The Percentages Agreement

Some historians, including Gabriel Kolko and Geoffrey Roberts, believe that the importance of the agreement is overstated. [70] Kolko writes: In response to US claims that Britain is engaged in a “power policy” in Greece, Churchill responded in a speech: “What is power politics?. Is a navy twice as large as any other navy in world power politics? Is the world`s largest air force, with bases in all parts of the world, a power politics? Is all this gold in world power politics? If that is the case, we are certainly not guilty of these offences, I am sorry to say. In October 1944, Churchill went to Moscow to meet with Stalin. He accepted that he could not do much for Poland, which was already effectively occupied by the Soviet army, but he obtained a “percentage agreement” (Churchill later called it his “naughty document”) that divided the Balkans into spheres of influence and gave Britain the dominant power in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean (Stalin then retained the agreement, even when in December 1944 a civil war between the communist forces and the provisionals == References == On May 4, 1944, Churchill asked his Foreign Minister Anthony Eden the rhetorical question: “Are we going to submit to the communitarization of the Balkans and perhaps Italy?” [26] Churchill answered his own question by saying that Britain must “resist communist infusion and invasion.” [26] The attempt to develop spheres of influence for the Balkans led Gusev to wonder whether the Americans would be included. [26] Eden assured Gusev that the Americans would support the Sphere of Influence Agreement, but when asked, the State Department responded categorically that it was not U.S. policy to enter into such agreements that would violate the Atlantic Charter. [26] Placed in a difficult position, Churchill appealed directly to Roosevelt. British historian David Carlton reports that a draft agreement, which was still to be drafted in 1944, appeared under strange circumstances when it was intercepted in 1943 and fell into the hands of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco`s secret services. This was mentioned by General Jordana in a famous speech he gave in Barcelona in April 1943.[2] On October 8, 1944, Churchill and Stalin met at the Fourth Moscow Conference.

Churchill`s account of the incident is as follows: Churchill suggested that the Soviet Union should have 90% influence in Romania and 75% in Bulgaria; the United Kingdom is expected to have 90 per cent in Greece; in Hungary and Yugoslavia, Churchill suggested that they should each have 50 percent. Churchill wrote it on a piece of paper, which he pushed to Stalin, who crossed it out and turned it over. During World War II, Winston Churchill became painfully aware that Britain had spent its capital on war and had become economically dependent on American support. Although Churchill wanted Britain to continue to be a world power after the war, he was aware that the Soviet Union would be a much stronger power in a post-war world than it was before the war, while Britain would be a much weaker power than before the war. [5] At the same time, Churchill was very concerned that the United States would return to isolationism after the war and thus put an economically weakened Britain more or less alone against the Soviet Union. Faced with these worries about the future, Churchill constantly sought an agreement with Stalin during the war that could stabilize the post-war world and bind the Soviets in a manner favorable to British interests. [5] In this regard, Churchill was particularly concerned about securing the Mediterranean in the British sphere of influence and made it clear that he did not want the Communists to come to power in Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia, believing that the Communist governments of these countries would allow the Soviet Union to establish air and naval bases in these countries. which would threaten British shipping in the Mediterranean. [6] The Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea were an important sea route between Britain and its colonies in Asia, particularly India, as well as the Australian and New Zealand dominions. .