On 10 May, the head of the Church of England, Justin Welby, led a service of remembrance at Westminster Abbey, marking the end of the Second World War in Europe. He addressed a congregation of War War II veterans, the royal family, and political leaders, saying: ‘We gather again, 70 years on, thankful for victory over the greatest darkness of the 20th century, perhaps of all history. Our gratitude is not simply for victory in Europe, but also the reconciliation in Europe that followed, neither obviously nor automatically.’
That evening, re-elected British Prime Minister David Cameron told Channel 4 News: ‘today is a good day to remember just what the United Kingdom stands for and what it has done. The United Kingdom stood alone against Hitler.’
There is a lot one could say about this, including the fact that the Soviet Union lost 26 million citizens during the war (around 14% of the population), while Britain lost less than half a million (less than 1% of its population). Seems like a lot of other people got hurt while Britain was ‘standing alone against Hitler’.
The main problem with the way that ‘VE Day’ is celebrated is that it is used to obscure what the United Kingdom really stands for, and what it really did 70 years ago.
I have no problem celebrating the fact that the Second World War ended in Europe, or that Hitler’s rule and the Holocaust were finally brought to an close.
What is a problem is the way that this is presented as a ‘victory over the greatest darkness of the 20th century, perhaps of all history’.
The simple fact is that, whatever the propaganda on the radio said, and whatever motivated troops on the ground, Allied political leaders did not fight against fascism as such, they fought against independent fascism. They didn’t fight, but actually supported fascists who would fit into British and US plans for a new world order.
You might argue that military necessity justified the continuation of fascist administration in areas conquered by the Allies during the war.
So, in Italian colonies occupied by Britain during the war, the most senior Italian officials were removed, and the political police were generally interned, but the rank and file of the carabinieri (military police) were kept on. Fascist colonial law and Italian judges were retained and the bulk of the civil administration continued in place.
The same thing happened in Tripolitania (now part of Libya), occupied by Britain in December 1942. When Arabs exiled from Tripolitania by the fascists returned in 1944, they were shocked to discover the Italian fascist administration still in place.
After fascist French North Africa went over to the Allies in 1942, the US made no move to abolish anti-semitic laws, and kept French military and civilian leaders who had willingly collaborated with the Germans in high office.
In the case of Italy, US President Franklin D Roosevelt had said on the radio, in fireside chat in late July 1943: ‘Our terms to Italy are still the same as our terms to Germany and Japan – “unconditional surrender”. We will have no truck with fascism in any way, shape or manner. We will permit no vestige of fascism to remain.’ Two days later, however, he told reporters: ‘I don’t care with whom we deal in Italy, so long as it isn’t a definite member of the Fascist Government, as long as they get them to lay down their arms, and so long as we don’t have anarchy. Now he may be a King, or a present Prime Minister, or a Mayor of a town or a village.’
In September 1943, Italy surrendered and the Allies accepted the continuation of the entire system of fascist rule. Roosevelt had to interpret as ‘not a definite member of the Fascist Government’ Pietro Badoglio, promoted to Marshal of Italy by Mussolini in 1926, a member of the Fascist Party since 1936, Mussolini’s Chief of Staff from 1925 to 1940, an early user of chemical weapons in Ethiopia, and appointed Mussolini’s successor as Prime Minister by fascist King Victor Emmanuel.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had been very enthusiastic about retaining both the king and Badoglio.
All this kind of collaboration with fascism one might see as realpolitik during wartime, subordinating political principles to the overriding goal of defeating Nazi Germany.
But what about Greece?
German troops began evacuating Greece in October 1944. There were few Allied troops there; just a few special forces soldiers operating with the Greek anti-fascist resistance EAM. The reality on the ground in Greece as the Germans left was that control was in the hands of EAM, which was the effective government of two-thirds of the country.
From the point of view of ‘military necessity’, the most effective use of British forces would have been to ignore Greece, which was now in the hands of anti-Nazis, and to throw every British soldier possible into the drive to Berlin.
Instead, Britain sent 10,000 soldiers to Greece as the Germans left, rising to 75,000 by January 1945 – while the war was still going on in Europe, long before VE Day. If the overriding goal was to defeat Nazi Germany, there was no need to divert these troops across the Mediterranean.
The trouble was that the resistance was Communist-led and nationalist, unlikely to accept Greece’s traditional role subordinated to British designs in the Middle East. Therefore it was unacceptable to have them in a determining position in the political re-shaping of Greece after the war.
British troops instead implanted George Papandreou as the head of a royalist government in Athens, and worked to undermine the resistance. Local police armed and supported by the British shot dead perhaps 24 unarmed pro-EAM demonstrators in Athens on 3 December 1944.
Churchill cabled the British commander on the scene on 5 December: ‘Do not hesitate to fire at any armed male in Athens who assails the British authority or Greek authority with which we are working. It would be well of course if your commands were reinforced by the authority of some Greek Government, and Papandreou is being told by [British ambassador Reginald] Leeper to stop and help. Do not however hesitate to act as if you were in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in progress.’
Notice the reference to ‘some Greek Government’ – Britain was imposing its will via clients rather than supporting any authentic expression of the Greek people. Athens was effectively a conquered city, to be put down, not the capital of an independent nation, an ally in the struggle against fascism.
Instead of supporting the anti-fascist resistance, the British supported the ‘Security Battalions’ and other right-wing, paramilitary groupings formed by the Nazis to hunt down the resistance. These armed collaborators were incorporated into the new Greek army, mostly into the new National Guard. The Athens police, 3,000-strong, remained the same as it had been under the Nazi occupation, with the same commander, Evangelos Evert.
After a round of violence, confrontation and retribution against collaborators, the Communist-led EAM dissolved its fighting forces in February 1945, but the right-wing police continued to arrest them in droves. By April, there were 16,000 members of the resistance in prison. By the end of the year, there were nearly 49,000 such prisoners. EAM supporters were beaten up or murdered, and left-wing newspapers were confiscated and had their presses sabotaged or blown up by the National Guard.
By June, British ambassador Leeper was writing to Archbishop Damaskinos, the king’s regent: ‘After the civil war I had always expected a reaction against KKE [the Greek Communist Party] which would lead to some excesses… [but] the National Guard were engaging in some places in what could only be described as terrorism’. He urged moderation.
This British-led and British-supported repression of the anti-fascist resistance by former collaborators started before Nazi Germany had been defeated, and it continued long afterwards. ‘Military necessity’ cannot simultaneously explain the Allied acceptance of Nazi collaborators in Tripolitania and other territories, and the diversion of 75,000 British troops to free Greece in 1944-1945 to repress the anti-fascist resistance, during the Second World War.
If we are going to show gratitude for victory over Nazism in Europe, as far as Greece goes, it was the anti-fascist resistance that won victory. Archbishop Welby spoke of ‘the reconciliation in Europe that followed [the end of the war], neither obviously nor automatically.’ Britain intervened not to reconcile but to divide, and to weigh in on the side of the collaborators.
David Cameron was right to say that the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War is a good time ‘to remember just what the United Kingdom stands for and what it has done’. The answers are rather grim, and they cast a different light on the postwar history of Greece and the current conflicts around Greek debts. What about Britain’s debt to Greece for the (long-term) harm caused by its 1944-1945 invasion?
2 Comments
Mila Rai has said it excellently. To be brief, it could hardly be said better.
We never heard about the toast that Cameron, Merkel and Obama privately made on Victory Day:
“Fascism is dead. Long Live Neo-fascism!”
The defeat of the Nazis was not an end as it was for so many. For their countries in was the beginning of a new, neo-fascist world order.