interests in the Arab Middle East. In any case,
why should Britain alone be made responsible for
the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine? It was
an international obligation.
There was thus a certain logic when Britain in
April 1947 decided to end its thankless responsi-
bilities and to hand them back to the United
Nations, the successor of the international organ-
isation that had conferred the Mandate on Britain.
Britain gave the UN until 15 May 1948 to find a
solution. But Bevin’s last hope, that the terminal
date of British rule in Palestine might, as in India,
force the contending parties to the conference
table, proved a vain one. Meanwhile Palestine
descended into civil war. It was not so much
Britain that seemed to abandon the Jews to the
apparently superior might of the Arabs surround-
ing them, as the nations at the UN, which duly
voted for partition but, just as Britain had done,
then left the Arabs and Jews to fight out the con-
sequences. For the time being at least the British
had safeguarded their own interests in the Middle
East, and the Americans had done the same.
The need to safeguard British interests, in the
Mediterranean as well as the Middle East, also lay
behind the support for the royal Greek govern-
ment against the communists. It was largely due to
British intervention that Greece was not taken over
by the communists after Germany withdrew in
October 1944. The Greeks had fought the invad-
ing Italians and Germans courageously in 1940–1,
and had been defeated despite the spirited inter-
vention of British troops. In December 1944
British troops returned, for Greece, with Turkey,
occupied a vital strategic position in the eastern
Mediterranean. Stalin had accepted Western pre-
dominance in Greece and did not challenge
the British directly, but communist Albanian,
Bulgarian and Yugoslav partisans provided aid to
the communist-led Greek National Liberation
Front (EAM), with its military wing, ELAS. EAM
had earned the admiration of the Greek people by
their resistance to the Germans during the occupa-
tion. George II, the Greek king, was in exile
with his government in Cairo. The majority of
the Greek people did not wish to return to pre-
war political and social conditions, with the result
that EAM received wide support among non-
communists. Opposed to EAM and ELAS was
another, much smaller republican resistance group,
EDES. Fighting broke out in Athens in December- With the assistance of the British, EAM was
prevented from taking over the country. A truce
was patched up in January 1945, but it was to pro-
vide no more than a pause in the mounting tension
(with atrocities committed by both sides) that led
to the outbreak of civil war in May 1946. Britain
insisted on elections in March 1946, but these
were boycotted by the left, so a right-wing gov-
ernment came to power and, with a plebiscite in
his favour in September 1946, the king returned to
Athens. British troops continued their support, but
EAM retained strongholds in the devastated coun-
tryside.
By the time of the king’s return the civil war
had begun. For a country that had already suf-
fered so much from foreign occupation and star-
vation during the war, this was the crowning
tragedy. With the help of communist neighbours
Bulgaria, Albania and Yugoslavia, EAM was able
to continue the civil war for three years until
October 1949. The great majority of the Greek
people may have been in favour of change and
moderate left policies, but the country was being
destroyed by extremists.
The civil war in Greece played a major role in
the post-war relations of the Second World War
Allies. The communist insurrection, it was
assumed, was being masterminded from Moscow.
As with later crises producing great international
tensions, the ‘domino theory’ was brought into
play. It was suggested in London and Washington
that if Greece fell to communism the whole Near
East and part of North Africa as well were certain
to pass under Soviet influence. Bevin was in a
dilemma. He had no sympathy for the corrupt
royal Greek government and sensed that what the
Greek people really wanted was social and polit-
ical change. But his paramount motivation lay
in his anti-communism. The foreign secretary
decided on a bold stroke to help rivet US atten-
tion on the Soviet threat in the Mediterranean
and at the same time relieve the financial burden
on Britain. On 21 February 1947 he sent a
message to Washington that British economic aid
to Greece would have to be terminated by the