German invasion of Greece
| Battle of Greece | |||||||
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| Part of World War II | |||||||
| File:478.gif | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 Germany.svg?lang=en){kind=small} Italy Bulgaria |
 Greece British Commonwealth | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Maximilian von Weichs | Alexander Papagos | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
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Germany: 500,000 men, 1200 tanks, 700 aircraft Italy: 529,000 men Bulgaria: ? |
Greece: 350,000 men British Commonwealth: 58,000 men | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
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Italy: 13,755 dead, 25,067 missing, 63,142 wounded, Germany: 2,559 dead, 5,820 wounded, 3,169 missing Bulgaria:? Total casualties: 112,000 |
Greece: 13,325 dead, 62,663 wounded, 1,290 missing, British Commonwealth: 903 dead, 1250 wounded, 13,958 captured Total casualties: 93,000 | ||||||
The Battle of Greece is the continuation of the Greco-Italian War beginning with the German invasion of Greece to the fall of Kalamata in the Peloponnese. With the Battle of Crete and several naval actions, it is considered part of the wider Aegean component of the Balkans Campaign of World War II. The German codename for their operation was Unternehmen Marita — "Operation Marita".
Greek Refusal to Italian Ultimatum
Nazi Germany had unleashed its “Blitzkrieg” and overran much of Western Europe. Benito Mussolini had grown jealous of Hitler’s conquests and decided to do some conquering of his own. Italy had already overrun Albania(Greece’s northwestern neighbor) in 1939 and several British strongholds in Africa but could not boast the same victories of Nazi Germany. Mussolini decided to attack Greece as it seemed to him an easy opponent.
In the early morning hours of October 28, 1940, Italian Ambassador Emmanuel Grazzi awoke Greek Premier John Metaxas and presented him an ultimatum. Mussolini demanded free passage for his troops to occupy unspecified "strategic points" inside Greek territory. Greece had been friendly towards National Socialist Germany, especially profiting from mutual trade relations, but now Germany's ally Italy was to invade Greece (without Hitler's awareness), partly to prove that Italians could match the military successes of the German Army in Poland and France. Metaxas rejected the ultimatum, echoing the will of the Greek people to resist, a will which was popularly expressed in one word: "Ohi" (Greek for "No"). (Presently commemorated as Okhi Day in Greece, in memory of Greek defiance to Italian aggression) Within hours Italy invaded Greece from Albania. [1]
Italian Invasion and Greek Counterattack
Benito Mussolini preferred that the Greeks would not accept the ultimatum but that they would offer some kind of resistance. “Documents later discovered showed that every detail of the attack had been prepared…His prestige needed some indisputable victories to balance the sweep of Napoleonic triumphs of Nazi Germany.” [2] The principal Italian thrust was delivered in the Pindus towards the city Yanina and it made some progress at first. The Greek Evzones, elite mountain troops utilized the terrain to their advantage. The Greek troops, unable to match the Italian armor or Italian attacks from the air, took to higher ground and lobbed their mortar shells and artillery pieces down upon the massed enemy.
The invaders crossed the Kalamas river and approached Yanina but were soon driven back and pursued beyond Greek territory and into Albania. Further north the Greeks checked Italian attempts to advance, and then passed on the offensive. Within three weeks Greek territory was clear of the invader and a full scale counterattack was in place.
The counterattack was met with great success, a change in Italian commanders and the arrival of considerable reinforcements having little effect. Koritsa, the largest town in Albania fell to Greek forces on November 13, to be followed by Pogradec, Argyrokastron (December 4), Himare (December 24) and Kelcyre (January 10).
Italian Spring Offensive
After weeks of inconclusive winter warfare the Italians, supervised by Mussolini himself, launched a full scale counterattack all along the front on March 9, 1941. Within two hours, 100,000 round of artillery were fired and Greek positions were bombed from the air. Despite the superiority of the Italian armed forces, the counterattack failed. After one week and 12,000 casualties, Mussolini called off the counterattack and left Albania with his prestige tarnished. [3] It was now up to Nazi Germany to intervene. In the six month fight against Italy, the Greek army had conducted itself well, but had rendered itself too exhausted to stand up to a German invasion. More importantly, the main mass of the Greek army was fighting in Albania, and could not be used to fight against the German invasion.
Allied Troop Dispositions Prior to German Invasion
On April 6th, 1941, the German Army invaded northern Greece, while other elements launched an attack against Yugoslavia. The British and Greek forces operating in the region were unable to present a cohesive front because of poor communication between their respective commands.
The Greeks had been insistent on fighting their battle along the Metaxas Line, a massive line of fortifications that had been built along the Bulgarian border in the late 1930s. This course of action was expected to take advantage of the naturally difficult terrain and the prepared fortifications, while protecting the strategically important port of Thessalonica. However, it disregarded the fact that the forces and equipment available were only adequate for a token resistance, and that the Metaxas Line was vulnerable to flanking through the Vardar Valley, if the neutrality of Yugoslavia was violated. Obsessed with the rivalry against Bulgaria, and being on traditionally good terms with the Yugoslavs, the Greeks had left the Yugoslav border largely undefended.
By contrast, the British preferred to create a main line of resistance along the Kleidi line, running on a roughly southeast direction from the town of Edessa to the delta of the Vardar River. The advantage of this course of action was that it required fewer forces, and that more time would be available for preparing the position. However, it also involved abandoning nearly the whole of Northern Greece, which was unacceptable to the Greeks for political and psychological reasons. Moreover, the left flank of this line too was susceptible to flanking from Germans operating through the Monastir gap in Yugoslavia.
The product of this disagreement was that eventually two distinct lines of resistance were set up, one along the Metaxas Line and one along the Kleidi line, both of which were undermanned. Predictably, both were easily overrun by the Germans, despite occasional acts of heroism. From the onset however, the Allies were at a huge disadvantage because the main mass of the Greek army was committed in Albania and could not be used to face the German threat.
Military Operations
Initial German attacks against the Metaxas Line by mountain troops (5th and 6th Mountain Divisions) met with little success. The Greek Eastern Macedonia Army Section (Tμήμα Στρατıάς Ανατολικής Μακεδονίας or TΣAM, sometimes mistakenly referred to as Second Greek Army), exploited the terrain to the their advantage and fought tenaciously, although their small numbers and limited amount of ammunition meant that by April 7th several strongpoints had been overrun, although as a whole the Line remained intact. While the defenders in most remaining strongpoints and forts were determined to fight on, the line was quickly outflanked by German Panzer forces (2nd Panzer Division) invading through southern Yugoslavia and down the Vardar Valley, meeting only sporadic resistance from hastily assembled Greek forces. On April 9th elements of the 2nd Panzer had reached Thessaloniki, and the remaining Greek forces of the TSAM were reluctantly forced to surrender. Even after General Bakopoulos surrendered the Metaxas Line however, the soldiers manning the frontier forts, and some of the frontier troops continued to fight on and as a result of this continued resistance, about half of the soldiers of the Metaxas line were able to evacuate by sea.[4]
The British and Commonwealth forces in Greece (a corps-size contigent known as W Force), under the command of General Henry Maitland Wilson, had only began to settle in their defensive line when news of the German invasion came. The outcome of initial clashes with the Germans at Vevi were not encouraging, while the rapid advance of the Panzers into Thessaloniki and the Prilep in Southern Yugoslavia greatly disturbed Wilson, who was faced with the prospect of being pinned by the invading Germans operating from Thessaloniki while being flanked by the German XL Panzer Corps descending through the Monastir Gap. This necessitated a retreat, initially to the Aliakmon river, and then to the narrow pass at Thermopylae, where the Germans broke through again on April 23rd, all the way down until German forces were at the Greek capital, on April 27th.
The retreat of the W Force, exposed the right flank of the Greek forces operating against the Italians in Albania, known as the Western Macedonia Army Section (Tμήμα Στρατıάς Δυτικής Μακεδονίας - TΣΔM) and Epirus Army Section (Tμήμα Στρατıάς Ηπείρου - TΣΗ) (sometimes mistakenly referred to as First Greek Army). The Greeks were very reluctant to concede ground to the Italians, and therefore refused to redeploy forces to counter the new threat, until they were cut off by elements of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler brigade. On April 20th, the commander of the Greek forces in Albania, General Georgios Tsolakoglou offered his surrender to the advancing Germans (although at Mussolini's insistence, the Italians were included in the final surrender agreement, precisely what Tsolakoglou had wanted to avoid). In recognition of the valour displayed by Greek forces, the enlisted men were allowed to return to their homes (rather than being confined to POW camps) and officers were permitted to retain their sidearms.
After some brief holding actions on the Peloponnese, the Greeks, British and Commonwealth forces had to be evacuated to Crete and Egypt. The evacuation of nearly 40,000 soldiers was completed on April 28th, but was heavily contested by the German Luftwaffe, which managed to sink at least 26 troop-laden ships.
In the bitterly contested Battle of Crete, the Germans employed parachute forces in a massive airborne invasion. The Germans met fierce resistance from the Allied troops on the island and from local civilians. The Germans were ultimately successful, in large part because Allied commanders failed to grasp the situation. The Germans suffered such heavy casualties on the island however, that Hitler forbade any further airborne operations.
Evaluation
The overall German casualties in the Battle of Greece, as they were officially announced by Germany after the end of the operation, are roughly 5,000 men including 1,100 dead. The actual losses, as they are estimated are 11,500, with 2,500 dead. The Allied expeditionary force lost approximately a quarter of its 58,000 strength including 11,000 captured, and Greece was effectively forced out of the war. Italian casualties were far heavier and amounted to over 100,000 as a result of their six month fight with Greece.
However, the measure of resistance was paid considerable homage to by German officals. Hitler's Chief of Staff, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel stated "The unbelievably strong resistance of the Greeks delayed by two or more vital months the German attack against Russia; if we did not have this long delay, the outcome of the war would have been different in the eastern front and in the war in general."
A speech Hitler made at the Reichstag in 1941 said of the campaign: “It must be said, for the sake of historical truth, that amongst all our opponents, only the Greeks fought with such endless courage and defiance of death.” The diary of Joseph Goebbels 9 April 1941: “I forbid the Press to underestimate the Greeks, to defame them... The Führer admires the bravery of Greeks.”
Footnotes
- ^ Christopher Buckley Greece and Crete 1941, (London: 1952; P. Efstathiadis & Sons S.A.:1984) ISBN 960-226-041-6, p. 16-18
- ^ Buckley, p 17
- ^ http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1941/mar41/f16mar41.htm
- ^ Buckley, p. 61