The primary concern had been formulated by South African Prime Minister Jan Christiaan Smuts, one of Winston Churchill’s most trusted advisers, who warned Churchill in 1943, with regard to southern Europe, that “with politics let loose among those peoples, we may have a wave of disorder and wholesale Communism set going all over those parts of Europe.” Neither so-called “Communism,” nor socialism, nor radical democracy, nor national capitalism that might strike an independent course was tolerable. These were the threats that had to be confronted, not Soviet aggression.
