Regional Politics
By mid-1940 Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had grown jealous of Adolf Hitler's conquests and wanted to prove to his Axis partner that he could lead Italy to similar military successes. Italy had occupied Albania in the spring of 1939 and several British strongholds in Africa (Italian conquest of British Somaliland in the summer of 1940), but could not boast of victories on the same scale as Nazi Germany. At the same time Mussolini also wanted to reassert Italy's interests in the Balkans, threatened by Germany (he was piqued that Romania, a Balkan state in the supposed Italian sphere of influence, had accepted German protection for its Ploiești oil fields in mid-October) and secure bases from which British eastern Mediterranean outposts could be attacked.
On 28 October 1940, after Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas rejected an Italian ultimatum demanding the occupation of Greek territory, Italian forces invaded Greece. The Hellenic Army counterattacked and forced the Italians to retreat, and by mid-December the Greeks occupied nearly a quarter of Albania, tying down 530,000 Italian troops. In March 1941 a major Italian counterattack failed, with small gains around Himare. In the first days of April, as the German attack on Greece unfolded, the Italian army resumed its offensive. From 12 April the Greek army started retreating from Albania to avoid being cut off by the rapid German advance. On 20 April the Greek army of Epirus surrendered to the Germans, and on 23 April 1941 the armistice was repeated including the Italians, effectively ending the Greco-Italian war.
The Greek victory over the initial Italian offensive of October 1940 was the first Allied land victory of the Second World War, and helped raise morale in occupied Europe. Some historians, such as John Keegan, argue that it may have influenced the course of the entire war by forcing Germany to postpone the invasion of the Soviet Union in order to assist Italy against Greece. This led to a delayed attack and subjected the German forces to the conditions of the harsh Russian winter, leading to their defeat at the Battle of Moscow.
Read more about this topic: Greco-Italian War
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