Percentages agreement

The Percentages agreement was a secret, informal political agreement between British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin agreed during the Fourth Moscow Conference, in October 1944. The Percentages agreement established the percentage-division of control over the countries of Eastern Europe into spheres of influence. Moreover, the Percentages agreement also is known as the Naughty document, because Churchill thought that the U.S. would reject a geopolitical agreement with greatly imperialist undertones, although U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt had been consulted and had tentatively agreed to the matter. In 1953, Churchill published the Percentages agreement in the final volume of his memoir, The Second World War.

Churchill's Mediterranean strategy

During the Second World War, Winston Churchill became painfully aware that the UK had spent virtually all of its reserve capital on the war and was becoming economically dependent upon American support. He recognised that the Soviet Union would end up being much stronger than it was before the war, while Britain would be weaker. Fearing that the United States might return to isolationism after the war, leaving an economically weakened Britain to face the Soviet Union alone, he sought a preemptive agreement with Stalin that might stabilize the post-war world and tie the Soviets down in a way that was favourable to British interests. In this regard, Churchill was especially concerned about securing the Mediterranean within the British sphere of influence, making it clear that he did not want Communists to come to power in Italy, Greece, and Yugoslavia as he believed that Communist governments in those countries would allow the Soviet Union to establish air and naval bases in those nations, which would threaten British shipping in the Mediterranean.

The Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea were key shipping routes between Britain and its colonies in Asia, especially India, together with the Dominions of Australia and New Zealand. It was also the main route that tankers used to carry oil from the Middle East to Britain.