|
Greece entered World War II on 28 October 1940, when the Italian army invaded from Albania, beginning the Greco-Italian War. The Greek army was able to halt the invasion temporarily and was able to push the Italians back into Albania. The Greek successes forced Nazi Germany to intervene. The Germans invaded Greece and Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, and overran both countries within a month, despite British aid to Greece in the form of an expeditionary corps. The conquest of Greece was completed in May with the capture of Crete from the air, although the ''Fallschirmjäger'' suffered such extensive casualties in this operation that the Germans abandoned large-scale airborne operations for the remainder of the war. The German diversion of resources in the Balkans is also considered by some historians to have delayed the launch of the invasion of the Soviet Union by a critical month, which proved disastrous when the German army failed to take Moscow. However, other historians (John Keegan) point out that the German timetable depended on the drying of the Soviet Union's dirt roads after an unusually wet Spring and that the German conquest of the Balkans ended much faster than the German Planners had expected. Greece itself was occupied and divided between Germany, Italy and Bulgaria, while the King and the government fled into exile in Egypt. First attempts at armed resistance in summer 1941 were crushed by the Axis, but the Resistance movement began again in 1942 and grew enormously in 1943 and 1944, liberating large parts of the country's mountainous interior and tying down considerable Axis forces. However, political tensions between the Resistance groups resulted in the outbreak of a civil conflict among them in late 1943, which continued until the spring of 1944. The exiled Greek government also formed armed forces of its own, which served and fought alongside the British in the Middle East, North Africa and Italy. The contribution of the Greek navy and merchant marine in particular was of special importance to the Allied cause. Mainland Greece was liberated in October 1944 with the German withdrawal in the face of the advancing Red Army, while German garrisons continued to hold out in the Aegean Islands until after the war's end. The country was devastated by war and occupation, and its economy and infrastructure lay in ruins. Greece suffered more than 400,000 casualties during the occupation, and the country's Jewish community was almost completely exterminated in the Holocaust. By 1946, however, a vicious civil war erupted between the British and American-sponsored conservative government and leftist guerrillas, which would last until 1949. ==Greco-Italian War== (詳細はAlbania on October 28, 1940, after making small initial gains, was stopped by the determined defense of Greek forces in the battles at the Elaia-Kalamas line and the Pindus Mountains. The unwillingness of Bulgaria to attack Greece, as the Italians had hoped, allowed the Greek High Command to transfer most of the mobilizing divisions intended for the garrisoning of Macedonia to the front, where they were instrumental in the Greek counteroffensive, launched on November 14. Greek forces crossed the border into Albania and took city after city despite facing a harsh winter, having inadequate supplies and facing Italian air superiority. By mid-January, Greek forces had occupied a quarter of Albania, but the offensive had come to a standstill before it had reached its objective, the port of Vlorë. This situation prompted Germany to come to the rescue of its Axis partner. However, according to Stockings and Hancock, Hitler had never wished to interfere in the Balkans. They claim in their book, ''Swastika over the Acropolis ''(2013) that the invasion of Greece had more to do with "a reluctant response to British involvement" than aiding his Axis partner. In a final attempt to restore Italian prestige before the German intervention, a counterattack was launched on March 9, 1941 against the key sector of Klissura, under Mussolini's personal supervision. Despite massive artillery bombardments and the employment of several divisions on a narrow front, the attack failed to make any headway and was called off after almost two weeks. But by April 13, the Italian front in Albania finally began to move, prompted by the general Italo-German joint attack. The Greeks put up a strong defense, fighting vigorously. However, a few days later, they were forced to retreat losing much of their hard won Albanian territory. Italian Bersaglieri units appeared and entered the plain of Korce, but even though minefields and road-blocks tried to delay their passage into Greek territory, they simply dismounted from their lorries and continued advancing by bicycle. The Greek Army of the Epirus however, was exhausted, while "the Italian advance amounted merely to keeping up with a defeated and retreating enemy."〔Owen Pearson, Albania in the Twentieth Century, A History: Volume II: Albania in Occupation and War, 1939-45, 2006, p. 142.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Military history of Greece during World War II」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|