A Year of Troubles

Abstract

The Anglo-American landings in North Africa in November 1942 meant that there would be no cross-Channel invasion in 1943 and that the focus of the Allied offensive for that year would be in the Mediterranean. In this framework, allied strategists seized upon resistance in the Balkans, in particular in Greece and Yugoslavia, as a powerful auxiliary to regular military operations. Here, guerrilla warfare was intensifying in response to both internal and external factors, and its support by SOE as a means both of wearing down Axis strength, and of creating confusion about Allied intentions, assumed major significance. The increasing scale of European resistance in 1943 and SOE’s growing involvement with it caused, however, profound difficulties. The strategy of preventing premature uprisings and concentrating on the build-up of secret armies, combined with the long delay before Allied landings took place, produced morale problems in the resistance and helped the Germans to make some spectacular gains against them. The guerrilla campaigns in the Balkans encompassed a struggle for postwar political influence between communists and non-communists, so that strategic objectives on the British side became inextricably linked with longer-term political objectives. The demand for increased material support to resistance brought the dispute over the allocation of aircraft to SOE to a head, while the political complexities led to major clashes between SOE and the Foreign Office in the early autumn.