With the intervention of the USA, the strengthening of the Athens government and the waning of international support for the communists, the end of the civil war was in sight
Throughout 1947 the British government was facing its own post-war financial difficulties, so began exploring ways to abandon its role in Greece. However, the Attlee government was also aware that a sudden ‘cut and run’ would lead to the collapse of the Greek government and with it a crucial line of communication to the East, as well as another communist regime in the Mediterranean region.
When the United States picked up on this, several key politicians, the ambassador to Greece and the head of the American Mission to the Greek government made it clear that the United States could not afford to lose Greece to the Soviets. Accordingly, President Harry S Truman and Congress approved the transfer of several hundred million dollars to help safeguard the country – part of a large anti-communist package for Europe. This aid immediately improved the situation for the Greek government in the face of fresh communist troops from Albania.
American military intervention and aid mainly came in the form of training and the provision of weaponry to the Greek state and armed forces. The US also supported this with their equipment and aircraft. With this support, by the summer of 1948 the army managed to push the communist forces further towards the interior and the Albanian border. The US also provided Greece with financial support intended to prop up its economy, but the Greek government sought to appropriate this for its military as it sensed the end of the civil war was close.
While support for the government in Athens grew, international communist support for the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) faltered. Aid from the Soviet Union itself remained limited, and Yugoslavia’s supplies of guns, anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry were slowing. There have been discrepancies and disagreements over whether Josip Broz Tito and Yugoslavia or Joseph Stalin and the USSR were the KKE and DSE’s main supporters, and there have also been questions over who their preferred supporters were.
These questions have arisen as many Greek communists demonstrated Titoist, Stalinist and even Trotskyist loyalties. This factionalism created issues for the KKE’s aims in 1948, during the Tito-Stalin split. This schism in the international communist fraternity happened over ideological differences between Tito and Stalin, such as their approach to the market, the spread of communism, and bureaucratic size and centralisation. This split led to Yugoslavia being expelled from the Cominform, the global successor organisation of the Comintern, which expanded control from Moscow.
This split had a monu
