now it was a year later, in March 1947, and when Britain notified the United States that it would soon have to pull out of Greece, Truman still proceeded cautiously. The State Department put together a case for assistance, and a congressional delegation was invited to the White House to hear it. They were not impressed by Truman and Marshall, but Dean Acheson’s worst-case scenario was persuasive. Not only was Greece under Communist threat, the secretary declared, but so too was Western Europe. Later he recalled saying that “the Soviet Union was playing one of the greatest gambles in history at minimal cost. It did not need to win all the possibilities” because “even one or two offered immense gains.”68
On March 12 the president gave a moderate speech to a joint session of Congress. Making no mention of the Soviet Union, much less Stalin, he said that the Yalta agreements had been broken in Eastern Europe and that “the peoples of a number of countries” had “recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon them.” He did not say that the United States would have to contain Communism. For many, however, he said as much, even though he put the issue quite differently:
At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantee of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms. I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.
The substance of these remarks was soon called the Truman Doctrine, though he did not use such a concept, and the administration never tired of saying that the intention was not to support any and all movements or governments trying to resist Communism. The president’s thesis was that “misery and want” give rise to “totalitarian regimes,” which “spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive.” To that end, he asked for the funds to help Greece and Turkey. Both sides of the House heartily applauded his remarks, even if some had serious doubts about such a policy.69
In April 1947, Greek Communist leader Zachariadis drew up plans for an armed struggle. The next month he met with Stalin, who only reluctantly agreed to provide aid because Greece was still not a Soviet priority.70 The dictator changed his mind somewhat in the course of the next months, though not because of anything President Truman had said. Newly released Russian documents show that in September Stalin instructed Zhdanov and Molotov to fulfill the Greek requests for arms, but to be sure of procuring them from outside the Soviet Union to disguise any links.71
On December 23–24, the Greek Communists declared a Provisional Democratic Government and soon opened a major offensive. The aim was to take the north, make Salonika the capital, and hope for speedy recognition from Moscow and the regional Communist regimes.
On February 10, 1948, as we have seen, Stalin got into a heated debate with visiting Yugoslav and Bulgarian delegations on whether the two Balkan neighbors should form a federation. Then the question of aiding the Greek Communists came up for discussion, and Stalin became unusually revealing of his postwar revolutionary strategy. He said that of course he wanted to support the Partisans in Greece. However, if their chance of achieving a successful insurgency was small, then, as in any other country, the armed conflict should be postponed. What was needed at all times was a “sober analysis of the forces involved.” He told his Balkan guests: “You are not bound by some ‘categorical imperative’ ” to aid revolutionaries at any cost. “You strike when you can win and avoid the battle when you cannot. We will join the fight when conditions favor us and not when they favor the enemy.”72