Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [75]
The decision that Greece had to be helped, and Crete held, was a political one, and the British paid a heavy price for it. Its wisdom has been hotly argued. In the end, Greece was not materially helped, and there are those who claim she would have been better off—or at least no worse off—without the British intervention. In the long run, the Greek campaign showed little more than that the British were willing to come to the aid of an ally; in that it may have demonstrated only the difference between Chamberlain and Churchill. In the end, not only was Greece lost, so was the chance of wrapping up the North African campaign relatively quickly.
In support of the intervention, some have argued that the campaign set back the German timetable for Russia. It is maintained that the Germans had planned to invade Russia by May 15, that because of Greece they had to postpone it until June 21, and that that five weeks at the end of the season allowed Russia to make it through to winter. This would be a satisfying justification for the tragedy of Greece if it were correct; unfortunately, it is not. The May 15 date for the German invasion of Russia was not the planned beginning of the campaign, but rather the operational readiness date. The Germans wanted to be ready by then, and to invade any time after that. To the extent that they were diverted at all from their timetable by the Balkan affair, it was the takeover of Yugoslavia rather than beating the Greeks that cost them time. Further, the real crux of the matter was not what happened in the Balkans, but what happened to the weather in central Europe. Spring was very late in 1941, and the ground was not sufficiently hard for the passage of armor until the third week in June. If anything caused a delay in the German invasion—and thereby saved Russia—it was not Greek or British or even Yugoslav courage, it was Polish mud.
As their campaign in the Balkans reached its sad conclusion, the British were also busy tidying up other areas of the Middle East. Indian, South African, and local troops had finally pulled themselves together sufficiently to take the offensive against the numerically superior but isolated Italian forces in East Africa. It took them about three months of occasionally heavy fighting, and a great deal of chasing around the desolate mountainous country, to run the Italians to earth. Many of the Italian native forces deserted, and by late May East Africa was secure. The Italians lost or surrendered nearly 300,000 troops; British casualties were about 1,200 in battle and 75,000 to local diseases, chiefly dysentery and malaria. Perhaps the prevalence of disease explains why Mussolini’s troops were not that eager to fight for Mussolini’s empire.
There was also the Levant. In April, a pro-German politician named Rashid Ali staged a coup d’état in Iraq. With their oil supply threatened, the British scraped up a few troops, moved in and took over. They then learned that the Germans were being supported by Vichy-French Syria, so in June they invaded that too. They sent along Free French units that had been contributed to the Middle East command by General de Gaulle, in the hope that Frenchmen would not fire on each other. The hope proved tragically wrong, and there were several bitter little fights before the Vichy troops finally capitulated.
None of these small successes was much to lay against the losses of men, equipment, and prestige in Greece. Even worse, that loss soon had to be coupled with a disaster in the Western Desert.
Erwin Rommel has become something of a cult figure among World War II buffs. Whether he deserves to be is a matter of some disagreement,