Kaltenegger, R. Hakenkreuz über Griechenland. Der Deutsche Balkanfeldzug 1941

The Balkans, the powder keg of the Old Continent, had always been caught in the tension between internal and external interests and had increasingly become the plaything of the European great powers since the Crimean War. The two Axis powers were also anything but united in their Balkan policy. In 1940, the German Reich had already occupied Poland and France and was preparing for the campaign against the Soviet Union. To this end, it was of the utmost necessity for Hitler to keep the peace with his eastern neighbour. But then events came thick and fast.

Mussolini, whose goal was a kind of Mediterranean empire modelled on the Roman Empire, attacked Greece in the autumn of 1940. At about the same time, there was a coup in Yugoslavia against the pro-German government and the installation of a counter-government. When the Italian army was unable to prevail in Greece despite numerical superiority, Hitler was forced to attack Yugoslavia and Greece simultaneously in order to preserve his objectives. In the short campaign against Yugoslavia, the 2nd Army overcame the strong Yugoslav border fortifications and advanced deep south to Zagreb, while the 12th Army, with Panzer Group 1 under its command, broke through the Bulgarian-Yugoslav border. With the unification of the two armies less than two weeks later, the country was defeated, but Tito's partisans, who rose up shortly afterwards, were to trouble the German Wehrmacht until the end of the war. The occupation of the entire Greek mainland by German troops between 6 and 27 April followed the breakthrough through the Metaxas Line by the 12th Army. This succeeded in defeating the British landing forces at Mount Olympus and Thermopylae and forcing them to leave the country, subsequently raising the imperial war flag on the Acropolis in Athens. But here too it was communist partisans who were to resist the Wehrmacht until the end of the war.