250: After the Failure

Description

After stopping the Italian offensive at Kalpaki, the Greeks went on the offensive themselves — driving the Italians back across the border and into Albania, capturing Korce and over 10,000 prisoners. Italian commanders were shuffled as blame was distributed, with Marshal Badoglio publicly scapegoated in the fascist press before being replaced by Cavallero.

Winter brought the fighting to a crawl on both sides, with frostbite cutting deeper into unit strength than enemy action. When Prime Minister Metaxas died in January 1941 and was succeeded by Koryzis, the new government reversed his policy of refusing British ground forces — a decision that would draw Germany into the campaign and transform a regional Greco-Italian war into a broader European confrontation.

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Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 250 - Greece Pt. 2 - After the Failure. This week a big thank you goes out to Ted for supporting the podcast by becoming a member. Members get access to ad-free versions of all of the podcast’s episodes plus special member only episodes roughly once a month. Head on over to historyofthesecondworldwar.com/members to find out more.

In late October 1940 Italy invaded Greece. It was a complete disaster due to a combination of rainy weather and the Italian leaders simply underestimating their enemy. Along most of the front the Italians barely advanced to contact with the Greeks, who retreated back from the border to occupy established defensive positions to the rear. Where the Italians did attempt to attack the Greek positions, like at Kalpaki, it was a complete failure. After this failure the Italian Army was reorganized, its commander replaced, and plans began to be formulated for another round of attacks. But the Greeks were not going to just hang around and wait for the Italians to figure things out, and instead they would go on the offensive. The Greek attacks would be more successful than the initial Italian advances, and they would very quickly find themselves occupying territory in Albania. This was a tremendous victory for the Greek Army, a force the Italians expected would not even fight them and would instead disintegrate, but the advance into Albania would be the catalyst for Greece’s eventual defeat. Because the Greek attacks would be the last actions of the regional Greco-Italian war, and the fighting would soon spiral out into the greater European conflict as first the British and then the Germans would become involved.

But all of that disaster was in the future when, in the aftermath of the Italian defeat at Kalpaki, the Greek 8th division was ready and waiting to pursue the retreating Italian forces. However, the Greek commander General Papagos would hold them back. There were instead other challenges to deal with along the front, and other areas where the Italians were still pushing forward. The Italians were also flooding reinforcements into Albania, with multiple battalions of mountain troops being rapidly brought in to the fighting. Some of these troop transfers were considered to be so important that they were done via air because using sea transports was just too slow. Soon after the start of the Italian attack the air war also began, with the Greek Royal Hellenic Air Force which would even include some night bombing sorties over the fighting near Kalpaki in an attempt to assist the Greek defenders. On the Italian side, the Italian commanders at the front would complain about the lack of air support that they were receiving during their offensive, although Greek sources would claim that there were endless waves of Italian bombers. This difference in perception is probably explained by the Italian Army downplaying the role of the Air Force as a way of trying to explain its failures, but also the Greek sources amplifying the impact of the Italian Air Force to make their defense sound more heroic. Then on November 14th a general Greek attack began along the front. The Greek air attacks would then shift to Italian air bases, with real success against some of the Italian air fields with fifteen Italian bombers destroyed at Korce and 12 other aircraft destroyed at Gjirokaster. Korce was one of primary targets for the ground operation because airfields in the area were used to bomb Greek cities. The Italian bombers were more capable than the Greek fighters, with the Italian bombers able to operate at an altitude of 20,000 feet, which was the maximum ceiling of the Greek fighters. This made it very difficult to intercept them once they were over their targets, and why it was so important to try and destroy them on the ground and to deny them airfields. While several of the Greek air attacks were successful at destroying Italian aircraft, they would also suffer losses that were unsustainable, and the real long term hope of the Greeks was for the British RAF to arrive. But that would not happen before, from the Adriatic to the borders with Yugoslavia the Greeks were able to quickly advance back to the border, ejecting the Italians from all of the Greek territory they had been able to capture during their first attacks. Which presented some interesting challenges for the Greek forces, because they were not well prepared for the number of Italian prisoners of war that they would have to suddenly take care of. Thousands of Italians would give themselves up to the Greeks during the opening days and weeks of their attack, with the number eventually eclipsing 10,000, and while a small number of them would be moved south via ships, most of them would simply have to walk to makeshift camps and facilities.

Along with the challenges posed by the large number of prisoners of war, another problem that the Greek leaders would have to solve was exactly what they were doing in the war. Metaxas and the government’s official position was that they were trying to drive the Italians out of Greece, but then that kind of just happened almost overnight. They had started the war as the defending nation, against an Italian invasion, but the Italians were now gone. What were they going to do now? The obvious answer was to continue the attack into Albania, where the Italian forces had based their attack from, but becoming the offensive power in a war was a very different situation than defending the nation. It was also not something that the Greek army had prepared or was ready to do. Going on the offensive would open the Greek forces to all of the same challenges that had caused so many issues for the Italians, projecting power into unfamiliar territory. In some ways these were not immediate problems, because as soon as the Greek forces got the Italians back across the border they needed time. They had been if not fighting at the very least at the front for weeks, and the weather, marching, and fighting had worn them down. This exhaustion was not easy to solve either, because they were still in exposed positions where the late autumn weather was not helping at all. The Greek military leaders were split on the best course of action, some believed that pushing forward was exactly what they should do, and immediately. It was only through aggressive action that they could prevent the front from solidifying. There would be a few areas where the border would be crossed, where it was advantageous and the Italian defenders appeared weak, but there would not be a general attack along the entire front. The largest city taken in this advance would be Korce, the capture of which was news all over Greece. Instead more cautious officers prevailed, with Metaxas strongly supporting a halt to any advances. And in reality winter was about to begin, so whatever window the Greeks might have had was closing by December and any energetic attacks would need to wait for better conditions.

On the Italian side, the disastrous attack had turned into a disastrous retreat, and the new commander General Soddu, who had only been placed in command weeks before found himself in a bind. Soddu had been sent to Albania to replace the previous commander in the hopes that a change would cause a change in Italian fortunes. Even the small areas of Albania that had been captured by the Greek counter attack were a stain on the performance of the Italian Army, especially after all of the very optimistic predictions for the campaign, and Mussolini’s very public boasting of how easy it would be to destroy the Greek Army. But instead of destroying their enemy, the Italian army had instead lost territory, and Korce, it was simply a disaster all around. Blame went above the head of Soddu though, and since obviously Mussolini was not at fault, a scapegoat was found in Marshal Badoglio. Badoglio was Chief of the General Staff, a position he had occupied since 1925. He had a major impact on the Italian preparations for war and the preparation of the Italian military for the conflict. But now he would have to be publicly blamed for the failure, and it would begin in the fascist newspapers around Italy. Because the fascist party, and therefore Mussolini, controlled the press in Italy it was easy to make sure that the proper stories were told about the disaster in Greece, to ensure that all blame could be focused on Badoglio. And of course Badoglio was then prevented from answering those accusations in any kind of public way. However, even after these stories were printed, and it seemed clear that Badoglio was on his way out, Mussolini just sort of kept him around for over a week, from November 27th to December 4th. At that point he was told he would be replaced by General Ugo Cavallero, and that was the end of Badoglio’s tenure as Chief of Staff, although it would be far from his last time in the spotlight during the war, as he would be a major player in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Mussolini and the surrender of Italy in 1943.

But just changing the Chief of Staff, especially with Cavallero being put in the position mostly out of his loyalty to the fascist party, was not going to solve Soddu’s problems in Albania. The good news for Soddu is that Italy still had the numbers on its side, and reinforcements would continue to arrive in theater throughout December. Even with the arrival of more forces Soddu was extremely pessimistic about Italian chances in the campaign, even telling a staff officer in Rome that the government should seek a political end to the fighting. Other Italian leaders were not quite that pessimistic, but it was difficult to make a case for how Italy could win the war with the Greeks without some kind of drastic change in the overall situation. There was a path forward though, they could try to get German help. This was a real challenge for the Italian leaders, if only because they had very clearly been trying to do something on their own when they began the attack on Greece, the whole point of the campaign was to improve Italy’s overall standing within the wider war. But now they would have to go hat in hand to the Germans for assistance. That is just what had to happen though, and so Italian Foreign Minister, Ciano, told the Italian ambassador in Berlin to approach his German counterpart Ribbentrop to ask for assistance. The next day the ambassador went directly to Hitler. Before the Italian attack Hitler and the other German leaders had explicitly told the Italians that they were not interested in adventures in the Balkans, and yet now they were being asked to come provide assistance. No promises were immediately made, and the Germans did the correct thing which was to send a military attache to Rome, first for discussions with Italian leaders and then for a tour of the front in Albania. General Rintelen, the attache, was simply in Albania to do a bit of fact finding and he of course spoke with Cavallero who was also in Albania, along with other Italian officers. What he found was that many of them were still quite upbeat about the situation, and Cavallero specifically did not even think that German help would be needed. This was a wild assumption to make, but remember that at the time that Rintelen was touring the front in mid-December Cavallero had only been on the job for a few weeks so he was maybe just way too optimistic and did not fully understand the challenges his army was facing. The end result was somewhat catastrophic, because the Germans decided to not send any assistance to Italy in late 1940 specifically because of these reports, and while they would eventually become involved in the spring of 1941 months were lost.

During the delay the Italian forces greatly suffered from the winter weather. It did not matter how many additional men were sent from Italy, when they arrived at the front they would immediately begin to lose combat effectiveness due to the weather and conditions. The issue was both the wet muddy weather, which made moving supplies very challenging, and the general cold along much of the front which caused many cases of frostbite. In some units the majority of men would be out of action at any given time due to frostbite, some battalions with a paper strength of 800 men would have over 500 reported cases of frostbite. Back in Italy a public drive for supplies and winter clothing would take place, built on Christmas spirit, but even when such equipment was available getting it to the front was a challenge. The good news was that, even though Cavallero would have many shortcomings as a commander, by all accounts he was actually pretty good at setting up and improving the logistics capabilities of his armies. The static positions at the front obviously helped with this, but there would be real improvement over the last weeks of the year. Meanwhile, Mussolini was already angry at the failures during the attack, and while he had replaced Soddu as commander and Badoglio as Chief of Staff, that did not in his mind erase the fact that the Italian Army had been quite clearly defeated. Mussolini became convinced that the results of the war against Greece had become indicative of his own standing and prestige within Italy. And that the Italians had to attack as quickly as possible and decisively defeat the Greeks to restore his image with his own people and in the eyes of his German allies. But no matter how many cables Mussolini sent to the front, or whatever he wanted Cavallero to do, there was nothing to be done about the static nature of the front during the winter months.

On November 18th RAF 80 Squadron would arrive in Greece, equipped with Gloster Gladiator IIs, upgraded versions of the Gladiator Is that the Royal Hellenic Air Force had been fighting with. The Greeks would also be visited by Air Chief Marshal Arthur Longmore, the commander of the RAF’s Middle East Command. If the RAF was going to send units to Greece, it would be Longmore who would send them there, and the message that he delivered to the Greek leaders was that he considered the Greek theater nothing more than a sideshow. And in fact he would not allow it to compromise the British positions in other areas of the Middle East. The Greek leaders, including the King, would be greatly disappointed by the message that had been delivered. And they were right to be disappointed, they were expecting a major commitment of RAF resources to the defense of Greece, not just at the front but also in the defense of Greek cities from Italian bombers. Some squadrons would arrive, but never in the number that the Greeks were hoping for or expecting. This disappointment was made worse by the attrition that the RHAF continued to suffer at the front, continuing to erode their fighting strength. The aircraft would also be impacted by the weather, with the temperatures reaching points where oil was freezing in the aircraft engines. Remarkably, the ground crews would take the wings off the affected aircraft, move them 26 kilometers during blizzard conditions to a railway station, get them on railway cars, and then successfully get them moving towards areas with better weather conditions for flying. The 22 PZL fighters would then be reassembled on the other end of the movement and were ready to fly just a few days later. This tremendous effort, again in freezing cold blizzard conditions, would come to be known as the Engineers’ Epic due to the hard work done by the flight engineers.

While the weather was difficult, it was also quite variable along the width of the front which ran around 180 kilometers from the coast to the Yugoslav border. And the Greek commanders were still not ready to just settle down into the line during the last weeks of 1940. Due to various force movements and attrition the Greek forces by this time actually outnumbered the Italians that were defending, and this allowed them to begin looking at both short term and long term objectives. In the short term, and really immediate scale, they would look at small front re-alignments to strengthen their overall position. These were generally objectives like the attack in the first week of January near the village of Himare (Hee-Mah-Ruh) where the goal was just to move forward onto some high ground to the east of the village. None of these attacks changed the overall situation, but they could make local operations easier. Unfortunately for the Greeks, they were suffering from the same weather related issues as the Italians, with frostbite being a more dangerous enemy than the Italians along much of the front. In fact, the Greek 4th Army would lose twice as many men to frostbite related medical issues as they did to the Italians. The only thing that the Greeks really had going for them was that the Italians were also in a horrible state. This would cause a pause for most of January, during which time both sides would prepare for their next efforts. The Greeks would aim for an advance in the Kelcyre (Kel-Tsuh-ruh) sector, with the planned date of mid-February being chosen in the hopes that it would allow the worst of the cold weather to be in the past. At the same time the Italians were also reinforcing, improving supply lines, all of the things that needed to happen before they could launch another attack. Mussolini, of course, continued to bombard Cavallero with messages that he had to attack as soon as possible. To that end most of the available Italian reinforcements were sent to Albania, instead of to North Africa which was also desperately in need of support. If you remember back to earlier episodes, the first six weeks of 1941 would see the British Operation Compass come to its conclusion with the push to Beda Fomm and the final destruction of the Italian 10th Army. Even with these major defeats in Libya, 6 divisions were sent to Albania early in 1941, and just 2 were sent to Africa. While these Italian preparations were underway, with the goal of launching a major offensive near the end of February to recapture Korce (Kor-kuh), the Greeks would attack again near Kelcyre (Kel-Tsuh-ruh) in the middle of the month. In five days the Greek 5th division was able to accomplish, well honestly not very much. They would attack, gain some ground, but then they would be met by an Italian counter attack. In the case of both offensives, they simply were unable to overcome not just the enemy forces but the weather and geography. To me, it just seems like two armies that were in denial that they were at the limits of their abilities, and they were impatient for better weather to arrive in the Spring when real advances could be made.

One of the things to keep in mind when talking about any of these efforts in January and February is that they were all done with the understanding that they were not going to somehow win the war. Instead, they were just trying to position themselves to be in the best position for the Spring of 1941 when both the Italians and the Greeks believed reinforcements would arrive from their allies. For the Italians, German involvement was coming ever closer as Italian difficulties continued, and the more the British became involved in Greece the greater the chance of active German involvement. The Germans were preparing for an invasion of the Soviet Union, the last thing that they wanted was for there to be some kind of problem in the Balkans after that started, or for British bombers to begin raids on Romanian oil infrastructure. And the Greeks were trying to get the British more involved, first by handing them a very lengthy shopping list of supplies and equipment that they believed they should be given as quickly as possible. This list was provided to the British Deputy Quartermaster for the Middle East, Major General Balfour Hutchison, near the end of 1940, although it would of course take weeks and maybe months for anything to arrive. It was a list that the British had no hopes of actually supplying, including over 400 anti-aircraft guns, massive quantities of ammunition, and then hundreds of thousands of almost every type of military equipment from socks to tents to helmets. All Hutchison could do was say he would do what he could, even though I am sure he knew the impossibility of the request.

Whatever supplies the Greeks could get, one thing that the British could not do was to give them another national hero to lead the nation in the war. That is because, on January 29th, Ioannis Metaxas had died. He had suffered from some kind of throat issue, whether cancer or a really bad abscess which eventually resulted in toxaemia, which is a fancy name for an infection that enters the blood stream. Regardless of how he died, the end result was the same, and for many in Greece this came as a tremendous shock. He was seen as a national hero, particularly by those who agreed with his political policies, although those who did not agree with those politics had more complicated views on the matter. He would be succeeded by Alexandros Koryzis (Ko Ree Zees) who had one very important difference in opinion with his predecessor. One of the key policies of Metaxas was that, while he wanted massive amounts of British support in the form of supplies and munitions, he did not actually want British ground forces to enter Greece. He believed that if the British army was kept out of Greece that the Germans would stay out of the fighting. And anything that kept the Germans out was a good idea. Koryzis disagreed, and soon after he became Prime Minister the decision would be made to accept the British offer of ground forces. The arrival of those ground forces, and the German plans for involvement in Greece, would begin the next phase of the war in Greece, and next episode we will begin that phase by examining the German decisions to become involved in the campaign.