Blockade and Famine: A Gap for Greece?

Winston Churchill and the British War Cabinet have been receiving damning reports from Athens since the autumn of 1941. Massive requisitioning of foodstuffs by German and Italian occupation forces, combined with the collapse of imports and the Royal Navy blockade maintained across the eastern Mediterranean, has stripped the Greek capital of its food reserves. Every week, thousands of civilians — children, the elderly, workers — are dying of hunger in the streets or in overwhelmed hospitals. The International Red Cross and several neutral governments are pressing London to authorise the passage of ships carrying wheat.

The Cabinet is divided. Lifting the blockade even partially amounts, according to its opponents, to indirectly feeding the Axis divisions stationed in Greece and weakening the economic weapon that London regards as one of its essential levers of war. Other members argue that allowing a narrow gap under strict Red Cross supervision would save hundreds of thousands of civilians without providing any real benefit to the enemy war machine.

Churchill and his ministers must decide: authorise a humanitarian gap in the blockade, under Red Cross supervision, to let wheat through; maintain the full blockade to preserve the economic weapon against the Axis; or demand impossible German guarantees, effectively deferring all relief without taking responsibility for it.