| Balkans campaign | |||||||||
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| Part ofMediterranean and Middle East theatre of theSecond World War | |||||||||
 German paratroopers on Crete in 1941 | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
 Germany(from April 1941) Hungary(from April 1941) | Allies: Greece Yugoslavia(from April 1941) United Kingdom Australia New Zealand | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
 Pietro BadoglioUgo CavalleroVittorio AmbrosioWalther von BrauchitschWilhelm ListKurt StudentElemér Gorondy-Novák | Ioannis MetaxasAlexandros PapagosDušan SimovićMilorad PetrovićHenry WilsonBernard FreybergThomas Blamey | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| 565,000 680,000 80,000 Total: 1,325,000 | 430,000 850,000 62,612 Total: 1,342,612 | ||||||||
TheBalkans campaign ofWorld War II began with theItalian invasion of Greece on 28 October 1940. In the early months of 1941, Italy's offensive had stalled and a Greek counter-offensive pushed intoAlbania. Germany sought to aid Italy by deploying troops toRomania andBulgaria and attacking Greece from the east. Meanwhile, theBritish landed troops and aircraft to shore up Greek defences. Acoup d'état in Yugoslavia on 27 March causedAdolf Hitler to order the conquest of that country.
Theinvasion of Yugoslavia by Germany and Italy began on 6 April 1941, simultaneously with the renewedinvasion of Greece; on 11 April,Hungary joined the invasion of Yugoslavia. By 17 April the Yugoslavs had signed an armistice, and by 30 April all of mainland Greece was under German or Italian control. On 20 May Germanyinvaded Crete by air, and by 1 June all remaining Greek and British forces on the island had surrendered. Although it had not participated in the attacks in April, Bulgaria occupied parts of bothYugoslavia andGreece shortly thereafter for the remainder of the war in the Balkans.
AfterWorld War I, with the complete collapse of theOttoman Empire and theAustro-Hungarian Empire, theAlbanians looked to theKingdom of Italy for protection against its traditional enemies. In 1919, Albania's territorial integrity was confirmed at theParis Peace Conference after United States PresidentWoodrow Wilson opposed a plan by the European powers to divide Albania amongst its neighbors. However, after 1925, Italian dictatorBenito Mussolini sought to dominate Albania. In 1928, Albania became a kingdom underZog I, who was a clan chief and formerPrime Minister. Zog failed to stave off Italian ascendancy in Albanian internal affairs. On 7 April 1939, Italian troops invaded Albania, overthrew Zog, and annexed the country to theItalian Empire.
The Italian invasion of Greece lasted from 28 October 1940 to 30 April 1941. Italian forces invaded Greece and made limited gains. But soon the Greeks counter-attacked and the Italians were driven back to theAlbanian border. In this period the United Kingdom was supporting the Greeks with theRoyal Air Force, but the arrival of British and Commonwealth ground troops in Greece was delayed due to operations in North Africa. The Italians spent much of the winter stabilizing a line which left them in control of only about two-thirds of Albania. A much anticipatedItalian offensive in March 1941 resulted in few territorial gains. Germany, led by Adolf Hitler, intervened in April andinvaded Greece after the successfulinvasion of Yugoslavia. Meanwhile the Italian 9th and 11th armies began to pursue the retreating Greek units back to the mainland. Although the Greek units fought the Italians as rearguards and delayed their advance as much as possible, on 23 April Greece officially surrendered both to Italy and Germany.
The invasion of Yugoslavia (also known as "Operation 25") began on 6 April 1941 and ended with the unconditional surrender of the Royal Yugoslav Army on 17 April. The invadingAxis powers (Nazi Germany,Fascist Italy, andHungary) occupied and dismembered theKingdom of Yugoslavia. By cobbling togetherBosnia and Herzegovina, some parts ofCroatia, andSyrmia, the "Independent State of Croatia" (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH) was created byGermany andItaly. In some of the territory of the formerKingdom of Serbia and theBanat, the German-occupiedTerritory of the Military Commander in Serbia, the Germans appointed a puppet government, theGovernment of National Salvation led byMilan Nedić.Montenegro remained underItalian occupation, andBulgaria was permitted to annex eastern areas of Yugoslavia, including most of modern-dayNorth Macedonia.
Hitler began planning to invade Greece in November 1940, after the British occupied Crete andLemnos. He ordered the invasion of Greece — code-namedUnternehmen Marita (Operation Marita) — on 13 December 1940 for execution in March 1941. The stated aim of the operation was to prevent the British from getting air bases within striking range of theRomanian oilfields.[1] On 6 April 1941, the German Army invaded northern Greece, while other elements launched an attack against Yugoslavia. Breaking through theYugoslav lines in southern Yugoslavia allowed Germany to send reinforcements to the battlefields of northern Greece. The German army out-flanked the GreekMetaxas Line fortifications and, despite the assistance provided by a British expeditionary corps, set out to capture the southern Greek cities. The Battle of Greece ended with theGerman entry into Athens and the capture of thePeloponnese, although about 40,000 Allied soldiers were evacuated toCrete, prompting one of the largest airborne attacks in the history of warfare: Operation Merkur, or theBattle of Crete.
On 20 May 1941,German paratroopers were dropped over the airfields of northern Crete to occupy the island. They were met by heavy resistance from Allied forces and the local Cretan population but eventually the defenders were overwhelmed by the German forces. The British Government ordered an evacuation on 27 May and the remaining forces surrendered on 1 June. However, the heavy losses incurred by the paratroopers convinced theSupreme Command of the Wehrmacht to abandon large-scale airborne operations for the remainder of the war.
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By 1 June 1941, all of Albania, Yugoslavia and Greece were under Axis control. Greece was placed undertriple occupation, and Yugoslavia wasdissolved and occupied. Germany had gained a significant strategic advantage: direct access to theMediterranean.
On 6 April 1941, despite having officially joined the Axis Powers, the Bulgarian government did not participate in the invasion of Yugoslavia and the Battle of Greece. On 20 April, the Bulgarian Army occupied most ofWestern Thrace and the Greek province of EasternMacedonia, which had been already conquered by Germany, with the goal of restoring its pre-World War I outlet to theAegean Sea. Bulgarian troops also occupied much of eastern Serbia, whereVardar Banovina was divided between Bulgaria and the Italians.
Throughout the remainder of the war, activeYugoslav,Greek, andAlbanian resistance movements forced Germany and its allies to garrison hundreds of thousands of soldiers permanently in the three countries, denying them to the other fronts. Especially in Yugoslavia after 1943, the threat of an Allied invasion and the activities of the partisans necessitated large-scale counter-insurgency operations, involving several divisions.
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