Greek communists kill Churchill in Athens Dec. '44

Let's be serious here,

When Greek communists detonate a bomb that kills Winston Churchill, you know several severe repercussions will occur.
  • Loss of competent leadership: The loss of him would cause a political crisis in the British parliament.
  • Red scare in Britain: Imagine, the government and society knowing the crimes of Greek communists. It would cause a mass hysteria in Britain and the British government would enact a McCarthy-style inquistion to root out suspected Communists and spy on CPGB.
  • Increased tensions between Nato and the Warsaw Pact: The bombing would increase tensions because a killing of a leader by Communists would not end well.
 
If it's traced to the Communists then the alliance with the Soviets is over. Neither London or Washington will believe the claims coming out of Moscow that the Soviets had nothing to do with it. Labour won't win the election outright, and may not even be able to form a coalition with the smaller parties. It's even possible that they end up with fewer MP's than the Liberals.
As a frame of reference, the Liberals won just 21 seats in the 1935 GE, with Labour winning 154 seats. Just how much red-baiting would it take for Labour to lose 133+ seats?
 

Ian_W

Banned
In December 1944, it gets blamed on the Nazis.

It doesnt matter if Greek Communists really did lay the bomb, it gets blamed on the Nazis.

In December 1944, the British Parliament takes it in their stride. It's probably too early for Clem Attlee to take control - the Conservatives are still the major party in Parliament. My guess is Eden steps up.

The Allies win the war. There is an election. Clem Attlee wins.

Churchill's legend is even more highly burnished, seeing how he got murdered by the Nazis in Athens in December 1944.
 
Things get nastier for Germany after the war because as others said the WAllies would convince their nations this was the Germans who brought down Britain’s beloved leader as they convinced their populations that Germany did the Katyn Massacre.

It might bring the British public much more in line with with the Washington political class about the need to dissolve Germany as a state.
 
The British government/people may think the empire can't take this sitting down and needs to get something out of it to avenge Churchill by the pen or if be it by the sword. I think you would see the allies leverage this to renegotiate post-war borders or face operation unthinkable (Stalin "We had a deal" churches successor, Truman, and Degall "We have altered the deal, pray we do not alter it again")
 
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Maybe the Greek Communists try to pin it on the Germans? If that happens, the Germans are going to get hit even harder, though at this point they're a dead horse unable to feel anything anymore.

If the Allies trace it to the Communists, expect one heavy crackdown as well as a fracture of trust between Stalin and the Americans (we're winning the war and now he's double crossing us). How that shifts policy is the question but the Cold War is definitely unavoidable after this.

As for the UK, who was Churchill's successor? They stood to garner a great deal of sympathy and likely would win the coming elections.
If I recall, Roosevelt and Hull were not at all pleased with British policy regarding Greece, seeing it as them making old school Imperialist deals with the Russians over spheres of influence. I don't think it would lead to a fracture of trust with Stalin, who will of course claim innocence and be backed up in that by Roosevelt's fellow traveler of a VP elect. Stalin's relationship with the EAM can be severed as well, with him decrying them as Trotskyites.

But this ignores the bigger picture. There is no way that this doesn't get pinned on the Germans.
 
If I recall, Roosevelt and Hull were not at all pleased with British policy regarding Greece, seeing it as them making old school Imperialist deals with the Russians over spheres of influence. I don't think it would lead to a fracture of trust with Stalin, who will of course claim innocence and be backed up in that by Roosevelt's fellow traveler of a VP elect. Stalin's relationship with the EAM can be severed as well, with him decrying them as Trotskyites.

But this ignores the bigger picture. There is no way that this doesn't get pinned on the Germans.
at this stage with large-scale intelligence beginning to be born over games of code breaking and early spying, do the allies have the ability to uncover the true nature of this plot through an investigation formal or informal between 1944 and 1953.
 
Thank you. I was about to say something to the effect 'Hang on, haven't we had this exact same thread with that exact same article before?'

And as I think I posted previously in at least one of those threads, unless the hotel was doubling as the Greek Foreign Office, Churchill's own WW2 memoirs seem to indicate that any actual meetings were nowhere near it.

Oh he was right there sure enough. Grande Bretagne was being used at the moment as effectively seat of government, with all foreign delegations residing there as well.
 
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