Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941

  The decision was taken, then, in an impulsive and arbitrary manner–characteristic of Mussolini’s personality and of his style of rule. But his fury over the stationing of German troops in Romania constituted the occasion, not the underlying reason, for invading Greece. It affected when, rather than whether, an assault would be launched. An attack on Greece had, as we have seen, long been part of Mussolini’s longer-term plans for establishing Italian dominion in the Mediterranean and Balkan regions. Germany had repeatedly conceded that Greece was Italy’s to determine. Equally, repeated warnings had been given that turmoil in the Balkans was to be avoided. The Italian military gleaned the impression that at the Brenner meeting Hitler had given Italy carte blanche in Greece.171 This was undoubtedly a misunderstanding. There is no reference to Greece in the official minutes, Italian or German, so if a hint to this effect was given, it must have been in private discussion between the dictators. Given the consistent German wish to maintain the uneasy status quo in the Balkans, it is inconceivable that Hitler was actually encouraging Mussolini to launch an attack on Greece. The cryptic reference can only denote some generalized concession, compatible with earlier similar statements, that Greece was seen on the German side as belonging to a future Italian dominium, not a target for immediate conquest.

  Mussolini himself had until now not seen Greece as an urgent priority. North Africa had seemed the more important and strategically worthwhile theatre. In fact, for some days after reaching his decision to launch an attack on Greece without delay he had envisaged this taking place in tandem with the offensive in Egypt. Only on 16 October did he learn that the latter could not take place for another two months or so.172 Greece at this point, but only now, assumed outright priority.

  On 13 October Mussolini informed Badoglio of the decision to attack Greece that he had unilaterally taken the previous day. He set the date for 26 October. Badoglio appears to have lodged no objection. The following day Mussolini told Badoglio and Roatta, the deputy chief of the army staff, that ‘the operation against Greece will not limit itself to Ciamuria, but will take in the whole country, which in the long run may prove a nuisance’. He would give Hitler notice of the attack only at the last moment.173 The army’s earlier contingency plans had only foreseen a limited conquest of Epirus, that is, of the northern parts of Greece. It was the first indication Roatta had been given that the earlier planning had been superseded.174 He pointed out that an offensive reaching to Salonika and Athens would require a far larger force than initially contemplated. Three months would be needed to have twenty divisions, the requisite number of troops, in place.175 The military chiefs were privately doubtful about the feasibility of the Greek operation before Graziani’s advance into Egypt had been undertaken. But if Mussolini noted their doubts, he was not listening. Greece would not now wait.

  Mussolini summoned a meeting of his military chiefs to take place next day, 15 October, at 11 o’clock in his study at the Palazzo Venezia ‘to lay down–in broad outline–the course of action that I have decided to undertake against Greece’. Ciano, Badoglio, his deputy head of Supreme Command Ubaldo Soddu and Roatta, together with Jacomoni and Visconti Prasca, who had been ordered over from Albania, were present. Roatta arrived late. He had been informed of the meeting only a short while earlier by the Duce’s private secretary. Remarkably, the chiefs of the naval and air staffs, Cavagnari and Pricolo, were not asked to attend.176 The meeting lasted only one and a half hours. It was one of the most superficial and dilettantish discussions of high-risk military strategy ever recorded.

  Mussolini began by outlining the objectives of the operation: occupying the whole of the southern coast of Albania and the Ionian islands of Zante, Cephalonia and Corfu in a first phase, then the total occupation of Greece in a second phase to put her ‘out of action’. This, he reckoned, would strengthen Italy’s position in the Mediterranean in relation to Britain, and ensure that Greece remained ‘within our politico-economic sphere’. He said he had decided the date, 26 October, which ‘must not be postponed even by an hour’. This appears to have been the first time that Roatta heard the date.177 Yet only the previous day he had insisted that three months would be necessary to prepare for such a full-scale action.

  Mussolini saw no complications arising from Yugoslavia or Turkey, and planned to make Bulgaria ‘a pawn in our game’ by offering her gains in Macedonia. He then turned to Jacomoni. The Governor of Albania asserted that the operation was impatiently awaited in his province. He pointed to possible supply difficulties if the port of Durazzo, the key unloading point, were to be bombed. The state of the roads, though much improved, could also cause problems. He relayed information that the Greeks would resist the action. The scale of resistance would depend upon the swiftness and decisiveness of Italian action. He raised the question of aid for Greece from Britain. A partial occupation might allow British air raids on southern Italy and Albania. Greek aircraft, however, posed no problems. Asked about the morale of the Greek population, he assessed their state of mind as ‘profoundly depressed’.

  Visconti Prasca then commented on the military situation in Albania. He was highly optimistic. The first phase of the operation had been prepared ‘down to the most minute details and is as perfect as is humanly possible’. He judged it would take only ten to fifteen days to occupy Epirus, well before the rainy season could set in to cause serious difficulties. The starting-date of the operation could be advanced, but not put back, the Duce interjected. Visconti Prasca was asked to comment on the morale of his troops. This was excellent, he stated. Around 70,000 men were ready, a superiority of two to one in the front line. As far as he was concerned, ‘the Greek air force does not exist’. The only worry from the skies was from the possibility of aid from Britain. He did, however, allude to reservations about extending the advance to Salonika, given the time of year. This would take time. A couple of months would be required. The Duce insisted on the importance of preventing Salonika from becoming a British base. He asked Visconti Prasca about the morale of the Greek troops. ‘They are not people who like fighting,’ was the lapidary reply. He arranged to simulate an incident to serve as a provocation for the Greek attack. Mussolini advised him not to worry excessively about possible losses. Visconti Prasca replied that he had always ordered the battalions to attack, even against a division.

  At this point, Badoglio took up the discussion. He thought the British would be preoccupied with Egypt and highly unlikely to attempt naval landings in Greece. The only possibility of British aid was from the air. Consequently, he favoured an operation against Greece to coincide with the advance on Mersa Matruh in Egypt, thus making it difficult for the British to spare aircraft to help the Greeks. Mussolini, still unaware that Graziani was about to postpone his advance, favoured the taking of Mersa Matruh even before the start of the Greek operation. Pushing on from there would make it even more difficult for the British to provide aid for Greece. And ‘after the loss of the Egyptian key point, even if London were still able to carry on, the British Empire would be in a state of defeat’, he added, with serene optimism. Badoglio approved of Visconti Prasca’s operational plan for Epirus, but stopping there would not be enough. Crete and Morea would also need to be occupied, along with the whole of Greece. This, however, would require about twenty divisions (the figure Roatta had come up with the day before) and take three months.

  Mussolini reckoned that the completion of the occupation of Epirus by 10–15 November would allow for a further month to bring in fresh forces needed for the remainder of the operation. He enquired how the march on Athens was envisaged, once Epirus was occupied. Visconti Prasca foresaw no great difficulties. Five or six divisions would suffice, he thought. Badoglio suggested the march on Athens should precede the taking of Salonika. Roatta agreed with Mussolini’s suggestion that two divisions might be enough for that. Mussolini was satisfied that ‘things are getting clearer’. Visconti Prasca enjoined that Greece would be cut in two from Athens, and Salonika could be attac
ked from the Greek capital. He did, however, in a response to a question from Mussolini, point out the difficulty of the terrain between Epirus and Athens: some 170 miles of poor roads over steep hills and a mountain chain where communications were reduced to passage over mule tracks. He thought three mountain divisions would be required. He imagined they could be dispatched to the port of Arta, a good distance down the Greek coast, in a single night.

  The final part of the meeting was devoted to the question of using Albanian troops in the attack, and the deployment of anti-aircraft defence in Albania. By this stage, Mussolini adjudged that ‘we have now examined all the aspects of the problem’. He summed up: ‘Offensive in Epirus; observation and pressure on Salonika; and, as a second phase, the march on Athens.’178

  What passed for dictatorial decisiveness was in reality the merest veneer of half-baked assumptions, superficial observations, amateurish judgement and wholly uncritical assessment, all based upon the best-case scenario. After years of self-indoctrination, Mussolini was a firm believer in his own infallibility. Jacomoni and Visconti Prasca were prototypical creatures of the regime, capable only of pandering to Mussolini’s assessments, wanting to profit from the opportunity of self-aggrandizement, anxious only to please by saying what the Duce wanted to hear. Ciano was largely silent. His preferences were plain. He was content to let his minions do the talking, assured that Mussolini was now pressing for what he himself had wanted all along. Soddu’s silence amounted to his own backing for the operation. Badoglio and Roatta raised objections only in the most oblique fashion, pointing to the size and scale of the operation necessary to undertake the complete conquest of Greece, but otherwise providing no opposition even to the most speculative assumptions.179 Their own underestimation of the Greeks, as well as their lengthy attritional struggles over previous months with Mussolini’s impulses in military matters whose complexity he did not remotely grasp, made them the more ready to bow to his imperative. So Mussolini got his way at the meeting without dissent. The decision that he alone had taken had now become an operational directive, with the full collaboration of his military chiefs.

  As soon as the military leaders left the meeting, however, and started to give detailed consideration to the planning for an operation whose objectives had been rushed through so carelessly, serious doubts arose–and rapidly multiplied. The landing at Arta, for example, was quite impossible, the naval chief, Cavagnari, asserted. The attack on Mersa Matruh that had been presumed to coincide with, or even precede, the Greek operation was now, they learned, to be postponed for at least two months. And the British, it was feared, would immediately establish bases in southern Greece, and be in a position to attack the Italian fleet at Taranto, on the heel of southern Italy. Badoglio raised these objections when he spoke to Ciano on 17 October. Badoglio’s pessimism was evident. Equally gloomy were the views of the chiefs of staff who had ‘unanimously pronounced themselves against’ the operation.180 But–deprived of his main logistical argument, the inaccessibility of the harbour at Arta, when it transpired that the Greeks had just dredged a deep-water channel enabling big ships to dock there–Badoglio was pliant at his audience next day with an enraged Mussolini, who had learned of the reservations voiced. Mussolini had told Ciano he would be prepared to accept Badoglio’s resignation. But Badoglio never offered it. He came away having achieved nothing, except a delay of two days for the start of the operation, rescheduled to begin on 28 October.181

  Military preparations now went ahead–over-hastily and incoherently.182 Even the troop demobilization within Italy was not halted.183 The auguries for the campaign were not good. Transporting motorized troops to Albania could not be completed in time, it turned out, since the harbour at Durazzo was too cramped. The weather was also poor, and deteriorating, further hampering troop transports and turning Albania’s roads into quagmires. King Boris of Bulgaria then, to Mussolini’s disgust, refused to join in the attack. Finally, it had become clear that the balance of forces was much less favourable to Italy than Visconti Prasca had implied. Far from outnumbering the Greeks by two to one, the forces were fairly even, even before the Greek mobilization, with extensive reserves in hand, was complete. The commanders on the ground in Albania wanted discretion over the starting-date of the offensive, but Mussolini insisted that 28 October was immovable. Worry that Hitler, currently tied up in his talks with Franco and Pétain, might intervene to put a halt to the operation once he got wind of it was decisive in the timing.184

  Whatever their logistical concerns, neither the military leadership in Rome nor the commanders on the ground in Albania had any doubts that victory would be easy. The underestimation of the Greeks was general. Ciano talked of a ‘walkover’,185 Soddu later wrote of the commonplace expectation of a ‘military parade’. The King himself thought the Greeks would crumble at the first assault.186 This type of presumption reinforced compliance with Mussolini’s hurriedly devised imperative to destroy Greece. A rapid victory was vital. The Duce was anxious to avoid the British, perhaps the Turks too, becoming involved in any protracted struggle. He wanted, therefore, and expected, a devastating assault which would ‘bring about a complete collapse within a few hours’.187 He was in excellent spirits as the attack began on 28 October.188

  His co-dictator was, by contrast, less than delighted when he was given the news, en route back from his talks with Franco and Pétain, that Italy was about to attack Greece. Hitler was said to have been fuming, and greatly worried that the Italian action could set the whole of the Balkans alight and give the British the opportunity to install airbases in the region. He thought it was Mussolini’s revenge for Norway and France.189 In fact, the Germans had received plenty of indirect warning from good sources in the previous days that action against Greece was imminent.190 Equally, they had been given outright denials by Italian military leaders that anything was afoot. They preferred to believe the denials. Hitler does not appear to have been alarmed before 25 October. Only on that day did a letter, composed six days earlier by Mussolini, reach him, cleverly couched but indicating that the Duce proposed to act on Greece very soon. Even then, the intelligence gleaned from Italy remained contradictory. A meeting with Mussolini, already instigated to discuss the dealings with the Spanish and French leaders just conducted by Hitler, was now brought forward. The dictators would meet in Florence on 28 October. When Hitler arrived for the meeting it was to be given the news, by a beaming Mussolini, that Italian troops had crossed the Greek border from Albania at dawn that morning.191

  So Mussolini had achieved his own fait accompli. Later, reproaching Mussolini for his rashness when it was already plain that the Italian assault had misfired badly, Hitler said he had hoped in Florence to restrain the Duce from premature action in Greece, and certainly not from undertaking the operation without a prior occupation of Crete, for which he was prepared to provide military assistance.192 But when they had met in Florence, there were no reproaches. Hitler restrained himself. Whatever his private feelings, he could scarcely have anticipated the scale of the military disaster that Mussolini had invited. He offered German support for the operation and parachute divisions to occupy Crete (to head off British intervention).193 The rest of the meeting confined itself to a report on his meetings with Pétain, Laval and Franco. He was keen to assuage Mussolini about his dealings with Vichy France, which were not at all to the Italian dictator’s liking.194 Greece was not again mentioned. But it soon would be.

  Far from being the expected military stroll in the park, the ill-planned and ill-coordinated attack on Greece rapidly proved an unmitigated military disaster. The advance took place in atrocious weather. Ceaseless, torrential rain and knee-deep mud bogged down the Italian tanks and heavy artillery. Streams were swollen by the autumn rains. Mountain tracks often proved impassable. Planes were grounded by thick mists. Heavy seas hampered naval operations. Shortages of equipment, fuel, ammunition and manpower soon became apparent. Poor training and leadership of the Italian troops also contribut
ed significantly to the mounting debacle. But beyond this, the Greeks defended their country with bravery and tenacity, offering stiff resistance from the onset. Their knowledge of the local terrain was a great advantage, and they were better organized defensively than the Italians were in attack. Within little over a week the Italians were forced to halt their offensive in Epirus. By the time another week had passed they were being pushed back over the Albanian border by a Greek counter-attack. When the front stabilized, as any further advance ground to a halt in abysmal weather conditions, it was about thirty miles within Albania. Mussolini’s casually brutal order that all Greek towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants be razed to the ground could not be implemented.195 Within six weeks, the would-be world power, Italy, had shown herself to be militarily weaker than the flyweight force of Greece. The Achilles heel of the Axis could not have been more plainly revealed.

  To make matters worse, the Italian fleet, at anchor at Taranto in southern Italy, was severely damaged by a British torpedo attack in mid-November. Half of the Italian warships were put out of action. Fascist dreams of empire sank along with them. With this one stroke, the balance of naval power in the Mediterranean was decisively altered.196 And by early December Graziani, his offensive in Libya still stalled and told by Mussolini that Greece now had priority, suffered the first of a number of devastating assaults in the beginning of a British offensive in north Africa. Italian forces were driven out of Egypt by mid-December. In the new year the retreat turned into a full-scale rout. By the end of January 1941 the British had advanced over 200 miles of desert, capturing 113,000 Italian prisoners and over 700 pieces of artillery. Following this, as Churchill later wrote, ‘the great Italian army which had invaded and hoped to conquer Egypt scarcely existed as a military force’.197 Here was a major consequence of the decision to invade Greece. What should have been the vital military effort, the push through Egypt to Suez against still weak British forces, had been completely undermined by the unnecessary Greek adventure, a blunder of the first order, with calamitous costs.