Mediterranean and North Africa · Germany vs Britain and Italy
Dodecanese campaign
8 September 1943 – 22 November 1943
After the armistice Britain tried to seize the Italian-held Dodecanese without American support. The Germans took Rhodes first and, with local air superiority, retook Kos and Leros. It was the last German victory of the war.
Explore Dodecanese campaign on the interactive map · Wikipedia
Day by day
— The armistice
Italy's surrender is announced in the evening and the Dodecanese, Italian since 1912, is suddenly up for the taking. Admiral Campioni on Rhodes has 35,000 Italian troops; General Kleemann has 7,500 Germans on the same island, and an airfield. Churchill wants the islands at once, as a lever on Turkey; the Americans will spare nothing from Italy for them, above all no aircraft.
— Rhodes lost
Kleemann attacks the Italians the night the armistice is announced and Campioni capitulates on the 11th, which decides the campaign: Rhodes has the only airfields that matter. British parties follow anyway. Kos is occupied on the 14th with a battalion and a fighter squadron, Leros on the 17th, Samos, Simi and Kalymnos in the days after, and there is nothing to cover them from the air.
— Kos
The Luftwaffe has 350 aircraft in the Aegean and the RAF's Spitfires on Kos are worn down over three weeks. At dawn on 3 October Kampfgruppe Müller lands at Marmari and Camare with 1,200 men, two companies of paratroops drop inland, and the island is finished by the next evening. The Germans take 1,388 British and 3,145 Italian prisoners, and shoot 102 Italian officers under the order that treats them as traitors.
— Leros
Leros is bombed for fifty days and then invaded at dawn on 12 November: seaborne troops into Palma and Alinda bays on the east coast, and in the afternoon 470 paratroops onto the narrow waist of the island at Rachi, which cuts the garrison in two. Three British battalions and the Italian gunners fight for four days on ground where the two halves cannot help each other. The Royal Navy loses the destroyer Dulverton to a glider bomb on the 13th.
— Leros surrenders
German reinforcements land through the 15th while the British battalions counter-attack the ridge and cannot hold it. Brigadier Tilney surrenders at 17:30 on the 16th; 3,200 British and 5,350 Italian prisoners are taken, and Admiral Mascherpa is handed to the Italian Social Republic and shot. It is the last German victory of the war.
— Samos
Samos is bombed on the 17th and evacuated across the two-kilometre strait into neutral Turkey; the last British troops leave on the 22nd and the Germans land unopposed. The campaign has cost the Allies about 4,800 men, four cruisers damaged, six destroyers and two submarines sunk, and 115 aircraft, for nothing. The islands stay German until May 1945.
