Post by raharris1973 on Nov 10, 2023 2:50:34 GMT
1. With WWII going basically as we knew it (German invasion & occupation, multiple Greek resistance groups internally, Greek government and Army units in exile, British troops landing in wake of Soviet Balkan advance, German collapse retreat) could the Greek Civil War have been avoided? By avoided, I would consider, internecine political violence and reprisals being about down to the level that we saw in postwar Italy (and France) to be about the level to qualify as 'not a civil war'. So politics could still be vigorously contest on left-right lines, it would get violent sometimes, with riots, some assassinations, state surveillance, and arrests, but all parties legal and only one national army and national gendarmerie around.
a) yes b) no
2. Could any of the Greek civil war contestants or 'player character's' unilateral action or inaction, deliberately changed from the real-life timeline, have prevented the civil war because we can safely assume the other side would have reciprocally restrained itself and not escalated? If so, which party?
a) Britain
b) The Greek monarch
c) The Greek right-wing party and armed groups loyal to it
d) The Greek communists, left-wing allies and the ELAS and later KKE armed forces
e) Yugoslavia
3. Could Greece have somehow become a republic at the end of WWII, instead of a monarchy, but a noncommunist one? If it had become a 'bourgeois-democratic' republic, would that have eased political tensions enough on its own to prevent the outbreak of civil war in Greece?
4. Could Greece have ended WWII as a 'People's Democratic', Communist Party led Republic?
In the 1946-1949 era, there was a paradoxical aspect to the Greek Civil War, and especially Communist side strategy. The Communist side continued to be a growing, spreading, rising threat to the Greek government, through middle or late 1948, becoming a problem too expensive for Britain to counter by spring 1947, and requiring tons of American aid, and napalm to counter, *despite* the Communist side doing almost everything to lose!
Among the Communist moves to lose were, a) Stalin never supporting it directly, based on his belief the west would never let it win and that it violated his percentages agreement with Churchill - this meant the support it enjoyed was Yugoslavian, and Albanian, and Bulgarian freelancing. b) The open Tito-Stalin split, which forced all world Communist parties to stand and take sides, and made the Greek Party feel compelled to stand with the larger and potentially more powerful/consequential USSR against the more immediately and practically helpful Yugoslavia, c) The Tito-Stalin split, which compelled reliance on the Albanians and Bulgarians, now more than ever under the thumb of the Soviets, who never believed in the effort, d) The Tito-Stalin split, which as it militarized and turned into a potential threat to Tito, compelled him to rely on western support, and drop his own backing for the Greek Communists, e) The purging of the best Greek Communist guerrilla commander, Markos Viafidis, as a 'Titoist' in 1948, and f) the switch of Greek Communist forces, just as the Greek Army was getting better equipped, fed, and paid than ever by the Americans, from the guerrilla strategy playing to Communist strengths, to a more conventional strategy of trying to beat the Army in pitched battles and seize and hold territory to set up a Communist capital and regional government on Greek territory. This last, (f), was a giant 'kick me' sign, with a 'right here' written on it.
5. After the open Tito-Stalin split, when Greek Communist Party Chief Nicholas Zachariadis repudiated Tito, what if Markos Vafiadis fell right in line with the Stalinist-loyal change, and Zachariadis kept him, and his guerrilla strategy on through 1948 and 1949?
a) How much longer than OTL could the Greek Civil War have been dragged out, at what cost to Greece and the USA?
b) How many American military advisors might need to be sent to Greece to keep its Army and government stable in a longer war. Would they need to be operating at scale in the field like US advisors in Vietnam in 62, 63, 64?
c) Might Stalin, by later 1949, or 1950, if the Greek effort is protracted, and other things are happening, like the Soviet A-Bomb, defeat of the Berlin Blockade, NATO, Communist victory in China, the Korean war, come to enjoy the persistence of the Greek Communist insurgency, thinking, "win or lose doesn't matter, it's good to bleed the Americans and their allies."?
a) yes b) no
2. Could any of the Greek civil war contestants or 'player character's' unilateral action or inaction, deliberately changed from the real-life timeline, have prevented the civil war because we can safely assume the other side would have reciprocally restrained itself and not escalated? If so, which party?
a) Britain
b) The Greek monarch
c) The Greek right-wing party and armed groups loyal to it
d) The Greek communists, left-wing allies and the ELAS and later KKE armed forces
e) Yugoslavia
3. Could Greece have somehow become a republic at the end of WWII, instead of a monarchy, but a noncommunist one? If it had become a 'bourgeois-democratic' republic, would that have eased political tensions enough on its own to prevent the outbreak of civil war in Greece?
4. Could Greece have ended WWII as a 'People's Democratic', Communist Party led Republic?
In the 1946-1949 era, there was a paradoxical aspect to the Greek Civil War, and especially Communist side strategy. The Communist side continued to be a growing, spreading, rising threat to the Greek government, through middle or late 1948, becoming a problem too expensive for Britain to counter by spring 1947, and requiring tons of American aid, and napalm to counter, *despite* the Communist side doing almost everything to lose!
Among the Communist moves to lose were, a) Stalin never supporting it directly, based on his belief the west would never let it win and that it violated his percentages agreement with Churchill - this meant the support it enjoyed was Yugoslavian, and Albanian, and Bulgarian freelancing. b) The open Tito-Stalin split, which forced all world Communist parties to stand and take sides, and made the Greek Party feel compelled to stand with the larger and potentially more powerful/consequential USSR against the more immediately and practically helpful Yugoslavia, c) The Tito-Stalin split, which compelled reliance on the Albanians and Bulgarians, now more than ever under the thumb of the Soviets, who never believed in the effort, d) The Tito-Stalin split, which as it militarized and turned into a potential threat to Tito, compelled him to rely on western support, and drop his own backing for the Greek Communists, e) The purging of the best Greek Communist guerrilla commander, Markos Viafidis, as a 'Titoist' in 1948, and f) the switch of Greek Communist forces, just as the Greek Army was getting better equipped, fed, and paid than ever by the Americans, from the guerrilla strategy playing to Communist strengths, to a more conventional strategy of trying to beat the Army in pitched battles and seize and hold territory to set up a Communist capital and regional government on Greek territory. This last, (f), was a giant 'kick me' sign, with a 'right here' written on it.
5. After the open Tito-Stalin split, when Greek Communist Party Chief Nicholas Zachariadis repudiated Tito, what if Markos Vafiadis fell right in line with the Stalinist-loyal change, and Zachariadis kept him, and his guerrilla strategy on through 1948 and 1949?
a) How much longer than OTL could the Greek Civil War have been dragged out, at what cost to Greece and the USA?
b) How many American military advisors might need to be sent to Greece to keep its Army and government stable in a longer war. Would they need to be operating at scale in the field like US advisors in Vietnam in 62, 63, 64?
c) Might Stalin, by later 1949, or 1950, if the Greek effort is protracted, and other things are happening, like the Soviet A-Bomb, defeat of the Berlin Blockade, NATO, Communist victory in China, the Korean war, come to enjoy the persistence of the Greek Communist insurgency, thinking, "win or lose doesn't matter, it's good to bleed the Americans and their allies."?
