THE BALKANS

RUMANIA, GREECE, YUGOSLAVIA AND CRETE

The fall of France in June 1940 had brought to the surface a dispute which had smouldered for years and which, although not in itself directly connected with the war between the great powers, was about to exert a major influence upon it. This was the territorial disagreement between Hungary and Rumania, which arose from the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. This Treaty had, following the defeat of Austria-Hungary in the Great War, caused Hungary to cede Transylvania, beloved of all followers of Dracula, to Rumania - a not unreasonable boundary change in most respects, since the majority of the inhabitants of Transylvania were, in any case, of Rumanian origin.

There were however, within Transylvania, some two million people of the Magyar race, known as the Sicules, who had no wish to be Rumanian, and who persistently refused to accept their change of nationality. When France fell, the Hungarian Government made approaches to King Carol II of Rumania, but it soon became apparent that Rumania was immoveable on the issue. War seemed inevitable, but Hitler, whose reliance upon the oil wells at Ploesti caused him to put a high priority upon the maintenance of access to Rumania, intervened. Hungary, whose government had a sympathetic ear in Italy, agreed, if Rumania was also agreeable, to submit to Axis arbitration on the dispute. As a result, Ciano and Ribbentrop presided over arbitration proceedings in Vienna in August 1940. Their verdict was that Transylvania should be partitioned, the west going to Rumania. Hungary was to gain the area occupied by the Sicules, plus the extension of her 1920 frontier to the Moldavian Carpathians. This had the effect of putting three million Rumanians into Hungary, a neat reversal of the previous position.

The Rumanians resented their government's acceptance of this proposal deeply, and General Antonescu, appointed Premier by King Carol II on September 4th, rapidly forced King Carol to abdicate and established Carol's son Prince Michael on the throne. Antonescu asked Hitler to provide military assistance to Rumania, and on October 7th the 13th German Motorised Division began to arrive in Bucharest.

Mussolini was indignant at the occupation, particularly since his allies had not told him of it before it took place. He resolved to reward Germany in kind, and to the horror of his Generals, who had, only three weeks before, demobilised 600,000 men on the Duce's orders, instructed them to prepare to invade Greece on October 26th. Count Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law and Foreign Minister, believed that neither Yugoslavia nor Turkey would come to the aid of Greece, to whom they were allied by the Balkan Pact, and that Bulgaria would approve of Italy's actions. Lieutenant-General Jacomoni, in command in Albania, told the planning conference on 14th October 1940 that everyone in Albania was anxious to settle the account with Greece. Faced with universal approval of Mussolini's scheme, Marshal Badoglio, who had severe doubts as to its military practicality, gave way and agreed, subject to an extension of the deadline for the attack for two days to October 28th.

Tito's most able and trusted lieutenants were sent to each of the regions to organise revolt under Tito's control. Some party groups, notably in Montenegro, did not accept that their role was solely to fight Germans rather than create a Socialist revolution, and for some weeks Tito had problems in establishing control. From his Belgrade headquarters, nonetheless, Tito controlled a rapidly expanding field army of small Partisan detachments, mostly living in the hills and keeping Tito's Intelligence Chief, Alexander Rankoviac, supplied with detailed information on Axis troop movements and concentrations. In return, Tito organised the capture and distribution of arms and ammunition and provided a headquarters training operation. Rankoviac's career was, in fact, almost brought to an early end in July, when he was arrested by the Gestapo as he planned to blow up Radio Belgrade. However, on 29th July, forty Partisans armed with revolvers and grenades freed him from a hospital where he was being held, without any of his rescuers being killed. Rankoviac went to the party headquarters in Western Serbia, and Tito himself had to leave Belgrade on 16th September. He was not to return until October 1944.

Within the six months between July and the end of 1941, Tito created an army of 80,000 men under arms, the nucleus of a force that was later to be estimated by the Germans, in late 1943, to total 111,000 men. His policy was to set out to clear the Axis troops from specific areas of the country, to call those areas "liberated territories" and to use them both as operational bases and as footholds for eventual Communist power. By the end of August 1941, the Serbian insurrection, organised by Tito, had cleared the German army from almost two thirds of the Serbian countryside and the Germans had begun to re-think their attitude to the Partisans. Although the Partisans subsequently lost much of that initial territorial gain as the three long years of guerilla warfare got under way, the Germans were never again to believe that holding Yugoslavia would be easy. At its peak, the Partisan Army was to tie down more than twenty Axis divisions in the retention of a country which Germany had expected to occupy comparatively peacefully.

The Cetniks

In organising resistance against the Axis invaders, Tito did not initially appear to have things all his own way. As early as April 1941, officers and men of the defeated Royalist army had begun to live and fight in the woods of Serbia under various leaders. But from them emerged Colonel Dragoljub Mihailoviac, who went to Western Bosnia when Yugoslavia capitulated and was in mid-Serbia by the middle of May 1941.

Intensely pro-Serb and anti-Croat, like many army officers, Mihailoviac was not a communist and had a low opinion of Tito, regarding him as (perhaps justifiably at the time) no more than an upstart Croat revolutionary. Mihailoviac resisted German domination purely for reasons of pride and Serbian nationalism. By the end of September 1941, there were 5,000 Cetniks. As Tito sought aid, arms and ammunition from the Soviet Union, so Mihailoviac looked for help from Britain. Initially, little came from either source to either leader and, at talks between Mihailoviac and Tito in October 1941, it became apparent that the Cetniks were more opposed to communist domination under a Croatian leader than they were to the German occupation.

By the beginning of November, the Cetniks were attacking Tito's Partisan positions, although without conspicuous success, for Mihailoviac had significantly underestimated the military capability of Tito's forces. Nonetheless, at this stage in events, the British, influenced by their commitment to the Yugoslav Royalist government in exile, seemed genuinely to believe Mihailoviac's assertions that Tito was a fraud who did not represent the Yugoslav people, and on 15th November had the BBC announce that Mihailoviac had been made `Commander-in-Chief of Yugoslav forces in the Fatherland'. Less than a week earlier, Mihailoviac had received his first parachuted supplies from the British, and on 12th November had been on the verge of losing his headquarters to the Partisans, who came within one mile of Ravna Gora, where the Cetniks prepared for hasty evacuation.

At the height of this drama, Mihailoviac was at a meeting with German officers proposing joint operations against the Partisans, in return for which Serbia would be returned to the control of the Cetniks. He assured the Germans that his main aim was to save the majority of his people from annihilation. The Germans did not fully trust him, and did not at this stage enter into an agreement, recognising that he was not the power he claimed to be and that Tito and his Partisans were far more dangerous.

While Mihailoviac was discussing terms with the Germans, two of his officers were holding talks with the Partisans, and reached a nine-point agreement to end hostilities. At the end of November, when major German response to earlier Partisan successes in Serbia had pushed the Partisans into retreat, Mihailoviac refused an offer from Tito of joint leadership and operations, stating that he was the only recognised leader of Yugoslav resistance. By the end of 1941, Mihailoviac had decided to make agreements with the occupiers and fight only against the communists. Only then did the British government realise something of the true situation and begin to think of Mihailoviac as being more of a master of compromise and prevarication than a Resistance leader.

Nonetheless, it was not until early 1944 that the British government, committed by its agreement with the Yugoslav Royalist government in exile to support of the Cetniks, finally lost patience with Mihailoviac and withdrew the British liaison officers who had been seconded to the Cetniks throughout the period when Tito's Partisan Army had been doing battle with the Axis. Not until mid-1943 was significant, though qualified, Allied support given to Tito, and not until the summer of 1944, only months before his victory in Yugoslavia, was the Partisan Army fully recognised by the Allies. Tito's cool, resourceful leadership and considerable grasp of military strategy and tactics enabled him to keep an Axis force more than three times the size of his Partisan Army busy for more than three years.

Greece Invaded by Germany

When the Greeks heard of the Yugoslav signing of the Tripartite Pact on March 25th, General Papagos had ordered withdrawal from Salonika, but he changed his mind and issued orders to stand firm when news of the overthrow of Regent Paul on the 27th reached him. On the night of April 4th/5th, he conferred with Britain's Anthony Eden, General Dill and the Yugoslav General Jankovic on the border between Greece and Yugoslavia. Papagos tried to persuade Jankovic to defend with the Greeks the short front necessary to prevent the Germans advancing to Greece if they entered Yugoslavia. Jankovic would have none of it. On April 6th, Papagos, knowing that the German invasion was imminent and that the defence of the full frontier was impossible, ordered the demolition of installations between the Bulgarian border and the forward Greek positions.

On the morning of that day, having been warned by the German Ambassador that Italy was about to invade Greece, Hitler travelled to Florence to try and prevent the rash act that was to extend the Axis front and create new potential for defeat. He was greeted by a Mussolini wreathed in smiles, who obviously expected Hitler to be equally happy at his master stroke. "Fuhrer" he is reported to have said, "we are on the march! At dawn this morning our Italian troops victoriously crossed the Albanian-Greek frontier."

Early in the Italian campaign, it became clear that many of Ciano's political bases for the strategy were hopelessly wrong. Above all, the Italians had misjudged totally both their own standing with the Greek people, and the Greeks' patriotism and preparedness to fight. The plain fact was that the Greeks loathed Mussolini, his regime, his army and his ideas. They had seen the cruelty of Fascism, and they wanted none of it.

As soon as the invasion took place, the Greek Prime Minister, General Metaxas, ordered general mobilisation, which provided the commander of the Greek forces, General Alexandros Pagagos, with 15 infantry divisions, 4 infantry brigades and a cavalry division, which together were assembled as five Army Corps. Although a head count gave the Italians the advantage, the mountainous terrain, the determination of the Greeks, the essentially flabby nature of the Italian troops and and the communications advantage enjoyed by the Greek army fighting on its own ground gave the defenders the edge. The Greeks also benefited from the extremely wet weather, which slowed down the invasion from the start, and made it virtually impossible for the Italian Air Force to give effective cover.

On the left of General Visconti-Prasca's invading army, the Alpine Division managed by November 2nd to break through the advanced Greek positions and take the village of Vovoussa, some 25 miles from the border, but a Greek counterattack on the following day drove them back whence they came in considerable disarray. In the centre, the armour and infantry that were headed for Yanina were held up totally. On the right, the Siena Division took Filiates and Paramithia, and looked able to take Yanina. But the weather raged on, the Italian Air Force was unable to prevent the Greeks from completing their mobilisation and concentration, and General Papagos made the most of the situation. By November 12th, Papagos could claim 100 battalions ranged in mountainous country they knew well, against 50 Italian battalions who wished they were elsewhere. He decided that the time had come to counterattack.

On November 14th, five days after the Italian command passed from General Visconti-Prasca to General Ubaldo Soddu, the Greeks attacked along the entire front, from the Ionian Sea to Lake Prespa.

Almost immediately, the Greek 5th Corps under General Tzolakoglou broke the Italian line at Mount Morova. Eight days after commencing the attack, Tzolakoglou crushed the Italian 9th Army at Koritsa, taking 2,000 prisoners, 80 field guns, 55 anti-tank guns, and 300 machine guns from the "Tridentina" Mountain Division and two infantry divisions.

November 21st saw the Greek 2nd Corps under General Papadopoulos cross the Albanian frontier to take Erseke and Leskovik. On December 4th, the 3rd Corps occupied Pograde, and the following day the 2nd took Permet, 23 miles inside Albania. The 1st Corps under General Kosmas meanwhile chased the Italian 11th Army down the Dhrin valley, and were greeted delightedly by the very Albanian people upon whose loyalty the Italians believed they could count totally. The 1st had also taken Sarande.

Now the weather, and the almost total lack of Greek armour, began to take a hand in the campaign. While the Greeks were able to fight in the hills they could win. Once on the plains they were no match for Italian tanks. Eight new Italian divisions had been sent to Albania between the end of October and December 31st, but the Greeks had no reinforcements, either from their own or British sources. The weather was bitterly cold, and the troops of both sides were suffering from a shortage of adequate winter equipment and of food. For a time there was virtual stalemate.

The Implications of Taranto

It is necessary at this stage to take a look at the Mediterranean sea war, for the highly successful torpedo bomber attack on the Italian fleet in its base at Taranto by Admiral Cunningham's Mediterranean Fleet had a profound influence upon the Italian campaign in the Balkans. In the latter part of October,Cunningham and Rear-Admiral Lyster, commander of the Royal Navy's aircraft carrier force in the Mediterranean, had planned an attack on the Italian fleet, which was showing a marked disinclination to come out and fight. On November 11th, air reconnaissance established that all six Italian battleships were in port at Taranto, and 21 obsolete Swordfish biplanes armed with torpedoes (eleven aircraft) and bombs (the other 10) took off from the Illustrious to attack in two waves. Fortune was to some extent favouring the attack - the protective balloon barrage around the anchorage had been damaged by storms, and the Italian torpedo nets extended only 26 feet down into the water, whereas British torpedoes ran at 30 feet depth. Nonetheless it was a daring attack, carried out in slow-moving aircraft in the face of 21 batteries of 100mm guns and 200 light anti-aircraft guns, plus the guns of the ships they were attacking. Six torpedoes scored hits, putting Littorio and Duilio out of action for six months and sinking the Cavour. The Royal Navy lost only two aircraft, with one crewman dead and three prisoners, despite the Italians having fired no less than 8,500 shells.

The Italians responded to the Greeks' successes in the Balkans, and to the loss of half their capital ships at Taranto, with an orgy of blame and recrimination, refusing as always to accept that the true cause of the disaster was the incompetence, mismanagement and sheer vanity of Mussolini. Badoglio, who had warned against the militarily unsound Balkans attack in the first place, was pilloried in the press and on the radio, and resigned in disgust on November 26th. In his place, General Cavallero became Chief of Staff or Comando Supremo.

Meanwhile Hitler, who had been preoccupied with plans for "Operation Felix" to take Gibraltar, destined to come to nothing because Spain's General Franco refused to throw in his lot with the Axis, had decided that Germany could not stand by and watch Mussolini and his compatriots annihilated. If he allowed the Balkan campaign to go to the Allies, the Rumanian oil fields would be threatened. Something had to be done. A date of March 15th was therefore set for a German invasion of Greece.

On December 29th, Cavallero arrived in Albania to take over personal command of operations from General Soddu. He had orders to go onto the offensive, and to prove that German intervention in Albania would be unnecessary. To achieve this he had 16 divisions spread across a largely mountainous front of 156 miles, made up of troops in poor health, with inadequate equipment and an over-extended supply line. The Greeks had roughly 13 divisions, and were on the offensive, although on a strictly limited-objective basis, taking a position here and a position there, with occasional dramatic success. An example was their defeat of the "Wolves of Tuscany" division at Klisura. Nonetheless, Cavallero meant business, and between December 29th and March 26th, brought in reinforcements of 10 divisions and 4 machine gun battalions, plus 3 legions and 17 battalions of Blackshirts from Italy. The Greeks' inability to fight offensively became more and more apparent as the weather improved, as the Italian Air Force was increasingly brought into action, and as the lack of Greek armour made any form of modern attack impossible.

With his reinforcements in place, and much of his supply problem rectified, Cavallero went on to the offensive on March 9th with an attack on three divisions of General Papadopoulos' 2nd Corps between the rivers Apsos in the North East, and the Aoos in the South West. Against them beneath the Trebesina mountains were ranged no less than eleven divisions of Italian infantry and the "Centauro" armoured division. After two days of fighting, with well dug in Greek artillery using their ammunition sparingly yet tellingly, the Italians had failed to break through, despite their great superiority of numbers, and were losing a great many men. General Papagos managed to reach Papadopoulos' Corps and reinforce his force with a further two divisions, and by the 15th March the Italians were no further towards their objective than they had been on the 9th.

Finally, on the 15th, Mussolini, who had watched the sorry affair of the Trebesina offensive in person with Cavallero, called off the attack and returned to Rome. The Italian Army had lost 12,000 dead and wounded for no very obvious gain. Meanwhile the tough and uncompromising General Metaxas had died in January, and had been replaced as Greek Prime Minister by Petros Koryzis. The British, approached by him to aid the Greeks in their fight against the Axis, consulted General Wavell, Air Chief Marshal Longmore and Admiral Cunningham, who all expressed doubts as to the capability of the RAF to hold Salonikan airspace against the Luftwaffe, if, as expected. Germany entered the Balkan struggle. At a conference in Athens on February 22nd 1941, attended by King George of Greece, British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, Prime Minister Koryzis and Generals Dill and Wavell, there was extensive discussion as to the expected attitude of still neutral Yugoslavia to the anticipated German offensive, and of the reaction of Yugoslavia if the Greeks were obliged to withdraw from Salonika. Eventually the conference made the dangerous decision to attempt to re-establish a British presence in Europe by sending an expeditionary force to Athens should the Germans take action in the Balkans.

On March 1st 1941, Bulgaria belatedly allied herself with Germany, whereupon the German 12th Army crossed the Danube and triggered the plan for the British landings in Greece. From March 7th onwards the force, commanded by General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, landed at Piraeus and Volos. Some 57,000 men and 100 tanks were put ashore, a force made up of the 6th Australian Division, the 2nd New Zealand Division and the 1st Armoured Brigade. By the end of March, Maitland Wilson's formations were established and had acquired, after protracted negotiations, three Greek divisions. But his forces were seriously under strength, mainly because he had been allotted the 7th Australian Division and the 1st Polish Brigade, neither of which was actually sent to Greece.

Germany attacks Yugoslavia

The establishment of German garrisons in Bulgaria gave Yugoslavia problems. No less than three countries were making claims upon Yugoslav territory; Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria. If Yugoslavia did not now agree to join the Tripartite Pact, and ally herself with Germany, the probability was that Germany and Italy would see to it that the country was divided among their allies. Since Hitler had given assurances that German armies would not pass through Yugoslavia to invade Greece, it seemed inescapably opportune that she should now give in and join. On March 25th, the Regent, Prince Paul, and his Prime Minister did just that. This capitulation set in motion a military plot which, on March 27th, overthrew Paul and his government, proclaimed the young King Peter's majority and put General Simovic in power. Yet, despite this sudden action, the new government did nothing to anger the Third Reich, nothing to change policy in any significant way. This provided Germany with the opportunity to do what Germany was best at - seizing the initiative by force of arms.

A massive force of two Armies plus General Kleist's Panzer Group was detailed for the assault, which took just twelve days to defeat Yugoslavia. On April 6th 1941, the Luftwaffe hit Belgrade with massive bombing raids, while Kleist's Panzers began the attack on the ground. By April 13th, Kleist and General von Wietresheim's 14th Motorised Corps, which had advanced 312 miles in seven days, met General Reinhardt's 41st Panzer Corps in Belgrade. Now the 46th Panzer Corps under General von Vietinghof captured by surprise a vital bridge over the River Drava at Barcs, and opened the way to the rendezvous with the Italians at Karlovac, Sarajevo was occupied on the 15th April, and on the 17th the Yugoslav army surrendered, at which time 6,028 officers and 337,684 NCOs and men became prisoners of war. But some 300,000 men escaped and took to the mountains, where they continued to fight and harry the Germans throughout their uncomfortable stay in Yugoslavia.

Tito's Partisans

The principal architect of the Wehrmacht's considerable discomfort in Yugoslavia was Josip Broz, known as Tito, a Croatian communist who narrowly escaped German arrest when he left Zagreb, his accustomed political base, in May 1941. Tito was a revolutionary leader of long standing who believed passionately in the Comintern and already led a substantial body of communist sympathisers before the German invasion of Yugoslavia.

By the end of May, Tito, by this time in Belgrade, believed that the Germans were about to invade the Soviet Union, and saw in this and the already complete German occupation of his country a potential opportunity for power. The three German divisions plus one regiment, commanded by Field Marshal von Weichs, which had remained in Yugoslavia after the capitulation, were removed late in April and early in May and were replaced by three divisions of older men more suited to occupation than to battle. Tito's belief that trouble for Stalin was afoot was turned into certainty by intelligence, gained by a White Russian from a German officer, that Russia was "about to be liberated".

The announcement of the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22nd June 1941 brought celebration among Yugoslav communists, for it released them from the Comintern ban on military action imposed as a result of the Soviet/German non-aggression pact of August 1939. On 3rd July, Stalin issued an appeal for guerilla activities by all those behind the German lines, and Tito's Comintern controller Dimitrov issued more specific orders.

"The peoples of Yugoslavia now have the opportunity to create a general liberation struggle against the German invader. It is a vital necessity to undertake all actions to assist and facilitate the just war of the Soviet people .... Remember that at present it is a question of liberation from Fascist domination, and not a question of Socialist revolution".

Tito issued a proclamation, printed on the Yugoslav party's already established secret press, and on 27th June 1941 set up a General Headquarters of National Liberation Partisans' Detachments. Individual acts of sabotage began to take place throughout the country, as yet largely uncoordinated and boosted by another major proclamation from Tito on 12th July. On 7th July, a Yugoslav veteran of the Spanish Civil War, Zikica Jovanovic, urged a crowd in the village of Bela Crkva, in Serbia, to resistance, shot two policemen and escaped. This incident marked the beginning of the great uprising.

At 5.15am on the 6th, as Panzer Group Kleist entered Yugoslavia, Field-Marshal List crossed the border between Bulgaria and Greece with five divisions from the German XXX Corps in the East and the XVIII Mountain Corps in the West. Overhead, Stukas of the Luftwaffe attacked the fortified Metaxas line, receiving as they did so a nasty surprise, for alone among such fortifications in Europe, the Metaxas Line had 37mm guns, which did a great deal of harm to the Ju87 aircraft. The Greeks held out with enormous courage and no little success. The Germans suffered substantial losses at the Nevrokop Basin, and in the Rupel Pass, and at no point found their advance easy. The Greeks were a tougher opponent than most that Germany had encountered. Nonetheless, sheer force of numbers and armaments ensured that the Germans advanced towards their objective, and gradually the Greek units began to surrender when they could do nothing more.

On April 8th, Lieutenant-General Vieil and his 2nd Panzer Division, after a lightning advance through Yugoslavia, crossed the border into Greece and dashed 56 miles in the day to occupy Salonika. General Bakopoulos was surrounded and, without communications, was forced to surrender. His 70,000 men were taken prisoner. By April 11th, the Yugoslav army having collapsed, the German 12th Army found itself in contact with General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson's Anglo-Greek formation. The British 1st Armoured Brigade had only 100 largely obsolete tanks to field against Field-Marshal List's 500-plus, and was unable to hold its position. The 2nd New Zealand Division, fighting every inch of the way, had to withdraw, thereby enabling German units to get between the British Expeditionary Force and the Greeks retreating from Albania.

On April 21st, the crack SS Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler captured Yanina to the rear of the Greeks. Going against orders from his government in Athens, the Greek commander General Tzolakoglou negotiated with the Germans, and surrendered sixteen Greek Divisions, the instrument of surrender being signed at Larisa by a representative of the Greek Parliament and Field-Marshal List.

Mussolini was not pleased, and felt that he should have been present to gloat over the surrender, despite his army's almost total failure to contribute to the victory that made it possible. To gratify his ally's ludicrous vanity, Hitler therefore ordered a further signing ceremony to be set up for April 24th, and at that entirely bogus ceremony Mussolini attended the demise of the independent Greek state. On April 19th it was decided that the British Expeditionary Force must be evacuated from mainland Greece. Rear-Admiral Baillie-Grohman, entrusted with this hazardous task, managed on April 25th to get almost 51,000 British, Australian and New Zealand troops out despite the efforts of German paratroops landing along the Corinth canal and the arrival of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler on all sides. This near-miraculous escape, more daring than Dunkirk, and at the time almost as valuable in terms of resources saved, was pulled off with the loss of only four transport vessels and two destroyers. It stands as one of the major achievements of the Second World War.The Expeditionary Force had lost 12,712 men either killed, wounded or taken prisoner, and had no military advantage, although the political benefits of their brave attempt to save Greece from occupation were to be felt when Britain's involvement in the resolution of the Greek Civil War (1944-45) and the return of the Government was accepted by the Greek people. Militarily, the Greek adventure was a disaster for Britain at a time when it could not afford setbacks of any kind.

The Invasion of Crete

Now, to prevent the RAF from having an easy base to attack his oil resources in Rumania during the invasion of Russia that was about to commence, Hitler turned his attention to Crete. On April 25th 1941, General Kurt Student, mastermind of the German paratroop forces, was given the task of planning the invasion of the little island in the Mediterranean that was so strategically placed.

Student planned a predominantly airborne invasion by the 7th Paratroop Division, reinforced by three infantry regiments, and backed by the air support of 228 bombers, 205 dive bombers, 233 fighters and 50 reconnaissance aircraft. The airborne units were to be dropped from 493 three-engined Ju52 transports, although some were to make a glider-borne landing in a force of 72 gliders. A force of 63 small ships was hastily requisitioned to ferry the infantry units, and the Italian Navy provided a destroyer and 12 torpedo boats to escort them.

The Allies, because of their secret ability to decode Enigma signals, were well aware of the plan to attack Crete, and resolved to hold the island if at all possible. There were 42,500 men already in position, of whom 10,300 were Greeks. There were 6,540 Australian and 7,700 New Zealand troops who had been evacuated from Greece, but these units were very short of vehicles, arms and supplies because of the haste of their departure. Thus the force was far less formidable than it seemed on paper.

The RAF had 35 operational aircraft on the island on May 1st, but the heavy bombardment by the Luftwaffe during the run up to the attack left only four Hurricanes and three Gladiators in a fit condition to take off and fly to Egypt on the 19th May.

The British forces were commanded by General Freyberg, an able and brave commander, but one who had arrived on the island only on April 30th, three weeks before the German attack came on May 20th. Throughout that day, the German 7th Airborne were dropped at Maleme, west of Canea, and around Heraklion and Rethimnon. There was bitter fighting, and the Germans had an unlucky day for losses of commanders - at Maleme, General Meindl was seriously wounded and had to hand over his command to Colonel Ramcke; at Rethimnon the Germans arrived without a commander at all, for General Sussman had been in a glider that had crashed en route.

The key to the battle lay with the Navy's effort to destroy the flotilla of small ships that was bringing the infantry reinforcements to the island. In this Cunningham's fleet was less than successful, losing in quick succession two cruisers and four destroyers, among them HMS Kelly , commanded by Lord Louis Mountbatten, and seeing Warspite and Formidable so seriously damaged that they had to be taken out the action. Although much pressure was applied from London, Cunningham knew when he was beaten, and pulled back. On the 25th, the German infantry under Lieutenant-General Ringel succeeded in breaking out from the Maleme perimeter, and General Freyberg decided on the 27th that the time had come to evacuate the Allied troops from the island and asked the Mediterranean Fleet to take them off. The evacuation through the little port of Sphakia took every minute of the time from the night of May 28/29th to dawn on June 2nd. The anti-aircraft cruiser Calcutta and two destroyers, Hereward and Imperial were lost, and 260 men were killed and 280 wounded on board Orion by a German bomb.

When the losses of the Crete operation were added up, the Commonwealth forces had lost 1,800 dead, and about 12,000 captured out of 32,000. The Royal Navy lost 1,828 killed and 183 wounded. But 18,000 troops were successfully evacuated. The Germans lost almost 4,000 killed and roughly 2,500 wounded, all of them fully trained top-quality combat troops, and most of them hard-to-replace paratroops. Neither side had found Crete easy.