Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

So far as eastern Europe was concerned, the Stalin priorities made quite impossible any mechanism of cooperation or international agreement. There can be little doubt that Stalin was determined to achieve security on the Soviet western frontier by establishing a buffer of states under complete Communist control. This covered Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria necessarily and any others he might get incidentally. He was not concerned with Greece, Albania, or Austria, had little hope of getting Czechoslovakia, hoped to retain Yugoslavia, and had considerable, but unspecified, fears over Iran. The technique to be used to get Communist control over these states was similar to that used by Hitler in Austria: (1) to establish a coalition government containing Communists; (2) to get in Communist hands the ministries of Defense (the army), Interior (the police), and, if possible, Justice (the courts); (3) to use administrative decrees to take over education and the press and to cripple opposition political parties; and (4) to establish, finally, a completely Communist regime, under the protection of Soviet military forces if necessary.

The success of these steps in Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania was assured, while the war was still going on, by the Western Powers’ acceptance of coalition governments containing Communists as a necessary price for Soviet security locally and for Soviet cooperation elsewhere (especially the Far East) and by the fact that Russian armies were in occupation of the areas concerned.

One of the first evidences of Churchill’s alternative policy based on spheres of power was Eden’s suggestion to the Soviet ambassador in London on May 5, 1944 that Britain would permit Russia to take the lead in policy about Romania in return for Russian support for Britain’s policies in Greece. This was defended as being based on “military realities,” was opposed by Secretary of State Hull, but was accepted by Roosevelt “for a three months’ trial.” It led to an agreement between Churchill and Stalin, at the Moscow Conference of October 9-18, 1944, that Anglo-Soviet interests in the Balkans might be divided on a percentage basis, with Russia predominant in Romania and Bulgaria, with England predominant in Greece, and with Hungary and Yugoslavia divided fifty-fifty. No one had any idea what these percentages meant, but the agreement was put down on paper and signed. At Stalin’s insistence, the gist of the arrangement had already been sent to Washington, where Roosevelt initialed it during Hull’s absence on vacation (June 12, 1944).

This agreement had little influence on Churchill’s actions. He continued to work for cooperative constitutional arrangements in eastern Europe and elsewhere. When Belgian Foreign Minister Paul Henri Spaak, in the summer of 1944, sought to obtain a Western defense bloc, extending from Norway to the Iberian Peninsula and including Britain, Churchill and Eden both rebuffed the plan on the grounds that it would divide Europe into two blocs, Western and Soviet, which would outbid each other for German support in the postwar world. The British chiefs of staff, however, in the autumn of 1944, sought to establish, as an alternative policy, the dismemberment of Germany and the incorporation of industrialized west Germany into Western defense plans in the event of Russian hostility in postwar eastern or central Europe. The British civil leaders, led by Eden, in September and again in October, rejected these General Staff suggestions and reiterated their determination to pursue a policy of unity and cooperation within the United Nations and to renounce any efforts to form any anti-Soviet bloc, least of all with Germany. The chiefs of staff yielded, unconvinced, and warned of the need to prepare an alternative policy if the United Nations broke down owing to differences with Russia and the need then arose to face a united Germany dominated by, or in collaboration with, Russia.

In the meantime the Soviet Union, in 1944, under cover of the continued violence of war and the negotiations to establish a united postwar world organization, took steps to establish its western buffer of Communized satellite states.

In August 1944, Finland, Romania, and Bulgaria sought to get out of the war. King Michael of Romania overthrew the pro-Nazi government of General Antonescu and sent a delegation, led by a Communist, to Moscow to sign a formal armistice. The surrender, signed on September 12th, was to the United Nations, but its enforcement was left to the Soviet High Command, with the Anglo-British members of the Allied Control Commission relegated to the status of observers. A similar armistice was signed with Finland on September 19th.

The Bulgarian surrender was more complicated, since that country was not at war with Russia. A new Bulgarian government, formed on September 4th, proclaimed its neutrality, and requested withdrawal of all German forces. Russia declared war the next day, marched unopposed into Sofia on September 16th and supported a coup d’état which established a Communist-dominated government. The new regime at once declared war on Germany and was occupied by Russian forces. Churchill and Eden, from Quebec, vetoed an armistice like the Romanian one, but the final Bulgarian armistice of October 28, 1944 was little different.

Soviet forces meanwhile had crossed Bulgaria and invaded Yugoslavia liberating Belgrade on October 15th. They then swung north into Hungary, reached Budapest on November 11th, and surrounded it by the end of the month. The Germans prevented a Hungarian surrender by seizing control of the government on October 15, 1944, and as a result Budapest was largely destroyed in fierce fighting during November and December. Only on January 20, 1945, was the provisional government of General Miklos able to conclude an armistice with the Russians, although fighting continued in the country for several months longer. The agreement left Hungary largely under Soviet military control (signed January 20, 1945).

Vain efforts extending over several years were made by the Western Powers, especially Britain, to prevent Yugoslavia and Poland from falling under complete Communist influence. In the course of 1943, rather futile efforts were made, through control of supplies of weapons and the work of British liaison officers, to get the Chetniks and Partisans to fight Germans rather than each other. Growing evidence that the pro-Serb Chetniks under royalist General Mihajlović were collaborating with the Germans inclined the British to shift their support to Tito, but it proved as difficult to get the royal Yugoslav government-in-exile in London to accept Tito as it was to get the latter to accept the royal government. A successful German attack on Tito, which forced him to flee to the Adriatic islands, brought both sides to terms, and, in October 1944, royal Prime Minister Ivan Subasic agreed to join a Tito government in which the Partisans would hold an overwhelming majority of the posts. The agreement promised free elections for a constituent assembly within three months of total liberation and the return of King Peter only after he had been accepted by a plebiscite. The king refused to accept this agreement until Churchill threatened to expel him from England. The new government, accepted by the Powers at Yalta, was established in Belgrade on March 4, 1945.

As might be inferred, the Polish settlement was even less happy than the Yugoslav one, since the Poles were under the full weight of the Soviet armies, and inaccessible to Western power. As early as 1943, the Polish Cabinet in London, which operated an underground army and underground government in Poland, was threatened by Russian demands that the Polish eastern frontier be moved westward to the Curzon Line and that anti-Soviet members of the government be removed. Futile negotiations dragged on for months. In July 1944, when the Soviet armies were approaching the Vistula, a Communist “Polish Committee of National Liberation” was set up under Soviet protection in Russia. It claimed full legal sovereignty over Poland under the Constitution of 1921 and denounced the Polish government in London as illegal.