This page is intended to serve as a focal point for studying Greek military history during the World War II-era.
Greece dealt the first victory for the allies by resisting initial attempts of Italian invasion and pushing Mussolini's forces back into Albania. Hitler was reluctantly forced to send forces and delay the invasion of the Soviet Union by six weeks. This is considered the turning point of the war as the German invasion was disastrous as a result of the Russian winter. The Germans also met fierce resistance on the island of Crete as the paratroopers suffered almost 7,000 casualties. These heavy losses eliminated the option of a massive airborne invasion of the Soviet Union and further expansion in the Mediterranean saving Malta, Gibraltar, Cyprus, and the Suez Canal from airborne invasion.
Mussolini invades Albania
See article: Greco-Italian War.
Battle of Greece
See article: Battle of Greece
Battle of Crete
See article: Battle of Crete
Occupation
Occupation zones & authority
Map showing the three occupying zones.
Conquered Greece was dividen into 3 zones of control by the occupying powers, Germany, Italy and Bulgaria. The Germans controlled Athens, Central Macedonia, Western Crete, Milos, Amorgos and the islands of Northern Aegean. Bulgaria occupied Thrace and Eastern Macedonia and Italy the rest. After the Allied invasions of Sicily and mainlaind Italy, some Italian occupation areas came under German control and their garrisons made subordinate to German command, often supplemented with German troops. Some Italian units were viewed by the Germans as innefective, and in some cases it was feared that Italian troops would begin to desert as it became clear that Mussolini's government was near collapse. The film Captain Corelli's Mandolin, set in Italian-occupied Kephalonia in the Ionian Islands, dramatizes such a takeover.
Troop dispositions
German
Italian
Bulgarian
Greek collaborationists & conscripts
Despite the fact that the vaste majority of Greece's leaders, clerics, population, military, and persons on both left and right political spectrum resisted the Italian, German, and Bulgarian occupation, a small group of sympathizers, including the puppet governments of the Quisling Prime Ministers Georgios Tsolakoglu and Ioannis Rallis emerged. From 1941 to 1944 the collaborationist governments and small cadre of sympathizers comprising "security battalions" fought against the guerrilla forces of the both the rightist and leftist factions of the Greek Resistance. These were widely reviled in colloquial Greek as Germanotsoliades (Greek: Γερμανοτσολιάδες, literally meaning "German Tsolias").
Resource extraction
Effect on civilian population
Resistance
See article: Greek Resistance
Liberation & civil war
See article: Greek Civil War
The content of this page is retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Greece_during_World_War_II under GFDL
