Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [283]
Lack of both electricity and camera flashbulbs made it necessary to hold the prime minister’s parting photo session in the embassy garden, much to the dismay of those responsible for his safety. Access was possible only by traversing a short walkway from the drawing room, on which he was visible to the world from Constitution Avenue. Attempts to hustle him behind the safety of the garden wall were frustrated by an onrush of photographers, which caused the prime minister to halt on the walkway. To the dismay of the press attaché behind him, “a short crack followed by1035 a shower of plaster announced that a bullet had hit the wall two feet above our heads. Summoning all my courage, I … gave the infuriated Prime Minister a sharp shove in the back, precipitating him smartly down the steps into the comparative safety of the garden.” On December 28, Churchill flew out of Athens for Naples. He had yearned to linger, and again to meet the Greeks. Macmillan, however, persuaded him that his duty was to return to London and reconcile King George of the Hellenes to the regency. Churchill allowed himself to be buckled into his seatbelt on the Skymaster, acknowledging that “even the most eminent persons are subject to the laws of gravity.” As the plane taxied, he suddenly ordered it to halt. He insisted on passing down to the ground party an amendment to the British final communiqué. Then he took off for Italy, and home.
Back in London the next afternoon, the prime minister twice met the king of the Hellenes, at 10:30 p.m. and 1:30 a.m. At 4:00 a.m., George II at last agreed to the regency. Churchill retired to bed, after a working and travelling day that had lasted twenty-two hours. General Plastiras became prime minister, though he was obliged to resign soon afterwards, following the leak of a letter revealing that in 1941 he had offered himself to the Nazis as leader of a collaborationist Greek government. On the night of January 4, 1945, the firepower of the British Army and diminished confidence in their own prospects persuaded the Communist guerrillas to retire to the countryside. An uneasy armistice was agreed to between the factions. Violence in Athens subsided, though it required the deployment of ninety thousand British troops to secure the country. Greece remained in a state of civil war between 1946 and 1949, but a non-Communist—indeed, bitterly anti-Communist—government survived until the Americans relieved the British of responsibility for Greek security.
Churchill’s visit was significant chiefly because it reconciled him to a course of action which all the other British players had already endorsed. The decisive factor in Greece was Stalin’s abstention. It suited Moscow to acknowledge the principle that whichever ally liberated an occupied country should determine its subsequent governance. The ELAS guerrilla leaders were vastly more impressed by the silence of Colonel Popov, Stalin’s man in Athens, than by the eloquence of Britain’s prime minister. In Greece, Churchill received his sole reward for the Moscow “percentages agreement,” which Americans so much disliked. So tormented and riven was Greek society in the wake of the occupation that it is hard to imagine any course of action which might have brought about the peaceful establishment of a democratic government. What emerged was probably the least bad outcome, in which no one could take just pride.
Churchill’s dramatic venture into personal diplomacy commanded less world attention than it might otherwise have done, because it coincided with the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium and Luxembourg. According to a State Department survey, the overriding U.S. media impression of British action remained unfavourable: “Anglo-American differences and British military action1036 in Greece during early December received more than twice as much front page space as Churchill’s mission to Athens … Predominant editorial opinion