The possible danger of the outbreak of the Third World War has been discussed for more than seventy years. For the first time they started talking about it in 1946 - almost immediately after the victory over Nazi Germany and Japan ended the Second World War and relations between the USSR and yesterday's allies - the countries of the West - became aggravated again. But in fact, the risk of the outbreak of the Third World War existed even before Berlin fell under the blows of Soviet troops and even before the entry of the victorious Red Army into the territory of Eastern Europe. As soon as the turning point in the war began to be felt and it became clear to the leaders of Great Britain and the United States that the Red Army would sooner or later defeat Hitler, London and Washington began to think about how to secure Eastern Europe from possible falling under Soviet control.
It is known that the West, a century before the start of World War II, was terribly afraid of the expansion of Russian influence in Eastern Europe, especially on the Balkan Peninsula and on the Danube. With the help of all kinds of provocations, setting up the pro-Western elites of the Ottoman Empire, and then of the independent Eastern European states, all kinds of barriers were built to the influence of the Russian Empire in the Balkans. The spread of Russophobic sentiments in the Slavic countries of Eastern Europe, in Romania was also a consequence of this policy. Naturally, when in 1943 the talk about the possibility of a Soviet military invasion of the Balkans and the Danube came up, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt began to discuss possible ways to prevent it.
For Great Britain, the Balkans have always been a strategically very important region, since London was afraid of the penetration of Russia, and then the Soviet Union, to the Mediterranean Sea. At the turn of the 1930s - 1940s. in London they discussed the possibility of forming a bloc of states, which would be directed against the Soviet Union. The bloc was supposed to include almost all the countries of the region - Turkey, Bulgaria, Albania, Yugoslavia, Greece. True, of the countries listed by that time, Britain enjoyed real influence only on Greece and Yugoslavia. In the rest of the region, German and Italian positions were already very strong. But Churchill, who was the author of the idea of forming an anti-Soviet Balkan bloc, believed that after the war Hungary and Romania would also be able to join it as the most important Danubian countries. Consideration was also given to the inclusion of Austria in the bloc, which was again planned to be cut off from Germany.
The British began to assemble an anti-Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe and the Balkans almost immediately after the outbreak of World War II. As you know, in London by 1940-1942. hosted the "governments in exile" of most states in the region. The emigrant governments of Czechoslovakia and Poland were the first to begin cooperation on this issue in November 1940, then the Greek and Yugoslav governments formed a political union. However, political coalitions of émigré "governments in exile" are one thing, and quite another is the real formation of a federation in wartime conditions, when units of the Red Army are advancing on Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Therefore, the British command, headed by Churchill, began to develop a plan for the upcoming liberation of Eastern Europe from Nazi troops by its own efforts.
But for this it was required to complete rather voluminous tasks - first to land troops on the shores of Italy, then to overthrow the fascist government in Italy and achieve the country's transition to the side of the allies, and then from the territory of Italy to begin the liberation of Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece and further on the list. After the liberation of the Balkan Peninsula, Churchill's plan was followed by an offensive on the Danube - on Romania and Hungary, and further on Czechoslovakia and Poland. If this plan were carried out, the Allies would have occupied the territory from the Adriatic and Aegean Seas to the Baltic Sea.
The operation to liberate Italy and the Balkans was planned to be carried out by the forces of the Anglo-American troops, as well as the colonial troops of the British Empire from India, Canada, Australia, etc. At the same time, it was planned that after the change of pro-fascist governments, the allies would be able to rely on Italian, Yugoslavian, Bulgarian, Greek and other troops. Together, they should not only crush the power of Hitlerite Germany, but also stand in the way of the advance of Soviet troops into Europe. If necessary, the allies could well begin hostilities against the Red Army. It is not excluded that in such a situation, in a weakened Germany, a "top" coup could also occur (as in Italy), after which the government that came to power would conclude a separate peace with the allies and act together with them against the USSR. This scenario was quite realistic, since the British special services established contacts with a number of representatives of the Hitlerite military-political elite, with whom they discussed the possibility of concluding a separate peace.
The conservative circles of the Hitlerite generals would also inevitably eventually become allies of Churchill's plan to form an anti-Soviet bloc in Central and Eastern Europe. For many of them, anti-communism and fear of the Soviet occupation exceeded loyalty to Nazi ideas. The generals would have easily betrayed Adolf Hitler by assassinating him or arresting him. After that, the remaining very numerous and combat-ready units of the Wehrmacht would also be at the disposal of the allied command.
Finally, Churchill's plans had another powerful ally - the Roman pontiff Pius XII himself.
He was, of course, an outstanding man, but he adhered to the right-wing anti-communist convictions. Pius inherited the old tradition of the Vatican, which had opposed Russia and the Orthodox world since the Middle Ages. Dad did not like communists even more. Therefore, when in 1941 Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the Vatican actually supported this decision of Berlin. It is known that the Uniate clergy in Western Ukraine, under the direct patronage of the Vatican, actively participated in the activities of local collaborators. The same situation developed in the countries of Eastern Europe. Among ordinary Catholic priests, very many people were convinced anti-fascists and even gave their lives in the struggle against Hitlerism, but the higher clergy, as a rule, shared the position of the pontiff.
For the British leadership, the Vatican also played a very important role as an intermediary in interaction with the German generals and diplomats. On a certain part of the Hitlerite elite, the Catholic clergy, by virtue of their religion, had a great influence. Therefore, they could also influence the accession of Hitler's generals to the plan to eliminate or overthrow the Fuhrer, neutralize opponents of the idea of peace with the allies, and move to confrontation with the USSR. Finally, the participation of the Catholic Church in Churchill's plan was also of interest from the point of view of ideology, since after the liberation of Eastern Europe from the Nazis, it was required to find some values in the name of which the population would support the allies in the struggle against the USSR. These values were supposed to be the protection of religion from the threat from the atheistic Soviet state.
In 1943, initially everything went according to the plan of the Allies. On July 24, 1943, a coup d'état began in Italy. Dissatisfied with Benito Mussolini's policy, Italian officials and generals decided to remove Duce from real power. All the powers of the head of state and the supreme commander-in-chief were taken over by King Victor Emmanuel III. He was supported by such leading figures of the fascist party and the military elite as the chairman of the House of Fascia and Corporations Dino Grandi, Marshal of Italy Emilio De Bono, Cesare Maria de Vecchi and even Mussolini's son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano himself. On July 26, Benito Mussolini was arrested.
An important role in the removal of the Duce was played by General of the Army Vittorio Ambrosio, who in 1943 served as Chief of the General Staff of the Italian Army. Almost from the very beginning, Ambrosio was opposed to the alliance of Italy with Germany and considered the country's entry into the war a big mistake of Mussolini. Therefore, the general has long been in touch with representatives of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition. It was he who, under the pretext of conducting military exercises on the day of the coup, withdrew Mussolini's personal guard from Rome.
On July 25, 1943, Marshal of Italy Pietro Badoglio took over as Prime Minister of Italy. Already in July 1943, he held negotiations with representatives of the Allies in Lisbon, and on September 3, 1943, he signed an act of unconditional surrender of Italy.
It seemed that the Allies were very close to achieving their goal, but on September 8, the invasion of Italy by German troops began. On October 13, 1943, the Badoglio government declared war on Nazi Germany, but the weak Italian army, which, moreover, not all went over to the side of the anti-Hitler coalition, was unable to resist the Wehrmacht. As a result, hostilities in Italy dragged on until the very end of World War II in 1945, and even the Allied troops that entered the country fought with difficulty the elite Nazi divisions that occupied a significant part of the country.
The protracted war in Italy actually thwarted the plans of the Western coalition to quickly liberate the country and subsequently invade the Balkans and the Danube Lowland. The Americans and the British are firmly stuck in France and Italy. In contrast to them, the Soviet troops advanced quite successfully to the west. The offensive of the Red Army in the spring of 1944 led to a serious defeat for the Nazi troops concentrated in the south of Ukraine. By August 1944, the combined German-Romanian armies suffered a crushing defeat in the Jassy-Kishinev direction. On August 23, 1944, a popular uprising broke out in Bucharest, and the King of Romania, Mihai, supported the rebels and ordered the arrest of Marshal Ion Antonescu and several other pro-Hitler politicians. The power in Romania changed, which was immediately tried to prevent the German troops stationed in the country. But it was too late. 50 divisions of the Red Army were sent to help the uprising, and on August 31, 1944, units of the Red Army entered Bucharest, controlled by the Romanian rebels.
Thus, the Anglo-American plan for the Balkan operation was violated in Romania, only by Soviet troops. On September 12, 1944, in Moscow, the USSR government signed an armistice agreement with representatives of the Romanian government. Romania, one of the largest and most important economically and strategically countries in Eastern Europe, was actually under the control of the Soviet troops, although then Stalin could not yet go to the open "communization" of this country. However, both in Romania and subsequently in other countries of Eastern Europe, governments were soon formed with the participation of communists and socialists.
The liberation of Romania was the beginning of the breakthrough of the Red Army into the Balkans. Already on September 16, 1944, Soviet troops entered the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia, and on October 20, into Belgrade. Thus, almost all the Balkans, with the exception of Greece and Albania, at that time were under the control of Soviet troops. Simultaneously with the liberation of the Balkan Peninsula, at the end of August 1944, the Danube Flotilla began its advance along the Danube River towards Hungary. It was no longer possible to stop the advance of Soviet troops, and on February 13, 1945, the Red Army entered the capital of Hungary, Budapest.
What happened most of all Churchill and Roosevelt feared - all of Eastern Europe and almost the entire Balkan Peninsula were under the control of the Soviet Union. In Albania, the communists also won, liberating the country on their own. The only country in the Balkans that remained in the orbit of Western interests was Greece, but here, too, a long and bloody civil war with the communists soon unfolded.
If the plans of Churchill and Roosevelt to form an anti-Soviet federation on the Danube and the Balkans, by coincidence, had not been prevented by the invasion of Hitler's Germany in Italy, the coup in Romania and the liberation of the Balkan Peninsula by Soviet troops, it is likely that the Great Patriotic War, which was an incredible test for our people, could immediately develop into the Third World War with yesterday's allies. And who knows what the result of this war would have been, especially since Japan has not yet been defeated and it could also go over to the side of the Western coalition.
