Collective views

For the chiefs of staff, intervention in Greece was from the outset seen to be a decision of high political and strategic importance to be taken by Churchill. It was also a course, they were told, about which there was no choice, even thought it might fail.

When the chiefs considered, in early January, the question of establishing air bases in Salonika, they thought this involved issues ‘of the highest political and military importance’ which must be referred to Churchill. He, in turn, persisted in asking the chiefs to consider ‘whether we could now afford some further assistance to Greece … particularly by reinforcing our air detachment in that country’. And he set out the position for them (and his colleagues) at the defence committee on the 8th of a likely ‘early advance by the German army … [now] massing in Roumania, with the object of invading Greece via Bulgaria’.

At the defence committee on the 8th chaired by Churchill which they, the service chiefs and Eden attended, it was agreed to send early and full support to Greece. Given the ‘probability of an early German advance into Greece through Bulgaria’, ‘it was … from the political view [of the first importance to] … do everything possible, by hook or by crook to send at once … the fullest support within our power’ to Greece.