Greece, invasion of

The invasion of Albania, Greece, and Yugoslavia instigated a Balkan campaign fought by Greek, British, and Yugoslav forces. Italy invaded Albania in April 1939, more than a year before Benito Mussolini took his country into World War II. Much as Adolf Hitler had done with the Sudetenland, Mussolini gave assurances that the invasion would stop with Albania and that he had no intention of invading Greece. The Allies, France and Great Britain, did not take this disclaimer at face value but responded to it with pledges to defend the sovereignty of Romania and Greece. It was a response that moved Italy squarely into the German camp as the two nations concluded the Pact of Steel. Yet even after Italy declared war against the Allies on June 10, 1940, Mussolini continued to assert his intention not to invade Greece. However, on October 28, 1940, claiming that Greece had in its relations with Great Britain forfeited its status as a neutral, Mussolini moved troops from Albania into Greece. The Italian dictator did not anticipate much resistance. France had already lost the fight for its life, and, with British forces preoccupied with home defense and Mediterranean Sea naval operations, he had no reason to believe that Great Britain would be in any position to honor its earlier pledge of aid. Accordingly, the invasion force was understrength, and it was quickly brushed aside by Greek resistance, which was bolstered by five Royal Air Force (RAF) squadrons providing close air support. On November 14, the Greeks turned the tables on the Italians, staging a counteroffensive that drove them back into Albania. British bombers braved miserable weather to bomb Italian port facilities and communications as the Greeks advanced against Valona. As Italy reeled under this humiliating counteroffensive, German planners, recognizing the need to secure the Romanian oilfields and also to protect the southernmost flank of the planned invasion of the Soviet Union, decided to stage their own invasion of Greece. In January 1941, Germany began a troop build-up in Romania, a nation now aligned with the Axis. Luftwaffe units were also dispatched to Bulgaria. In the meantime, German diplomats fruitlessly attempted to intervene in the ongoing combat between Greece and Italy. Despite success against the Italians, the Greek position was increasingly vulnerable as the Greek- British alliance faltered under mutual suspicions. Nevertheless, on March 9, 1941, when the Italians launched a new offensive against Greece, this time with 28 divisions, they were again repulsed. But a new problem developed as Yugoslavia officially joined the Axis on March 25, a move that provoked an antifascist coup against the Yugoslav government. This reinvigorated the Greek-British alliance, and Commonwealth troops were rushed to the Greek front from the Middle East, along with more RAF units. All of this would have been more than a match for the Italians, but, on April 6, 1941, the Luftwaffe attacked Belgrade, and, simultaneously, General Siegmund List led the Twelfth German Army from Bulgaria into Yugoslavia and Greece. On April 8 and 10, combined German, Italian, and Hungarian forces invaded Yugoslavia. Belgrade fell on April 12, and the nation surrendered on April 17. The process of Yugoslavia's defeat freed up List's 40th Corps to advance from southern Yugoslavia into Greece, outflanking the troops holding the Aliakmon Line there. Simultaneously, List's 18th Corps plowed through the Metaxas Line and took Salonika on April 9. British general Maitland Wilson pulled his forces back to a new defensive line on April 10, then, on the 14th, withdrew all the way to Thermopylae. Greek general Alexandros Papagos, fearing a total collapse of Greek Army morale, delayed withdrawal from the Albanian front, and when he finally did order it, on April 12, List was sufficiently far advanced to isolate the Greek forces from their British and Commonwealth allies. New Zealand troops scored a small triumph against List's 18th Corps at Olympus Pass on April 14, but the situation was ultimately hopeless. On April 21, the British decided to cut their losses and withdraw from Greece altogether, whereupon the Greek Army surrendered. The evacuation of British and Commonwealth forces was hard fought but successfully completed during the night of April 30–May 1. As for Greece, the Communist Party (KKE) there organized disparate guerrilla bands into a fairly well coordinated resistance, which, by September 1941, developed into the National Liberation Front (EAM), a leftleaning group, but by no means completely communist. In December, the EAM created the National People's Liberation Army (ELAS) as its military arm. ELAS forces organized themselves in the mountains and were joined there by members of the National Republican League (EDES) as well as a few smaller resistance groups. British Special Operations Executive (SOE) operatives were parachuted into Greece to work with Greek guerrilla fighters in a program of sabotage, which, despite severe German reprisals, was highly effective. Especially hard hit were Greece's already tenuous rail lines, which the guerrillas effectively denied to the occupiers through incessant and often spectacular acts of sabotage. However, relations between the SOE and the guerrillas were often strained. When the Germans withdrew from Greece in October 1944, ending the occupation, Georgios Papandreou, the Greek prime minister, ordered the guerrillas to disband. ELAS refused, and the nation that had just been delivered from German occupation now tottered on the brink of civil war. The British brought in more troops, but a low-level war erupted between ELAS and Greek government forces in December 1944. It did not end until February 1945 with a truce. Outright civil war did erupt in the years following World War II, and it was only by means of British and then, even more important, American military and economic aid that a communist takeover was averted and the government secured by 1949.