Percentages agreement
It is also known as the naughty document, a nickname coined by Churchill himself due to his concerns regarding American reaction to any deal with such strong imperialist undertones, although in reality U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt was consulted tentatively and conceded to the agreement.
[8] Churchill's "Mediterranean strategy", which he supported for political reasons more than military ones, caused much tension with the Americans, who preferred to fight and defeat the Wehrmacht in northwest Europe.
[12] As a corollary to his "Mediterranean strategy", Churchill supported plans for a post-war federation of Austria and Hungary as a way to limit Soviet influence in Eastern Europe, favouring a magnanimous peace with the Hungarians.
Churchill had hopes that he with the help of Stalin could persuade Tito to accept King Peter II, believing that retaining the House of Karađorđević would ensure Yugoslavia would remain at least partially in the British sphere of influence after the war.
[19] However, unlike Greece and Italy, which British ships using the Suez Canal route had to sail past, this was not the case with Yugoslavia, which therefore led Churchill to place less importance upon that nation.
Roosevelt was unimpressed and on 11 June held that the result would be "the division of the Balkan region into spheres of influence despite the declared intention to limit the arrangement to military matters."
[25] The destruction of Army Group Center created a huge gaping hole in the German lines on the Eastern Front, and led to rapid Soviet advances.
[27] On 23 August 1944, King Michael of Romania dismissed his pro-German Prime Minister, Marshal Ion Antonescu, signed an armistice with the Soviets, and declared war on Hungary and Germany.
[29] King Michael hoped that having Romania switch sides might save the Romanian branch of the House of Hohenzollern from being replaced after the war with a Communist regime.
A recurring theme of his "Mediterranean Strategy" was his plan for the Allies to land on the Adriatic coast of Yugoslavia and advance through the Ljubljana Gap in the Alps to reach Austria in order to stake a post-war claim on Eastern Europe.
The collapsing German position in the Balkans spurred Churchill's interest once again in his plans for the Ljubljana Gap, but landing in Dalmatia would require capturing north-east Italy first.
[32] In Triumph and Tragedy, the last of his History of the Second World War books, Churchill attacked the Americans for Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France, to which he was opposed.
[33] As an expression of bitterness that the Americans opposed his Mediterranean strategy, Churchill claimed that if only the manpower and resources devoted to Operation Dragoon had been made available for plans to advance up the Ljubljana Gap, then the Allies would have taken Vienna in 1944 and thereby prevented the Red Army from capturing that city in 1945.
At the conference, Field Marshal Alan Brooke, the chief of the Imperial General Staff, had to inform Churchill that the British Army had been stretched to the breaking point by the losses caused by the fighting in north-west Europe, Italy, and Burma, and only a skeleton force would be available for operations in the Balkans.
Even more frightening to Churchill was the possibility the Red Army might turn south into Greece and liberate it, thereby presenting Britain with a fait accompli with EAM installed in power.
Even the U.S. 3rd Army, led by the famously aggressive General George Patton, had its advance in Lorraine slowed to what the American historian Gerhard Weinberg called a "crawl" by October.
The decision of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery to focus on Operation Market Garden, an attempt to outflank the Westwall, which ended in the defeat of the Anglo-Polish paratroopers at the Battle of Arnhem, rather than on clearing the Scheldt, allowed German forces to dig in and deny the Allies use of Antwerp.
[31] The fact that the Soviets did not follow up taking Belgrade with an offensive onto the Adriatic Sea, instead heading up the Danube river valley towards Budapest, allowed the German Army Group E under Alexander Löhr to escape from Greece.
[47] On 15 October 1944, Horthy signed an armistice with the Soviet Union, but Hitler had anticipated this move and made preparations to keep Hungary a battlefield regardless of what the Hungarians thought.
[48] In a telegraph to Stalin on 4 October, Roosevelt expressed his regret that his reelection campaign kept him from attending, but that "in this global war there is literally no question, political or military, in which the United States is not interested".
[49] After discussing Poland, Churchill told Stalin Romania was "very much a Russian affair" and the Soviet-Romanian armistice was "reasonable and showed much statecraft in the interests of general peace in the future."
[57] Bulgaria turned out to be the main difficulty during the meeting on 10 October between Eden and Molotov with Eden accusing the Bulgarians of mistreating British officers in Greek Thrace and wanted the Soviet Union to order them to treat British officers with respect, leading Molotov in a rare moment of wit to say the Soviets had just promised not to interfere in Greek internal affairs.
[61] In a telegram to Roosevelt sent on 11 October, Churchill wrote Stalin and I should try to get a common mind about the Balkans, so that we may prevent civil war breaking out in several countries, when probably you and I would be in sympathy with one side and U.J.
[65] The charge that Stalin coldly and cynically abandoned EAM which was in a position to take over all of Greece in October 1944 proved damaging to his reputation in left-wing circles.
'"[70] David Carlton wrote that "[With the October contract] a clear if informal deal had been done on the point that mattered most to Churchill: he had Stalin's consent to handle Greece as he saw fit.
Richard Crampton described the agreement as "infamous" with Churchill and Stalin in a "cavalier fashion" dividing up Eastern Europe into spheres of influence with no effort to consult the peoples concerned.
[74] Churchill feared that if Roosevelt was included in the talks about the future of Greece, then the Americans might side with the Soviets and agree to recognise EAM as the legitimate government.
[81] Stalin, meanwhile, initially believed the secret agreement was more important than the public deal at Yalta, leading to his perception of betrayal and a growing urgency to secure friendly governments on the USSR's border.
Given these concerns, Churchill presented the percentages agreement as a triumph of statecraft, with the obvious implication that this was the solution to the Cold War with the Western powers and the Soviet Union agreeing to respect each other's spheres of influence.
After 1956, Hungary under János Kádár stayed loyal to Moscow with regard to foreign affairs, but introduced significant reforms in the domestic sphere that were dubbed "Goulash Communism".
