Plowman, Jeffrey German Breakthrough in Greece

The 1941 Battle of Pineios Gorge. Then and Now

On 25 February 1941, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill first approached the governments of Australia and New Zealand to seek their agreement to deploy their troops in his Greek campaign. While the New Zealand government insisted that its forces must be supported by a tank brigade, the Australian government feared an evacuation, a fear that was also widespread among British planners, who did not want to share it. Two months later, on 14 April, ten days have passed since the German invasion of Greece, and the ANZACs are in trouble, even if they do not yet know it. The small German motorcycle battalion that has just reached the positions of the 21st NZ Battalion at Platamon is a harbinger of the impending armoured battle group. To the south lies the strategically important city of Larissa. To the north, almost the entire ANZAC Corps is spread out along the Olympus mountain range, whose western end is near Kalabaka, where a small brigade is waiting for the arrival of the 1st Armoured Brigade further north. Larissa is their only escape route, and the German advance is aimed directly at it. Worse still, as the fighting at Platamon became increasingly fierce, the ANZAC Corps high command seemed slow to react, almost turning a blind eye while continuing to reinforce the west against a perceived threat. The fact that this lone battalion, with only four 25-pounders for support, was able to hold off the attackers until the ANZAC Corps headquarters finally reacted was certainly not thanks to the corps commander, Lieutenant General Thomas Blamey. Some believe that this successful delaying action was only possible thanks to the intervention of Blamey's chief of staff, Brigadier Sydney Rowell. However, the complete evacuation of all ANZAC troops north of Larissa is more likely due to the tendency of New Zealand soldiers to appropriate foreign property, in this case British anti-tank mines. Ultimately, the situation was turned around thanks to the efforts of small groups of men whose resilience and ingenuity, often under extreme circumstances, helped to delay the advance. The Germans, for their part, made a series of mistakes, not least of a logistical nature, but also attributable to their arrogance after their easy victories in France. In the end, the entire ANZAC Corps escaped the trap, albeit narrowly, and the British avoided the far-reaching political consequences that would have resulted from the loss of their only contribution to the British land forces in the Middle East, in the case of New Zealand. How the ANZAC troops in Greece managed to hold their ground against attacks from both sides of the hill is the subject of this book.