British Policy towards Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary 1944–1946

Abstract

The outbreak of the Second World War caused the British to involve themselves in the affairs of south-east Europe, in which they had previously taken very little practical interest. From 1941 the Foreign Office assumed that the British would play an important post-war role in the area, but that the Soviet Union would be a powerful rival, claiming predominance in Romania, though not necessarily in Bulgaria, still less in Hungary. However, the Quebec and Teheran Conferences of 1943 ruled out any British wartime military role in south-east Europe, leaving the field open to Russia. Britain’s only hope of keeping a post-war foothold there was by political-diplomatic methods such as the Anglo-Soviet percentage agreement over Romania and Greece, later extended to Bulgaria, Hungary and Yugoslavia,¹ and the Armistice terms and Allied Control Commissions (A.C.C.) for the three ex-satellites, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.