The United States, Differentiation, and Balkan Cooperation during the Cold War

Abstract

To reject it in favour of a deliberately evasive and opaque geographical term like Southeastern Europe, could promote the stereotypes it intends to avoid as well as ahistorical approaches to the study of the region and in the long run, historical amnesia. 5 II.The Legacy of WWII Liberation found Balkan societies deeply divided and seeking divergent political futures.Total war, collaboration, resistance and survival had become intertwined with pre-existing disputes and regional competition. Nazi Germany's and Fascist Italy's conquests were accompanied by energetic occupations through the "puppet" governments of Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania and had created a combustible security environment. The Soviet Union's success in pushing Hitler' armies westward appealed to popular mood in the occupied Balkans more than the slower-moving Anglo-American strategy that aimed to divert Nazi Germany away from reinforcing the shores of France. 6 Allied "grand strategy" in the Balkans was experienced as a clamp that increased the ferocity of occupation, intensified disunity and bifurcated local resistance into communist and anti-communist groupings. It bred frustration and fostered suspicion. The cynicism evinced by the Stalin-Churchill percentages agreement in 1944 anticipated a future based on division. 7 It also revealed that American opposition to spheres of influence was flexible. In Athens, the December Events demonstrated that Britain, starved of the resources it needed to finance its postwar strategy, could resort to heavy-handedness to avert Communist takeovers. 8 In the Balkans, the shape of peace had