ギリシアの内戦 -トルーマン・ドクトリンの背景-

「冷戦」-その虚構と実像-

抄録

As generally known, the Truman Doctrine, being a signal to get the “Cold War” started in the post war international politics, was announced to draw support from the Congress about the U. S. assistance to Greece and Turkey, especially to the Greeks. In this context, to look at political development in Greece from the period of World War II to the post war era will provide us with one of important references to evaluate the nature of “Cold War”.
Before the Second World War, Greece found its established political parties severely lost their power bases under the autocratic regime. The ancient regime came to be further broken into pieces by the fact that Greece had been occupied by the Axis Powers. Consequently, National Liberation Front (EAM) and National People's Liberation Army (ELAS) succeeded, through their resistance movement, in ruling over almost all territory of Greece under their influence.
Faced with this new situation, Britain found the strategic importance in Greece, thereby forced the Greek communist party to accept to form a coalition with the government in exile, by concluding agreement on sphere of influence with the USSR. In 1944, Britain attempted to disarm the ELAS and to make a new national army, mainly recruited from the army stationed in the Middle East. The EAM (=ELAS), which controlled almost whole of Greece at that time, naturally rejected the British attempt. Britain, however, undertook her strong military intervention into Greece. As a result of that, Varkiza agreement was reached in February 1945; the EAM (=ELAS) was forced to be disarmed in return for amnesty and free elections.
Thus the right wing from abroad came to seize political power in the capital of Greece by means of British force. The right wing regime, however, lacked in domestic support; she had no other choice but resort to violence and reaction in order to maintain her political power. Several regimes born in Greece after the war were unable to overcome a series of financial crises regardless of tremendous economic assistance from UNRRA. Therefore, they had to get their financial program exclusively dependent on assistance from foreign countries. Moreover, their administrative organizations were just impotent and corrupted. There lacked any momentum for national integration in Greece. The situation became much worse. The army, the police, and the right wing began to suppress the left wing throughout the country. The leftists were compelled to hide themselves again in mountain areas for their survival. Then civil war started in 1946.
Accordingly, it should be noted that the civil war in Greece was never induced from interventions by communist countries. To the contrary, it was a by-product of British intervention into Greece to bring back the ancient regime forcibly. However, it was a high price-politically and economically-for Britain to maintain the imported right wing in power for years. This is precisely the reason why the United States came to replace Britain to pay that price. Through the foregoing analysis, one can conclude that what determined the inception of the “Cold War” were 1) the collapse of ancient regime by war at global level, and 2) major powers' reaction to prevent the situation. This is really demonstrated by the Greek case.