CHAPTER 6

The Balkan Campaign

GERMAN TANKS ROLL THROUGH THE STREETS OF BUCHAREST, SEPTEMBER 1941, FOLLOWING ROMANIA’S SIGNING OF THE TRIPARTITE PACT.

On 10 June 1940, Benito Mussolini, Fascist dictator of Italy, declared war on France. With Paris about to fall to the Germans, Mussolini wanted to reap benefits from his Axis partner’s success. In the week before the French armistice was signed on 22 June, a hastily arranged Italian offensive was launched on French positions in the Alps. The result was a military disaster.

Badly equipped and poorly prepared, the advancing Italian troops walked into a massacre. Not only did they have no idea why they were going to war, they had little combat experience or training. It was an experience that soldiers of the Italian Army would find repeated many times over the next three years, as their leader sought to emulate the astounding string of victories achieved by his ally, Adolf Hitler.

Mussolini had been planning to wage a ‘parallel war’ alongside Hitler, chiefly to ensure a share of the spoils, ever since the signing of the ‘Pact of Steel’ between Italy and Germany on 22 May 1939. Just over three months later, as Hitler’s forces attacked Poland and, in 1940, northern and western Europe, Mussolini had intended to invade Yugoslavia and Greece. In the event, he was warned off getting involved in the volatile Balkans by Hitler himself.

Badly equipped and poorly prepared, the advancing Italian troops walked into a massacre. Not only did they have no idea why they were going to war, they had little combat experience or training. It was an experience that soldiers of the Italian Army would find repeated many times

However, the surrender of France in June 1940 meant the end of the balance of power in the Mediterranean that had previously been held by the French and British navies. This was a situation Mussolini was eager to exploit. Unsure whether or not the French Mediterranean fleet would remain loyal to the Vichy collaborationist government in France, the British had invited the French Admiral Darlan to join forces with them. When

Benito Mussolini, founder of the Italian Fascist Party, became prime minister of Italy in 1922. At that time, Italy was still recovering from the effects of the First World War, and the Italians were desperate for solutions to the problems of their impoverished and crime-ridden nation. After outlawing all other political parties and waging an especially vicious campaign against the communists, Mussolini set about turning Italy into a strong and unified fascist state. He wiped out his enemies at home with his private army of ‘Blackshirts’ and sought to build a glorious empire abroad. His invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1936 was a challenge to which the League of Nations could offer no practical resistance.

Mussolini’s rise to power was an early inspiration to Hitler, who set up his own army of ‘Brownshirts’ and admired many of Mussolini’s policies. However, by the time Germany and Italy formed the ‘Axis’ in 1936, the positions of the two leaders had been reversed, and Hitler’s Germany was by far the stronger of the two nations. In 1939, relations were cemented by the signing of the ‘Pact of Steel’, which would eventually lead Italy to follow Germany into the Second World War.

BRITISH TROOP REINFORCEMENTS BOUND FOR ALEXANDRIA GET THEIR FIRST GLIMPSE OF EGYPT. MANY OF THEM WERE ALSO ABOUT TO GET THEIR FIRST EXPERIENCE OF COMBAT, AS THEY ATTEMPTED TO TURN BACK THE ADVANCING ITALIAN ARMY.

Darlan had refused, Churchill authorised the Royal Navy Commander, Admiral Cunningham, to put the French fleet out of action so as to keep it out of the hands of the Germans. At the port of Alexandria, in Egypt, French ships were captured without problems, but at Mers el Kebir in Algeria the French Fleet was attacked by British guns and, except for one battle cruiser, all ships were either crippled or sunk. Over 1000 French sailors lost their lives and relations between the British and French were severely strained, even though the British had acted with great reluctance. Churchill wept in the House of Commons when he announced the news.

The sudden removal of the French military and naval presence left a vacuum in the Mediterranean that Italy was eager to fill. By default, Mussolini now had the largest air force and navy in the area, and his aims and ambitions were considerable. As far as he was concerned, the Mediterranean Sea – Mare Nostrum, or Our Sea – belonged to Italy as a matter of history. In an echo of the Nazi desire for Lebensraum, Mussolini spoke of the need to claim living space for the Italians. In private, his ultimate ambition was nothing less than the rebuilding of the ancient Roman Empire. In the Balkans, Albania had been under Italian occupation since 1939. In North Africa, Italy had control of Libya and in 1936, 500,000 Italian troops had invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and Eritrea. Mussolini now expanded his horizons. The French in Algeria and Tunisia were no longer in a position to threaten his Libyan garrison and he felt confident enough to attack British interests in Africa.

At Mers el Kebir in Algeria the French Fleet was attacked by British guns and, except for one battle cruiser, all ships were either crippled or sunk. Over 1000 French sailors lost their lives and relations between the British and French were severely strained

On 2 September 1940, Italian troops crossed the border from Libya into Egypt, where two British divisions were stationed in defence of the Suez canal. The canal was a vital link between Britain and her empire in India and the Far East. Through it, men and matériel from Britain’s overseas colonies could be shipped west to support the British war effort. If Mussolini could seize the canal, he would be able to sever Britain’s supply lines at a stroke, achieving a military victory that would bring him ‘the glory Italy has been seeking for three hundred years’. Led by General Graziani, the Italian Army initially advanced some 60 miles, capturing the town of Sidi Barrani, but despite Graziani’s claim that he was leading ‘the best colonial army in the world’, they could get no further. Some 30,000 Italian soldiers were lost in the advance, while the retreating British suffered only minimal casualties. More significantly, the Italian supply lines were now stretched all the way from Tripoli to Egypt along a single, vulnerable road.

FOR THE BRITISH, AUSTRALIAN AND INDIAN TROOPS STATIONED ALONG THE SUEZ CANAL, DEFENCE OF EGYPT MEANT DEFENCE OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE. HERE, TROOPS OF THE BRITISH SOUTH STAFFORDSHIRE REGIMENT TAKE UP POSITIONS ON THE EGYPTIAN BORDER.

At this juncture, the British Mediterranean Fleet launched a major attack on the Italian Navy. On 11 November 1940, 21 obsolete ‘Swordfish’ biplanes from the Royal Navy aircraft carrier Illustrious attacked 28 ships of the Italian fleet in the naval base at Taranto. Twelve Swordfish carried a single torpedo each. The rest carried bombs or flares. Attacking from less than 35ft, they managed to destroy almost half the Italian ships in less than an hour for the loss of only two planes destroyed and two more damaged. At a stroke, the threat of Italian sea superiority in the Mediterranean had been removed.

ITALIAN TROOPS STATIONED IN LIBYA MAN A LIGHT ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUN. ALTHOUGH THEY COULD BE BRAVE FIGHTERS, THE ITALIAN SOLDIERS WHO FOUGHT IN NORTH AFRICA AND ELSEWHERE WERE LED BY INCOMPETENT COMMANDERS. THIS INCOMPETENCE WAS TO COST THOUSANDS OF LIVES.

A counter-attack against Italian positions in Egypt soon followed. Early in December 1940, the British retook Sidi Barrani, capturing nearly 40,000 Italian prisoners. Although they were outnumbered, the 30,000 British, Indian and Australian troops were both better trained and more mobile than the Italians. The next month, they took Tobruk in Libya and then surrounded the entire Italian 10th Army at Beda Fomm. For Britain, this was a spectacular success and might have meant all-out victory in North Africa if only the British generals Wavell and O’Connor had been allowed to continue their push towards Tripoli. For Mussolini, the adventure in Africa had soon turned into disaster. In Abyssinia, his armies were being attacked by South African and Kenyan troops as well as local partisan groups, and would surrender on 20 May 1941. In the Mediterranean, Mussolini’s fleet was all but useless. His only hope for Italian glory now lay in the Balkans.

THE BALKAN CAMPAIGN

WOMEN OF THE GREEK RESISTANCE LEAD A PARTISAN UNIT THROUGH THE MOUNTAINOUS GREEK COUNTRYSIDE. THE GREEK PEOPLE TURNED OUT TO BE FAR MORE FORMIDABLE OPPONENTS THAN MUSSOLINI HAD ANTICIPATED.

On 28 October 1940, Mussolini launched his invasion of Greece. His justification was the fact that, as Greek independence was guaranteed by Britain, the country was ‘un-neutral’ and therefore presented a threat to Italy. In secret, Mussolini was still in search of a swift and impressive military victory to compare with the dramatic successes of his German allies, and expected little resistance from small and impoverished Greece. He told his generals that he was ready to ‘resign from being an Italian’ if his men failed to defeat the Greek Army. Mussolini issued an ultimatum to the Greek King, George II, and his premier, the dictator General Metaxas, demanding that Italy be allowed to occupy Greece until the end of the war. Without waiting for an answer, the 200,000 Italian soldiers stationed in Albania moved into northern Greece. Despite Hitler’s warnings not to, Italy had started a war in the Balkans.

Having seen Germany overrun western Europe in a matter of weeks, Mussolini confidently expected his own war with Greece to be over within days. He was soon proved totally wrong. The first problem the Italian Army encountered was the mountainous Greek terrain. There were few proper roads and those that did exist were in poor repair. What was more, the Italians had no maps. To make matters even worse, the winter rains had begun days before the invasion was launched, and the temperature soon dropped to freezing point. Mussolini had been so confident of quick success that his troops had not been supplied with winter clothing. Thousands froze to death in the first weeks of the campaign. Mussolini then discovered that the support for the invasion that he had expected, though not sought, from the Fascist-inclined government of neighbouring Bulgaria was not forthcoming, and his secret campaign of bribing Greek politicians and generals had been for nothing. In this way, Mussolini had hoped to ‘fix’ a speedy surrender, but his attempts at cheating had failed.

In fact, with support from the RAF, the Greeks turned out to be truly formidable opponents. Aided by Albanian mercenaries, many of whom had been originally employed by the Italians, and led by the seasoned General Papagos, the Greeks counter-attacked almost immediately. Within a week, the Italian troops, already demoralised by the weather and the terrain, were being pushed back into Albania.

A CAPTURED GERMAN PRISONER IS SEARCHED BY LIEUTENANT COLONEL REG JONES OF THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE AS AN ALBANIAN FARMER LOOKS ON.

At that, the Italian Army command began to panic. Marshal Badoglio, the Italian Chief of Staff, was sacked for accusing Mussolini of mounting the invasion for purely political purposes. Mussolini himself went to the front to rally his troops, but could do little to halt the Italian retreat. At sea, what was left of the Italian fleet was suffering further defeats from the Royal Air Force. Mussolini’s plans were coming apart. It was at this point that Hitler’s patience with his Fascist ally ran out. Fearing that the British air bases established in Greece would eventually be used to threaten Germany and the oilfields in neighbouring Romania, Hitler decided to take control of the situation and invade Greece himself. In January 1941, he announced that ‘for reasons of strategy, politics and psychology’, Germany would come to the Italian Army’s aid.

A BRITISH COMMANDO PATROL SETS OFF THROUGH THE MORNING MISTS INTO THE MOUNTAINS OF ALBANIA. THE DIFFICULT TERRAIN AND HARSH CONDITIONS IN THE BALKANS LED TO DISASTER FOR THE ITALIANS, WHO WERE COMPLETELY UNPREPARED TO FIGHT A WAR IN SUCH CIRCUMSTANCES.

However, before his armies could march on Greece, Hitler needed to secure the support of the country’s neighbours, a move that would also have the effect of securing his southern flank for the coming invasion of Russia. To this end, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria were ‘invited’ to join the Tripartite Pact signed on 27 September 1940 by Germany, Italy and Japan. Hungary and Romania, both already dominated by Germany politically and economically, agreed at once. Bulgaria joined them after being occupied by German troops who had marched through Romania. Only Yugoslavia, where a military coup replaced the pro-German government within days of the country joining the Pact, signalled defiance to Germany’s intentions.

ABOVE: BULGARIA JOINS HITLER’S BALKAN CAMPAIGN, SEPTEMBER 1940. FOLLOWING THE SIGNING OF THE TRIPARTITE PACT, BULGARIAN TROOPS WERE TO TAKE PART IN THE GERMAN INVASION OF YUGOSLAVIA.

BELOW: BULGARIAN TROOPS ON THE MOVE. BULAGARIA JOINED HUNGARY AND ROMANIA IN THE TRIPARTITE PACT ONLY AFTER BEING OCCUPIED BY GERMAN TROOPS.

Set up in July 1940 with instructions from Winston Churchill to ‘set Europe ablaze’, the Special Operations Executive aided partisan groups in France, western Europe and the Balkans in their resistance to German or Italian occupation throughout the war. As well as supplying manpower and expertise to guerrilla operations, the SOE also co-ordinated air drops of arms and explosives. In Greece, SOE agents infiltrated partisan villages and in Yugoslavia they struck up alliances with the Chetniks and afterwards the communist partisans led by Tito. Tito’s partisans were also supplied with a wide variety of arms, from guns to tanks, by the Americans, and this assistance proved instrumental in the eventual liberation of Belgrade from German troops in 1945. Tito himself would go on to become leader of Yugoslavia after the war, maintaining an uneasy relationship with Soviet Russia.

ABOVE: A GERMAN HAUPTSTURMFEUHRER PAUSES FOR A RADIO INTERVIEW DURING OPERATION PUNISHMENT, THE GERMAN ATTACK ON THE YUGOSLAV CAPITAL OF BELGRADE.

BELOW: A WAFFEN SS DIVISION ENTERS BELGRADE, APRIL 1941. THE GERMAN INVASION OF YUGOSLAVIA TOOK LESS THAN A MONTH, AND COST GERMANY ONLY 151 MEN BEFORE THE YUGOSLAV GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCED ITS SURRENDER.

Hitler was reported to be enraged. He immediately ordered that an invasion of Yugoslavia would accompany that of Greece, even though this meant putting off his plans for the assault on Russia. He called for the complete political and military destruction of Yugoslavia. On 6 April 1941, Operation Punishment began. Thirty-three German divisions marched into Yugoslavia, accompanied by a massive bombing campaign against the capital, Belgrade. Soldiers of the Yugoslav Army, many of them on horseback, fought valiantly, but could put up little effective resistance. In the 10 days before the Yugoslav Government surrendered, nearly 20,000 people were killed by Luftwaffe bombing raids alone.

GERMAN SOLDIERS ON THE MARCH THROUGH A YUGOSLAV VILLAGE.

Meanwhile, German troops, tanks and planes had begun pouring into Greece, where they were to have far more success than the Italians. With the Greek Army committed to fighting the retreating Italians in Albania, the country was poorly defended, despite the presence of large numbers of British troops. As soon as the German plans for the invasion of Greece became clear, Winston Churchill authorised the diversion of British forces from the North African campaign. However, this turned out to be a disastrous decision. Despite Churchill’s enthusiasm for the chance to engage Hitler in Europe, the move meant losing the initiative in North Africa, where Britain was on the verge of victory. By contrast, the British Expeditionary Force that landed in Greece could do little to stem the German advance. Woefully outnumbered and out-gunned, the British were obliged to retreat within days of the German invasion.

ATROCITIES IN YUGOSLAVIA. FOR EVERY GERMAN SOLDIER KILLED BY PARTISANS, 100 CIVILIANS WERE EXECUTED.

ABOVE: THE YUGOSLAV ARMY CONTAINED OVER ONE MILLION MEN BUT WAS BADLY EQUIPPED AND RIVEN BY DISSENT AND OPPOSING ETHNIC AND POLITICAL FACTIONS.

BELOW: THE CONQUERING GERMAN FORCES PARADE THEIR ARMOUR THROUGH THE STREETS OF ATHENS. DEVASTATED BY THE LOSS OF HIS COUNTRY, THE GREEK PRIME MINISTER ALEXANDER KORYZIZ COMMITTED SUICIDE THREE DAYS BEFORE THE GREEK SURRENDER.

Athens fell to German troops in less than three weeks. In an echo of Dunkirk, almost 50,000 British troops were evacuated from Greece by sea under heavy fire from German aircraft. Once again, they had been forced to flee, leaving their arms and equipment behind. On 21 April, the Greek Army surrendered. Only the island of Crete, held by the RAF and a garrison of British and New Zealand troops since the beginning of the Italian campaign, remained briefly free from Axis control. In order to take Crete, the German armed forces launched a massive airborne attack. Following Luftwaffe assaults on the island’s defences, the largest parachute force the world had yet seen began dropping over Crete. They were supported by more troops following in gliders. Once these troops had captured the island’s airfield, the Luftwaffe was able to establish complete command of the area. The losses on both sides were very great. The German parachute forces were so severely decimated that they were never again used in significant numbers. Over 25,000 British, Australian and New Zealand troops were lost trying to hold Crete. Again, the Royal Navy evacuated those it could get out, losing over 30 ships and 2000 men in the process.

GERMAN TROOPS MOVE QUICKLY TO OCCUPY THE GREEK ISLANDS, INCLUDING EUBOA, SEEN HERE.

GREEK TROOPS POSE FOR A PHOTOGRAPH IN THE DAYS BEFORE THE SURRENDER. HITLER, IN A BIZARRELY CHIVALROUS GESTURE, PERSONALLY ORDERED THAT SURRENDERING GREEK OFFICERS BE ALLOWED TO KEEP THEIR CEREMONIAL SWORDS.

A GERMAN PARATROOPER GETS THROUGH. MANY, HOWEVER, WERE PICKED OFF BY BRITISH GUNS BEFORE THEY EVEN REACHED THE GROUND.

The Axis powers now held all of the northern Mediterranean coastline. Once again, the German blitzkrieg had proved unstoppable. Mussolini, anxious to make up for his military humiliation, attempted to claim as much territory as he could from the German victory. This, in fact, suited Hitler, who had never wanted to become militarily involved in the Mediterranean in the first place. He was soon to turn his attentions elsewhere. Nevertheless, it was made clear to the Italian dictator that, from now on, he would be taking his orders from Berlin. The Italians were handed large areas of Greece and Yugoslavia and soon found themselves embroiled in a guerrilla war. In Yugoslavia, two resistance organisations, the royalist Chetniks and the communist partisans under Josip Broz, better known as Marshal Tito, declared war on both the occupying forces and on each other. The fact that Hungary, Bulgaria and Germany were also administering parts of Yugoslavia made the situation even more complicated. The situation in Greece was similar. There, the nationalist EDES and the communist ELAS spent as much time fighting each other as they did the occupiers. After the eventual Italian surrender in 1943, ELAS, tacitly supported by the Soviet Union, would go on to do battle with British troops flown in to prevent a communist take-over in Greece. In the meantime, Mussolini’s answer to the guerrilla threat was to declare that for every Italian soldier killed, 20 hostages would be executed. Infinitely more damaging to the Greek people, though, was the mass starvation that swept the country during the occupation, killing hundreds of thousands. Mussolini’s response was to claim that the Greeks had brought the situation on themselves.

The long-term consequences of Italy’s ill-fated Balkan campaign were considerable. At home, Mussolini’s standing would never recover from the Italian Army’s humiliation at the hands of a few Greek and Albanian ‘peasants’. However, by diverting the British from certain victory in North Africa, the Greek campaign gave Hitler time to send an armoured division, under the leadership of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, to assist the Italians at Tripoli, in Libya. This would change the course of the desert war. Most significantly of all, the delay caused by the distractions in Yugoslavia and Greece would turn out to have a major effect on Hitler’s next campaign: the invasion of Russia.

JOSIP BROZ, BETTER KNOWN AS ‘TITO’, LED THE YUGOSLAVIAN COMMUNIST PARTISAN MOVEMENT, WHICH CONTAINED OVER 20,000 MEMBERS AT ITS HEIGHT. HOWEVER, FROM 1942 ONWARDS, TITO’S PARTISANS DEVOTED MOST OF THEIR ENERGIES TO FIGHTING RIVAL ROYALIST CHETNIKS RATHER THAN THE GERMANS.

SS PARATROOPS MAN LOOKOUT POSITIONS DURING A FAILED OPERATION TO TRY AND CAPTURE TITO.

A JEWISH PARATROOPER TAKES UP CAMP WITH A GROUP OF PARTISANS.