Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [74]
That was precisely what did not happen. The Germans operating out of Bulgaria hit the Greeks at the same time they hit the Yugoslavs, and within three days, by April 9, the Metaxas Line was swamped, Salonika was taken, and the German armor was pouring through the Mon astir Gap. The British were pushed off the Aliakmon Line before they ever got dug in; it was the Dyle in Belgium all over again.
Wilson then withdrew to Mount Olympus, but got pushed off that as well. The Germans had air supremacy, and their armor moved through territory supposed to be unsuitable for tank operations. The British had few anti-aircraft guns, and their tank commanders were reduced to parking the tanks on as steep hills as they could manage, hoping in that way to elevate their guns enough to get a shot at German aircraft; the method served more as a vent for frustration than any practical purpose.
As the British columns were harried southward, the Greeks on the Albanian front got cut off. Reluctant to give up the few tangible gains they had so far made, they hung on too long and suddenly found their retreat cut. The western Greek armies surrendered on April 23.
By then the British were back across the Plain of Thessaly and almost to Athens. The Greek commander, General Papagos, told them they had better get out or be forced to surrender, and Wilson’s weary army, its air component outnumbered ten to one, hurried down into Peloponnesus; the Germans dropped paratroops at the isthmus of Corinth, but they cut off only some stragglers.
As usual, it became the navy’s task to rescue the overextended army. Under heavy air attack, the destroyers and cruisers raced into the little southern Greek ports, loaded up, and raced out again. By the end of the month there were no British troops left at large in Greece. The campaign cost them about 12,000 men and substantial amounts of equipment, almost all the casualties coming during the evacuation when ships were sunk and machine-gunned unremittingly by the Luftwaffe.
As a footnote, the British then decided that even if they could not hold Greece, they could hold the island of Crete. Hitler was not too interested in it, but Hermann Goering convinced him that if Crete were taken, Luftwaffe units could break the Royal Navy’s hold on the eastern Mediterranean. Hitler agreed, and the Germans decided to take Crete from the air, the first major independent airborne operation in history. The British left a scratch garrison of about 28,000 men, supported by 14,000 Greeks, under General Bernard Freyberg, the famous commander of the New Zealand Division. Unhappily, the troops were the usual mixed remnants of the earlier disaster on the mainland, and they lacked proper equipment and material.
The Germans opened their attacks on May 20 with paratroops and gliders on the main airfields. The British were ready for them, however, and for thirty-six hours it looked as if they might hold on. Vicious fighting swept back and forth across the key positions, and the Germans were in serious trouble. On the second afternoon they resorted to desperate measures and landed troops by transport on the Maleme airfield in the middle of fighting. It was costly, in both men and aircraft, but it turned the tide, and by nightfall the Germans had an airfield. The Royal Navy broke up attempts to bring troops over from the mainland on captured Greek shipping, but the Germans steadily reinforced by air, and on the 28th, Freyberg decided to evacuate. His haggard soldiers made their way through the mountains to ports on the south coast of the island, and again the navy came in under heavy air attack to pull them off. About 12,000 soldiers were left behind, but 18,000 were rescued. Against the heavy losses