George S. Scherbatoff (1897-1976), a US Navy commander during and after the Second World War, also served as a member of numerous naval and diplomatic missions, including the US delegation to the conference at Yalta in 1945. The donated album, which is entitled “Trip to Greece with the UN Balkan Commission, November 1947-May 1948,” contains many photographs of the commission’s activities that are described by accompanying notes. The commission’s purpose was to investigate the civil war in Greece; the controversial role of its parent organization, the United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans, was examined by Amikam Nachmani in his book International Intervention in the Greek Civil War: The United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans, 1947-1952 (New York: Praeger, 1990). The album, which complements the Leften Stavrianos and Kostas Kouvaras papers at Hoover, provides valuable illustrative material of the Greek civil war.
In addition to the commission’s activities, the album contains photographs of Viacheslav Molotov, Ernest Bevin, and other dignitaries attending an international conference in 1947 and of US ships, US naval officers, and Chinese military leaders in 1945. The photographs of the Chinese officials and military leaders would interest scholars researching US aid to China during the Second World War and complement the Albert C. Wedemeyer papers and other collections on the subject in the Hoover Archives.
