The Politics of Reconstruction

As the Second World War drew to a close, it was evident that Greece would have to rely on foreign aid for its survival. Already during the Nazi occupation, the city dwellers were dependent on International Red Cross food imports. After a disastrous famine in the winter of 1941–1942 that claimed the lives of 45,000 people in Athens and Piraeus, the Allies lifted the naval blockade and, from September 1942 until the liberation of the country, 15,000 tons of grain and 3,000 tons of other foodstuffs were unloaded in Greek ports every month. In November 1943, the governor of the Bank of Greece, Kyriakos Varvaressos, prepared a memorandum on behalf of the Greek government in exile for the newly established United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), in which he outlined the structural economic problems of Greece and the havoc that Nazi occupation had wrought. He foresaw that ‘a large section of the Greek population would have to rely entirely on imports for the satisfaction of its needs’. ¹ This is what exactly happened with UNRRA aid in the immediate post-war years. In fact, it was not only the population that was dependent on foreign relief aid, but also the state that was dependent on foreign economic assistance. Greece was among the major recipients of foreign aid after the end of the Second World War. In 1952, Varvaressos submitted another report to the Greek government, in which he estimated that post-war economic aid to Greece had reached $2 billion. Despite this enormous amount, he concluded that Greece ‘is and will remain a poor country with limited economic potentialities’ and singled out the economic dependence of Greece on US economic aid as a major source of concern. ²