Italy's attack on Greece in October 1940 was not made for any of the normal political, economic or military reasons that usually cause wars. The main reason lies with the ego of Benito Mussolini, who was looking for an easy victory to enhance his standing with his ally, Hitler.

His occupation of a completely defenseless Albania in April 1939 was the last cheap success he had achieved. The Italian empire in East Africa was cut off and already faltering under British attack. His drive into Egypt from Libya was glacially slow and would soon grind to a halt. Greece was the only "easy" conquest remaining within Italy's reach.

So Greece was provoked in various ways to provide a reason for war. Greek naval and merchant ships were attacked by Italian aircraft and submarines. Greece was accused of helping the British despite its strict neutrality. Incidents were created along the Albanian border. Greece's eastern frontier was not secure either, where she shared a long and difficult to defend border with Bulgaria and Turkey. Greece had fought a number of times with both these powers, most recently during World War I when Bulgaria and Turkey were both German allies.

Relations with Turkey had improved markedly in the 1930's but suspicions still lingered. Tension with Bulgaria was constant.

In 1940 Greece was theoretically a constitutional monarchy, but in reality it was a dictatorship, all meaningful political power being held by one General loannis Metaxas. In common with many countries during the 1930's, Greek democracy succumbed to the pressures of the Great Depression. The takeover of the government by a part of the army in 1936 exacerbated the already serious divisions in Greek political life.

The Metaxas government had many of the features of early twentieth century dictatorships; parades of uniformed supporters, a youth organization modeled on the Hitler Youth and lots of absurd nationalist propaganda. But despite its shallow imitation of the Fascist powers the Metaxas government could not be compared to Hitler's dark tyranny or even to the rule of Mussolini or Franco. Political opponents might be jailed, but they were more often simply placed under house arrest or exiled to one of the Greek islands.

Many of those jailed or exiled by the Metaxas government would later be prominent in the resistance to German and Italian occupation from 1941 to 1944. Greek political rivalries were temporarily forgotten with the Italian and German invasions, but they would surface again after the Axis left Greece in 1944 and the country would be plunged into a bitter civil war lasting until 1949.

Preparations For War

To Metaxas' credit he had seen that a new European war was inevitable in 1936 and had resolved that Greece would be as prepared as possible.

Mobilization was streamlined, repeatedly rehearsed, and perfected. Training was intensified. The armed forces were modernized as much as Greece's very limited financial resources would allow. Virtually everything had to be purchased from foreign countries, as Greece had only one arms factory and it turned out only small arms and artillery ammunition.

A proportion of the army's artillery was replaced with new equipment, the small air force was re-equipped, anti-aircraft weapons were purchased and a license was acquired from Sweden for production of the famous Bofors 40mm AA gun. But expensive items: motorization, communications equipment, a large air force, and tanks simply could not be afforded.

As an example, when Italy attacked Greece on 28 October 1940, the Greek Army had a total of four operable tanks.

The vast majority of Greek military equipment came from France or Czechoslovakia. After the fall of these countries to the Germans, Greek procurement problems became much worse. The Germans were most unlikely to sell them anything and British equipment was not compatible with what the Greeks already had. It was only the massive captures of Italian material in North Africa by the British, some of it identical to what the Greeks were using, that enabled the Greeks to equip new units or replenish existing ones.

But if Greece could not afford or produce modern weapons, it could produce concrete. Great efforts were put into fortifications in that area seen as the most threatened, Greece's frontier with Bulgaria and Turkey.

Existing pre-WWI forts were used as a basis for a new continuous line stretching along the old pre-1918 Bulgarian/Greek border. Although this had the effect of surrendering the territory Greece gained in WWI to any invader coming through Bulgaria or Turkey, it was a reasonably short and defensible line,

The Metaxas Line, as it was called, was well designed and built. Although not elaborate like the Maginot or Siegfried Lines, its positions were mutually supporting and very difficult to knock out from the air. Consisting mostly of machine-gun and mortar positions, the line had only 25 modern fixed artillery pieces. Nevertheless, it was more than adequate against other Eastern European armies and proved to be a problem even for the Germans.

Mussolini thought his march into Greece would be little more than a parade and his advisors agreed; after all, their careers depended on never contradicting Il Duce. Italian preparations for their attack were slipshod in the extreme. Airfields were not built, the road network was not improved, ports' cargo capacities were not increased.

Finally, only nine divisions were present on the frontier to carry out the attack when dozens more sat idle in Italy, a one-day boat trip away. It was already quite clear that the Mussolini government was made up of criminals, but Italian military preparations for the Greek campaign were carried out with an incompetence which revealed them to be fools as well.

The Greek Armed Forces in 1940-41

Introduction and Preparation
Army
Navy
Air Force
The Campaign