Mediterranean and North Africa · Greece vs Italy
Greco-Italian War
28 October 1940 – 23 April 1941
Italy invaded Greece from Albania after Metaxas rejected an ultimatum. The Greeks stopped the attack in the Pindus mountains and drove the Italians back into Albania, where the front stabilised through the winter. Mussolini's spring offensive failed, and the German invasion followed in April.
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Day by day
— Ohi
Metaxas refuses the ultimatum at 03:00 and the Italians cross the frontier from Albania at 05:30 in rain: eight divisions of Prasca's army in three groups, on the coast towards Igoumenitsa, up the centre against the Kalamas line at Kalpaki, and the Julia Alpine Division through the Pindus towards Metsovo. Greece has one division and a few battalions on the border, and mobilises behind them.
— Halted
The 8th Division holds the Kalamas line at Kalpaki through a week of attacks. The Julia Division, 50 kilometres deep in the Pindus with no road behind it, is cut off by Davakis's men and the reserves marching up from Metsovo, and comes out with a fifth of its strength. Prasca is sacked on 9 November; the Greeks, now with three corps in the line, begin their own attack on Korce the next day.
— Into Albania
Korce fell on 22 November and Pogradec on the 30th; on 6 December I Corps takes Sarande on the coast, and Gjirokaster follows two days later. The Greek army, on foot and mule with a few hundred lorries, is 30 to 60 kilometres inside Albania on the whole front, and the Italians are shipping divisions across the Adriatic as fast as Durres can take them.
— Primavera
The line froze in January with the Greeks holding Himare and Klisura and short of Tepelene, both armies losing more men to frostbite than to fire. Mussolini has come to Albania to watch twelve divisions attack on a 30-kilometre front between the Osum and Vjosa rivers, aiming at Klisura. Hill 731 is assaulted eighteen times in a fortnight and never taken; the offensive is called off on 25 March with 12,000 Italian casualties.
— Surrender
The Germans crossed from Bulgaria and Yugoslavia on 6 April, and the Leibstandarte came over the Metsovo pass on the 20th behind the fourteen Greek divisions still facing Albania. Tsolakoglou surrendered them to Dietrich at Votonosi that day; Mussolini insisted on a second signature, and on 23 April the Greeks sign again at Thessaloniki with an Italian present. The Italians have lost 13,700 dead in six months and it is the Wehrmacht that has taken Greece.
