Tuesday 3 June 2014
The geography of Greece is immensely defensible. Even a weak power with sufficient determination can defend the salient formed by the the country as it juts south from the main peninsula of the Balkans between the Aegean and Ionian seas against vastly superior invaders.
This is particularly true if the defender also retains control of the sea, which is very possible on account of modern Greece consistently dominating the Archipelago with its surprisingly powerful navy. This allows the defender to fully exploit the narrow chokepoints which allow entry into successive regions of the country.
As fantastically situated as Greece is, forming a veritable natural fortress, the defender can yet, by those false steps not uncommon in wars between mankind, place himself in an embarrassing situation much to his disadvantage.
In this present work, I intend to use two striking examples to demonstrate what a defender whose base is in southern Greece should do in the face of a superior enemy power, and what he should not do. Apart from the examples of antiquity, such as the invasion of Greece by the Persians under Xerxes, or the march of Alexander to Thebes, and the example of the Greek Revolution, these are much more instructive for our purposes, especially the latter, which is of an entirely singular nature.
The first example is that of the Greco-Turkish War of 1897. This is a very useful conflict for demonstrating our point about Greece's physical advantages.
After the creation of the independent Greek Kingdom in the early months of 1830, the country was delineated to run from the northeastern shore of the Gulf of Ambracia, continuing northeastwards into the mountains of the Pindus and Tymphristus, then turning south to run along the southern slope of the Othrys north of the plain of Phthiotis, formed by the valley of the Spercheus as it flows into the Malian Gulf, upon which lies the great city of Lamia. This frontier is depicted on the first map.
To the west of the Pindus, the regions of Aetolia and Acarnania, is very rugged and inhospitable. There is no suitable crossing over the Pindus south of Metsovo, and as this region lies south of the Gulf of Ambracia, it is rather well protected.
The Greeks had an additional advantage of sea power which allowed them to move quickly in the western regions of their country. Movement by sea was virtually the only way a large army could operate in Aetolia or Acarnania, and without sea power they could not cross the Gulf of Corinth from Acarnania or Phocis to the Morea.
This ensured that the decision would be found farther east. There one must cross Mount Othrys to enter the valley of the Spercheus if they are to reach Athens and the Peloponnese by land.
There were two ways to cross the Othrys, one was by the coastal road from Halmyros to Pelasgia around the eastern slopes of the mountains, and passing north of Cape Artemisium to reach the Spercheus. As this passed close to the sea, and just opposite the island of Negroponte, it was sensitive to marine operations.
Therefore, in order to reach the plain of Phthiotis from the north securely by land, one must necessarily cross the single major pass over the Othrys at Phourka. This would take one from the plains of Lake Xynias (now drained) to Lamia.
Once in Lamia one could continue south to the mountains of Callidromo and Oeta. One could then move north of the Callidromo and Cnemis along the narrow coastal road of Phocis opposite Negroponte and thus enter the plain of Boeotia from the north by way of Martino or Kastro. This path is much easier, but it is blocked by Thermopylae and vulnerable to the influence of sea power, which could be employed to cut the lines of communication by a daring landing behind an advancing enemy.
Therefore a foe without command of the sea would be compelled to adopt the inferior, but more secure, passage over the Brallos Pass between the mountains of Oeta and Callidromo. This would take one to the plains of Elatea, between the mountains of Callidromo and Cnemis to the north, Oeta and Giona to the west, and Parnassus to the south.
From here, one could take the Gravia Pass between Giona and Parnassus to reach Amphissa. Passing near the coast they could travel by way of the ancient oracle of Delphi between mounts Parnassus (north) and Kirfis (south), continuing north of Mount Helicum to reach the plains of Boeotia at the city of Livadia.
As this path takes one to the coast, it makes them vulnerable to a landing by way of the Gulf of Itea. Therefore the much easier route lay directly east along the River Cephisus which takes one directly from the plains of Elatea to those of Boeotia with no mountains intervening, but with mountains to the north and south shielding one's flanks from an amphibious assault on one's communications.
Moving through Amphicleia along the Cephisus one quickly passes between Parnassus (west) and Cnemis (east) to emerge on the plains of Boeotia near Chaeronea, where in 338 B.C. Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great's father, defeated Athens and Thebes to establish the unity of Greece under Macedonian hegemony, with the exception of Sparta and the Morea.
In ages past the road ran to Orchemenus and thence south along the western shore of Lake Copais, and then eastwards along the south shore of the lake, which occupied a great portion of the plains. This afforded much greater protection than today, for the lake has been drained, making Boeotia entirely open from west to east, leaving the road to Thebes much less difficult than before.
Once in Thebes, the road to Athens is barred by the daunting mountains that rise sharply to the south and east. The easiest route, again, lies to the north, following the foothills of Mount Parnes along the coast, then moving between Parnes and the mountains of Epacria by way of the Malakasa Pass. The road then passes east of Parnes, on the western end of the Plain of Marathon where the Persians of Darius landed in a clever attempt at bypassing the defences of Athens in 490 B.C.
This road then passes between Mount Parnes and Mount Pentelicus to reach the plain of Athens from the northeast. Alternatively one could move east, north of Mount Pentelicus across the plain of Marathon, then skirt around the east and then south of that mountain, to enter the plain of Athens from the east between Mount Pentelicus and Mount Hymettus by way of the Gargetos Pass.
Since this was vulnerable to interdiction by sea, if one were not in command of the Aegean it was preferred to instead move south from Thebes. Crossing the pass of Dryoscephalae over Mount Cithairon to the plain of Vilia, and then continuing over Mount Pateras one reaches the Thriasian Plain north of the Gulf of Eleusis at Mandra.
Crossing this plain, one can go either east or southeast. The Daphni Pass separating the northern and southern parts of Mount Egaleo can be traversed by moving southeast. But, obviously, this again passes near the coast. Therefore the Phyle Pass between Mounta Egaleo (south) and Mount Parnes (north) is much preferred. It is also far wider and more accessible.
The Athenian Plain itself is formed by the rivers Cephissus and Illisus that flow from Mount Parnes to Phalerum Bay. It is bounded in the north by Mount Parnes, to the east by Mount Hymettus, to the west by Mount Egaleo, and to the south by the Saronic Gulf. As such it is an impressive citadel of nature, protected from the landward side and given easy access to the sea, while a fleet defending its seaward approaches can take shelter in the nearby Gulf of Eleusis, formed by the island of Salamis.
Thus is described the way by which one could take Athens by marching overland, away from the sea to avoid granting the advantage to the dominant sea power. Taking Athens would be a disastrous blow to the Kingdom of Greece, but presuming that the Greeks insisted on fighting on further in the much superior region of the Peloponnesus, an invader would would find that prospect most difficult.
Either before or after taking Athens, one would have to use the Dryoscephalae Pass to reach the Thriasian Plain, and then follow the coastal road west, south of Mount Pateras, to reach the plain of Megara.
Just east of the Isthmus of Corinth rises the heights of Mount Gerania, forcing one to hug the coast south of Gerania to reach the isthmus just west of the mountain.
The isthmus is very narrow and easily controlled, virtually impossible to outflank save by sea, and is the last stronghold of the Greek Kingdom. It is no coincidence that the Pelopennus has always been the heart of Greece, whence their people originated and the last bastion of their culture when they fell to the Turks. It is home of the ancient Greek cities of the Iliad like Argos, Pylos, Corinth, Sparta, and Mycenae.
As such, the peninsula is not only easily sealed off from the mainland, but is itself extremely rugged and mountainous. Virtually the entire interior is mountainous and defensible, with the coast dropping dramatically to sea level. Apart from the coasts, the valleys of the Pamisus, the Eurotas, the Inachus; and the plain of Elis west of Mount Erymanthus, are the only low-lying regions.
The Pamisus is in the southwest of the Morea, forming the region of Messenia. The heart of Messenia lies along the river valley between the ranges of Kyparissia and Lycodomo in the west, and the Taygetus in the east.
The Eurotas is in the southeast of the Morea, forming the region of Laconia. Most of the population lives along the banks of the river which cuts a plain between the Tagyetus in the west and Mount Parnon in the east. On the river lies the city of Sparta, and the region formed the territory of that famous city-state in ancient times.
The Inachus is in the east of the Morea, between Mount Parnon in the west and mounts Arachnaio and Didymo in the east. It forms an exceptionally rich alluvial plain which was ruled by the city of Argos in antiquity.
All of these regions are easily accessible from the sea, as the Pamisus, Eurotas, and Inachus flow into the gulfs of Messenia, Laconia, and Argolis respectively. The southern peninsulas of the Morea also extend south into the Mediterranean like an outstretched three-fingered hand.
The westernmost of these is the peninsula of Acritas. The central peninsula is the Mani Peninsula, between the two is the Gulf of Messenia. Further east of the Mani Peninsula is the peninsula of Malea, between which two lies the Gulf of Laconia. Farthest east, forming the "thumb" of the hand, is the Argolic Peninsula east of the Inachus valley. Between it and Malea lies the Gulf of Argolis. These gulfs have traditionally been controlled by the island of Cerigo, a base long used by the fleets of Venice. But it is clear from this description that the Morea is formidable citadel for the Greeks, even should Athens fall to an enemy, and so long as they control the sea.
In any case, the border of 1830 was much in Turkish favour as it left the Phourka Pass in Turkish hands. As the Turks did not possess naval superiority at any time after the Greek Revolt, save briefly during the intervention of the Egyptians, their only practical route lay inland to avoid the coast and the Greek advantages of sea power.
This route was extremely predictable and necessarily had to traverse numerous passes, each of which could be consecutively held by the Greek defenders. As such the Turks would find the going rough. Their route is traced on map one.
During the Crimean War the embryonic Kingdom of Greece was deterred from joining Russia by the naval presence of the British and French fleets. A similar situation existed during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. But Russia endeavoured to improve Greece's position nonetheless at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. That congress decided to award Thessaly to Greece at Turkish expence, which was hammered out after a boundary commission agreed to particulars in 1881.
The new Greek frontier considerably strengthened Greece's defences, while also increasing her population and resources.
Though plans were made to extend the northwestern border far into Epirus, this was not done. The border remained the Gulf of Ambracia in the west, but once it reached the Pindus it turned sharply north running almost to the Katara Pass, just south of Metsovo. From there it ran along the ridges north of Kalambaka and Meteora. Just east of Trikkala it turned south to encompass much of the ridge of Kritiri, before following the eastern slopes of that ridge north to the west of Tyrnavo, and thus to the ridge of Analypsis and Mount Olympus.
Naturally, the Turks kept all of the keys to Thessaly in their own hands, and these were the passes leading onto the plains. This made defence of Thessaly somewhat problematic.
The Kalambaka Pass opens onto the plain from the northwest, but there was little danger of an invasion from this direction given the remoteness of location and difficulty of terrain to the north. The most obvious and by far the most practical route lay through the Vale of Tempe between Mount Olympus and Mount Ossa, formed by the lower course of the River Peneus. Lesser passes exist just west of the vale, like that of Nezeros near the eponymous lake, now drained.
More inland passes exist in the ridge of Kritiri, the main one linking Elassona with Larissa, called the Melouna which divides the ridge of Kritiri from that of Analypsis. Farther south, just west of Tyrnavo, is that of Reveni, while to the south, north of Koutsochero is that of the Skoumpa Defile. These positions are marked out on map two.
Larissa held the line of the Peneus, dividing the plain of Thessaly in half. But beyond this the only defensible positions were in the Volos Pass at the foot of Mount Pelium and the Agoriani Pass through the centre of Mount Kassidiari.
As such the Greeks were in a somewhat difficult position when they declared war on the Turks in 1897. The Cretan revolts had raised tensions between Greece and the Ottoman Empire since their outbreak in the 1860s. Greece nearly went to war in 1886, but was restrained by the Great Powers who blockaded Piraeus.
On 18 April, 1897, though, the spark was lit. Using their superior fleet the Greeks quickly overran Crete while deciding to stand on the defensive in Thessaly. They hoped to advance to secure the passes, perhaps igniting a revolt in Macedonia behind the Turks, and thereby compel the Porte to surrender Crete.
The initial Greek plan was to make the main thrust into the Skoumpa Defile and the Reveni Pass making for Damassi, and perhaps getting behind the Turkish forces based on Elassona.
For their part, the Turks intended to pin the Greeks in front at the Melouna Pass and strike their left flank at Tyrnavo after emerging from the Reveni Pass.
As the Turkish flanking attack ran into the main Greek force, it was put to flight. However, the Turks were not long in realising that the Greeks had made their main effort to the west, and therefore modified their own plans. Instead of flanking the Greek left from Reveni as it moved north, the Turks threw their main body at Melouna to flank the Greek right as they moved west towards Damassi.
In the short series of engagements, the Greek flank was turned and they retreated in chaos towards the south. Their disorganised and ill-disciplined forces abandoned Larissa without a fight on the 25th, which the Turks considered most peculiar as the city was well fortified and capable of protracted resistance.
The Greeks fell back in two directions. As they were dependent upon the sea for supplies, and in particular on the port of Volos, they decided to detach a strong force to the southeast in order to cover that city and guard the Volos Pass at Velestino.
The other detachment moved due south to a northern spur of the Kassidiari, near the town of Pharsalus. Near this town in 48 B.C. Julius Caesar defeated Pompey at the Battle of Pharsalus. It is also near Cynoscephalae, where the Macedonians under Philip V were defeated by the Romans under Titus Flaminius in 197 B.C., which resulted in the conquest of Greece by Rome.
On this fateful field history was to be decided once more. The decision to detach forces to Velestino was a serious mistake. The heights of Mount Mavrovouni rose between the two Greek forces and split them from each other.
The Turkish generals were eager to fall on Velestino first and drive the Greeks into Volos, after which their comrades farther west would be cut off from reinforcements and supplies by sea. Accordingly, already on the 27th the Turks had engaged the Greeks at Velestino, and inadvertently forced them to retreat to the south, towards Halmyros, uncovering Volos.
Volos fell to the Turks on the 8th of May, and it was a bitter blow to the Greeks. Before this had happened the Greeks farther west had been defeated at Pharsalus during the 6th and 7th, being forced southwest towards the Agoriani Pass and the town of Domokos.
The Greeks at Domokos and Halmyros were now totally isolated from one another. Domokos and the Agoriani Pass were all that lay between the Turks and their breakout into the plains of Lake Xynias and on towards the Phourka, which was the obvious Turkish route as the Greeks still held control of the sea despite the loss of Volos, and had their fleet to their back at Halmyros.
At Domokos on the 17th, the Greek position was outflanked and defeated, and once more the Greeks were forced to retreat, this time flying over the Phourka to Lamia. At this point the Greeks requested that the Tsar of Russia mediate the conflict and terms for an armistice. The troops evidently got wind of this, as many were dispirited and demoralised by the news, and many hoped that no further fighting would occur. They were mistaken, their enemy still advanced.
Perhaps as a result of this gloom, the Greeks do not seem to have attempted to hold the Phourka Pass, at least not initially or at its entrance. The confused situation at the Greek headquarters allowed the Turks to establish themselves in the pass before the Greeks were in position to hold it. Nonetheless the Greeks secured the southern length of the pass, so on the 19th the Turks and Greeks fought for control of the pass and the entrance to the plain of Phthiotis.
On the afternoon of the 19th an armistice was agreed to, for seventeen days, and the two sides ceased fighting. The Turks returned north of the Othrys pending the final peace settlement, while the Greeks stood at Lamia. The Greek forces that were previously at Halmyros were brought by land and sea to Lamia starting on the 18th, and were despatched to take up position southwards, to the Hot Gates, when they arrived on the 19th and 20th.
With the Greeks situated between Lamia and Thermopylae, and the Turks in the plain of Lake Xynias, the war in Thessaly came to an end. The Greeks had been utterly defeated. Yet, this defeat was not as serious as one might imagine. The Hellenic Army, though battered, was intact. It had successively and skillfully withdrawn upon its own communications and had fought several delaying actions, which, if not victories, at least preserved the army and its equipment.
Operations in Aetolia-Acarnania and at sea were subsidiary to our purposes. As the Turks controlled the entrance to the Gulf of Ambracia with their strong fortress at Preveza, where Barbarossa famously defeated Andria Doria in 1538, the Greeks were confined to entering Epirus by way of the narrow road between the Pindus and the Gulf of Ambracia.
North of the gulf is a broad plain formed by the rivers Arta and Louros, which continues west to the Rodias Lagoon, west and south of which is the peninsula on which lies Preveza.
The Turks attacked the bridge over the Arta on the 21st of April, but after an artillery duel which did not go their way, they retreated westwards across the Louros.
The Greeks then attacked across the Arta towards Philippiada to the west and into the Pentepigadia Defile to the north on the 23rd, hoping to rouse the population to revolt and thereby enter Ioannina. This was unsuccessful, and the Greeks were forced back across the Arta after losing actions in the Pentepigadia Defile between the 27th and the 30th.
As the Greeks had lost at Pharsalus on the 6th and 7th of May, the Greek High Command decided to attempt another offensive into Epirus to offset their defeat in Thessaly. The Greeks accordingly attacked north towards Grimpovo and Ampelia between the 12th and 16th, but did not get as far as they had the month before, and were compelled to retreat once more east of the Arta, having achived nothing. On the 19th the armistice was concluded and hostilities ceased.
Meanwhile, at sea, as we've seen, the Greeks overran Crete very quickly. The Greek fleet bombarded Preveza on the 17th of April, and landed men north of the city with the intention to take that place on the 18th. Between the 21st and the 23d the cities of Parga and Santi Quaranta were bombarded from the sea.
Unfortunately, by the 16th of May a Turkish counterattack had driven the Greeks into the sea from their positions before Preveza. The Greek forces farther east failed to cooperate with the navy and its landings to secure Preveza. Not surprisingly, therefore, the Turks took advantage of the Greek Army's retreat across the Arta to fall upon the isolated troops blockading the peninsula of Preveza. They were forced to evacuate in some panic.
In the east the Greek fleet bombarded the Turkish positions east of Mount Olympus at Lephtokarya, Platamonas, and Katerini on the 21st of April. They also landed temporarily at Lephtokarya to sever the railway line leading through the Vale of Tempe, while another force on the 20th landed near Alexandroupoli in an attempt to cut the railway line between Constantinople and Salonica. These landings likely convinced the Turks to stick to inland roads and avoid the coast.
On the 24th of April bombardments were conducted on Cape Kassandra in the Gulf of Therma. But operations further south called the Greek fleet away from assaulting the totally undefended port of Salonica, to Volos. Here they departed for Halmyros on the 8th of May, and between the 18th and the 20th they ferried the troops from Halmyros to Stilida, where they marched west to join the main Greek army at Lamia, and thence to Thermopylae as we've seen. On 5 June, the armistice was extended to naval operations.
Four months later the Treaty of Constantinople was signed, on 19 September, after prolonged negotiations. Greece had been defeated, but not as decisively as she might have been. The Greeks still held their positions along the River Arta in Acarnania, they held Crete, and the Turks had not crossed the Phourka Pass. The Greeks essentially retained their positions along the old 1830 frontier, plus Crete.
The Turks had won, but as the Greek Army was very much intact, and the Greeks remained supreme at sea, they were willing to conclude a moderate peace rather than attempt to force the Hot Gates or the Brallos in the teeth of Greek naval power. The Turks had initially desired to regain Thessaly, but to this Greece could not be induced to consent, and Russia would not agree to insist upon it.
Therefore the Turks contented themselves with imposing a crushing indemnity upon Greece of four million pounds, at the time far beyond the annual expenditure of the nascent kingdom, which crippled her for some time. In addition the Greeks were compelled to withdraw from Crete, the reason for the war, and recognise the return of Turkish sovereigntly, albeit with provisions for autonomy creating the so-called Cretan State.
The third map displays the positions and movements of the Greeks east of the Pindus during the war of 1897. Many contemporaries and later historians were highly critical of the Greeks. Dividing their forces after their retreat from Larissa was most foolish. Some are of the opinion that the Greeks should have retired with their whole strength upon Volos.
While this would have exposed the Agoriani Pass and the Phourka beyond it, uncovering the road to Athens, the presence of the Greeks on the Turkish left made an advance on Athens impossible lest the Greeks suddenly emerge from the hills of Mount Pelium to cut the Turkish lines of communication over the aforementioned passes and trap the Turks in Phthiotis or Boeotia.
Even so, the predicament of the Greeks was much better than it could have been. Though they failed to effectively utilise the strength of the position at Volos or the flexibility offered by their control of the sea, the Turks were nevertheless still incapable of eliminating their army. Battered and bruised as it was, it retreated, somewhat haphazardly, to the passes blocking the advance of the enemy. At the Phourka, far from their bases, and with the Greeks still in possession of naval superiority, the Turks were satisfied to end their campaign there.
Many have believed that they could have, and should have, advanced all the way to Athens. Given what we know, the prospect of success for such an attempt can only be regarded as doubtful. And even if Athens fell, there remained the Morea which the Turks would find nearly impossible to reduce without command of the sea, a factor which had spelled their doom during the Greek Revolution and which they were equally unable to secure in 1897.
The Turks had been successful, at least in the east of Greece and on land. But they had failed in Crete, which was under Greek occupation. With their navy the Greeks might yet have seized all the islands of the Archipelago, as they were to do later during the Balkan Wars. And in, fact the final contest on the field of Domokos was not a decisive victory like Austerlitz, Marengo, or Ulm. Doubting their ability to push on to Athens, the Turks rather easily yielded to the remonstrances of Russia to return to the status quo ante.
It was to be a much different story in the spring of 1941.
First of all, the Greeks had learned from their defeat in 1897, which obliged them to reform and improve their military. In 1912 and 1913 the Greeks successively defeated the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria, at which point the Ottoman Empire in Europe, save Thrace, was partitioned between Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece, and an independent Albania created at Austrian and Italian insistence.
Greece belatedly joined the First World War, which won for her parts of Anatolia and most of Turkish Thrace, which were lost again after the rise of Mustapha Kemal. But the Greeks succeeded in seizing the remainder of Bulgaria's Aegean coast leaving herself and Turkey as the sole powers maintaining any sort of fleet in the Aegean. This was supplemented by the acquisition of Crete and most of the Aegean islands during the Balkan Wars.
Thus the northern border of Greece ran along the northern Pindus opposite Albania, thence along Mount Verno and Mount Voras, to continue along the Rhodope range all the way to the Maritsa.
It was very difficult to access Greece from Albania, and in any case one could only reach the plains of Thessaly over the Pindus by way of the Katara Pass, far to the south and easily defended. Given Albanian weakness Greece needn't fear an invasion from the northwest. This leaves the only practical routes into Greece farther east.
Between Mount Verno and Mount Voras is the Monastir Gap around the vicinity of Bitola, in today's Republic of Macedonia. Serbia conquered Macedonia during the Balkan Wars, and it was retained by Yugoslavia well into the Second World War. Given traditional friendship and alliance between Athens and Belgrade, the Monastir Gap was secure.
East of the Monastir Gap flows the River Vardar. This forms a broad and accessible valley between Mount Paiko and Lake Dojran, rapidly opening onto the plains of Macedonia all the way to Salonica and the Aegean. As this, too, was in Yugoslavia, the Greeks could consider it secure.
Of immediate danger was the Greco-Bulgarian border. The easiest and most obvious path into Greece from Bulgaria is through the Rupel Gorge formed by the River Struma. This was easily defensible and the Greeks could plug this gateway.
Some one hundred miles east of the Rupel Gorge lies the Makaza Pass, just north of the city of Komotini. While this is more difficult to defend given the great length of front to cover from the Rupel Gorge to Makaza, the Greek Army very wisely contracted the distance to only reach the line of the River Mesta, just east of Mount Lekanis and on the coast adjacent to Thasos. If necessary this could be withdrawn westwards towards the city and pass of Kavala at the foot of Mount Lekanis.
This position is immensely difficult to outflank, especially if one does not have control of the sea. Thus the Greek lines running from the Struma to the Mesta were virtually impregnable.
The last entrance into Greece is along the valley of the Maritsa. This is most likely where the Turks would enter, given that it borders upon their country. Assuming that the Turks succeeded in getting across the river, they'd be faced by the superb Greek defences along the Mesta and upon Mount Lekanis. As the Greeks had no intention of contesting the Maritsa against Bulgaria in the event of war, an invader from the north would just put himself farther east of the Greek defences along the Mesta than he would coming down from the Makaza.
All of these passes and the Greek northern frontier can be seen in map four. Presuming one were to surmount these difficulties, to reach the plains of Thessaly and thus the route the Turks took on their way to Athens in 1897, and the Persians took in 480 B.C., one could take a number of paths.
The most direct and by far the most convenient route lay through the Vale of Tempe, as we're already familiar with from the previous war. Assuming that path brings one too close to the sea, the other options were the Petra Pass, a most inferior road, and the main inland passage along the valley of the Aliacmon, and from there over the Sarantoporo Pass.
Petra and Sarantoporo bring one to Elassona, the headquarters of the Turkish Army in 1897, and thence over the Melouna Pass to the plains of Thessaly. All of this being depicted on map five.
This foray into geography brings us at last to the terrible debacle that befell the proud Hellenic Kingdom in the spring of 1941, during the Second World War. Intriguingly, this operation bears a marked similarity to the campaign against France in the summer of 1940. Though the Greeks were most assuredly inferior to the Germans in nearly every category, and many have criticised Churchill's desire for a Balkan stronghold as fanciful, I've been led to conclude that the Greeks had an honest chance.
What allowed them to be so rapidly defeated was not the supposed overwhelming superiority of the Germans, nor the inadequacy of British assistance to the Greeks. In this respect it, again, resembles France in 1940. The Greeks may console themselves with the myth that they had no chance, but in reality they abandoned their, very solid, chance of indefinitely holding their opponents at bay. Their own arrogance and the Germans' skillful and unexpected exploitation of a "blind spot," so to speak, was what allowed them to defeat the Greeks in the same way that they had defeated the French.
Normally, a Greek withdrawal, even a chaotic one, could be conducted with great skill and yet be able to contest the numerous chokepoints leading into their homeland. With control of the sea, the possible avenues of advance were further limited. This gave the Greeks a clear idea of where their enemies must pass, and gave them the opportunity to bitterly contest each pass, making their enemies pay dearly for every foot of ground they took. Such a possibility was carefully illustrated by the operations that characterised the Greco-Turkish War.
The Germans were to take an entirely different approach than that of the Turks, and they were to, remarkably, barely fight the Greeks at all. Nonetheless their victory over the Greeks was decisive and irreversible, and laid the entire kingdom prostrate at their feet in a matter of days. This next portion will explain how they achieved this remarkable success.
In October of 1940, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, perhaps jealous of Germany's astonishing success, sought to achieve an impressive military victory of his own. He pressed upon the Greeks his demands for bases and garrisons which the Greeks considered tantamount to annexation. They rejected the Italian demands with scorn, leading the Italians to declare war on the 28th of October.
Given that Italy had invaded and annexed the Kingdom of Albania on 7 April, 1939, the Italians were able to invade Epirus from Albania. Unfortunately for Italy, her declaration of war came well after she was at war with the United Kingdom, and her fleet had patently failed to achieve ascendency over the tenacious British Mediterranean Fleet. Failing this, the Italians were unable to exercise their naval power to move more flexibly around the eastern coasts of Greece.
This compelled them to advance headlong into the bleak inhospitable crags of the Pindus in northwestern Greece. Here the Greeks used their terrain to their advantage, and soon the Italians had been completely halted.
As Greek reserves rushed towards the front, the Greeks soon established numerical superiority over the wavering Italians, and this allowed them to counterattack into Albania. Between November of 1940 and February of 1941, the Greeks swept the Italians entirely out of northern Epirus and had reached as far north as Valona, which important port they attempted to capture.
On 9 March, the newly re-inforced Italians launched a spring offensive that pushed the Greeks back from Valona but failed to take the Klisoura Pass, and by the 20th their attack had run out of steam.
Nonetheless the Greeks were well inside the borders of Albania, having clearly bested the inept Italians in the mountains of Epirus. Their front lines ran irregularly from the shores of Lake Ohrid at Pogradec to the Ionian Sea at the port of Chimara. But this very success was to prove their undoing.
As British bombers operating from Greek aerodromes were within striking distance of the Ploești oilfields in Romania, Hitler decided that Germany must intervene to remove the British and their Greek allies from the Balkans. In pursuance of this, he drew in Bulgaria, Romania, and Yugoslavia as accomplices. But Yugoslavia's anti-German coup d'état on 27 March, 1941, decided Hitler to overrun Yugoslavia on the way to Greece.
On 6 April the operations against both Greece and Yugoslavia were opened. By the 18th Yugoslavia had been ground into dust and the Germans were already well on their way to victory in Greece.
The Germans were perceptive enough to realise that simply battering the Greeks south over numerous passes would be costly and time-consuming, therefore they intended to avoid having to do that.
Fortunately for them everything favoured their plans. The Greeks had concentrated the majority of their forces to the northwest of their country in southern Albania, as we've noted, in their resolution to grapple with the hated Italians.
Now one may recall that the main passage over the Pindus is at Metsovo, called the Katara Pass. In order to get from their positions in Epirus back to the plains of Thessaly the Greeks had to traverse difficult mountain paths leading south to the Katara and Grevena Passes. Alternatively they could strike east to the pass over Mount Verno, between Florina and Lake Prespa, the Pisoderi. South of that lay the Kleisoura Pass (not to be confused with the previously mentioned Klisoura Pass in Albania), the Vlasti Pass, dividing Mount Verno from Mount Askio; and the Siatista Pass, dividing Mount Askio from Mount Vourinos.
Any one of them would have taken the Greeks to the southern reaches of the Monastir Gap and the valley of the Aliacmon, and thus to the Sarantoporo and the plains of Thessaly. The Greek positions facing the Italians, and the passes detailed above are all found on map six.
On 6 April, as mentioned previously, German forces crossed the Greek border from Bulgaria and opened the Greek campaign by assaulting the Rupel Gorge.
Of twenty-one Greek divisions, Greek Commander-in-Chief Alexandros Papagos only detached six divisions to watch the so-called Metaxas Line that ran from the Struma to the the Mesta just east of Mount Lekanis. But these gave stiff resistance and the Germans were unable to break through the well-fortified Greek positions.
Having already anticipated this outcome, more German forces had meanwhile pushed west through Yugoslav Macedonia, turning sharply south along the Vardar to outflank the Greek left, trapping the six divisions of the Greek Second Army between the Vardar and the Mesta. By the 9th the Greek Second Army had surrendered to the Germans who had encircled them, which is depicted on map seven.
Though Greece had been invaded by Germany, and had indeed by long aware of German preparations in Bulgaria, Papagos in Albania now refused to budge, even after the capitulation of the Second Army. He did not even admit that retreat was necessary until a week after the first German forces had crossed the border, the first Greeks beginning to withdraw from Albania on the 13th.
By then it was too late. The Germans were pouring through the Monastir Gap to encircle the Greek First Army of fifteen divisions as they had done to the Second Army. The British forces sent to help Greece plugged the gap as best they could, as the Greeks refused to heed reason. Though the British generals were aware of the danger to the Monastir Gap, Papagos and the Greeks remained oblivious to their peril.
On the 9th of April the Germans took Florina and closed the Pisoderi Pass. On the 10th the British attempting to defend Klidi by way of the Klidi Pass were defeated by superior numbers and pushed south. On the 13th the Germans defeated the British at Ptolemaida, forcing them to withdraw to Kozani. On the 14th the Germans reached Kozani.
The same day as the British had withdrawn to Kozani, Papagos as last ordered a retreat from Albania. But that night and into the next morning a few regiments from the Greek 20th Infantry Division were defeated in Kleisoura Pass, and that window of escape was slammed shut. On the 15th the Greek 35th Infantry Division was driven out of the Vlasti Pass.
Later on the 14th, the Germans attempted to cross the Aliacmon, but were repulsed by stiff British resistance. Nonetheless on the 13th Wilson had decided to withdraw to Thermopylae, and by the 19th the British had withdrawn the last of their forces from the north by the Vale of Tempe, after a sharp action there on the 18th. On the 20th the Germans took Larissa, and on the 21st captured the port of Volos.
By then it was all over. On the 16th the Germans were in Siatista, the Greeks now had little hope of linking with the British, and had only one way left through which they could obtain supplies or slip the noose being drawn around their necks, the Katara Pass.
Racing southwest along the main road from Kozani, the Germans reached Metsovo on the 18th, before the Greeks could come up in force. Pushing the weak detachments in the pass aside, the Germans pushed on to Ioannina, which they took on the 19th.
With the British already withdrawn from the plains of Thessaly, and the Germans flooding into that plain, the Greeks had no hope of escaping save by their own power. As the Germans brought up more forces to secure Metsovo, a Greek breakout was increasingly unlikely.
Realising that the game was up, Papagos, after some final attempts to break through, surrendered nearly the entire Greek Army, designated the Army of Epirus, on 23 April. These movements are displayed on map eight.
When news of the Greek surrender reached Wilson at Thermopylae, he ordered an immediate evacuation of all British troops from Greece, leaving behind a rear guard to slow the German advance through the Hot Gates. On the 24th the Germans attacked the British near the hallowed tomb of Leonidas and were repulsed with heavy losses. Nonetheless the British continued their withdrawal, and by the 27th the pursuing Germans entered the now undefended Athens.
Before they had entered Athens, on the 25th, the Germans attempted to capture the bridges over the Corinthian Canal using airborne forces as they had done in Holland, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, and France. These failed, however. The British managed to blow the bridges, and since the Corinthian Canal has walls nearly three-hundred metres in height, this effectively ended German hopes of reaching the Morea by way of the isthmus for the time being.
To circumvent this, German forces moving along the west side of the Pindus south from Ioannina reached the Gulf of Corinth at Lepanto, where the combined fleets of Spain and Italy defeated the Turks once and for all in 1571, and Missolonghi, from which they crossed by sea to Patras on the night of the 27th. On the morning of the 28th the canal was seized, and by the 29th they had reached the Gulf of Messenia moving rapidly against little resistance, for by that time the British were all but gone. On the 30th the last of the British forces evacuated from the Morea and the campaign was effectively over.
So, a few interesting points to touch upon. Even the small-scale badly outnumbered British Expeditionary Force was able to cause considerable damage and to delay the Germans at successive chokepoints, most notably at Thermopylae where two brigades held up the German advance for over a day and retired in good order. And again at the Corinthian Canal, which was held for nearly three days by only skeleton formations. If the Greek Army had still been around to defend these positions, developments may have gone far differently.
That they were not is the other point needing to be examined. The Greeks in their mad insistence to relinquish a foot of soil to the Italians doomed themselves and their country in a spectacular and almost inconceivable manner.
The Greeks were blinded by their contempt for Italy. As Hitler invaded Yugoslavia and German forces raced towards the Greek border, British General Sir Henry Maitland "Jumbo" Wilson pleaded with Alexandros Papagos to retreat from his advanced line in Albania to take up a better position. Papagos refused, arguing that a retreat would destroy Greek morale. Wilson attributed this failure of Papagos to see his plight to a "fetishistic obsession to yield not an inch of ground to the Italians." In order to assuage their pride in the contest with Italy, the Greeks allowed themselves to be destroyed by Germany.
To make matters worse, the Greeks had put too much faith in their Yugoslavian ally. They had anticipated a German attack from Bulgaria, against which they were well provided for with the Metaxas Line. With their main force covering the Albanian border, they seemed to have been in a strong position. The British under Wilson were less sanguine, however, and warned of the Germans moving through Yugoslavia, which the Greeks, unbelievably, did not heed. The Germans moving through Yugoslav Macedonia severed the Second Army's line of communications by rushing down the valley of the Vardar, while at the same time other Germans pushed down the Monastir Gap to cut those of the First Army.
In fact, the Greek Army was deployed in two remote theatres with an enormous gap between them, and into this gap poured the Germans just as they had done in the Ardennes in 1940.
Despite this development, and the surrender of the Second Army on the 9th, Papagos stubbornly refused to withdraw. By the time he had finally decided to retreat, the Germans had already taken the Kleisoura Pass, and the next day they were to enter Kozani.
14 April was the critical moment of the campaign, the British at that point had no further hope of keeping in communication with Papagos or of preventing the Germans from reaching the plains of Thessaly. Having acheived that, moving much more quickly than the Greeks against minimal resistance due to Papagos's ill-judged delay, the Germans placed themselves between the British and the Greeks. Furthermore, they placed themselves between the Greeks and their lines of supply, together with their only route of escape.
Given the rugged terrain of Epirus, the Greeks travelling mostly by foot and mule could not hope to win a race against the motorised Germans speeding across much flatter ground. Additionally, this was the worst theatre to have been caught in for the Greeks, because it had the one coast controlled by the Italian Navy.
The British based on Souda Bay in Crete, and more distantly on Alexandria in Egypt, together with the Greek Navy at Salamis, could ensure the control of the Aegean and the Gulf of Corinth. But on the northwestern coast the only Greek base was at Preveza on the Gulf of Ambracia. This is too distant to control the coast of Epirus, and too inadequate to shelter capital ships, so the British could operate there, which was dangerous anyway because of the swarms of Axis aircraft in nearby Apulia.
This gave a clear field to the Italians moored nearby at Taranto. An emergency evacuation like Dunkirk, or the British withdrawal from Greece herself, was out of the question for the Greeks in Epirus. They and their British allies had no fleets that could contest the seas with the Italians so close by.
Accordingly the Italians were exceptionally useful for the Germans in this campaign. The Italian fleet prevented any escape by sea of the Greek First Army, and the Italian forces pinned the main Greek army in position while the Germans worked around its right flank. Obviously, flanking manoeuvres are only useful when the enemy is incapable of facing them on account of other forces engaging his attention in front.
Not surprisingly, therefore, by the time the lead elements of the slow non-mechanised Greek Army reached the Katara Pass they found the Germans had already arrived. With the capture of that pass, the Greeks could no longer escape. They were trapped in Epirus until they starved to death or surrendered. Realising that further resistance was pointless, Papagos capitulated the Greek Army.
Incredibly, the Greeks did not seriously contest any of the passes that so admirably defended their country as they had wisely done in 1897. There were no Greeks to stop the Germans from crossing the Sarantaporo or the Vale of Tempe, there were no Greeks at Thermopylae even, these extremely defensible passes were instead defended by precious few British forces who were only seeking to delay the Germans long enough for their comrades to evacuate by sea.
Even so, the Germans found forcing them to be very difficult. They found defeating the much more numerous and seemingly more formidable Greeks to be hardly difficult at all. In fact the main Greek Army did not fight a single engagement with the main German column. The Germans defeated the Greeks without being required to seriously engage them in battle.
With the main Greek Army conveniently obliging the Germans' own strategy, they allowed themselves to be trapped and destroyed in Epirus while the rest of their country was entirely undefended. They left meagre British forces to prevent the Germans from reaching Thessaly, and to defend Attica and the Morea. These were entirely inadequate for such a task, and were quickly severed from the Greeks who were only in contact by way of the road from Ioannina to Kozani, which had already been cut on the 14th.
Without criticising Papagos too much, as he was an experienced and determined commander who fought with great success against the Italians, it is clear that his priorities were entirely skewered. Albania and Epirus were strategically and economically worthless. There was no reason for the Greeks to insist on defending them, especially since this would place them in grave risk of being isolated and eliminated.
If the Greeks had instead listened to Wilson's advice and had withdrawn in good order immediately after the Germans crossed the frontier, they may have reached the plains of Thessaly long before the Germans were able to encircle them. Finding the British forces there, the Greeks may have been able to hold the passes of Sarantaporo, Katara, and Tempe for a very long time. And if forced to yield them, then the Greeks could retire in good order south across Thessaly to form a new line at Domokos, and the Phourka, and Thermopyle. The Germans would find taking the Hot Gates against the entire Greek Army a much more formidable task than forcing them against a couple brigades, which even that they found difficult to do.
Instead of utilising their favourable terrain, exploiting the advantages of their fleet, and ensuring that they could fall back upon their lines of communication to offer a much more dogged and intractable resistance, the Greeks chose to remain in a remote geographically inaccessible region in the one sea dominated by their adversaries and served by only two roads that were both cut within four days of each other.
The Greek campaign of 1941 thus presents a total contrast with that of 1897. In 1897 the Turks merely pushed the Greeks onto their lines of communication and into new defensive positions. In 1941 the Germans flew right past the Greek Army to cut its arteries and kill it before it even had a chance to react. It was a display of genius taking rapid and effective advantage of an enemy's faulty dispositions made on account of misguided sentimental reasons.
Papagos ought to have been more worried about successfully defending his people from the fury of the German invaders rather than in proving the superior valour of the Greeks over that of the Italians. All the more so since he allowed the Italians to pin him in place, and though the Greeks gave them a hell of a drubbing, Papagos and his generals were forced to swallow the bitter humiliation of capitulating to the Italians and leaving their country to the mercy of the despised Mussolini in the end anyway.
After the war the generals and the government were heavily criticised for their conduct, though Papagos remained personally popular. Above all the Greeks were said to have been ashamed that it was British forces defending Thermopylae and not Greek forces, as this sacred soil is something of a national redoubt filled with nostalgic glory for the Greeks. But by the time the Germans reached the Hot Gates, there was no Greek Army left, it had surrendered in its entirety the day before, and in the mountains of Albania nowhere near Themopylae. It is a tragic illustration of consequences involved in clinging desperately to obtuse emotions.
To conclude, however, it does not seem that the Greeks were faced with overwhelming superiority. The Germans deployed some 600,000 men in Greece, which was not excessively superior to the Greeks' nearly 500,000 and some 60,000 British. If the Greeks had held narrow passes the number of Germans that could actually engage them would be much more limited, leaving the opposing forces in direct contact about equal. This would have been exceptionally difficult for the Germans to defeat in such circumstances.
Furthermore, the mountainous topography of Greece was unfavourable for mechanised warfare. The Germans would not have been able to utilise their superior mobility to outflank their enemies as their enemies' flanks would be covered by inaccessible mountains. Greek weakness in armour therefore would have been only a marginal disadvantage.
Curiously, the Greeks made no attempt to evacuate the Greek Second Army from Macedonia, though they could easily have done so. If the entire Greek Army was concentrated on the Aegean coast, the Greeks would have been able to move it rapidly by sea, allowing them to retreat swiftly and effectively from the Germans.
Forcing the Isthmus of Corinth would have been an herculean task for the Germans, as the height of the canal's walls precludes any possibility of pontoons, and bridges are conspicuous and easily targeted. Plus, if they were blown by an artillery shell while Germans were on them, those Germans would fall to their deaths. Though the Germans seized Salamis and the primary Greek naval facilities, the Greeks might easily have joined the British at Souda Bay in Crete, relying on the British facilities at Alexandria. Rotating out of Souda the Greeks and British together could have prevented any German attempts to cross the Gulf of Corinth without much difficulty, and could use Patras to deflect any attempts by the Italian fleet to ferry them.
Seizing the Peloponnesus with airborne troops was impossible. The only other option that would have been available to the Germans was to take Crete with airborne troops and thus force the British and Greek fleets to withdraw from the Aegean. Once that was done they could have crossed the Gulf of Corinth to outflank the isthmus by sea. They may or may not have been able to achieve this, but if the Germans failed on Crete there could be little chance of them ever conquering the Morea. In that case the topography of Greece would have frustrated even the Wehrmacht and would have vindicated the policy of Churchill, but the Greeks themselves forfeited this prospect in a gross dereliction of their duties. Hopefully their successors will have learned better. - Kaiser
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