The Greco-Italian War

The first Axis setback

Italy’s invasion of Greece in late 1940 is often overlooked in favor of the battles of the Western Front, the bitter fighting in the Soviet Union, or the Pacific War. Nevertheless, it is not just a story of Greek heroism in the face of a stronger enemy, but also the first time the Axis war machine encountered a serious setback. After German victories in Poland (Stories of Poland’s fall), Denmark and Norway (The German invasion of Norway), the Benelux countries (The Benelux states in World War II) and France, and early Italian victories against Britain in North Africa, Italy’s overconfident invasion of Greece was the first time something seriously went wrong for Hitler and Mussolini.
 
ITALY’S AMBITION
Mussolini’s ultimate goal was to create spazio vitale (“living space,” the Italian equivalent of the German lebensraum) for his new, Fascist Roman Empire. Extending control over Greece and the rest of the Balkans through either diplomatic or military means was an integral step toward that goal.
 
In 1923, Mussolini temporarily occupied the Greek island of Corfu, ostensibly as revenge for the murder of an Italian general on the Greek-Albanian border. His longer-term goal was to turn Greece into a puppet state while annexing Greek islands in both the Ionian Sea between Greece and Italy, and in the Aegean, off Greece’s eastern shores. The crisis was averted through international effort, and Italian troops eventually withdrew from Corfu.

In April 1939, before World War II, Italy invaded and occupied Albania, which lies adjacent to Greece’s northwest border. There was now an available route for land invasion.
 
By late 1940, the Duce was feeling a sense of urgency. Previous Italian attempts to dominate the Balkans were always opposed by Germany, and Mussolini felt that Hitler was trying to grab the area for himself, cheating Italy of its “rightful” spoils. The invasion of Greece was going to reassert Italian territorial ambitions in the region.
 
In July, Italy started provoking Greece by attacking Greek warships and submarines with bombers. On August 15, an Italian submarine torpedoed and sank the Greek cruiser Elli, which was in harbor participating in a major Orthodox religious holiday. The incident led to a surge of anti-Italian sentiment in Greece.

Mussolini was full of hubris and was confident the invasion would succeed easily. The man who egged him on the loudest was General Sebastiano Visconti Prasca, commander-in-chief of Italian forces in Albania. Prasca, convinced that the Greek were pushovers, wanted to be in command of the invasion, hoping that inevitable success would earn him the coveted rank of Marshal. He argued against the inclusion of additional Italian forces, fearing that if the invading army grew too large, he would be replaced by a more experienced officer. One sign of how careless the Italians were is the fact that only 107 of the planned 1,750 supply trucks arrived in time for the invasion, while 300,000 troops and 600,000 reservists were allowed to go home for the harvest shortly before the attack.

GREECE’S PREDICAMENT
Greece was an unstable country during the first half of the 20th century, weakened by three wars including World War I, and under several dictatorships. One constant threat was Bulgaria, which threatened to invade Greece’s northeastern part. The 1934 Balkan Pact between Greece, Yugoslavia, Romania and Turkey (the countries that surrounded Bulgaria) was signed for mutual protection against the unpleasant neighbor that had territorial designs on all signatories.
 
In the 1920s, Greece sought rapprochement with Italy, but changed policies after Italy’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, which revealed Mussolini’s aggressive intentions. Greece started to seek support from Britain instead. Britain helped restore the monarchy in Greece (“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown”) which lead to the strange coexistence of an Anglophile king and a Ioannis Metaxas, the Germanophile prime minister-dictator. Of course, strengthening ties with Britain enraged Mussolini, making an invasion even more likely.

THE INVASION BEGINS
On October 13, 1940, Mussolini informed Pietro Badoglio, Chief of the General Staff, that the invasion would begin on the 26th, giving him a mere two weeks to finalize plans. The original plan was only to conquer Epirus, the mountainous region that lies along the Greece-Albanian border, but it was expanded into a full-blow invasion of the country the next day, with Mussolini sweeping aside Badoglio’s protests that there weren’t enough forces for the task.

Bulgaria was invited to join the invasion and tied up Greece’s forces in the northwest. A stern warning from Turkey, a signatory of the Balkan Pact, that it would join in on the Greek side if Bulgaria got involved, persuaded Bulgaria to stay out of the matter. This allowed Greece to move most of its forces stationed along the Bulgarian border westward, to reinforce defenses along the Albanian border.
 
At around 3:00 AM on October 28, 1940, the Italian ambassador to Greece delivered an ultimatum to Greek prime minister Metaxas: allow Italian forces to enter Greece and occupy unspecified “strategic locations,” or face war. Metaxas replied “Alors, c’est la guerre!”, French for “Then it is war.” A popular Greek myth, however, holds that his reply was a laconic “ohi!,” Greek for “no!” The unpopular dictator became a national hero overnight, and ohi turned into a rallying cry for Greek resistance, celebrated to this day. Most Greeks believed that they would easily triumph against the invaders. The political and military elite held no such illusions, as they were clear about how bad the situation was; they nevertheless insisted that fighting was necessary for the nation’s honor.

Initially, 87,000 Italian troops, 463 planes, 163 light tanks and 686 artillery pieces faced off against 50,000 Greek soldiers, 160 operational fighters, and 940 artillery guns along a 90-mile (150 km) frontline of rugged mountains and very few roads. Most of Greece’s military equipment was World War I issue from Poland, France, Belgium and Austria, all countries under German occupation now. Britain helped Greece with light and medium bombers flying from Egypt and old Gloster Gladiator biplane fighters; but Britain itself was pushed hard by Italian forces in North Africa and could only afford to send limited support. Italy also commanded thousands of Albanian auxiliaries, but most of these deserted or fled. Once the fighting began, Italy quickly realized it greatly overestimated its own capability and underestimated Greece’s will to fight. Advance through the mountains and the swamps of the Kalamas river was grueling.

An amphibious landing on Corfu was planned but delayed by bad weather. By November 2, the revised date, the troops slated for the landing were badly needed as reinforcements on the mainland, so the attack on Corfu was shelved.
 
In the Pindus mountains, 2,000 Greek reservists were stretched thin along a 23-mile (37 km) stretch of front in extremely broken terrain. Though hard pressed and their commander gravely wounded, they held the line until hastily sent reinforcements arrived. Aided by local civilians, including women, children and the elderly, the defenders managed to surround the attacking Italian mountain division and nearly wiped it out before it could retreat.
 
The Italian invasion ran out of steam and was pushed back to the border and into Albania. On November 13, the overly ambitious General Prasca was relieved and recalled to Italy.  

TURNING THE TABLES
Greek units started pushing into Albania, driving the Italians in front of them, on November 14. Italian frontline troops were exhausted from three weeks of non-stop fighting. Their supply situation was abysmal. Only two ports in Albania were ready to receive supplies and were backlogged. There were not nearly enough trucks, horses and mules to get supplies from the ports to the frontline, and the chaotic maneuvering of combat units made them hard to find by whatever supply column did get underway.
 
Having no tanks of their own and insufficient anti-tank weapons, the Greeks only advanced along mountain ridges, avoiding the valleys where Italian tankettes could maneuver and be brought to bear. They could always count on the local ethnic Greek population for mountain guides and supplies.

Even though Greece managed to halt the Italian invasion and push back into Albania, things on the front were far from rosy due to heavy casualties and supply shortages. Greek High Command decided to stop large-scale advances in late December, though fighting continued for contested territories. The Italians were steadily building up their numbers in Albania, reaching around 270,000 troops by January.
 
By February 1941, Greece’s artillery ammunition was down to less than two months’ worth of stocks, and acute shortages affected every type of supplies despite British efforts to help Greece. Greece tried to secure aid from the United States, but U.S. military production prioritized helping the British. Meanwhile, Italian supplies and reinforcements were continuously arriving in Albania.
 
On March 9, Italy launched a new offensive, with 9 Italian divisions facing 6 Greek ones and trying to push them out of Albania. The operation was called off on March 16, after over 24,000 Italian and 5,301 Greek casualties. Though the attack failed to gain ground, it did manage to exhaust Greek forces even further.

By this time, Greece was suffering from every sort of arms and equipment shortage. Some 200 to 300,000 partially trained men could not be sent to the frontline because they had no uniforms, guns or other equipment. Food shortages were affecting the entire country. The British stepped up aid efforts in March and April, but could not truly relieve the problem.
 
Even so, what little supplies the Greek had could still get to the frontline thanks to their better logistics network, and some pieces of equipment, mainly machine guns and artillery, were superior to their Italian counterparts. Meanwhile, Italy still hadn’t managed to sort out its logistics, and its bountiful supplies had trouble getting to where they were needed.

THE END
By April 1941, both sides decided to ask for outside help. Greece and Britain persuaded Yugoslavia to join on their side and help push Italy completely out of Albania and back into the sea. However, this decision came too little too late: Mussolini beat them to the clock by biting the bullet and asking for Hitler’s help.
 
On April 6, Operation Marita kicked off. German troops launched an offensive from Bulgaria, rapidly overwhelming both Yugoslavia and Greece. Greek defensive position along the Bulgarian border had been largely emptied when the Italian invasion started and could not stop the Germans. The bulk of the Greek army was trapped in Albania and pressed by Italy, unable to retreat and react to the new German axis of attack. Troops sent by the British Empire started arriving in Greece in March and numbered 62,000 by late April, but were insufficient to stem the tide. With their forces disintegrating, Greece could no longer fight and surrendered on April 20. As a final defiant gesture to Italy, the surrender was offered to German SS Obergruppenführer Sepp Dietrich. (On Mussolini’s insistence, they were later forced to sign a second surrender which also mentioned Italy.)

Realistically, Greece was doomed to fail the moment the Italian invasion began, it was just a matter of time. Nevertheless, the country managed to humiliate Mussolini’s military by showing it was much weaker than believed. Sending troops to help out Italy forced Hitler to delay the invasion of the Soviet Union by five weeks, and the Italian fiasco lowered his opinion of his Mediterranean ally. For the first time since World War II began, the world saw that the Axis was not invincible. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once declared that "today we say that Greeks fight like heroes, from now on we will say that heroes fight like Greeks."
 
Join us on our Italian tours, such as the South Italian Tour, the North Italian Tour or the Grand Italian Tour, to learn more about Italy’s WWII involvement and Mussolini’s Fascist reign.