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Battle of Greece
Part of World War II
Date 7 April 1941 – 30 April 1941 Location Greece Result Axis victory
Belligerents
Germany Italy Bulgaria	Greece United Kingdom Australia New Zealand
Commanders and leaders
Maximilian von Weichs	Alexander Papagos
Strength
Germany: 4 corps Italy: 3 armies Bulgaria: ?	Greece: 2 armies British Commonwealth: 2 divisions 1 armored brigade
Casualties and losses
Germany: 1,533 dead 3,362 wounded Italy: 13,755 dead 25,067 missing 50,874 wounded 12,368 captured Bulgaria: ?	Greece: 15,700 dead British Commonwealth: 25,000 dead and captured

The Battle of Greece is the continuation of the Greco-Italian War beginning with the German invasion of Greece to the fall of Kalamata in the Peloponnese. With the Battle of Crete and several naval actions, it is considered part of the wider Aegean component of the Balkans Campaign of World War II. The German codename for their operation was Unternehman Marita — "Operation Marita."

Mare Nostrum & the roots of the Battle of Greece

Fascist doctrine had long emphasized the need for Italian colonial expansion and the reinstatement of Roman imperium over the whole of the Mediterranean, that the Romans had called Mare Nostrum - "our sea." Irridentist Italians wanted to recover the Italianate areas of Corsica, Savoy, and Nice from France, which looked like a strong possibility despite the Italian military's relatively meager contribution to the Battle of France. Italian possessions in Dalmatia and their conquests in Albania provided a good springboard for an attack on Greece, which Mussolini felt would be easy prey. The British were seen as preoccupied with protecting Libya and Egypt; along with East Africa, where the Italians had overrun British Somaliland and Abyssinia and were threatening Kenya and the Sudan, and though reticent about British naval power, the Italians decided to make their move, invading on October 28, 1940 — presently commemorated as Ohi Day (No! Day) in Greece, in memory of the famous reply to Mussolini's ultimatum.

The Greek Army, however, proved an able opponent, stopping the Italian advance after initial succes, and defeating them in several notable battles, including The Battle of Saranda, where the Greek army captured the Albanian port named for the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, and the Battle of Pindus. This neccesitated German intervention on Italy's behalf, something Hitler was willing to do, though it disrupted some of his timetables.

Germany strikes in the Balkans

On April 7th, 1941, the German Army invaded northern Greece, stunning the British and Greeks, and making them pull back their forces from deep into Albania to keep them from being flanked and destroyed. The Greek national sentiment was such that the army had to maintain a position along the "Metaxas Line", all along the northern border of Greece, near the port of Thessalonica. This was untenable from the start, and it was easy for the Germans to break through at multiple points with their Panzer groups. This, in turn, necessitated a Greco-British retreat further to the narrow pass at Thermopylae, where the Germans broke through again, all the way down until German forces were at the Acropolis. After some brief actions on the Peloponnese, the Greeks and British Commonwealth forces retreated to Crete. In the highly contested Battle of Crete, the Germans employed parachute forces and forced the British and New Zealanders off the southern half of the island, making Germany the dominant force in the Mediterranean.

• v
• t
• e

• World War II Balkans Campaign
• 1940
• History of Greece
• World War II stubs