 In 1947 , de Guingand asked the British government to recognise its mistaken strategy in Greece . Buckley countered that if Britain had not honored its 1939 commitment to Greece , it would have severely damaged the ethical basis of its struggle against Nazi Germany . According to Heinz Richter , Churchill tried through the campaign in Greece , to influence the political atmosphere in the United States and insisted on this strategy even after the defeat . According to Keegan , " the Greek campaign had been an old @-@ fashioned gentlemen 's war , with honor given and accepted by brave adversaries on each side " and the vastly outnumbered Greek and Allied forces , " had , rightly , the sensation of having fought the good fight " . It has also been suggested the British strategy was to create a barrier in Greece , to protect Turkey , the only ( neutral ) country standing between an Axis block in the Balkans and the oil @-@ rich Middle East but the British intervention in Greece was considered a fiasco . Martin van Creveld believes that the British did everything in their power to scuttle all attempts at a separate peace between the Greeks and the Italians , to keep the Greeks fighting so as to draw Italian divisions away from North Africa . 
