Balkans campaign (World War II)
| Balkans campaign | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Mediterranean and Middle East theatre of the Second World War | |||||||||
German paratroopers on Crete in 1941 | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
|
Germany (from April 1941) Hungary (from April 1941) |
Allies: Greece Yugoslavia (from April 1941) United Kingdom Australia New Zealand | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
|
Pietro Badoglio Ugo Cavallero Vittorio Ambrosio Walther von Brauchitsch Wilhelm List Kurt Student Elemér Gorondy-Novák |
Ioannis Metaxas Alexandros Papagos Dušan Simović Milorad Petrović Henry Wilson Bernard Freyberg Thomas Blamey | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
|
565,000 680,000 80,000 Total: 1,325,000 |
430,000 850,000 62,612 Total: 1,342,612 | ||||||||
The Balkans campaign of World War II began with the Italian invasion of Greece on 28 October 1940. In the early months of 1941, Italy's offensive had stalled and a Greek counter-offensive pushed into Albania. Germany sought to aid Italy by deploying troops to Romania and Bulgaria and attacking Greece from the east. Meanwhile, the British landed troops and aircraft to shore up Greek defences. A coup d'état in Yugoslavia on 27 March caused Adolf Hitler to order the conquest of that country.
The invasion of Yugoslavia by Germany and Italy began on 6 April 1941, simultaneously with the renewed invasion 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 Germany invaded 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 both Yugoslavia and Greece shortly thereafter for the remainder of the war in the Balkans.