Military history of Greece during World War II
The exiled Greek government also formed armed forces of its own, which served and fought alongside the British in the Middle East, North Africa, and Italy.The Italian invasion from Albania on October 28, 1940, after making small initial gains, was stopped by the determined defense of Greek forces in the battles at the Elaia–Kalamas line and the Pindus Mountains.[2] In a final attempt to restore Italian prestige before the German intervention, a counterattack was launched on March 9, 1941, against the key sector of Klissura, under Mussolini's personal supervision.Italian Bersaglieri units appeared and entered the plain of Korce, but even though minefields and road-blocks tried to delay their passage into Greek territory, they simply dismounted from their trucks and continued advancing by bicycle.The resulting "Battle of Greece" ended with the fall of Kalamata in the Peloponnese on April 30, the evacuation of the Commonwealth Expeditionary Force and the complete occupation of the Greek mainland by the Axis.While pursuing the British southward, the southwest movement threatened the rear of the bulk of the Greek Army (14 divisions), which faced the Italians at the Albanian front.The generals at the front began exploring the possibilities for capitulation (to the Germans only), despite the High Command's insistence on continuing the fight to cover the British retreat.In the event, several generals under the leadership of Lt. Gen. Georgios Tsolakoglou mutinied on April 20, and taking matters in their own hands, signed a protocol of surrender with the commander of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) near Metsovo the same day.About the same time the Commonwealth forces made a last stand at Thermopylae before their final retreat to the ports of Peloponnese for evacuation to Crete or Egypt.German troops seized the Corinth Canal bridges, entered Athens on April 27, and completed their occupation of the mainland and most islands by the end of the month, along with the Italians and Bulgarians.Very soon, the Cretans formed resistance groups and in cooperation with British SOE agents began to harass the German forces with considerable success till the end of the war.As a result, mass reprisals against civilians continued throughout the occupation (Heraklion, Viannos, Kali Sykia, Kallikratis, Damasta, Kedros, Anogeia, Skourvoula, Malathyros, etc.).[6] According to the OKH Heeresarzt 10-Day Casualty Reports per Theater of War, 1944,[7] the German field army had 8,152 dead, 22,794 wounded and 8,222 missing in the South- East (Greece and Yugoslavia) between 22 June 1941 and 31 December 1944.The Bulgarians occupied their own zone with an Army Corps and, faced with active resistance from the local population, engaged from the outset in a policy of Bulgarization of the area.Finally, with the advance of the Red Army and the desertion of Romania and Bulgaria, the Germans evacuated mainland Greece in October 1944, although isolated garrisons remained in Crete, the Dodecanese and various other Aegean islands until the end of the war in May 1945.As in some occupied European countries, a Greek puppet government was formed from the outset by the Occupation authorities, initially headed by General Georgios Tsolakoglou and later by Konstantinos Logothetopoulos.Except for isolated cases, such as the group of Colonel Georgios Poulos and Friedrich Schubert's Jagdkommando, only in 1943, with the appointment of the experienced politician Ioannis Rallis as Prime Minister, did the Germans allow any substantial Greek armed force to be recruited by the Athens government.These were the infamous "Security Battalions" (Tagmata Asfaleias), whose motivation, as in many other cases in occupied Europe, was primarily political: they fought exclusively against the communist-dominated EAM-ELAS resistance movement, which controlled most of the country.
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