Classical Spies: American Archaeologists with the OSS in World War II Greece

14. “Playing a Dangerous Game”

fourteen  “Playing a Dangerous Game” while the world focused on the cease-‹re on the western front, Rodney Young fought for his life in Greece. On May 5, 1945, the vessel carrying him to Syra to relieve the UNRRA’s Cyclades regional director capsized and most passengers were lost at sea, including a member of the Swedish Red Cross. After ‹ve hours in the water Young was saved, but the article recording it barely made the New York Times. During his three days of recuperation , Germany surrendered and the Allies declared victory in Europe. Buoyed by the good news, Young turned his attention to negotiating with the guerrillas. Young’s American School colleague, Oscar Broneer, now executive vice president of Greek War Relief, made his ‹rst trip to Greece in six years to get an idea of conditions and was overwhelmed with the magnitude of the destruction.1 Although the war in Europe was over, in Greece a different sort of war was emerging. Amid the tumult, Washington’s neglect of Greece handicapped future possibilities for SI. Aldrich’s parsimonious policy that forbade helping former Greek personnel and their dependents left destitute at the time of liberation and the Dekemvriana had caused widespread dissatisfaction and earned OSS the reputation of “having let people down.”Edson worried that some agents felt so badly treated that they “would injure American intelligence if they could”and constituted a“security danger to future clandestine operations by OSS in Greece.”2 Daniel DeBardeleben, OSS chief of Southeast Europe SI, replied that “the importance of Greece so far as the war is concerned has decreased greatly.” Sherman Wallace explained that few in Washington wanted any SI 262 from Greece. Instead the State Department, Edson’s chief “customer,” was mainly interested in Russian intelligence and Communists.3 As the“Cold War”evolved, Greece became important once more. By late May, even the U.S. Military Intelligence was “showing interest,” and Donovan prolonged OSS operations in Athens inde‹nitely. Soon Greece was no longer a backwater, and the State Department and SI/Washington craved intelligence from the critically situated country. By the summer of 1945, the position of Greece was without recent parallel; the country’s northern border had become the frontier between the British and Russian spheres of in›uence in the Balkans. This magni‹ed the importance of the small nation beyond that suggested by its population, its natural resources, or its geopolitical position controlling the Aegean and the approach to the Turkish Straits. Edson recognized that Greece, “lying squarely at a point where British and Russian interests converge,” would henceforth be “a political pressure area.” As Else had predicted, because the Greek Left was pro-Russian and the Greek Right was pro-British, even internal Greek politics had important international implications, and the success or failure of political entities in Greece could alter the balance of power in the southern Balkans and the Middle East. This circumstance made internal Greek politics much more important than they appeared, and the United States would need to be “continuously and accurately informed” about them by sources under U.S. control and direction. Because it would be dif‹cult to base American SI operations inside countries within the Russian sphere (including Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria), Greece became crucial for SI penetration of Bulgaria and southern Yugoslavia. Moreover, it was the only place in southeast Europe (aside from European Turkey) where American and British services could operate with any degree of effectiveness without being completely clandestine.4 Shepardson informed Aldrich that keeping an intelligence service in Greece, “a natural meeting point for con›icting ideologies,” had become a matter of “major importance” to Washington at least “until the end of the Japanese war and very possibly for a considerable period after that.” Shepardson was monitoring the ›ight underground of Axis capital, as well as military activity on Greece’s Bulgarian, Yugoslavian, and Albanian borders. The State Department was interested in all political matters that might have a bearing upon the development of British or Russian policy. Finally, the United States “permanently and de‹nitely committed to obtaining intelligence from Greece” and “operations of the unit in Greece . . . of vital con- “Playing a Dangerous Game” • 263 cern to the home base.” For this reason, Shepardson sent his own deputy, DeBardeleben, to head Cairo’s SI.5 Ironically, aside from Cox (and occasionally Caskey and Young), only with the...