The United States and the Making of Modern Greece

History and Power, 1950-1974

James Edward Miller

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781469622163, 9780807832479
• eBook ISBN: 9780807887943
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Focusing on one of the most dramatic and controversial periods in modern Greek history and in the history of the Cold War, James Edward Miller provides the first study to employ a wide range of international archives — American, Greek, English, and French — together with foreign language publications to shed light on the role the United States played in Greece between the termination of its civil war in 1949 and Turkey’s 1974 invasion of Cyprus.

Miller demonstrates how U.S. officials sought, over a period of twenty-five years, to cultivate Greece as a strategic Cold War ally in order to check the spread of Soviet influence. The United States supported Greece’s government through large-scale military aid, major investment of capital, and intermittent efforts to reform the political system. Miller examines the ways in which American and Greek officials cooperated in — and struggled over — the political future and the modernization of the country. Throughout, he evaluates the actions of the key figures involved, from George Papandreou and his son Andreas, to King Constantine, and from John Foster Dulles and Dwight D. Eisenhower to Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.

Miller’s engaging study offers a nuanced and well-balanced assessment of events that still influence Mediterranean politics today.

1

THE GREEK TAR BABY, 1950-1953

It is of the utmost importance that we supervise the use of any funds
made available to Greece; in such a manner that each dollar spent will
count toward making Greece self supporting, and will help to build an
economy in which a healthy democracy can flourish

—Harry Truman, 1947

Not only what Papagos said, but the tone in which he said it deeply
disturbed me. In the vernacular he was telling us off. . . . My views
were not requested.

—Ambassador Henry Grady, 1949

Movies frequently provide Greeks and Americans with a basic understanding of recent history.¹ The postwar relationship between the United States and Greece was the subject of Takis Tzimis’s “The Man with the Carnation” [Ο Άνθρωπος με το Γαρύφαλλο], a 1983 documentary-style melodrama with music by Mikis Theodorakis, released about midpoint in Andreas Papandreou’s first term as prime minister of Greece. In a 1950 Greece staggering under the weight of repression, the courageous communist Nikos Beloyiannis returns from exile hoping to unite all “true Greeks” in a struggle against American imperialism. The repression, accompanied by uncontrolled violence, is imposed by the forces of the “Right,” at the orders of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), whose Athens representative, the Greek-speaking “Tom,” is a cinematic version of the legendary agency operative Thomas Karamessinis. Early on in the film, Tom asks one of his Greek interlocutors to fill him in on the activities of future dictator Col. George Papadopoulos, clearly already a key U.S. collaborator. Meanwhile, the unnamed U.S. ambassador, presumably John Peurifoy, carries on his efforts to bend the Greek people and their progressive prime minister, Gen. Nikolaos Plastiras, to the will of the United States. Plastiras’s brave efforts to deal with the nation’s pressing economic problems and to pacify a war-shattered people are undermined by the members of his government and the secret services, both lackeys of the United States. The idealistic Beloyiannis, betrayed by the Communist Party, is executed on American orders after a stirring courtroom speech in which he compares Greece’s latest foreign masters with the Nazis. His martyrdom is an essential step in the recovery of national independence. Close-ups of tanks and a map of Cyprus at film’s end reinforce the implied comparison with the subsequent struggles of Andreas and his father, George, against alleged U.S. intervention in Greece’s affairs. The ultimate triumph of Andreas, his Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), and the Greek people over American imperialism is forecast.

Tzimis’s film is a failure as both entertainment and agitprop. A more satisfying and entertaining portrait of the American experience in Greece in the early 1950s is Peter Sellers’s “The Mouse That Roared” (1959), a tale of the ways in which small states successfully manipulate great powers. American efforts to create a stable, prosperous, and democratic Greece were a study in official frustration. While American officials, above all U.S. ambassadors Henry Grady and John Peurifoy, did possess the power to play a determining role in the direction of Greek postwar reconstruction, utilizing it successfully proved difficult. American power confronted Greek history. Intensely nationalist and wary after decades of foreign intervention, Greek politicians and public opinion resisted American efforts at persuasion. Heavy-handed U.S. interventions aroused public anger, defeating a primary American objective of reinforcing the legitimacy of the Greek government by reducing U.S. involvement in the nation’s internal affairs. While eagerly accepting U.S. assistance, particularly the monetary variety, the Palace, the army high command, and Greece’s political class were equally determined to utilize this aid for their own partisan ends. American efforts to scale back its economic and military assistance to the levels of 1947-49 were a paradigm of later U.S. foreign policy problems. Carefully hoarding its limited financial resources and applying them on the rational criterion of strategic importance was a good approach to foreign policy. Unfortunately, the United States, in Greece and elsewhere, wanted it both ways. While reducing aid and encouraging greater “independence” on the part of Greek elites, the United States simultaneously attempted to retain the level of influence its earlier investments had purchased. By 1952 as Marshall Plan assistance phased out and the size of the military assistance program declined, the United States began to lose its leverage over Greece’s political leaders. It could not push them to reform, and it lacked viable alternatives to cooperating with these elites. Essentially, the Greek political class became a tar baby from which the United States could not disengage successfully, except on terms it was unwilling to accept. The psychological impact of U.S. power remained strong even as its purse emptied,² but the United States was unable to achieve its objective of fashioning in a relatively brief time a long-term solution to the inherent problems of the Greek political system.

THE PROCONSULS

The image of U.S. ambassadors as proconsuls, an idea deeply ingrained in the Greek collective memory, recurrently revived by the Greek press, and thus probably not erasable, is in marked contrast with the realities of the early 1950s. Neither the liberal Henry Grady nor his conservative and controversial successor, John Peurifoy, fit the imperial mold. Grady, a veteran of the wartime Italian occupation, was particularly aware of the dangers of intense intervention in Greek politics and consistently pushed Greek authorities to assume more control over their affairs. Peurifoy, an experienced administrative officer with no background in Greek affairs, relied heavily on his staff for direction. His initial readings of Greek politics proved remarkably incorrect. One U.S. diplomat recalled: “He had no political sense at all.” Both men were frequently in conflict with the semiautonomous parts of the American mission, above all, the Marshall Plan economic aid administrators and the U.S. military. Gen. James Van Fleet, who headed the military assistance mission during the civil war, remained in Greece through the middle of 1950. Van Fleet, whose very conservative views made him into a natural ally of the king and queen, was a source of continuous trouble for Grady. The CIA station under Karamessinis was more cooperative, but the chief of station’s ethnic background inevitably attracted the notice of the country’s elites, who hoped to find a more sympathetic interlocutor in a fellow “Greek.” Greece’s politicians, its military officers, and the Palace successfully played on divisions within the U.S. mission.³

A good part of the U.S. problem was its own anomalous role in Greece. Having effectively taken control of the Greek economy for the duration of the civil war, the Americans had accustomed their Greek clients both to feeding at the trough of U.S. aid and to receiving (and largely ignoring) U.S. directives and pep talks. U.S. officials, led by Ambassador Grady, were telling Greek political and military leaders, as well as King Paul, to take control of the internal affairs of their country and, as much as possible, to exclude the U.S. from their decision making. Greek leaders liked much of the message but had no intention of dealing the Americans out of their political maneuverings. The king had a taste for authoritarian politics. He frequently suggested installing Marshal Alexander Papagos, the popular commander in chief of the army, as prime minister of a government that would answer to the Palace and not parliament. In seeking U.S. support for this project, the king argued that it was the only way to defeat communism. Grady repeatedly intervened to dissuade the monarch from following through with plans for “extra-constitutional” governments. A few weeks before the end of the civil war, the king was again maneuvering to replace the politicians with a royal government. Grady headed to the Palace to put the brakes on this plot. Informing Washington of the results of this meeting, Grady stressed that he was trying to keep the United States out of Greece’s internal affairs while steering Greek leaders toward democratic practices. He would be back at Tatoi Palace five months later to discourage another plan for establishing an authoritarian government.⁴

The Palace was not the only threat to democratic government. The Greek army was riddled with conspiratorial movements, one of which, the Sacred Band of Greek Officers (IDEA), epitomized the military’s intense, long-term involvement in politics. Founded in 1944, IDEA was strongly nationalist and anticommunist, and its influence grew within the officer corps. It acted as the self-anointed guardian of the Greek state. At one time, IDEA opposed the extraconstitutional machinations of Plastiras. Initially wary of Marshal Papagos, IDEA was ultimately co-opted by the commander in chief.⁵

Another problem facing Greece’s political system was the political weight of these two senior military leaders. Plastiras, a hero of the Greek left, and particular bête noire of the Palace, led the 1922 coup that ousted King Paul’s father and sent his brother into exile. He had been involved in a failed 1933 coup. Although long out of uniform, Plastiras remained a symbol of Greece’s praetorian political traditions, telling the U.S. ambassador in September 1951: “Of course, I’m terribly royalist nowadays. But I’ve kicked two kings out, and if at any time you want the present one to go, just let me know.”⁶ Marshal Papagos, the hero of the resistance to the Italian invasion of 1940 and victor in the civil war, was a man of the right who commanded the loyalty of the vast majority of the army officer corps and, until early 1951, enjoyed the support of the king and queen, who hoped to thrust him onto the political stage to counterbalance parliamentary parties and leaders, above all Plastiras.⁷ Papagos’s relationship with the royal family was complex, but he was ready to cooperate when it favored the objectives of the military. The king and queen apparently believed Papagos malleable enough to serve their interests.⁸

Greece’s political parties were staunch defenders of neither democracy nor the national interest. Politicians of all factions attempted to utilize the U.S. embassy as a tool in their political maneuverings. They curried American support while their backers in the Greek press carried out an assault on U.S. management and objectives, complaining of “foreign intervention.” Seeking U.S. backing for his candidacy, Plastiras assured embassy officials that as prime minister “he would take no move in foreign policy without the advice and consent of the United States.”⁹ Palace support for Papagos led politicians of both the right and center and their press allies to request embassy intervention against this threat to their positions.¹⁰

In the early spring of 1950, the Palace undermined the broadly based coalition government of Alexander Diomedes, which, in the judgment of U.S. officials, had made useful progress in reconstruction. Diomedes told sympathetic American diplomats that his fall was an effort by politicians allied with the Palace to create a new party of the right at the expense of both the conservative Populists and the centrist Liberals. He warned that this type of intervention would endanger the monarchy. King Paul installed a (nonpolitical) “service” government to carry the nation to new elections. The outcome of the March 1950 vote was not to royal taste. The center parties emerged victorious.¹¹

Undaunted by the expression of the popular will, the royal couple began a full-court press to open the way for a Papagos government. Queen Frederika tried to win American support by writing to former U.S. secretary of state George Marshall. Meanwhile, a senior member of the royal household approached the embassy with a plan for a government that excluded Plastiras, the leader of the largest party of the center. Conservative allies of the Palace piled on other arguments, such as Plastiras’s supposed softness toward the Soviet Union and dangers of his interference with the management of the army. The king summoned Grady to urge the creation of a coalition that would keep Plastiras on the sidelines. The ambassador responded that such an action would subvert the entire democratic process, rejecting the argument that Plastiras constituted the threat of excessive civilian control over the Greek military.¹²

Ignoring Papagos’s willingness to serve under Plastiras, the Palace continued to resist nominating a prime minister. King Paul drew out discussions with party leaders as a way of undercutting the Plastiras candidacy while playing on the ambitions of the other principal leaders of the fragmented center, Sofokles Venizelos and George Papandreou. The king worked out an arrangement for Venizelos, the ambitious son of the great man, to form a minority administration. “This has come as considerable shock to us,” Harold Minor, the U.S. chargé, reported. Venizelos formed his ministry “without the full support of his own party and with a clear understanding that his antics were viewed unfavorably by [the] Americans and British.” Minor met with Petros Metaxas, the king’s chief aide, to protest that the Palace’s actions in handing power to a government representing only about 20 percent of Greek voters and led by an “intriguer” were violations of democratic procedure.¹³

The king and queen stood firm. Plastiras was a “republican, unreliable, stupid, and a fellow traveler.” Venizelos ignored a private warning from Grady that the United States could not accept his minority government. The Greek embassy in Washington, acting on instructions from Athens, announced that the United States backed the new ministry.¹⁴ Grady fumed: “It is easy to see what would happen if they could say the American ambassador has caused the fall of [the] government. . . . Our correctness here is being taken advantage of and we are drifting into political confusion. We can be neither dictatorial nor laissez faire but ‘gentle persuasion’ does not seem to be effective with irresponsible politicians and stubborn monarchs. We are all . . . deeply concerned about effect on [the] ECA [Economic Cooperation Administration] program of political drift during [an] interval of six months or so it will take King to accomplish his very definite objective of getting Papagos in as prime minister.”¹⁵ The ambassador released a March 31 letter to Venizelos stating that with only twenty-seven months left in the Marshall Plan, the Greek government had to be able to act decisively on a broad range of politically unpopular domestic reforms. Without a stable government based on majority support, U.S. taxpayer aid would be frittered away, Grady continued, and thus, such assistance would have to be suspended. Venizelos, utilizing the Greek embassy, tried to rally U.S. backing for his continuance in office. When this ploy failed, he resigned, proclaiming himself the innocent victim of U.S. intervention.¹⁶

This incident underlined the practical difficulties of attempting to disengage from Greece’s complex internal politics. The U.S. stake in Greece was too large in political and economic terms to simply ignore the machinations of the Palace and the political class. An American government that permitted foreign politicians to control U.S. funding and use its dollars for their partisan objectives would face serious domestic political criticism. Moreover, a Greece that failed to follow normal democratic political practice would largely undercut the rationale for the Truman Doctrine and other major U.S. foreign policy initiatives. Still, if the United States insisted on having the last word on Greek decisions, it would pay a heavy price, above all with Greek public opinion. In its April 4, 1950, analysis of the crisis, the embassy commented that Grady’s intervention had “tremendous” impact. Greeks generally agreed with Grady’s arguments but were angry that a U.S. action left their “dirty laundry . . . hung out in front of the world.”¹⁷

American actions offended Greece’s national pride and broke the unwritten rules of patronage that governed Greek society. The patron-client relationship as practiced in Mediterranean society was long-term and based on reciprocal if unwritten obligations. Greek politicians believed that by backing them in the struggle against the communists, the United States had entered into a permanent relationship. With that war over, they expected the Americans to continue economic aid at high levels. Greece’s monarchs believed that they had a special relationship with the United States that constituted an extra layer of protection for their special constitutional status. Greeks generally believed that the United States had made an open-ended commitment of economic assistance. Accustomed by European philhellenism and their own unique historical experiences to see themselves at the center of world geopolitics, they were unwilling to accept the idea that, with the civil war over, Greece’s objective strategic importance had declined. No Greek appears to have taken at face value repeated public and private American statements that both the aid and the level of involvement were short-term, designed only to get Greece back on its political and economic feet, to be followed by a rapid reduction of U.S. activity. In 1944, long before U.S. intervention was in anyone’s plans, Ambassador MacVeagh explained Greek political reality to President Franklin Roosevelt: “No Greek will ever believe that a ‘head man’ can’t do the things he wants to, whatever may be the rules, and no such ‘head man’ can survive in Greece.”¹⁸ U.S. efforts to reduce its commitment to Greece through selective interventions struck Greeks as absurd. Accustomed to foreign intervention as a logical means of increasing an outsider’s control, the...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• PREFACE
• ABBREVIATIONS IN THE TEXT
• Introduction
• 1 - THE GREEK TAR BABY, 1950-1953
• 2 - NO REPORT FROM CYPRUS IS EVER CHEERFUL, 1950-1959
• 3 - THE RIGHT, 1953-1963
• 4 - BLACK MAK : CYPRUS, 1960-1964
• 5 - COUP D’ÉTAT, 1964-1967
• 6 - THE ANDREAS VERSION, 1967-1973
• 7 - DANCING WITH THE DICTATORS, 1969-1974
• 8 - A PERFECT STORM : CYPRUS, 1967-1974
• EPILOGUE : THE ANDREAS ERA
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY