The Axis Conquers Greece: The Italian Invasion and the German Intervention, 1940-41

On 28 October 1940, Italian armed forces invaded Greece from Albania as part of Mussolini's parallel war for control of the Mediterranean basin. What promised to be a military walkover turned into an unmitigated disaster as the Greeks, spurred on by Prime Minister Metaxas' call to resist the unjustified aggression, drive the invaders deep into mountainous Albania in the dead of winter. Hitler was forced to intervene the following spring to rescue his Axis partner, while Churchill seized the opportunity to threaten German hegemony on the European continent by aiding his loyal Greek allies. After easily conquering the whole of mainland Greece, German intervention culminated with the conquest of Crete on 1 June 1941 in a daring airborne operation.

Going beyond the mere recounting of events, The Axis Conquers Greece seeks to explain why they happened the way they did and to dispel some of the myths that still persist, using Italian, Greek, German, British, Australian and New Zealand sources. It makes a comparative study of the armed forces of the participants to understand their performance during the campaign and gives a voice to protagonists from all nations, from heads of state to simple soldiers, to give insight into how they thought and acted.