Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [242]
From 1943 onwards, the SOE lavished much effort upon Mediterranean countries, with mixed results. Some of its most flamboyant officers, men such as Billy Maclean and David Smiley, were dropped into the mountains of Albania to work with local partisans. Almost without exception, they loathed the country and its people. They found the Albanians far more eager to accept weapons and to steal equipment and supplies than to fight the Germans. “How pleased I shall be to return to civilisation again,”889 one officer confided to his diary, “to be among people one can trust and not to be surrounded by dirt, filth and bad manners … It is not as if one was doing anything useful here or could do so. There is so little charity among these people that they cannot believe anyone would come all this way just to help them … They are boastful and vain with nothing to be boastful or vain about. They have no courage, no consistency and no sense of honour.”
Enver Hoxha, the Albanian Communist leader who dominated guerrilla operations, was chiefly concerned to secure his own power base for a postwar takeover. It is easy to see why the Albanians, mired in poverty and a struggle for existence, showed so little enthusiasm for supporting the activist purposes of British missions. Guerrilla operations provoked the Germans to reprisals which the SOE’s teams were quite incapable of deflecting. Young British officers in Albania hazarded their own lives with considerable insouciance. Local peasants, however, saw their homes, crops and families imperilled, for no discernible advantage save to pursue a misty vision of “freedom.” Beyond a few useful acts of sabotage, in Albania the military achievements of resistance groups were slight.
Throughout the Balkans, internal political rivalries dogged British efforts to mobilise societies against their occupiers. In Greece and Crete, the population was overwhelmingly hostile to the Germans. The country had a long tradition of opposition to authority. Unfortunately, however, Greek society was racked by dissentions, the ferocity of which bewildered British officers thrust into their midst. There was no love for the king, nor for the Greek exile government backed by Churchill. Each guerrilla band cherished its own loyalties. Col. Monty Woodhouse, one of the most celebrated SOE officers who served among the Greeks, reported to Cairo: “No one is ever free from the struggle for existence890; everything else is secondary to it. That is why no one outside Greece can speak for the Greeks.” The British, on instructions from Cairo and ultimately from Churchill, were predisposed to support royalists. When Napoleon Zervas, leader of the relatively small Republican group EDES, told the SOE in 1943 that he backed the restoration of King George, he was rewarded by receiving twice the arms drops provided to the Communists of EAM/ELAS, even though the Communists were six times more numerous, and were doing all the fighting. Zervas repaid British largesse by establishing a tacit truce with the Germans, and biding his time to pursue his own purposes. As so often in occupied Europe, political and military objectives891 pulled British policy in different directions.
In 1944, realities on the ground seemed to make it essential to provide arms to the Communists of ELAS, only some of which were employed against the Germans. Monty Woodhouse was recalled to Britain during the summer, and visited Churchill at Chequers to make the case for sustaining aid to ELAS. Woodhouse told the prime minister that if supplies to the Communists were cut off, “I very much doubt whether any of my officers will get out of Greece alive.” Churchill brooded for a moment, then took Woodhouse by the arm and said, “Yes, young