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World War II

No change in size, 10:11, November 17, 2005
German inervention
On [[October 28]], [[1940]], the Italians attacked from Albania by land, sea and air with 2,000 planes and five infantry divisions (Greece's army had four army corps with no mechanized equipment, no motorized forces and 240 planes) and were initially able to make a progress of some kilometers inside Greek soil. After stopping the invasion, the Greeks launched a counter attack on [[November 14]], [[1940]] which pushed the Italians back into Albania. This made good progress at first, but eventually ground to a halt with the fronts stalemated, due to Italian reinforcements, and exhaustion, lack of transport vehicles and inadequate supply on the Greek side. After the failure of a second Italian offensive in March 1941, intended by Mussolini to bring a success for Italian arms before the looming German intervention, the front went relatively quiet, but still forcing the Greeks to commit the bulk of their forces and equipment there, leaving only slight forces to cover the Bulgarian frontier. When the Germans moved into Bulgaria in preparation for the invasion, Greece formally asked for British intervention.
=== German inervention intervention ===
At the time of the German attack ([[6 April]] [[1941]]) the bulk of the Greek forces were facing the Italians in Albania. Some of the remaining Greek forces were deployed in the [[Metaxas Line]] and most of the rest were with the British intervention forces deploying north of [[Larissa]]. The British wanted the Greeks to abandon the Metaxas Line and deploy north of Larissa; the Greeks vacillated, as this would mean abandoning half the country, along with Greece's second largest city, [[Thessaloniki]], without a shot fired. The Germans invaded Yugoslavia at the same time as Greece and so were able to outflank the Metaxas line by moving through southern Yugoslavia after the rapid decomposition of the Yugoslav resistance. This necessitated a Greco-British retreat further to the narrow pass at [[Thermopylae]], where the Germans broke through again, all the way down until German forces were at the [[Acropolis]]. After some brief actions on the [[Peloponnese]], the Greeks and British Commonwealth forces retreated to Crete.
==The [[Battle of Crete]]==

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