German invasion of Greece

For several days, Allied troops played an important part in containing the German advance on the Thermopylae position, allowing ships to be prepared to evacuate the units defending Greece.

[c] In the early hours of 28 October, Italian Ambassador Emanuele Grazzi presented Metaxas with a three-hour ultimatum, demanding free passage for troops to occupy unspecified "strategic sites" within Greek territory.

[22] Metaxas rejected the ultimatum (the refusal is commemorated as Greek national holiday Ohi Day) but even before it expired, Italian troops had invaded Greece through Albania.

Greece did not have a substantial armaments industry and its equipment and ammunition supplies increasingly relied on stocks captured by British forces from defeated Italian armies in North Africa.

[40] As Hitler had plans to ultimately use the French colonies in Africa as bases for the war against the United Kingdom, the potential loss of Vichy control over its African empire was seen as a problem by him.

The Regent of Yugoslavia for the boy king Peter II, Prince Paul was married to a Greek princess and refused the German request for transit rights to invade Greece.

[50] During a meeting of British and Greek military and political leaders in Athens on 13 January 1941, General Alexandros Papagos, Commander-in-Chief of the Hellenic Army, asked the United Kingdom for nine fully equipped divisions and corresponding air support.

[51][38] The Greek leader, General Metaxas, did not particularly want British forces on the mainland of Greece as he feared it would lead to a German invasion of his country and during the winter of 1940–41 secretly asked Hitler if he was willing to mediate an end to the Italo-Greek war.

[55] The weather in the winter of 1940–41 seriously delayed the build-up of German forces in Romania and it was only in February 1941 that the Wehrmacht's Twelfth Army commanded by Field Marshal Wilhelm List joined by the Luftwaffe's Fliegerkorps VIII crossed the Danube river into Bulgaria.

Winston Churchill aspired to reestablish a Balkan Front comprising Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey, and instructed Anthony Eden and Sir John Dill to resume negotiations with the Greek government.

Although an invading force from Albania could be stopped by a relatively small number of troops positioned in the high Pindus mountains, the northeastern part of the country was difficult to defend against an attack from the north.

[74] General Dill described Papagos' attitude as "unaccommodating and defeatist" and argued that his plan ignored the fact that Greek troops and artillery were capable of only token resistance.

This had the advantage of requiring a smaller force than other options, while allowing more preparation time, but it meant abandoning nearly the whole of Northern Greece, which was unacceptable to the Greeks for political and psychological reasons.

[85] While weak security detachments covered his rear against a surprise attack from central Yugoslavia, elements of the 9th Panzer Division drove westward to link up with the Italians at the Albanian border.

[99] Most fortresses—like Fort Roupel, Echinos, Arpalouki, Paliouriones, Perithori, Karadag, Lisse and Istibey—held until the Germans occupied Thessaloniki on 9 April,[102] at which point they surrendered under General Bakopoulos' orders.

In a 9 April estimate of the situation, Field Marshal List commented that as a result of the swift advance of the mobile units, his 12th Army was now in a favourable position to access central Greece by breaking the Greek build-up behind the Axios river.

The port of Volos, at which the British had re-embarked numerous units during the prior few days, fell on 21 April; there, the Germans captured large quantities of valuable diesel and crude oil.

[111] On 15 April, Regia Aeronautica fighters attacked the (RHAF) base at Paramythia, 50 kilometres (30 mi) south of Greece's border with Albania, destroying or putting out of action 17 VVKJ aircraft that had recently arrived from Yugoslavia.

The motorcycle battalion of the 2nd Panzer Division, which had crossed to the island of Euboea to seize the port of Chalcis and had subsequently returned to the mainland, was given the mission of outflanking the British rearguard.

According to the most popular account of the events, the Evzone soldier on guard duty, Konstantinos Koukidis, took down the Greek flag, refusing to hand it to the invaders, wrapped himself in it, and jumped off the Acropolis.

[151] On 25 April (Anzac Day), the few RAF squadrons left Greece (D'Albiac established his headquarters in Heraklion, Crete) and some 10,200 Australian troops evacuated from Nafplio and Megara.

[154] On 25 April the Germans staged an airborne operation to seize the bridges over the Corinth Canal, with the double aim of cutting off the British line of retreat and securing their own way across the isthmus.

[155] The 1st SS Motorised Infantry Regiment (named LSSAH), assembled at Ioannina, thrust along the western foothills of the Pindus Mountains via Arta to Missolonghi and crossed over to the Peloponnese at Patras in an effort to gain access to the isthmus from the west.

Field Marshal Alan Brooke, (who became Chief of the Imperial General Staff in December 1941), considered intervention in Greece to be "a definite strategic blunder", as it denied Wavell the necessary reserves to complete the conquest of Italian Libya, or to withstand Rommel's Afrika Korps March offensive.

[130] It has also been suggested the British strategy was to create a barrier in Greece to protect Turkey, the only (neutral) country standing between the Axis bloc in the Balkans and the oil-rich Middle East.

[180] The proposal had been accepted by a meeting of the War Cabinet in London at which Menzies was present but the Australian Prime Minister had been told by Churchill that both Freyberg and Blamey approved of the expedition.

Eden rejected the criticism and argued that the UK's decision was unanimous and asserted that the Battle of Greece delayed Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union.

[188] According to Robert Kirchubel, "the main causes for deferring Barbarossa's start from 15 May to 22 June were incomplete logistical arrangements and an unusually wet winter that kept rivers at full flood until late spring.

[130] Antony Beevor wrote in 2012 about the current thinking of historians with regard to delays caused by German attacks in the Balkans that "most accept that it made little difference" to the eventual outcome of Barbarossa.

Buckley writes, "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.

Australian soldiers in Alexandria , Egypt, embarking for Greece
Winston Churchill believed it was vital for the United Kingdom to take every measure possible to support Greece. On 8 January 1941, he stated that "there was no other course open to us but to make certain that we had spared no effort to help the Greeks who had shown themselves so worthy." [ 70 ]
Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Blamey , commander of Australian I Corps , Lieutenant General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, commanding general of the Empire expeditionary force ('W' Force) and Major General Bernard Freyberg , commander of the New Zealand 2nd Division, in 1941 in Greece
German advance until 9 April 1941, when the 2nd Panzer Division seized Thessaloniki [ image reference needed ]
German infantry in Greece
Australian anti-tank gunners resting, soon after their withdrawal from the Vevi area
Retreating Greek soldiers, April 1941
German artillery firing during the advance through Greece
Damage from the German bombing of Piraeus on 6 April 1941. During the bombing, a ship carrying nitroglycerin was hit, causing a huge explosion [ 140 ]
In the morning of 15 April 1941, Wavell sent to Wilson the following message: "We must of course continue to fight in close cooperation with Greeks but from news here it looks as if early further withdrawal necessary." [ 144 ]
Occupation: Italian German Bulgarian Italian territory
German paratroopers land in Crete