This week, 70 years ago, the German Wehrmacht launched an assault on the Kingdom of Greece, after Greek Prime Minister, Alexandros Korizis, rejected the German demand for unconditional surrender. On the same day the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was also attacked.
    This was occasioned by the Italian Duce’s foolhardy decision to launch an invasion against the Greek homeland at the onset of winter. What little progress the Italian army made in the first weeks of the surprise, unprovoked attack, which was launched from Italian-occupied Albania, was subsequently reversed. The Greeks then drove the Italians from their country and occupied a significant part of Albania, before they ran out of steam and the Italians stiffened.
    But the Italian assault accomplished two other things - neither good for the Axis cause. The first was that it stripped Marshal Rodolfo Graziani of the much needed, and promised supplies and equipment which were necessary to contend with the Commonwealth forces in Libya and Egypt. Secondly, because of the guarantees which the British had given to Greece, the oil fields of Rumania, from which the Reich was deriving much of its oil, were now within bombing range of the Royal Air Force. For that last reason, the Germans felt that they had no choice other than to pull the Italian fat out of the fire.
    On April 6, 1941, the German Wehrmacht launched Operation Marita when units of Field Marshal Wilhelm List’s Twelfth Army invaded the Kingdom of Greece through Yugoslavia and Bulgaria.
    Although the British reminded the Greeks of Frederick the Great’s admonition that, “He who attempts to defend everything, defends nothing,” and urged them to give up their gains in Albania, shorten their lines and withdraw to more defensible positions, they just could not bear to give up that which they had taken from the Italians. Consequently, they found themselves with too little strength, even with Commonwealth reinforcements, to oppose the Germans elsewhere and were seriously threatened with encirclement. Then, they withdrew. However, it was too late. The SS Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler Regiment was astride their line of retreat.
    On April 9, the Greek city of Thessalonika was captured, thereby severing Thrace and Thessaly from the rest of the country. By then, Lt. Gen. Konstantinos Bakopoulos had surrendered the Greek Second Army.
    General Alexandros Papagos, Greek Commander-in-Chief, suggested to British commander General Henry Maitland Wilson on April 14, that Commonwealth forces be withdrawn from Greece, lest they, too, be lost.
    After telling the King that he had failed him, Greek Prime Minister, Alexandros Korizis shot and killed himself on April 18, 1941.
    Two days later, on the Führer’s birthday, General Georgios Tsolakoglou relieved First Army’s commander Ioannis Pitsikis, without the approval of  Commander-in-Chief Aleksandros Papagos, and surrendered the remainder of Greek forces -  First Army - which had been holding the Italian Ninth Army in Albania, to the SS Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler’s commander Joseph “Sepp” Dietrich. With Greece on the ropes, the Bulgarian Army entered Thrace the same day.
    The Italian Duce was furious! Even in defeat, the Greeks had found a way to humiliate him! Finally, to placate Il Duce Hitler ordered another surrender ceremony to be attended by representatives of all three countries - Germany, Italy and Greece - which occurred on April 23. One of the terms of the surrender called for the Greeks to surrender their arms and artillery. Later that day, after receiving the order to surrender his guns, Major Konstantinos Versis dynamited the guns, then shot and killed himself.
    The only task remaining to the Axis was to chastize the Commonwealth forces, who were rapidly heading for Greek ports. Then began a race down the Greek Peninsula. Commonwealth forces fought a number of delaying actions, one of which occurred at the historic pass of Thermopylae, where, in 480 B.C., 300 Spartans, 400 Thebans and 700 Thespians led by Spartan King Leonidas had held the pass, until all were killed, against a Persian army of overwhelming numbers. A brigade from New Zealand held the famous pass for a day, until being ordered to retreat on the evening of April 24.
    The next day, King George II and his family and government left Athens for the island of Crete, and German paratroopers occupied the Isthmus of Corinth.
    Two days later, the first German troops arrived in Athens. They went to the Acropolis, where they encountered Konstantinos Koukidis, an Evzoni (honor guard) soldier and ordered him to take the Greek flag down and raise the German flag. He lowered the Greek flag, wrapped it around his body and jumped to his death. A plaque now commemorates his heroism and sacrifice.
    On April 30, General Tsolakoglou was appointed to head the Greek government. After the war he was tried and convicted of treason and sentenced to death, which sentence was commuted. He died in prison on May 22, 1948.
    By May 1, the evacuation of Commonwealth troops from the Greek mainland was complete, with most going to Crete. Approximately 8000 were captured and many more killed as the Luftwaffe sank, at least, 26 troopships.
    On May 3, at the Italian Duce’s insistence, an Axis victory parade was held in Athens. German Chief-of-Staff Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel had this to say:
    “The squall over the troops’ victorious entry into Athens was a chapter to itself.  Hitler wanted to do without a separate parade to avoid injuring Greek National pride.  Mussolini, alas, insisted on a glorious entry into the City for his Italian Troops.  The Führer yielded to the Italian demand, and together, the German and Italian Troops marched into Athens.  This miserable spectacle, laid on by our gallant Ally, must have produced some hollow laughter from the Greeks.”
    The occupation of Greece was divided between Germany, Italy and Bulgaria. The Germans did not inter the captured Greek soldiers. On Hitler’s orders, they were merely disarmed and sent home.
    On May 4, 1941 in an address to the Reichstag, the German Führer paid tribute to the Greeks when he said that, “Historical justice obliges me to state that, of the enemies who took up positions against us, the Greek soldier particularly fought with the highest courage. He capitulated only when further resistance had become impossible and useless.”
    The cost to the German Reich for the Balkan adventure was 1,099 dead, 3,752 wounded and 385 missing. The Italians, from the initial attack until the end suffered 13,755 dead and 63,142 wounded.  Most of their captured were liberated when Greece surrendered. The Bulgarians suffered 400 killed or missing. The Greeks suffered 13,325 dead, 62,663 wounded and 1,290 missing. Commonwealth losses were 903 dead, 1,253 wounded and 13,958 captured.
    After the conquest, Greece was initially divided into three zones of occupation - German, Italian and Bulgarian. During the occupation hundreds of thousands of Greeks died - most from the Great Famine during the first winter of the occupation. There were also executions - 40,000 by the Bulgarians, 21,000 by the Germans and 9,000 by the Italians. Of the country’s prewar population of 60,000 Jews, 81 percent were murdered.
    After the Italian Kingdom surrendered, in September 1943, the Germans administered their zone as well. That transition did not always go smoothly. The novel and film, “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” recounts the massacre of the Italian Acqui Division, commanded by General Antonio Gandin, which was garrisoning the Greek island of Kefalonia. After some negotiating, and a bit of a scuffle which cost the Germans 300, and the Italians 1200, dead, General Gandin surrendered his command. The Germans then executed the Italian officers and several thousand soldiers. Those that weren’t killed were loaded aboard ships for shipment to the Reich. Most of them died when the ships were sunk en route.
    Scholars still debate whether German involvement in Greece cost the Axis victory in Russia.  Stalin thought that it did.  He would say, “The Russian people will always be grateful to the Greeks for delaying the German Army long enough for winter to set in, thereby giving us the precious time we needed to prepare. We will never forget.”  Field Marshal Keitel, agreed, saying at his trial in Nuremberg, that, “The unbelievably strong resistence 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.” His opposite number, Soviet Marshal Georgi Zhukov, said that, “If the Russian people managed to raise resistance at the doors of Moscow to halt the German torrent, they owe it to the Greek people, who delayed the German divisions during the time they could bring us to our knees.”
    Others, however, note that the spring of 1941 was unusually wet in the western part of the U.S.S.R., turning the roads into rivers of mud, which would have appreciably slowed the German Blitzkrieg. Besides, Field Marshal List’s Twelfth Army constituted only a tiny percentage of the 3,500,000 Axis soldiers who joined in the greatest offensive in history - Operation Barbarossa. What is without question is that partisan warfare in Greece and, more so in Yugoslavia, occupied hundreds of thousands of Axis troops that could have been put to good use elsewhere.

 

*Next - THE FALL OF ITALIAN EAST AFRICA   

 

Mr. Wimbrow writes from Ocean City, Maryland, where he practices law representing those persons accused of criminal and traffic offenses, and those persons who have suffered a personal injury through no fault of their own.