We are pursued but not abandoned. We are struck down, but never struck
out or destroyed.
- St. Paul to the Church at Corinth
For the British and ANZAC troops sailing into the Aegean in March of 1941, the trip would have provided some awesome sites. One of their first glimpses of Greece would have been the gleaming top of Mount Olympus, the legendary home of the Greek gods. As they sailed closer to the port of Salonika, they would have seen the coast of the ancient kingdom of Macedon, birthplace of Alexander the Great who was perhaps history's greatest commander.
The troops aboard these transports were green and untested. The British 1st Tank Brigade of the 2d British Armored Division had only recently been formed. And while the 6th Australian and the 2d New Zealand had some career officers who fought in WWI, the majority of the leaders and soldiers were businessmen, lawyers, plant managers, farmers, laborers, herdsmen, and the like. Despite their inexperience, they were anxious to fight the Germans and would do their best to help the Greeks repel the expected invasion.
They were led by General Maitland Wilson, an able British commander who had been involved in the development of British motorized infantry and had recently played a role in the stunning defeat of the Italians in Cyrenaica. In that battle a good number of the troops had gained some experience, and a few units had even been blooded. In Greece, however, they would be outnumbered, outgunned, and marked for annihilation by the ultimate army of the day.
The hopelessness of the situation was not lost on the British high command. In fact, before Wilson Force had even landed in Greece, plans for its withdrawal had already been drawn up in Cairo.
Indeed, the expeditionary force would need the reincarnation of Alexander the Great himself to secure victory in such desperate circumstances. Unfortunately - at this point of the war - it appeared that Alexander had already been reincarnated in German field gray.
The Chess Players
For his part, Hitler had actually worked at not invading the Balkans. His wish was for a neutral Balkan theater - albeit one completely under his control. Yet the British were now in Greece and in Crete, and their bombers could upset Hitler's plans for Russia by attacking his recently acquired Romanian oil fields.
Further, the events of WWI weighed on his mind - remembering how British forces had landed in Solinika, thereby opening a new front and speeding the collapse of the Kaiser's Germany. And most obvious was how foolhardy it would be to launch and offensive in the east with an enemy at his rear. So, Hitler concluded, the Balkans must be brought to heel, and Greece had to be cleared of the British. With this decision made, he allocated ample forces to the task.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill realized that the situation in Greece was rather hopeless and that there should have been no British or Commonwealth divisions sent at all. Unfortunately this realization, which he published in his memoirs, came too late. At the time of the conflict - at the critical moment of decision - he abdicated his authority and allowed his war cabinet to be persuaded that the venture was worth it all, infected as they were with a "strong glow for action" and a desire to save face, already having pledged their support to Greece.
Land of Confusion
When Wilson Force landed, the Greek Second Army, which had been pulled back from the panhandle on the eastern edge of Greece, was dug in at the Metaxis line, a series of fortifications that ran across eastern Greece and also along its border with Bulgaria. This was bad. The British had wanted the Greeks pulled back all the way to the more defensible and strategically sound Vermion-Olympus line. But this would have meant the abandonment of the whole of Northern Greece, an unpopular decision that the Greek leadership could not, would not, make.
So, behind the Greeks then, the British established shorter, more defensible positions at Mount Olympus, the Varder river valley west of Salonika, and the Vermion position. The Vermion line extended west toward the Greek 1st Army in the Pindus mountains and Albania. The junction of the British and Greek forces was a weak spot that would not escape the trained eyes of the German generals.
Yugoslavia in the Cross Hairs
The Greeks were not alone in resisting the Axis powers. In Yugoslavia, a recent coup d'etat backed by the populace replaced a pro-German government with one that sought to preserve the country's independence. The coup infuriated Hitler who ordered his commanders in chief to "destroy Yugoslavia as a military power and a sovereign state."
On April 6, 1941 the German attacks on Greece and Yugoslavia began. German forces crushed the two Yugoslav armies in less than a week and entered Belgrade signaling the fall of Yugoslavia.
As these forces sped toward Belgrade, other German forces cut a path across the southern region of Yugoslavia and began a pivoting move southward into Greece that would prove devastating to the Greek and British forces.
