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Probably the most significant indication of Churchill’s innermost belief derives from his remarks to Roosevelt’s envoy Harry Hopkins early in January. Hopkins reported to Washington on the tenth: “He thinks Greece is lost234—although he is now reinforcing the Greeks and weakening his African army.” Just as the prime minister’s heart had moved him to dispatch more troops to France in June 1940 against military logic, so now it inspired him to believe that the Greeks could not be abandoned to their fate. An overriding moral imperative, his familiar determination to do nothing common or mean, drove the British debate in the early months of 1941. He nursed a thin hope that, following the success of Operation Compass, Turkey might join the Allies if Britain displayed staunchness in the Balkans.

It is likely that Churchill would have followed his instinct to be seen to aid Greece, even if Wavell, in the Middle East, had sustained opposition. As it was, however, the C-in-C provoked amazement among senior soldiers by changing his mind. When Dill and Eden arrived in Cairo in mid-February on a second visit, they found Wavell ready to support a Greek commitment. On the nineteenth, the general said: “We have a difficult choice, but I think we are more likely to be playing the enemy’s game by remaining inactive than by taking action in the Balkans.” Now, it was Churchill’s turn to wobble. “Do not consider yourself obligated to a Greek enterprise if in your hearts you feel it will only be another Norwegian fiasco,” he signalled Eden on February 20. Dill, however, said that they believed there was “a reasonable chance of resisting a German advance.” Eden said to Wavell: “It is a soldier’s business. It is for you to say.” Wavell responded: “War is an option of difficulties. We go.” On the twenty-fourth, Churchill told his men in Cairo: “While being under no illusions, we all send you the order ‘Full Steam Ahead.’”

The Greek commitment represented one of Anthony Eden’s first tests as foreign secretary, the role to which he had been translated in December, on the departure of Lord Halifax to become British ambassador in Washington. In the eyes of many of his contemporaries, Eden—still only forty-four in 1941—displayed a highly strung temperament, petulance and lack of steel, which inspired scant confidence. An infantry officer in the First World War, endowed with famous charm and physical glamour, he established his credentials as an antiappeaser by resigning from Chamberlain’s government in 1938. Throughout the war, as afterwards, he cherished a passionate ambition to succeed Churchill in office, which the prime minister himself encouraged. Churchill valued Eden’s intelligence and loyalty, but the soldiers thought him incorrigibly “wet,” with affectations of manner which they identified with those of homosexuals. Sir James Grigg, permanent under-secretary at the War Office, and later secretary for war, dismissed Eden as “a poor feeble little pansy,” though it should be noted that Grigg seldom thought well of anyone. In a world in which talent is rarely, if ever, sufficient to meet the challenges of government, it remains hard to identify a better candidate for the wartime foreign secretaryship. Eden often stood up to Churchill in a fashion which deserves respect. But his reports to Downing Street from the Mediterranean in 1940–41 reflected erratic judgement and a tendency towards vacillation.

Dill, head of the army, remained deeply unhappy about sending troops to Greece. But in the Middle East theatre, Wavell’s was the decisive voice. Many historians have expressed bewilderment that this intelligent soldier should have committed himself to a policy which promised disaster. Yet it does not seem hard to explain Wavell’s behaviour. For months, the Middle East C-in-C had been harassed and pricked by the prime minister, who deplored his alleged pusillanimity. As early as August 1940, when Wavell visited London, Eden described the general’s dismay