Athens Post Files: 1945:848–UNRRA: Telegram
The Senior Deputy Director General of UNRRA (Jackson) to the Director General of UNRRA (Lehman)89
A. 1. [Here follows reference to a telegram of the UNRRA Office at London.] We have now had an opportunity of discussing the situation here with Maben and the other authorities concerned, including the Regent and the United States, British and Canadian Ambassadors. Our views are set out in this and the two immediately following telegrams.
2. From April 1 to September 30 UNRRA imported into Greece 1,200,000 tons of civil supplies. As a result we have succeeded in keeping the people alive and we have also achieved reasonable results in the fields of agriculture, transport, health and welfare which, if followed up, should be of permanent value to Greece. In spite of much effort on the part of the UNRRA Mission, however, it has not been possible to achieve much in the major field of reviving Greek industry owing to initial late arrival of raw materials, the attitude of most factory owners and incompetence and lack of will on the part of the Government. It is true that if UNRRA ceased importing supplies into Greece now, the basic economic condition of the country would be little better than it would have been if we had not come here.
3. There are present in the situation here all the signs of an approaching economic breakdown. The currency is again rapidly falling in value and prices are soaring. This economic situation cannot be separated from the political position since in almost every case the action of the Greek authorities in economic matters, or their failure to take action, is based on internal political considerations, and this in turn again affects political developments.
4. Broadly speaking all the Governments which have been in power here since the German withdrawal have been unable to put through a proper programme of economic reconstruction. Two major and continuing factors controlling this have been: [Page 247]
- (a)
- the absence of a competent and effective administrative machine.
- (b)
- the decisive influence on these Governments of a number of people, usually behind the scenes, whose main object is to make money quickly at the expense of the country.
No real improvement can be achieved unless these factors can be eliminated.
5. The immediate situation is that the Regent is trying to produce a new “middle of the road” Government. Opinions differ as to whether he is likely to succeed. Maben’s view, which we share, is that whether or not the Regent succeeds in making a new Government there is no chance of such a Government proving effective and able to surmount the difficulties mentioned in paragraph 4 above, unless he has direct support from at least one of the major Governments. In the meantime it is quite impossible to get the Greek Government to take any effective action to deal with the situation and indeed the Government’s policy is aggravating the situation daily.
6. UNRRA has unavoidably become a major factor in Greek politics today. The whole country knows that it depends upon the continuation of the UNRRA supply programme and anything which was said by UNRRA about the handling of their supplies by the Greek Government, would immediately have internal political repercussions of the first importance. Moreover, the Greek authorities continue to request the most elementary advice from UNRRA on a variety of subjects, simply because the UNRRA Mission is at present the best equipped organization to deal with the economic problems of the country and knows far more about what is happening here than does the Greek Government.
See my immediately following telegram.90
- This telegram and the two that immediately follow were sent through facilities of the British Embassies at Athens and Washington and were repeated to the UNRRA London Office; Lt. Gen. Sir Humfrey Gale, a British national, Personal Representative of the Director General of UNRRA in charge of the European Regional Office at London, was associated with Commander Jackson in the sending of these messages.↩
- Infra.↩