The Spirit of Salamis- A Short Allied Victory in Crete TL

[phil03]

A few years ago I started this thread: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-allied-victory-in-the-battle-of-crete.415360/. We had a good discussion and I toyed with the idea of making something more out of it. With a thread on the same subject going up recently and with social isolation still in the portrait I decided to give it a go

The Spirit of Salamis- A Short Allied Victory in Crete TL

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Prologue: The Genesis of Operation Mercury and the Creation of the Creforce

When studying World War II as a whole a scholar might be forgiven to first look for the origins of Operation Mercury (the German attack on Crete) in the military situation as a whole and to look for Germans' motivations in how a successfull attack on Crete might have helped the Afrikakorps and the upcoming Operation Barbarossa, or more simply in a desire to finish expulsing the allies from the Balkans. While these factors indeed played a role in Nazi Germany's decision to attack the island, we must look elsewhere, mainly in the incessant feuds of the different factions and organisations inside the Nazi state, to understand the origins of Case Merkury.

The Kriegsmarine proved to be the greatest champion of the operation, hoping to see it repeated in Malta, Cyprus and/or Gibraltar, and therefore possibly heralding the rise of the Medditerannean strategy championned by its commander's, Admiral Raeder. Moreover, Mercury also enjoyed the support of the Luftwaffe: as a result of the success on the Raid of Taranto and the British victory at Cape Matapan only the Fallschirmjäger (1), as well as the Luftwaffe's domination of the skies of Crete, could show that she could serve as the backbone of a German invasion. Mercury was therefore seen by Goering and his subordinates as a way for the Luftwaffe to regain some of the prestige lost over the skies of Britain a year before. The number two of the Nazi regime therefore threw his still considerable political weight behind the operation. The Heer and the OKH, on the other hand, strongly opposed the planned invasion, believing that even in victory the Luftwaffe and the Fallschirmjäger would suffer severe looses that would hinder their ability to properly support the ground forces during the upcoming invasion of the USSR and pointing the inherent risks of Mercury, as conducting a major offensive with mainly airborne power had never been attempted before. Thus, its opponents characterized the invasion of Crete as a dangerous distraction. In the end it was Hitler himself who ended the debate in favour of Mercury, the Nazi dictator deeming it a usefull diversion to distract Stalin's attention from Barbarossa's preparations.

Similarly, doubts were raised in the British camp as to whether Crete should or could be defended. Lead by the CnC Middle-East, General Archibald Wavell, some argued that, with operations Battleaxe (the British counterattack against Rommel and the Italians in Lybia) and Brevity (the assault on Vichy France-held Syria and Lebanon) set to soon begin, while the German-friendly Iraqi government of Rachid Ali and the Italian forces continued to resist, the forces needed to defend Crete were simply not available in the vicinity. Winston Churchill himself put an end to such talks, however: a Crete in German hands would threaten the Mediterranean supply lines to Alexandria and the political consequences of abandoning the island to its fate could not be overstated. Crete would be defended. To do so a ragtag and disparate group of units were gathered. The Creforce, as it was dubbed, was assembled around the 2nd New Zealand Division (its commander, General Freyberg, also commanded the Creforce as a whole), the equivalent of another, small, division in greek troops evacuated from the continent, a british brigade, a few Australian brigades having suffered during the Greece campaign, and a few small tanks and marines units. When all was said the Creforce could pass for the equivalent of an army corps, and therefore be able to oppose the German paratroopers on, if not equal footing at least something approximating it.

As May 1941 entered its second half ULTRA informed the allies in general, and General Freyberg in particular, that the invasion was soon to come. As the outcome of the battle would rest on Germany's ability to supply and reinforce its paratroopers fighting was bound to center around the military airfields of Malemme, Rethymon and Heraklion airports and, to a lesser degree, the harbours of Chania and Suda some voices in the headquarter of the Creforce rose to demand that the airfields be disabled but Freyberg firmly vetoed the idea, fearing that to do so would allow the germans to deduce that their code had been deciphered. For General Freyberg the last days before the beginning of Mercury were spent preparing the defense of these five key points, sending the last air forces still on the island away (as they could not hope to compete with Germany's air superiority) as well as to decide who was to replace Brigadier Hargest at the head of the 5th New Zealand Brigade, following his sudden departure from service following a heart attack (2).

In the early morning of May 20 1941 the first german gliders where spotted by the Creforce, the Battle of Crete was about to begin.

Excerpt of Crete 1941: Germany's First Defeat on Land.

Generals Freyberg and Student, commanders of the Allied and Axis forces during the Battle of Crete​

(1) The German airborne corps.
(2) The POD.

 

[phil03]

The German Assault on May 20, 1941 Please Ignore the Arrows Indicating Further Developments in OTL. ​

May 20-21: The First Day

Few events in recent times have ilustrated the inherent vulnerability of airborne forces during the first moments of their deployment, and therefore the inherent risk to rely on them to conduct a major strategic offensive, then the opening hours of the Battle of Crete. Large, slow moving and hard to manoeuver the gliders carrying the first wave of german paratroopers could not escape the eyes of the Creforce, undistracted by any combat on the ground as she was, and proved to be easy targets for, not only its anti-aircraft guns, but also its mortars. Many of the men supposed to conquer Crete were corpses before they even left their glidders. Even if a glidder managed to reach its drop zone without incidents its passangers were nevertheless doomed to remain easy targets for dangerous minutes still, as a paratrooper was defenseless and unable to fight back during his long descent toward the ground allowing many units of the Creforce, famously including the inmates of the local military prison, freed to fight the ennemy, to inflict heavy casualties in what the veterans of the battle would nickname ''the Great Cretan's Turkeys Shot''. Even touching the ground was often not the end of the tribulations of a german paratrooper, however, as many who found themselves landing too far from their comrades were quickly spotted by the Cretans themselves, who either warned the allied troops in the vicinity or dealt with them themselves. Nearly 2,000 german paratroopers died or suffered grievous injuries during the first moments of the assaults on the three airfields.

Some latter day historians have tried to exhonorate Student and his officers by putting the share of the blame on the appaling failure of German's inteligence, who had lead the patratrooper commander and his subordinate to believe that the Cretans would, at worst, adopt a benevolent neutrality due to their hostility to the monarchy, while in reality the Venizelist beliefs that motivated said hostility instead ensured that they would fight tooth and nail against fascist invaders. They also like to point out that the size of the allied garrison was, likewise, drastically underestimated. While such considerations did, indeed, play a role in the results of Case Merkury they must not be used to avoid holding Student and his subordinates responsible for a fundementaly flawed operational concept...

Excerpt of Paras: An History of the Airborne Weapon

As they were embarking in their gliders the large forces sent to attack the town of Heraklion and its airfield had high hopes for a quick victory. The decision to wait until latter in the day to launch the assault on the sector, so as to be able to comprehensively from the air beforehand, proved the undoing of the men it was supposed to protect, however. Well dugged in the valiant Greek defenders of Heraklion, alongside their british allies of the 14th Brigade guarding the airfield, only suffered minimal looses. Moreover, when the attack came at last, at 17:00, the dust created by the bombardment hindered the Luftwaffe's capacity to support it during those few crucial hours before darkness came. Approximatively a thousand german paratrooper managed to enter Heraklion's defensive perimeter on May 20. By midnight only a pocket a hundred strong remained close to the airfield, bound to be destroyed by the allies on the following day. The fight for Heraklion had ended in a decisive victory for its defenders.

Many historians and analysts studying the Battle of Crete have concentrated their attention to the far more dramatic events who took place around the Maleme and Rethymon airfields, mentionning the fight for Heraklion only in passing. Nevertheless any impartial student of the Battle of Crete could do nothing else but salute the valliance of the defenders of Heraklion and the excellence of their officers.

Excerpt of The Official Greek History of the Battle of Crete

The defense of Heraklion and its Immediate Surrounding, Early May 20 (Photo by Crete-1941.org) ​

As news of the calamitous beginning of the assault on Maleme began to trickle down back to Athens some voices in the Fallschirmjäger began to demand that the assault on Rethymon be cancelled and the troops assigned to it be redirected toward Malemme. Student himself vetoed the idea, tough, as the airfield had been deemed by German intelligence to be poorly, if at all, defended. The assault was to take place during the beginning of the afternoon, as previously planned. Moreover, and while underestimated by the germans, Rethymon's garrison remained the less well defended of the three airfields, with only the equivalent of a small brigade standing guard, lead by Brigadier Ian's Campbell.

Despite severe looses taken during the first moments of the attacks, both because of the danger of large airbornes drops and of the difficult terrain, the assault on Rethymon did meet with some success, most notably taking Hill A and threatening the airfield itself. While a timely counterattack by Campbell's only armored reserve, 7th British Tank Regiment, managed to stop their offensive. Still, at the end of May 20 the Germans assault on Rethymon had fared better then its counterparts on Maleme and Heraklion. The Battle of Rethymon had only just began

Excerpt of Blood of the Minotaur: The Battle of Rethymon

The defense of Rethymon and its Immediate Surrounding, Early May 20 (Photo by Crete-1941.org) ​

The main trust of Case Merkury, the assault on Malemme airfield and the harbour of Suda, began about as badly as it could have. In addition to the difficulties experimented by the forces sent to attack Heraklion and Rethymon. The man supposed to command the attack, Colonel Braun, was killed alongside the other passengers of his glider. Worse, the originally-planned pincer attack on the airfield, between some german paratrooperslanding at the mouth of the Tavronitis river and others near Kondomari, became a simple attack on one front when the latter group of soldiers unknowingly tried to land in the middle of two New Zealand batallions, leading to their rapid slaughter.

Any hopes Creforce's headquarters might have held to see the events around Malemme take a similar course to those Heraklion quickly vanished, however, as the germans forces having landed to the west of the airfield fought more efficiently then any other Axis forces during the Battle of Crete. A bridge over the Tavronitis was quickly taken and the 5th New Zealand Brigade, as well as the smaller units attached to it, soon found themselves fighting tooth and nail to defend the immediate surroundings of Malemme airfield itself. As the german attack grew more and more promising some of the german reinforcements originally destined to Rethymon and Heraklion were instead sent to Malemme and as the day whent by the pressure on Acting Brigadier F.D Leckie's men grew and grew. As the afternoon unfolded it became evident that the main weight of the German attack was concentraded on the 22nd New Zealand Battalion, guarding the airfield's southern flank. Hill 107, in which their positions were situated, had become the most important piece of real estate in Crete. At 5pm the situation of the 22nd Batalion had grown critical enough for his commander, Colonel Leslie Andrews, to request either a counterattack or the authorisation to retreat. Upon receiving Andrew's message Acting Brigadier F.D Leckie immediately answered with:

''Retreat forbidden under any circumstances. Hill 107 must hold for Maleme airfield to as well. Immediate counterattack impossible due to german air superiority. Counterattack to be launched at dusk. (1)''

The Battle of Crete was entering its most delicate moment.

The defense of Malemme and its Immediate Surrounding, Early May 20 (Photo by nzhistory.govt.nz) ​

Excerpt of Fighting Kiwis: A Short History of the New Zealand Armed Forces

A good officer must take responsibility for the outcome of battle, and therefore he must be ready to impose his authority over his subordinates. Nevertheless, a good officer must also listen their concerns and take them into considerations, for they are his eyes and ears.

When Acting Brigadier Leckie phone Creforce headquarter, urgently requesting that some of my strategic reserves be released to launch a counterattack at Maleme I was originally reluctant to grant his request as the danger of a sea landing remained ever present. Further events would show that my concerns were entirely warranted. And yet, Leckie's arguments were sound, the importance of the 22nd Batallion for the defense of Maleme clear and the need to save the airfield equally so. I approved the release of the C Squadron of the 3rd Hussars and of the 1st Batallion of the Welch regiment.

Excerpt of For Freedom and New Zealand!: The Memoirs of Field Marshal Freyberg, Viscount of Chania.

Their faces covered with black gew to prevent their ennemies to easily spot them the Maori Batallion made its way toward the german lines, accompagnied by forces of the 21st, 23rd and 1st Welch batallion, who had provided one compagnie apiece for the counterattack. As the moment of truth was coming the words of their commanders were still ringing in their ears:

''According to the racial doctrine of their master you are not men, you are sub human, barely better then animals and arguably worst. Tonight it is your most sacred duty, to your people and to the world, to prove him wrong!''

As they approached the german position they yelled ''Ake! Ake! Kia Kaha E!'' (2) before charging forth, bayonets at the end of their barils and quickly followed by their brother at arms. We will dispense with the minutes by minutes account of the fighting. For our purposes it is sufficient to say that, tired, battle weary and not well trained to fight in the dark, the german forces around Maleme proved unable to withstand the decided assault of the Maori batallion and the forces sent to support it. Quickly put on their collective backfooth, the men threatening Maleme airfield retreated soon after the arrival of the tanks of C Squadron. By midnight the Maleme defensive Perimeter had been cleared of all ennemy forces.

Excerpt of Haka: The History of the Maori Batallion

By all accounts the results of the first day of the Battle of Crete stunned both sides as even the most optimistics in the Allied camp, or the more pessimistic among the Germans, had not expected the Fallschirmjäger to be the victim of the kind of one-sided beating the Wermacht was more accustomed to give then to receive at this stage of the war.

In the regional headquarter of the Wermacht in Athens morale was extraordinarily low. According to the reports of the men on the ground the size of the allied garrison of the island had been drastically underestimed, with several units who were presumed to already be in Egypt still on the island. Moreover, the doctrine of the german airborne force had demanded that all of its main objectives be captured in the first 40 minutes following their landing. As of the end of May 20 none had. Worse, appart from those tasked with capturing Rethymon, all German forces had been forced to retreat further inland. The naysayers inside the OKH and the Heer had been more then vindicated and, even at this stage, loud voices began to rise to demand Student's replacement by General Julius Ringel (3).

Like in many other occurences during the latter years of the war, German reverses attracted the wrath of their dictator on the officers deemed responsible. After suffering an hitlerian tantrum (the role of played by the Maori Batallion, in particular, aroused the anger of the Nazi dictator) Student and his supporters only barely managed to avoid seeing their master unilateraly order the end of Merkury and the abandonment of all german soldiers in Crete. It was also during the night of May 20-21 that emerged the division that would cost so much to the Axis forces engaged in the battle: some officiers, around Student, strongly advocated to turn the main effort of the German attack against Rethymon, as it was the only sector in which the offensives of the first day had given somewhat promising results. Others, surrounding Ringel, instead advocated to renew the attack on Maleme and, as importantly, the harbour of Suda, to allow for the German forces on the island to be supplied and reinforced by the sea. A few crucial days would be needed to solve the debate, and only temporarily.

In the headquarter of Creforce at Chania, on the other hand, optimism reigned. General Freyberg had concluded his last reports to the CnC Middle East, General Archibadl Wavell with ''I believe we will give a good account of ourselves'', not even daring to name the victory that now seemed tantasingly close. Nonetheless, some disagreements did emerge as to the proper course of action going forward. Freyberg, and most of the high ranking officers of the Creforce, advocated a prudent strategy, designed to allow the Allied forces of the island to react in force against an amphibious landing or another large scale airbone assault. A vocal minority, tough staunchly supported by the current resident of 10 Downing Street, instead argue for a more energetic response: a series of attacks designated to quickly destroy the german forces still alive on Crete. By the early hours of May 21 a compromise had emerged: the Creforce would not hunt all the paratroopers having retreated inland but it would strike back against the German forces still threatening Rethymon airfield and push those german forces still close to Heraklion further away from the airfield, as well as clean the last german pocket close to the town...

Excerpt of Crete 1941: Germany's First Defeat on Land.

(1) This is were the butterflies became significant. In OTL Hargest hesitated to launch a counterattack and formally order Andrews to stay put. When he finally did the latter the result was simply too disorganised, not powerfull enough and lacking in purpose. Here you have a clearer, more energetic and more sudden response to Andrew's pleas then in OTL.
(2) Upwards, upwards, be strong! The moto of the Maori Batallion. According to the testimony of a veteran of Crete I read the batallion had a reputation for being especially good at night fighting, which make them well suited to lead the counterattack at Maleme ITTL.
(3) Commander of the Fifth German Mountain Infantry Division, assigned to be transported to Crete to support the assault when possible.

 

[phil03]

German Paratroopers attempting to gather after their landing​

May 21-24: Maleme or Rethymon?

As Colonel Sturm, commander of the german forces in the Rethymon sector, was expecting significant reinforcements in the morning hours May 21 plans had been drawn for capitalising on the conquest of Hill A and reversing the failures of the first day. A wrench was thrown in the german offensive before it could even began, however, as a powerfull detachment of Australian troops quickly retook Hill A, leading Sturm to deem retaking it is first, and absolute, priority.Thus began the bloody of tale of the Four Days of Rethymon, 96 hours of brutal fighting around the airfield and centered around Hills A and B, as well as the villages of Perivolia and Stravomenos. Times and times again these positions would shift hands, most often then not following the comings and goings of the sun. In no places would the fighting be fiercer then on Hill A, soon nicknamed by both sides Hell Hill.

Young men who once had all the time in the world fell by droves. Future doctors, lawyers, businessman, teachers, enginner, politicians or other valuable members of society were turned into more corpses, their time on this world cut short at a rythm comparable to the first bloody moments of Mercury and the most terrible hours of Ares. As we will see, neither side will prove both willing and able to bring their full strenght to bear, the Germans being plagued by their divisions between those who believed the key to victory was to be found at Rethymon and those who still saw Malemme as the main theater of war and the allies' capacity to reinforce Rethymon being undermined by the need to keep large garrisons around Maleme and Heraklion, as well as by the Luftwaffe's mastery of the air.

As a result, when the sun of May 24 disapeared neither side could truly pretend to have won the Battle of Rhethymon...

Excerpt of Blood of the Minotaur: The Battle of Rethymon

General Freyberg inspecting the front​

In many ways the surroundings of Heraklion where the theater of a mummer show for the rest of the Battle of Crete. The Germans had no intention to truly push toward the airfield before Maleme and Rethymon had fallen while the allies felt the need maintain a sizable garrison to guard what was, after all, the capital of Fighting Greece. After the allied offensive of the night of May 21-22, in which the last German pocket in the defensive perimeter was destroyed and the other German forces were forced further inland, the fighting in the sector devolved into periodic skirmishes until Operation Athena was launched by the Creforce.

As a result many who have studied the battles have simply ommited these reperations from their recountings of events but, as men fought and died in these engagements, we believe it is right to recount them in some details...

Excerpt of The Official Greek History of the Battle of Crete

By all accounts the german operations around Maleme during the second phase of the Battle of Crete were the worst of both worlds. Student still holding command, even tough his hold was slipping, and imposing Rethymon as a priority, they lacked the means to ever truly hope to break the Creforce's defenses. Whether from the west accross the Stavronis, the east toward Platanias or the south toward Modhion or Kondomri they all faced the implacable defenses of Acting Brigadier's Leckie and his men and achieved nothing of note.

Nevertheless, by their very existence they did much to shape the outcome of the Battle of Crete, for they deprived the Germans fighting at Rethymon of crucial reinforcements during some of its most critical moments...

Excerpt of From the Minoans to Fighting Greece: An History of Crete

Cretan Partisans​

As May 24 was coming to an end it had become clear that Case Merkury had failed. The assaults of the first day had undoutebly been utter and complete failure and while the subsequent efforts made to capture Rethymon had, on May 24, finally managed to gain a foothold on the airfield itself it had become abondantly clear that the slow and grueling fighting that would be necessary to hope to conquer it would see it devastated and give the Creforce plenty of time to sabotage it, negated its strategic value for the Fallschirmjäger. Worse, 7th Flieger Division and the Luftlande Regiment had both greatly suffered during the first four days of combat. The 22nd Luftlande division, called in reserve, was retained more strenght but its ranks had been significantly diminished nevertheless. The airborne assaults regiments, on whose shoulders most of the weight of the German attacks had to rest until an airfield or a port was taken, had being particularly badly mauled while looses in the air were rising. The german airborne arm was showing its limits.

It could have been the end, or the end save for mop up operations, of the matter had the Nazi dictator not decided otherwise. While he had initially threatened to abandon the german forces in Crete to their fate after the catastrophic, for the germans, first day of the battle Hitler had become determined to see Battle of Crete end in a victorious conclusion for Wermacht. His fears of eventually seeing the Allies use the island as a base to bombard the oilfields of Ploeisti, who had already played a key role in the tyrant's decision to support the attack, had turned to obsession. Similarly, concerns regarding the effects on German prestige of a defeat began to take more and more place in the mind of the German dictator, making Crete the first instance of the infamous unwillingness to accept defeats and retreats he will show the three last years of the war. As a result the attention of the Berlin Chancellery turned to the only other alternative to accepting defeat: Case Ares.

Conceived following the German failures of the first day of the battle and prepared since then, it called for a double amphibious, airborne and land based assault on Maleme and Suda, in the hope of capturing both. Naturally, such a plan could not be executed without massive italian assistance. Extremely reluctant to risk what was left of the Regia Merina east of the Adriatic, Mussolini nevertheless was eventually compeled to do so, for the leverage Germany possessed over him after saving Italy's positions in the Balkans and in North Africa was simply too strong for Italy to resist a concerted and determined effort from Berlin, tough the relationship from the two fascists countries did suffer as a result (1).

As the Italian squadron heading east had been spotted by scout planes, and last minute movements by german paratroopers further east had been reported further east, the Creforce was well aware that the landing General Freyberg had feared since the beginning of the battle would soon be attempted and orders were given to fievrously further fortify Suda and Maleme while what troop that could be brought from Rethymon and Heraklion were ordered to head west. Any hopes the Germans might have had to achieve in vain proved mere fantasies.

A call for aid was also sent to the Medditerannean fleet and in Alexandria many hesitated to answer it, fearing the damages the German bombers might inflict on their ships. Admiral Cunningham himself ended such talks, however, by famously declaring:

''Gentlemen, it takes three years to build a ship but it takes three hundred to establish a tradition. We will sail North! (2)''

As the ships of the convoy destined to carry elements of the Gebirgs and Cuneo mountain infantry divisions as making its last preparations in the ports of the Peloponesus Cunningham and his men were setting sail from the harbour of Alexandria and Student's replacement by general Ringle was announced in Athens, tough the troops on the ground would be kept in the dark for morale's sake. The stage was set for Operation Ares and, for the first time in world history and in an ery foreshadowing to the Pacific War, battle will be joined all at once on sea, land and air.

Excerpt of Crete 1941: Germany's First Defeat on Land.

(1) In OTL Mussoloni simply refused to engage the Regia Marina and the situation of the Germans in Crete was strong enough that he had the excuses needed to make it stick. Obviously ITTL it isn't the case.
(2) He more or less said the same thing when some wanted to put a premature end to the evacuation of Crete in OTL.

 

[phil03]

Men of the 22nd Luftland Making their Jump East of Maleme​

May 25: Bloody Crete

In many regards the first portion of Operation Ares, the land and airborne assault against Maleme, was in many regards a rehashed version of the attack on the Creforce's westernmost airfield where the lessons of the first day of Operation Mercury would be absorbed and its mistakes corrected. The paratroopers already on the island were the attacks from the southewest alongside the Stavrontis while powerfull reinforcements of the 22nd Lutflande were to land between Modhion and Kondomeri and attack Maleme from the east. Ironically enough, considering he had spent the last days actively campaigning to replace the head of the Fallschirmjäger because of the latter's failure on the first day of the operation, the southern prong of General Ringel's consisted in repeating the very same pincer attack on Maleme Student had imagined and had so disastrously failed. And yet, in spite of its evident lack of originality and its utter predictability the renewed assault on Maleme managed to shake the allied hold on the airfield to its core. Protected by a bombing run designated to delay an hinder the Creforce reaction to the droppings, rather then pursuing the vain hope of breaking the defenders of Maleme, the germans were able to severely limit their looses in the first few moments of the Ares' parachutings. Tough the Allies nevertheless ennacted a large tribute from the 22nd Luftlande in those few instants.

Attacked on two fronts, having to bear with german air attacks more frequent and ferocious then ever and denied reinforcements, for the men who could have come were needed to hold Suda, the strenght of the airfield's defenders was pushed close to its breaking point as ferocious fighting erupted all around the defensive perimeter. Nevertheless, while Maleme's garrison bended it never broke. As hours passed and casualties mounted both sides became more and more aware that Suda had yet to fall and that the night, with the obstacles it gave to night operations was approaching.

Nowhere was the trust of the german offensive more determined and vigorous then near the crossroad on the coast, whose fall would have opened the way to Pirgos, last obstacle before the airfield. The defenders of the crossroad, the men of the Greek Garrison Batallion (1), were therefore holding a position whose importance was second only to Hill 107 on the first day of the battle. At the critical moment of the fight for the crossroad, as the german advance was at its acme, the speakers installed around the fortifications of the crossroad began to ring with the voice of the commander of the Batallion, Lieutenant Colonel Dimitris Molopoulos (2):

''We received a message from Prime Minister Tsouderos: Colonel Molopoulos, your men are to remember what your ancestors did at Salamis and beat back the ennemies of Hellas! (3)''

As the memory of that great and faithfull battle held an important place in all Greeks' hearts, especially in those dark days when Democracy had to fight for her survival, the moral of the defenders of the crossroad rose once more and, has Molopoulos decided to unleash his last reserves, the germans were driven back, their momentum broken at the decisive moment.

Only during the 1990's was it revealed that the Prime Minister never sent such a message.

Excerpt of The Official Greek History of the Battle of Crete

As the silhouetes of the Axis' landing craft began to appear on the horizon at Suda and was first sighted by its defender a tomb-like silence fell on the harbour. Only the waves, the screams of some officers and the quick pace of some men busying themselves making last minutes preparations could be heard, and even the two latter would die in the final moments, when the german crafts, or what they used as such, where about to reach the beach. As, at last, the first landing craft touched ground the whole garrison of the harbour erupted in a loud and gutural battle cry, the fight for Suda had begun.

Excerpt of Fighting Kiwis: A Short History of the New Zealand Armed Forces

For a time the fight for Suda had hung on the balance, its brave defenders standing strong and refusing to give but an inch to their german assaliants as the numbers of the latter were growing as more elements of the Gebirgs and the Cuneo divisions came ashore. Had the italo-german amphibious landing been allowed to proceed Operation Ares might perhaps, just perhaps, have succeeded and the outcome of the Battle of Crete would have been changed for the worst. Fortunately, it was not to pass as in the last moments of the mourning of May 25 three german fighters were shot down in the sky of Crete (4).

For the first time in the Battle of Crete allied air forces had made their apperance on the sky of the island and few could long ignore what such a development meant: the Formidable had arrived in the waters of Crete and an aircraft carrier seldom travels alone... From the bridge of its flagship, the battleship HMS Warspite, Admiral Cunningham wired the following message to all his vessels:

''The man on Crete expect all those of the Navy to do their duty!''

Creforce Observers Spotting Some of the Italian Ships Escorting the Convoy Transporting the Troops for the Suda Bay Landing​

Excerpt of the Official History of the Medditeranean Fleet

The Battle of Suda Bay not only, naturely, played a key role in deciding the outcome of the fight for Crete but could also be rightfully considering as second only to the raid on Taranto in the wider struggle for the Mediterannean Sea. While other battles would see similar numbers of vessels involved the very conditions under which metaphorical swords were drawn: the Regia Marina was naturally reluctant to consider any retreat for such a thing would inevitably expose some of the troop transporters to the blow of Cunningham and his men, while they themselves were animated by their utter determination to end Ares and save Suda. As a result many ships who might have been salvageable had they been damaged in other battles were instead sunk in what was, in many regards, the naval equivalent of a street brawl.

Following Taranto and Matapan Operation Ares demanded much to what remained of the Regia Marina. Three italian battleships were sent to Suda (Caio Dullio, Littorio and Andrea Doria) alongside three heavy cruisers (Trento, Bolzano and Gorizia) four light cruisers (Raymondo Montecuoli, Giovanni dela Banda Nerre, Alberto de Guissiano and Luigi Cadorna) and a sizable escort of destroyers. Similarly, Admiral Cunningham also engaged much of the ressources at its disposal for the Formidable was accompagnied by four battleships (Warspite, Queen Elizabeth, Barham, Valliant), eleven light cruisers (Gloucester, Fiji, Orion, Ajax, Perth, Dido, Naiad, Phoebe, Calcutta, Carlisle and Coventry) an even more formidable escort of destroyers and the submarine Rorqual.

From the first moments of the battle the Luftwaffe showed up in force in the sky over Suda Bay and took an heavy tool from the british sailors as the Ajax and the Perth quickly found watery grave. They did not die alone, however, as, armed with a superior accuracy due to both their radars and the prowesses of their gunmens, the Navy sent the Raymondo Montecuoli and the Gorizia to join them. In those same moments the old Caio Dullio also handilly lost its duel with the Queen Elizabeth. The hearth of the battle was elsewhere, however, as the aged Valliant, supported by the Fiji and the Calcutta, took it upon himself to defy the modern Littorio, supported by the Trento. Drowned under the shells of its Italian counterpart and incapable of coping with the threat from the sky the Valliant succombed but, before sinking, it managed to do severe damage to the italian titan. The Fiji and the Calcutta refused to abandon the fight and, after having seen the Barham and the Gloucester come to their rescue, renewed the assault on the Littorio. A lucky shot by the Fiji made its way to the Littorio's engine room, leading to a mighty explosion and to the vessel sinking quickly. The Trento quickly followed suit less then an hour latter. In spite of its best efforts the Luftwaffe was unable to change the outcome. An attempt against the Warspite most notably lead to the slaughter of those foolish enough to strike at Cunnigham's well defended flagship without having overwhelming force on their side.

Facing the utter destruction of the Italian Squadron, Admiral Iachino, its commander (5), took it upon himself to order a quick retreat toward the Peloponesus. As the landing was well underway, while Cunnigham and his ships were rather close from its site, such a thing could not be accomplished easily. When all was said and done the Regia Marina managed to exertipate herself, save for the cruiser Luigi Cardona, alongside most of the troops having yet to land. Nevertheless, a significant number of men from the Gebirgs and Cuneo division died at the hands of the Medditerannean fleet on that day, while she herself lost the Calcutta and the submarine rorqual in her attempts at pursuit.

As the bruised yet victorious fleet began to sail south Cunningham and his men could congratulate themselves: the balance in the Medditerannean had tilted even further in Britain's favour and Operation Ares had been brought to a halt. (6)

Excerpt of Roman Dreams and British Nightmares: The Regia Marina During the Fascist Era.

Dusk was almost upon Crete when the men having landed in Suda, those still alive at the very least, finally meet with those further inland. Far from a moment of triumph, however, it symbolicaly marked the failure of Ares. Suda and Maleme remained in allied hands, in spite of a great effort and even greater looses from Axis forces while the depletion of the ranks of Fallschirmjäger and the outcome of the Battle of Suda Bay had a made impossible to reattempt such an airborne and amphibious combined assault. Far from a victorious force moving on after taking Suda the suposedly elite infantrymen who arrived were, in essence, soldiers who in retreat who had abandonned all their supplies and fleed toward the only place were they could find relative and temporary safety. Even the reinforcements they represented was compensated by how their medical, nutritional and amunition nee would unavoidably tax the small and brittle supply lines by air the german forces in Crete depended on.

It was the outcome of the operations on the air, however that was the true final nail in the coffin of the German, now Germano-italian, invasion of Crete. More then anything else, it was the Luftwaffe's almost complete dominance of the island's sky that had kept the outcome in doubt in spite of the many disasters faced by the invaders. On May 25, however, the Luftwaffe faced its heaviest looses since Battle of Britain Day almost one year before. Splitted between the needs to support the assaults on Maleme and Suda, escort the gliders, support the Regia Marina, supply the men on the ground and face the fighters of the Formidable it simply could not face all that was demanded of her, not without encuring unnaceptable looses, or sending to the Peloponesus' bomber and fighter wings that would have forced the Third Reich master to delay the Operation Barborassa he prized above all things. The allies had paid a heavy prize for these successes, to Admiral Cunningham's sailors several thousands of General Freyberg's soldiers were added as the Creforce suffered close to half its casualties of the battle. And yet, the looses of the Axis forces were even more severe, significantly so.

Operation Ares had been conceived as a powerfull double blow that would have smashed through the Creforce's lines and set the stage for breaking allied resistance on Crete. Instead it was the Germano-italian assault who broke itself on the allied anvil. The Battle of Crete had yet to end but its outcome was no longer in doubt.

Excerpt of Crete 1941: Germany's First Defeat on Land.

One of the Many German Planes to be Shot Down Over Crete on May 25
​

(1) Made of Remnants of the Crete Division.
(2) I couldn't find the name of its commander in OTL, sadly, so making up a name turned up to be a necessary breach from historical reality.
(3) The reference to Democratic Athens was also particularly poignant for men coming from the Venizelist stronghold Crete was. An official history obviously did not mention that factor as discussing anything invoking such internal divisions is usually not their cup of tee.
(4) While there was only so much that could done in that regard Cunningham did his best to have his many fighter pilots as possible aboard the Formidable.
(5) After Cape Matapan, where the Vittorio Venneto had only narrowly escaped, he judged more prudent to choice the Andrea Dorio, rather then the Littorio, as its flagship since the latter would be a natural target for the Medditeranean Fleet.
(6) Obviously the destroyers on both sides suffered as well but the numbers involved would have made going the details impossible without going into more details then I would want to go for the tempo, so to speak, of this TL.

 

[phil03]

Warning: Mentions of War Crimes

Heraklion after the end of the Battle​

May 26-30: The Last German Attacks and Operation Athena

While Operation Ares had put an end to any real hope of victory for Germany in the Battle of Crete it did not bring the fighting on the island to a halt. There was, after all, thousands of soldiers of the Wehrmacht still on Crete, and while their reserves of food, water and amunition were rather lacking they nevertheless still had some. This state of affairs, alongside the reluctance of the Lutftwaffe in general, and of Goering in particular, to accept the failure of Mercury and the blow to the german airforce's prestige that would come with it, led to one last, desperate, attempt to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. In a manoeuver that was to consume most of their remaining supplies, no matter whether it proved successful or not, the german forces on the islands were to hurl all of their remaining strength against Maleme in Rethymon to attempt to, at last, capture an airfield. An authorisation to conduct one last day of air raids on Crete had been obtained with great difficulties, in the hope of giving these attacks some chances of success.

The days when Maleme was vulnerable were over, however. The, now routine, nightly counterattack by the Creforce had unmade most of the gains made by the Germans in the area during Ares and the fortifications of the airfield's defensive perimeter had resisted well throughout May 25. May 26 saw the germans and the italians throw themselves against Maleme with the energy of despair but throughout the day the allied lines didn't move an inch.

Excerpt of Fighting Kiwis: A Short History of the New Zealand Armed Forces

Unlike the events who took place around Maleme on May 26 the fighting in the vicinity of Rethymon on the same day developed in a quite worrisome fashion for the Creforce, at least at first. Believing that the epicenter of the battle had definitely moved west and that the failure of Ares meant that the end of the battle was imminent the men guarding the airfield had allowed their guard to slip. The german assault on Rethymon was therefore a rude awakening for the allied garrison of the area and, thanks to the effect of suprise, made surprising progress, even managing to capture a part of the airfield itself in relatively short order. For one terrible moment it seemed as if a German victory might yet prove itself possible, after all.

The reality of the military soon reaserted itself, however. As the forces defending Rethymon regained their posture the german advance came to a screeching halt and the defenders of the airfield began to push their ennemies back, slowly but surely at first but with increasing speed. Moreover, as the day dragged on much of the German's meager reserves of amunition were spent, significantly hindering the ability of the Paratroopers counting on them to hold their ground. As night fell a counterattack lead by the last armoured reserves at Brigadier's Campbell disposition unmade the last german gains made earlier and pushed the Axis forces in the area deep inland.

The Battle of Rethymon was over.

Excerpt of Blood of the Minotaur: The Battle of Rethymon

Once Pasti (1) had been a simple Cretan village, similar to so many others. As the allied forces made their way further inland, in a bid to eliminate the remaining German forces on the island, they had passed through many of them. When, during the night of May 27-28, a Creforce detachment arrived to Pigi they expected it to be as unmemorable as all other Cretan villages. From the moment they entered Pasti an erie silence greeted them, none of its inhabitants were anywhere to be seen. Pasti appeared less abandoned then as it would if its people had vanished and then, a few minutes latter, they found it: the remains of dozens of men, women and children inside a half-filled ditch. The remains of those who once made a large part of Pasti. Several weeks latter, as peoples who had fled the village made their way back to their old homes after the end of the battle, the Allies discovered that believing, rightly or wrongly, that some of Pasti's inhabitants were informing the Creforce and, in reprisal, had ordered the slaughter.

The horrific discovery foreshadowed what was to await the allied forces as they would liberate Europe from the Nazi yoke.

Excerpt of Europe's Long Night: The Nazi Rule and Crimes in Occupied Countries and Territories

As it had become evident that the resistance of the last Axis forces on the island was to crumble in short order one last command was sent to the only German detachment of some strength who was still in the vicinity of Heraklion: take the archeological site of Knossos and destroy it. As fate thankfully had it the message was received by Major Georg Reimer, a classicist by training. Having read much and more on the palace complex and the Minoans he could not resign himself to see the former be destroyed, military discipline be damned. The message was ignored and the radio on which it had been received, the last German radio in the area, was destroyed to avoid seeing it sent again.

Decades latter, after having emigrated, married a Cretan woman and become a Greek citizen, Professor Reimer ended his career as director of the Heraklion Archeological Museum.

Knossos​

Excerpt of From the Minoans to Fighting Greece: An History of Crete

Conceived in the hours following the failure of Operation Ares, Operation Athena (2) aimed to quickly crush Axis resistance on Crete with minimal losses, so as to allow many of the units in the Creforce to reinforce current and planned operation in North Africa and the Middle-East. To achieve its objectives Athena targeted the achilles heel of the Germano-Italian forces: their supplies and supply lines. The drop zones, on which had landed most of which had allowed the invasion of Crete to sustain themselves, were to be conquered and the German (and italian) forces were to be harassed rather then truly engaged, as to force them to use their amunitions in a manner that would not cost much in Allied losses while also preventing them from establishing new drop zones. As news of the successfull counterattack at Rethymon arrived to Chania General Freyberg deemed that the conditions were ripe to launch Athena.

To say that Athena proved an unmitigated success would be exagerated as heavy, fierce, and as it turned out futile, fighting took place around the drop zones, lenghtening the proverbial butcher bill for the Creforce. Nevertheless, it did manage to reach its main objectives and, combined with the growing certitude that no new supply planes were to appear in the sky of Crete, helped bring about a complete collapse of enemy morale. As the days went by more and more a steady trickle of ennemy soldiers began to surrender to the Creforce, with the last German and Italian forces of any significance doing so on May 30. The Battle of Crete was, at last, over.

Excerpt of Crete 1941: Germany's First Defeat on Land.

New Zealand Forces Relaxing Following the End of the Battle
​

(1) The name is fictional. Going to Google map and picking a random village's name simply seemed tasteless to me in this instance, for hopefully obvious reasons.
(2) The name was chosen as an answer of a short to Operation Ares by the many Philelenes in the officer corps of Britain and of the Commonwealth, as Athena was the other war divinity in the Olympian Pantheon and while Ares was the patron god of Sparta (whom the Nazi strongly admired) while Athena was, obviously, the patron goddess of Athens (who, as a city-state famous for its democratic ethos and as a great naval power, was easy for the British and Commonwealth forces to identify with).

Author Note: My appologies for the somewhat shorter chapter this week but I wanted to wrap up the battle itself before moving forward. Next chapter is gonna be an epilogue of a short, with some ITTL historical analyses of the battle as a whole and discussions of how its ITTL outcome changed the decision process of, and the influence of different figures and organisations inside, the both the Allied and Axis forces. Once that is taken care then we will, at last, move to the immediate aftermath of the battle and everything that will follow.

 

[phil03]

Monument to the Creforce, (Michael Dingen) ​

May 30, 1941-2020: Aftermath and the Judgement of History

The Allied victory on Crete had not come cheap. In ten days of fighting the Creforce had lost more then 8,000 men, close to a fifth of its initial strenght. Appart from the 22nd New Zealand Battalion, practically destroyed in front of Maleme on the first day of the battle, it was the Australian units, involved into the heavy fighting around Rethymon and in many cases called upon to reinforce Maleme just before Operation Ares, who had suffered the most. To their ranks one must add the sailors of the Valliant and those of the other ships of the Medditeranean Fleet, including three cruisers and one large submarine who were lost at Suda bay, as well many onboard those who had survived the great naval clash. Seventeen pilots who had taken off the Ark Royal on May 25 completed this gruesome list. Nonetheless, and despite being quite significant in and of themselves, these looses paled in comparaison to those suffered by the Axis Forces.

25,000 elite, or reputed as such, German and Italian infantrymen died in their vain assault on Crete. The 7th Flieger Division and the Luftlande Sturmregiment were destroyed as fighting units, their survivor soon to be dispersed among other units. The 22nd Luftlande Division fared better, but would nonetheless spend several months in reserve to be reconsituted, as the 22nd Volksgrenadier Division (1), a standard infantry unit, before being of much military use. The Gebirgs and the Cuneo divisions, for their part, would need significant reinforcements before being capable of offensive operations. Appart from a force of commandos the Fallschirmjäge was, for all intent and purposes, dead. At sea the Regia Marina had lost two of her five battleships, alongside four cruisers and several smaller units. It was, in the air, however, that the German looses where the most crippling; 300 aircrafts, alongside their entire crew, fell over Crete. Two hundred more were significantly damaged (2). The subsequent operations in the old Roman sea will show that these looses where consequential indeed...

Excerpt of Crete 1941: Germany's First Defeat on Land.

Many historians have depicted the Battle of Crete as primarily a failure of inteligence, pointing out that, far from 12,000, as the Germans had originally estimated its strenght, the Allied Garrison could boast close to 50,000 men and that, far from leading the Cretans to collaborate with the invaders because of their dislike for the monarchy and Metaxas' regime, the staunch Venezelism of the island had lead it to embrace anti-fascism vervently and provide all the assistance they could to the Creforce. While these factors obviously played their part in the German defeat they are nevertheless utterly unsificient to explain the disaster that was Operation Mercury when it benefited from the inestimable advantage represented by total air domination.

No, to truly explain the course the events took one must, inevitably, turn to the inherent disadvantages of a strategic offensive through airborn means. Deprived of the natural distraction caused by ground operations the gliders of such an assault, are bound to attract the full attention of those below, allowing to reap a fearsome tool. Once on the ground they need to conquer an harbour or an airfield in fourty height hours under pain of seeing their combat efficiency quickly and dramatically, dropings made by transport planes taking large casualties being the only to slow, rather then stop that process. As these targets are often well guarded and fortified and, as paratroopers do not carry heavy weapons with them they often prove unassailable. A partial solution to these problems was found in Operation Ares, when German bombings where using to prevent any attacks during the droppings, rather then to break the defense of their targets, but even it did not allow Maleme to be taken, and the tactic was simply impossible to replicate without total air superiority.

As a result Operation Mercury was the first, and the last, large strategic offensive resting on airborne power...

Excerpt of Why the Fallschirmjäger Lost of the Journal of Second World War Studies

To prevail in war a few things are of paramount importance. One must be able to survey the battlefield and identify its key points. Suda, Rethymon, Maleme and Heraklion were correctly identified by the Creforce as the four locations that needed to be held at all cost, and their defense planned accordingly. You also need to blunt whatever advantage the ennemy might possess while making the most of yours. By taking full advantage of comprehensive inteligence network formed by the Cretans themselves and by waiting for the night for troop movements and counterattack, therefore diminishing the efficiency of the Luftwaffe, the Creforce did both the former and the latter. Moreover, sometimes one must accept high casualties and large risks when making decisions at the key moment of the battle, just like Admiral Cunningham when he sailed straight into waters whose skies were dominated by the ennemy. The Allied cause was properly rewarded for it...

Excerpt of Why the Creforce Won of the Journal of Second World War Studies

Statue of an Orthodoxt priest turned combatant, the Cretans still take great pride in their role in the battle (Yachtcharterfleet)​

While the two men would never truly see eyes to eyes it is nevertheless fair to say that the end of the Spring of 1941 marked a turning point in the relationship between Archibald Wavell and Winston Churchill. While rumours of the imminent sacking of the CnC Middle-East had floated around Downing Street for weeks the victory in Crete, progress in East Africa, and the housting of Rachid Ali's pro-German Iraqi regime had given Wavell a stay of execution, at the very least, and gone some way to molify the Prime Minister. The main apple of discord between the two man at this point in time was Operation Exporter, the invasion of the Vichy-held Levant, supported by the Prime Minister and opposed by the General, who would have rather concentrated his forces and attention on North Africa as much as possible. Sign of the greater credit now held by Wavell, a compromise was struck: Exporter would go forward by Wavell was allowed to delay Operation Battleaxe, the Allied counterattack against Rommel and the Italians in Lybia.

Except of Too Many Fires: The British War Efford in the Middle-East and North Africa in 1940-41

By the end of the battle of France the prestige of the Luftwaffe and of its Reichmarshall had reached its peak, as the role the former had played in the successes of the Blitzkrieg could not be denied. In the minds of many the Battle of Britain was supposed to mark the final triumph of Goering and its airforce but, instead, it had delt them a crippling blow, giving their rivals inside the Nazi state plenty of amunition. The desire to give themselves the means to counterattack played a far from insignifiant part in the support given to Mercury by Goering and his main subordinates. When all was said and done, however, the outcome of the fighting on Crete merely contributed to the army growing ascendant over the airforce, while Goering's star grew only more dim compared to those of his rivals inside Hitler's inner circle. Student himself would remain on half pay for the rest of the war, with only the intervention of his patron sparing him a worse fate.

The failure of the invasion of Crete was also a crippling blow to Admiral Canaris and his Abwehr, held responsible for the faulty estimation of the size of the allied contingent on the island. As it had also been the main voice arguing for substantial support to be granted to Rachid Ali and his partisans the Spring of 1941 saw whatever influence the military inteligence agency might have once held plumet, setting the stage for some of its members to began to gravitate toward the opposition...

Excerpt of In the Den of Vipers: Power Struggles In the Nazi State

Today the bells of England's parishes are ringing in victory for the first time in this war. History will remember that it was in Crete that the Nazi Hordes were first beaten back on land and that a mighty beacon of hope was built. I have the utmost faith that, fueled by victories, its flame will only grow brighter, hotter and mighter as time flow.

Excerpt of Winston's Churchill Speech to the House of Commons of June 1, 1941.

Thank you general, for you might very well have saved my throne!

Excerpt of King Georges II of Greece's Telegram to General Freyberg, June 3, 1941.

To the defenders of Rethymon, the men of the 22nd New Zealand Batalion and the Sailors of the Valliant...

Excerpt of the Instriction on the Monument to the Creforce in Heraklion

A few days before the last units of the Creforce that were to serve elsewhere departed a convoy of ships heading for Crete found itself the target of German dive bombers. The Battle of Crete was over, the Siege of Crete had begun.

Excerpt of Crete 1941-42: The Contest of Will

German Prisonners Waiting for their transfer to Egypt​

(1) The name the 22nd division took in OTL when it was forced to make a similar move in 1945.
(2) Those numbers might seem high but the looses of Lutftwaffe were actually surprisingly considerable in OTL: 200 aircrafts destroyed and 125 damaged. So, if anything they are actually on the slightly conservative side of things.

 

[phil03]

Disclaimer: On this one I merely recycled ideas from the thread I linked before the prologue, mainly a post by Paulo the Limey. He should get the credit for coming up with the basic squeleton of how the siege would develop, not me, as in this instance I mostly putted it in TL format, so to speak.

A Hurricane fighter, the backbone of the air defense of Crete (Cpl Phil Major) ​

June 1941-June 1942: The Siege of Crete

As the Battle of Crete came to an end the Allies could have been forgiven to believe that the danger to the island had passed. After all, Italy would have been incredibly reluctant to once more engage the Regia Marina east of Corfu, and would have probably been unable to do so successfully, while the Paratroopers unit at Hitler's disposal had been decimated in the first attempt on the island and Germany's assets would soon be needed elsewhere, not the least against Russia, in any case. To be sure, in early June 1941 there was many officers of the Whermacht and leading figures of the Nazi regime who argued that the island should be left alone, appart for sporadic air attacks to prevent an Allied build up as much as possible. Most military historians having studied the question in the following decades have come to believe that it would have the more judicious choice.

That a different course of actions was chosen was due, like many other German mistakes made during the war, to the German's dictator direct intervention. Obsessed by the potential threat an Allied presence on the island might present to the oil of Ploeisti and intent on wiping away the blow to German prestige caused by Mercury, Hitler ordered that significant air assets be still directed against the island, in the hope of making the Allied position on it untenable. Hunger, lack of supplies and bombardments were to achieve what invasion couldn't. Thus, most of the Allied forces had barely had the time to left the island before the first convoys were attacked...

Excerpt of The Fight for the Medditerannean

While the forces the Luftwaffe assigned to the blockade of Crete were, originally at least, inferiors to those who had supported Mercury, they were nevertheless more then sufficient to ensure complete air dominance over the island. As a result the first phase of the siege of Crete saw the remaining Allied forces on the island, mainly Greek infantrymen, unable to do much appart from hunkering down and absorbing the blows as well as they could. During those long weeks the harbours of Crete's northern shore were out of reach, for no convoy could be reasonably risked there, and the small harbours of Stakia and Palaiokhara were Crete's lifeline. Destroyers came after dusk, unloading whatever they could as fast as possible and making sure to be far away to the South before dawn.

In spite of all obstacles, however, progresses were made. As the Fall of 1941 had just begun captured italian kits had been brought from Africa and distributed to the greek forces on Crete, new anti-aircraft bateries installed on the island and, most important of all, all kind of supplies needed to repair airfields and support Hurricanes squadrons on the Minoan's old home...

Excerpt of From the Minoans to Fighting Greece: An History of Crete

In many regards the engagement the mass engagement of the Hurricanes in Crete was proof of their dimishing importance to the Allied war effort. Unwilling to abandon Crete to the blows of the Luftwaffe, and yet also uneasy at the tought of sending Beaufighters, or even Spitfires, in such a risky theater of operations. In many regards the Hurricanes formed the backbone of the Allied's answer to the German air assault on Crete precisely because they were now deemed, to some degree at least, expandable to the war effort. A rather sad development for a fighter who had given such great services to humanity during the Battle of Britain, to be sure, but one shared, to some degree at least, with many other fighter models througout the years.

Still, while the Hurricane had begun to show its age it nevertheless remained a redoubtable ennemy and an efficient killing machine. Mere weeks after the arrival of the first Hurricanes the mere four squadrons, the bare squeleton of what would become the Crete Defence Aircorps during the next months, assembled on the island and managed to prove enough of a hindrance to the Luftwaffe, and to inflict on her sufficient looses, that the isolated destroyers of the earlier day could be replaced by small, yet substantial, convoy to the southern ports of Crete. As a result the German tide began to recede and, in spite of the best efforts of the Stuka's pilots, the Allied position on the island only grew from strenght to strenght...

Excerpt of Freedom's Hawks: Allied Fighters of World War II

As 1942 was beggining morale had undoutebly improved among the garrison, just as it had correspondingly declined among the men of the Luftwaffe. The four squadrons of Hurricanes of Fall of 1941, crewed in majority by whatever pilots the Greeks had managed to evacuate half a year before, were steadily growing into a full wing, with far more multinational crews. Even more revealing of the rise in Allied power in the sky of the island was the arrival, during the tail end of the Winter of 1941-42, of a squadron of brand new Beaufighters on the island. Crete had became secure enough for assets of a greater value to be risked. Convoys, were now, at last, able to risk coming to Suda bay and Heraklion, anti-aircraft guns of a bigger calibre were brought on and, skeletal at best by the end of the Summer of 1941, the island was, at last, acquiring a solid radar cover.

On land small tanks were, for the first time since the end of the Battle of Crete, present on the island. The reconstruction of the Hellenic army had also, at last, begun as a new Cretan Division had been raised, armed with Italian kits and was duly being trained. While it was those troops who would eventually make the Aegean Campaign possible, at leasts in its first phases, such offensive operations were still sometimes away by the Spring of 1942. Nevertheless, their presence in Crete helped ensure that, even should the Italians prove willing to risk what was left of their Regia Marina, a second attempt at an invasion would be impossible. The Siege of Crete was for all intent and purposes over, and would have been even if not for certain events in other theaters.

Historians being historians, however, many felt the need to find a bookend of a short, an event spectacular enough to be pointed out as the true end of the siege. While several dates have advanced as candidates the most appropriate, in my opinion, is also the most popular: June 9, 1942. On that day a squadron of Wellington bombers, sent to Crete temporarily, raided the German airbase on Milos and inflicted heavy damages. As the island's airfield had played an important part in the attacks on Crete, and the air raid represent the first Allied offensive effort beyond Crete since the fall of Continental Greece, it can indeed be seen as the beginning of a new phase of the war in these waters...

Allied convoy discharging its cargo, March 1942 (War Office official photographer, Cook H E (Lt))​

Excerpt of Warm Sun and Deadly Skies: The Air War in the Medditerannean Area

By the end of the Siege of Crete the Luftwaffe had engaged between nine hundred and a thousand aircrafts over its entire course, with the forces engaged by the Luftwaffe growing significantly as the Allied forces did as well. The RAF and its allies lost 136 of its fighters, while their German opponents lost around 250 of theirs. Critically, the Allied pilots were often able to find new mounts quickly enough, tough not as quickly as on other fronts, while German pilots who survived their defeat found themselves spending the rest of the war in POWs camps. Curiously enough, some historians have argued that the uselly over agressive Germans were, in fact, defeated by lack of daring in this instance, as engaging truly overwhelming forces from the beginning of the siege might have, in their view, been the only to prevent the eventual buildup of Allied airpower on the island. While we will naturally never know which results would have come from such a course it is only proper to remain sceptical of such arguments, as, throughout the war, no air blockade has ever succeeded alone.

Moreover, it can argued that such questions are utterly and completely besside the point, as whether it succeeded or not, to began the Siege of Crete was the wrong decision for Germany. Obsessed by Barbarossa and by his grotesque and depraved dreams of Lebensraum the German dictator had ensured that the air forces needed to maintain a continuous pressure on Minos' island would not diminish the air support from which the troops fighting on the Eastern Front would benefit. As a result. the fighters and the bombers sent against Crete could only be taken from those that should have been attacking Malta and supported the Axis' ground forces in Lybia. The new years would see Nazi Germany pay an heavy price indeed for such a calamitous strategic decision...

Excerpt of Crete 1941-42: The Contest of Will

Flag of the modern day successor of the Cretan Division​

 

[phil03]

Georges II of Greece (Source: Library of US Congress)​

May 1941- January 1942: The Internal Struggle

To understand the internal tensions that plagued the Government of Fighting Greece during its first twelve to eighteen months of existence it is necessary to cast one's eyes backward, to the long struggle between Venizelists and Royalists. From the emergence of Eleftherios Venizelos as the most important figure on the Helenic political scene decades before the specter of a Second World War to come had begun to haunt humankind. As the Royalists stood for a right-wing, authoritarian and traditionalist monarchy while the Venezelists sought to carve a center-left and Republican future for Greece the two society projects faced each other, exchanging turns in power in a demented game of political musical chair and comprehensively purging their opponents.

For most of the early 20th century Greek political life was marked by coups and revolutions, as both sides tried to get rid of their rivals once and for all, blaming each other for the cataclysm of 1922. In the wake of the failure of the 1935 Venizelist revolt, and of the death in exile of Venizelos himself, it seemed as if the monarchist had, at last, managed to do so. Thoroughly purged from the army and the administration, and hunted by Metaxas' thugs, the Venizelists had seemingly been reduced to impotency. For a few years the struggle for the future of Greece was mostly fought between more moderate Royalists, supported by Georges II himself, and Metaxas as well as those who shared his fascistic leaning. The great defeat and the occupation of the country shook Greek political life to its core. In Heraklion the Venezelists would attempt to rise from the ashes of defeat and make the case that it was they, more then any other, who could give Greece her freedom back.

Excerpt of The King of Luggages: A Biography of Georges II of Greece

In many regards the very nature of its last stronghold disadvantaged the King and his government in their struggle against the democratic opposition. Fierce Venizelists themselves, the Cretans sold their assistance in the upcoming battle for a heavy price indeed: the suspended Greek Constitution, supposed to make the country a consitutional monarchy under a British model, was reinstated and the purged Venizelists officers and administrators who had managed to make their way to unnoccupied territories were, if slowly at first, reintegrated. Had the island fallen the importance of its political leanings might have been lesser in grand scheme of things but it didn't. Instead, Crete's heroic resistance, and the key role played by its inhabitants, ensured that the once defeated cause of greek liberalism would see its prestige rise, both at home, and abroad. As, under British pressure, a reshufling of the royal cabinet was undertaken soon after the end of the battle, it had become clear that the Venizelists would be unlikely to be eternally content to play second fiddles inside Fighting Greece.

By contrast the King and his Prime Minister Tsouderos had not done much to endeer themselves to either their Greek supporters or their British Allies. As the Battle of Crete was about to begin the king and his closest advisors elected to sail to Cairo, and then to London, believing that staying in Crete, or even settling in Cairo, would leave them vulnerable to the Venizelist leanings of the Cretans or the Greek community of the Middle-East. Such a calculation was, needless to say, rather shortsighted as it neglected the damages to the government's prestige that would have been caused by what could only appear as a desertion, as well as the political damages that would have come had the Government cut itself from most of its supporters. While the negative reactions of many in Cairo quickly lead to a press release stating that the king had only departed from Crete to not be an obstacle to the efforts of its defenders, and that British pressure had lead to a return to Crete to be agreed upon after the end of the battle, in the eyes of both London and its supporters the harm had been done.

Prime Minister Emmanouil Tsouderos (source: Istorikathemata)​

In the end the reckoning came in the Fall of 1941, in the form of a challenge to Tsouderos' position by Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, founder and leader of the resistance group Omiros, who had taken upon himself to make his way to Crete to bring about closer ties between the growing resistance on the continent and Heraklion. His arrival, as well as the strenght of his personality, provided the Venizelists with what they had lacked since the death of their founder: a leader (1). Attacking Tsouderos for what he saw as his "Wait-and-seeism", Kanellopoulos toured Crete, the Middle-Eastern Greek communities and the nearby Allied consulates as he tried to rally support behind a more active use of the Greek forces in the conflict, a firm engagement for democracy and a referendum on the future of the country after liberation (2). For several months Tsouderos resisted the pressure but at the end a memorandum he himself penned proved to be the doom of his political career. A few days after the end of the Battle of Crete Tsouderos had provided the king and his closest colleagues with a paper outlining his toughts regarding the strategy that was to be followed by the government. In December 1941 it found its way to the British consul in Cairo.

According to Tsouderos, Greece had already more then done its part for the Allied war effort and it shouldn't be expected to provide more. The Greek forces were to be preserved to be used latter as a tool to ensure internal stability while other Allied forces would have to defeat Germany without their help. Moreover, the memorandum also stated that, thanks to its sacrifices, Greece would be entitled to request the annexations of the Dodecanese, Southern Epirus, part of Macedonia, Cyprus and, should Turkey enter the war on the Axis side, a return to its Thracian border under the Treaty of Sevres alongside a proeminent role in an international administration of Istanbul (3). Both through these rather extravagant claims and by posing a significant obstacles to Britain's ambitions of an eventual Balkans Campaign Tsouderos ideas ran counter to those of London and, when leaked, caused the British to side with his opponent. In January 1942 Tsouderos found himself with no other options but to resign as Prime Minister, before accepting the face saving post of Ambassador to Chile. Following his departure Kannellopoulos found himself at the head of a government, administration and officer corps who, if not overwhelmingly Venizelists in political leaning, were already predominantly so and bound to bend even further in that direction in the future.

To be sure, the Venizelists had paid a significant price for the British support that had allowed them to prevail. The Republicanism that had long been the hallmark of their government was to be, for the time being at least, abandonned as London would simply not suffer to see the Royal House of Greece be permanently exiled unless the Greek people could absolutely not be persuaded to decide otherwise. Nonetheles, it had became clear that the Consitutional Monarchy circumstances had lead them to lukewarmingly support was to be dominated by Venizelists politicians and Venizelists ideas should it prevail. In the short, medium and long term they triumphed over their old opponents. It was happy occurence too, for with the creation of the collaborationist Hellenic State and the rise of the Communist resistance in mainland Greece ensured that Venizelists would have new ennemy to fight for the allegiance of the Greek people...

Excerpt of: The Many Rises and Falls of Venizelism

Prime Minister Kannelopoulos (Source: Prabook)​

(1) In OTL he only made his way to the Middle-East in 1942. Here the developments of Fighting Greece's internal politics lead him to make the trip earlier.
(2) More or less his pitch when he made a bid for power in OTL as well. Unlike in OTL, however, he actually manages to make it to PM rather then merely forcing himself as a powerfull #2 in the government.
(3) Believe it or not the memorandum is actually OTL. The difference is that ITTL with a stronger Venizelist presence in the government somebody hostile to Tsouderos managed to get his hand on it and leak it.

Author Note: This one was beggining to become rather lenghty before I even got to Occupied Greece. Therefore I decided that, instead of having a rather bulky update including for the two of them that would have taken longer to write, they would work better as separate updates, even if a bit shorter. Next update will deal with Occupied Greece.

 

[phil03]

The Occupation of Greece in 1941 and early 1942. The Bulgarian zone is in Green, the German zone in Red, the Italian zone in light blue (the Dodecanese is in dark blue) and Fighting Greece is in Purple (based on a map in wikicommon by Cplakidas)​

May 1941-June 1942: Greece under Occupation

As the Battle of Crete was about to come to an end three political entities were now occupying continental Greece and most of the Agean islands: the Kingdom of Bulgaria, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. To understand the bloody fiasco that the Occupation of Greece proved to be it is necessary to first understand their motivations and vision.

Excerpt of The Three Headed Tyranny, the Axis Occupation of Greece

In spite of having done far more then anyone else to expulse the Greek and Commonwealth forces from the continent Nazi Germany proved relatively disinterested in the fate of Occupied Greece, at least at first. Providing that order was maintained Germany's interests in Greece during the middle years of the Second World War tended to limit themselves to the economic pillage of the country for the benefice of its war effort, to what was needed to maintain the Siege of Crete or, latter, to fend of Allied assaults and to the persecution of the local Jewish communities (1). As a result Germany's occupation zone encompassed only a fraction of the country but nonetheless contained several of its most important territories. Athens and Piraeus, Salonica and its surroundings, the Southern Peloponesus and the Cyclades were patrolled by the men of the Wermarcht.

The effects of Germany's presence in Greece went far beyond its occupation zone, however. Already severely weakened by Athens' war efforts the Greek economy was simply not prepared to face the confiscations of industrial and agricultural material as well the massive requisitions, reparations and forced loans inflicted on her. Rampant inflation soon became the norm, as the value of the Drachma plumeted and a flourishing black market established itself. Nonetheless, the suffering inflicted by these developments paled in comparaison to the Great Famine of 1941-42, caused by the occupation and, more specifically, by Germany's agricultural policy toward Greece for the most part. Reaching its peak in December 1941, during which the death tool in Athens reached 400 persons a day, the famine killed around 350 000 Greeks, including 45 000 in the Athens area alone (2). Such a cataclysm could naturally not go without political consequences...

Excerpt of A Nation of Plunderers: Germany's Economy During the Second World War

A starving Greek child during the famine (Private collection George Chandrinos)​

Italy's occupation zone in Greece cannot be properly understood if considered as a whole. Rather it must be understood as the agregate product of three subzones. In the Northwest zones populated by the Albanian Chams and the Vlachs were to become part of the Italian-controlled Kingdom of Albania and a Vlach state, respectively. The former does not deserve much attention, as its history belong more to the tale of Albania during the War then of Greece. The latter, however, does deserve more examination.

A formerly nomadic people the Vlach had spread accross the Balkans, tough electing to live mainly in Greece and Romania, without achieving independent status but nonetheless periodically expressing a desire for autonomy. After the Fall of Greece, however, a group of more radical Vlach nationalist under Alcibiades Diamandi approached Mussolini, asking for Italy's support in the creation of a Vlach state. While hesitant at first Fascist Italy soon grew favourable to the idea, the failure of Operation Mercury and its consequences having impressed upon its leading figures the need to find as many local Allies as possible. Thus the Principalty of Pindus was founded in November 1941, with the King of Italy as Prince. Whatever hope the Italian occupiers might have had for their new auxiliaries was soon to be frustrated however as, while still participating in some operations against the Greek Resistance, what passed for the army of the principalty spend most of its time and ressources proping a regime rather unpopular among the Vlachs themselves and more of them ended up finding their way to the resistance's maquis rather then enrol in Diamondis' ''legion''.

In the rest of the Italian Zone, which corresponded to most of the country, the occupation proved milder then elsewhere. That is not to say that life in Italian-occupied Greece was pleasant, of course, but executions and atrocities proved less frequent there then what took place in the zones under German or Bulgarian control, or indeed what would in those same regions Mussolini's Fall. Many latter days historians have pointed out to the Duce's dream of annexations of large swaths of Greece in his New Roman Empire as the cause for such a state of affairs, as these ambitions lead Italy to try to avoid becoming too unpopular with the local populations, without much success it must be said.

Excerpt of The False Rome: An History of the Italian Empire During WWII

In the eyes of Sofia the Bulgarian Occupation Zone was no occupation zone at all but rather a rightfull part of Bulgaria unjustly taken from her following the Second Balkans War and the Great War. As a result Eastearn Macedonia found themselves the theater of violent process of Bulgarisation that is today widely acknowledged as ethnical cleansing. In a manner of months the quasi totality of all Greek elites had been expulsed from the area. Others found themselves subjected to brutality, forced labour and property confiscations. In total more then a hundred thousand Greeks found themselves either expulsed or essentially forced to exile while Bulgarian settlers took their place, alongside the properties of many who had remained. The use of the Greek language was also forbidden while the activities of Greece businessmen were severely curtailled. Even the deads were not spared as greek tombstones were defaced.

Such policies naturally made Eastern Macedonia and Thrace fertile ground for the Greek Resistance, even at this early stage. As early as September 1941 a the local Communists organised an uprising around the city of Drama. While such a course of action was premature, to say the least, and the uprising was soon quashed its existence was nonetheless a powerfull testimony of how fast the Greek Resistance had grown in the area. The Macedonian Communists would quickly recover their strenght while the growth of the Venizelists resistance would continue, faster and unempeded.

Excerpt of The Brutal Pursuit of an Empire: Bulgaria During the Second World War.

The government of the Helenic State did not, at first, differ significantly from those of many other occupied countries in Greece. Unlike what one might believe Nazi Germany seldom elected to install the leaders of local fascist movements at the head of colaborationist governments, at least at this stage of the war. Instead Berlin prefered to form such governments around technocrats and local right wing politicians in the hope that they might prove more able to ensure the compliance of the administration and their assistance in fulfilling the wishes of the occupant. At first it seemed that the political material necessary for the formation of such a government. Before the Greek Armed Forces had been expulsed from the continent General Georgios Tsolakoglou, once a reasonably proeminent commander in the Greek had written to Hitler to offer to head a colaborationist government and their was high hopes that several of his colleagues would follow.

The Allied victory in Crete threw a wrench in these projects, however, as several of the very officers who had once agreed with Tsolakoglou's asessment that collaboration was the only way to save Greece now found themselves believing that to serve Germany when part of Greece remained free was, if not treasonous then at least close to it. Thus the newlyfounded Hellenic State found itself forced to rely upon unsavoury figures, such as the corrupt businessman Platon Hadzimikalis or the pro-German doctor Konstantinos Logothetopoulos. Worse, the very existence of an Allied Crete undermined whatever legitimacy the Hellenic State might have otherwise enjoyed, as any Greek individual of political importance always had an eye looking South. The Great Famine, the annexation of the Eastern Macedonia and Thrace to Bulgaria, and everything that came with it, and the other injustices and atrocities of occupation destroyed whatever faith Tsolakoglou's government might have enjoyed from the Greek government. Worse in the eyes of Germany: their puppet had a tendency toward Greek nationalism and independant toughts, demanding that the Hellenic State be treated as a full partner of the Axis and that Eastern Macedonia and Thrace be returned to Greece. Thus, as Greek Resistance was growing and Fighting Greece was growing in strenght in the Aegean, Berlin decided that some changes were needed... (3)

Excerpt of The Three Headed Tyranny: the Axis Occupation of Greece

Like many resistance movements in Europe the Venizelists in mainland Greece first rejoined the fight in a rather piecemail fashion, as multiple groups, sometimes with rather fuzy ideological beliefs, acting separately from each other at first. To unite their efforts and create means to coordinate their activies was one of the most difficult tasks Fighting Greece as a whole, and the Venizelists in particular had to face. Rather unsurprisingly, Venizelists resistance first rose in the Bulgarian occupation zone in reaction to Bulgarian atrocities. Gathering much of the non-communists resistance of the area under their banner, the Venizelists holding more influence then their Royalists Allies of circumstances in the group but not by much, the Defenders of the North took up arms as early as summer 1941, bombing roads and railroads and, by the end of 1941, taking it upon themselves to attack isolated groups of Bulgarian soldiers. The time when they merely sought to help along the smuggling of fighters to Crete and the Middle-East was seemingly long gone.

Further south the group Omiros experienced similar developments. Following Kanellopoulos's departure its remaining leadership proved to be firmly Royalists and the group turned out to be the main source of support old style of Royalism enjoyed in the mainland, altough it always took great care to not explicitely embrace Metaxism so as to not turn away Venizelists in their main areas of operation (Attica, Beotia and the Isthmus). Originally dedicated to intelligence gathering the group also took up arm by the end of 1941. By the end of the Siege of Crete several German officers and individuals close to the Colaborationist government had died as a result of their activities and the sabotages they conducted had done much to hinder German efforts during the Siege of Crete.

In the northeast the non-communist resistance was at first dominated by EDES and its leader, Napoleon Zervas. Charismatic and not incapable of charm the Venizelist officer rided the wave of discontent caused by the annexation of a good part of Epirus to Italian Albania and to the projected Principalty of Pindus Zervas soon managed to build a rather imposing resistance movement in a relatively short period. The lack of organisational skills of EDES's leader, alongside the lack of depths of many of his political beliefs, proved to be its bane, however, as both prospective resistance fighters and the SOE prefered to deal with the EKKA. While EDES would play a significant role during the rest of the occupation it never truly managed to grow into a national movement, something that might very well have been a blessing considering some of its actions latter in the conflicts...

Founded in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Crete by the politician Georgios Kartalis and the army officers Dimitrios Psarros and Evripidis Bakirtzis the EKKA distinguished itself by the quality of its organisation and its clear Venizelist line. Bolstered by the Allied victory in Crete and the growing hold of the Venizelists on government the resistance group grew fast in both numbers and power, quickly achieving national status. Such was the success of the EKKA that Psarros was smuggled to Crete during the Spring of 1942, to serve as Minister of War. By the time of his departure several villages in Thessaly and Central Greece had already been liberated by the EKKA, marking the births of the free zones around which the effort to expulse the Germans would be organised latter in the war.

Excerpt of The May Rises and Falls of Venizelism

Dimitrios Psarros, Founder of EKKA and Minister of War (Unknown Author)​

In many regards the German occupation had been a godsent for the Greek Communists. Persecuted by Metaxas and his regime through the years leading to 1941 and having seen many of its leading figures emprisoned the Communists had failed to carve a niche for themselves in Greece's political life. By overthrowing Metaxas' regime, however, the Germans had unwittingly provided a golden opportunity for many communist leaders to escape imprisonment and, has the eyes of the occupiers were at first turned toward the supporters of the Heraklion government, to reorganise and reinforce themselves. Moreover, the Communists would also benefit from the economic misery caused by the Occupation, the famine in particular as it would do much to radicalise the Greek population. If one add to these factors their, already considerable, experience of undergound life and the prestige the crucial role the Red Army would soon play in the war brought upon Communism it is easy to understand how Communism could rise rapidly.

While the communist-led EMA, as well as its armed wing ELAS, would never truly manage to dislodge the EKKA as the first resistance group in Greece it nevertheless was truly national in scope and formidable in nature. By the end of 1941, and in spite of the powerfull blow dealt to it by the failure of the ill-conceived Drama Uprising, EMA had also begun to liberate villages and set free zones of its own, giving no lack of headaches to both London and Heraklion, tough lesser in term of territorial extent. Like in many other parts of Europe, the rivalry and competition between resistance groups faithfull to the legal government and those supporting, or at the very least being friendly to, Communism became one of the defining feature of the fight against the occupiers. Non-communists supporters of the left, in particular, were fiercely courted by both the EKKA and EMA.

Excerpt of Moscow's Swords: Communist Resistance Movement in Europe.

Propaganda Poster of EAM (Unknown Author, erodotos.wordpress.com)​

(1) I toyed with different ideas a bit but at the end I decided that the best way to deal with the Holocaust in Greece ITTL would be to make one update examining it specifically latter on.
(2) That is one of the unpleasant consequences of the POD: overall the occupation will be harsher which, among other things, caused the famine's death tool to be higher then OTL.
(3) Overall the Hellenic State's base of support was even smaller then OTL and it lost whatever popular it could boast of even more quickly, that will have some significant consequences latter on.

Author Note: Appologies for the delay on this one but I found it harder to write it, mainly because it really didn't not have a clear chronological logic for me to organise my toughts around. As it is I am still a bit queasy about the end results so I hope you will enjoy it nonetheless . The main trend compared to OTL is that the resistance is growing faster while the Venizelists hold far more sway in it. Next time we go to the Middle-East and then back to the Middle-East as Fighting Greece goes on the offensive!

 

[phil03]

The Allied Coalition Truly Took Shape During the Year Following the Battle of Crete​

May 1941-May 1942: The Wider War

While latter events would ensure that much of the tensions between the two men would be covered up in their respective memoirs and recollections future archives' opening would sow just how close the working relationship between Wavell and Churchill came to the breaking point. On May 1, 1941 the Prime Minister was strongly considering replacing the CiC Middle-East, and was finding significant support in the War Cabinet for such a course of actions. The victory in Crete, of much importance for a wartime leader seemingly always thinking of the Balkans as a significantly more important theater then it truly was, bought Wavell much good will, however, and a reprieval that latter events made permanent.

Much disagreements nonetheless remained between the two men, however. Optimistic and eager to strike while the iron was hot, for as news of the victory in Crete were the toast of London the British capital could also celebrate progress in the Horn of Africa and the colapse of the pro-German regime of Rachid Ali in Irak, Churchill reiterated its demand for a quick offensive against Rommel and Lybia (Operation Battleaxe) launched simultaneously with the conquest of the Vichy held Levant (Operation Exporter). More cautious, Wavell would have instead prefered to see Exporter cancelled altogether and for Egypt to be reinforced by men once deployed in Crete and Irak, and perhaps even some who were currently fighting the Italians further south, before striking west. As Churchill was Prime Minister the debate was mainly settled in his favour but Wavell had gained enough credit through the failure of Mercury and Ares for him to gain some concessions nonetheless. Exporter was to go forward and Battleaxe would not wait until its completion but it would be delayed until General Cunningham could dispose of many of the men who fought in Crete in Irak.

Excerpt of The Prime Minister and the General: Winston Churchill, Archibald Wavell and the Fight Against the Axis.

While the preliminary operations had lead to mixed results, with both Allied and Germano-Italian attempts at taking key positions before the battle (Operation Brevity and Case Skorpion) both failing (1) Battleaxe's first phase did not turn that . While, by all account, a capable enough general of infantry Alan Cunningham proved to be unable to deal with the demands of a tank battle and showed himself utterly inferior to General Rommel in all respect, threatening to all but mentally collapse in the middle of the fight, forcing Wavell to replace him with one his younger protegée: General William Slim. Fortunately, Slim proved himself far more competent then Cunningham and, thanks to greater numbers in the ground and, especially, in the air, managed to salvage the situation (2). While Battleaxe was a costly victory for the British Eight Army it was a victory nonetheless. The short-lived Siege of Tobruk was lifted, Cyrenaica retaken and the Axis forces pushed back east. Thus the stage was set for Operation Crusader as, in spite of the pleas of both Erwin Rommel and of Mussolini's the German Dictator, obsessed, as always, by the newly openned Eastern Front, simply refused to take seriously the direness of the Axis' position in Lybia and the convoys supplying the Axis forces in Africa were mercilessly harassed by the Allied squadrons based in Malta (3), until it was no longer salvageable and sending the kind of reinforcements needed to save it, or at least sending them in time, was no longer possible. In many ways it was therefore an unavoidable turn of events when, a few days before Christmas 1941, Slim's troops Tripoli and, a few days later, managed to, in the words of Winston Churchill, ''Cleansing a whole continent from the stain of Fascism!'' (4).

Excerpt of A Short History of the 20th Century.

How the Armée d'Afrique (5) and the officers and officials of French North Africa would have reacted to the entry of Allied forces in Tripoli remain a hotly debated question among historians. On one hand General Maurice Noguès and most of his subordinates had remained loyal to Vichy through the better part of 18 months but, on the other, the existence of significant Allied sympathies, or at the very least Germanophobia, among their ranks was well attested. The answer to this particular historical enigma would never be know, however, for Hitler acted before it could come to pass. Once it has become clear that the situation in Lybia was unsalveagable Hitler, convinced that to see Allied armies at the Tunisian border would lead the french to turn cloack and seeking a way to salvage the situation in Africa Hitler ordered the execution of Case Anton, the occupation of the Vichy Zone and the preparations for a transfer of German troops to French North Africa.

This decision, like so many made by their Fuhrer, proved to be disastrous for Nazi Germany, however, for it cause precisely what it sought to prevent. Throughout the summer of 1940 many in the Maghreb had toyed with continuing the fight and it was only with the most profound difficulties, as well as under the promise that the empire was to remain free of German presence, that Pétain had been able to obtain their allegiance. The occupation of the Vichy Zone, which dealt a crippling blow to Pétain's pretension of protecting France, and evidently seeming to prelude a transfer of German troops to North Africa proved to be enough to break the ties of the colonies with the old Marshall. A few supporters of Vichy tried to put up a fight but they were soon overpowered and a Comité du Salut National (6) was established with Noguès as its président. Moreover, before he was captured by the German forces Admiral François Darlan, Minister of Navy, had found the time to order the Toulon Squadron to sail for North Africa, which it managed to do with only negligeable looses. Alongside the french ships and crews interned at London and Alexandria it would soon join the Allied forces. France had now three governments, the only one not at war with Germany being the weakest of the three, and resistance was growing on the mainland as Vichy's popularity was cratering...

Excerpt of The Dark Years: An History of France During the Second World War.

In many regards the looses taken by the Regia Marina during the Raid on Taranto and the failed landing, that was supposed to be the core part of Operation Ares, had been grievous blows from which it had never recovered. Nonetheless, as 1941 was drawing to a close the Regia Marina, inferior as it was to Cunningham's Meditterannean Squadron, was nonetheless still a threat. In a brilliant action, littleknown today due to its lack of strategic consequences due to other events, the Italian submarine Sirè and three manned torpedoes entered Alexandria's harbour undected. Despite facing a fleet on alert, as it was to depart soon thereafter, they nonetheless managed to disable one destroyer and the battleship Queen Elizabeth (7). The rejoicing in Rome proved to be of short duration, however, for Cunningham's other vessels nonetheless sailed as planned, heading west to intercept the mighty Italian convoy heading toward Tripoli to give the Axis forces in Africa the suplies they would have needed to hold off defeat for at least sometimes as Malta's squadrons were wrecking havoc on Rommel's supply lines.

A few Allied reconnaissance planes having been sent to properly disguise the fact that the information had been sent from Enigma, the stage was set for another conventional naval battle. The details of the Battle of the Gulf of Sidra have been abundantly described elsewhere. For our purposes it is sufficient to say that it ended as other conventional battles between the two fleet had. Tripoli fell and the Regia Marina ceased to be capable of contesting the Allied mastery of the old Mare Nostrum, especially after it had been reinforced by the still significant remnant of the once mighty Marine Nationale.

Excerpt of The Fall of the False Rome: The Last Years of Fascist Italy

As tensions in East Asia and the Pacific were rising apiece the attention of Imperial Headquarters began to turn to theaters who had been comparatively neglected in the last years, as their attention was most evidently turned toward Europe in the Middle-East. One of these territories was Burma, whom even those who had the most faith in the might of Fortress Singapore aknowledged was in danger due to the ever closer ties between Bankgok and Tokyo. To adress the situation and prepare the colony for war a favourite of Hastings Ismay, the British Chief of Staff, was sent: General Bernard Law Montgomery (8). Unimpressed by what he found upon his arrival in Rangoon, and even less so by a visit in Singapore to confer with General Percival, and receiving little ressources from London, he nonetheless sought to turn what he had in hand into as potent a military instrument as possible. Drilling his soldiers, organising his forces and having them build fortifications with almost manic energy he managed to annoy most of his subordinates, superiors and colleagues but also gained their respect, even if often only grudgingly.

General Montgomery was no miracle worker and thus, when the Japaneses came they were victorious, inflicting heavy casualties to the Allied forces in Burma and pushing them back many miles. The japanese victory was not decisive, however. Rangoon held and the assault on Yunnan and the Burma Road was stopped, ensuring that the Chinese forces would continue to receive the precious supplies coming accross the mountains. In latter year it was said that no greater victory had been won by the Viscount of Moulmein then having snatched defeat from the jaws of disaster!

Excerpt of The Lion of Burma: A Military Biography of Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery

In many regards the fate of North Africa was sealed by Hitler's obessession with the Eastern Front, for it deprived the Afrikakorps and its Italian allies from ressources they would have direly needed and ensured that Berlin would only understand and try to react to the crumbling of the Axis position in Lybia when it was too late. It is nonetheless to affirm, like some historians have done, that no reactions from the Wermacht was launched until Tripoli's fate was sealed, for one was attempted but it proved to be misguided. Ordered to send some of his U-boats through the Straits of Gibraltar to support the Italians in the Medditerannean Donitz executed himself, despite his misgivings. Through the bright lights of June and July 15 U-boats were lost in these waters, a level of looses preventing those who had made it to the Axis harbours of southern Western Europe to be of much weight against the Medditerannean Squadron. Their absence from the Atlantic would prove to be a great boon for the Allies, however...

Excerpt of Wolfpacks and Convoys: The Battle of the Atlantic

(1) In OTL Skorpion was a success. Here it failed due to higher morale among the Allied troops, lower morale among the Axis, some of the troops who were destroyed in Crete in OTL being there and a better Allied situation in the air.
(2) The butterflies are really starting to act up here, as the Siege of Crete takes significantly more from what the Axis had in Africa in OTL then what the Allied had. Moreover, Slim had been something of a protegé of Wavell throughout the war, hence why he ended in Burma. After Irak he could justify giving him a big operational command and he pretty much took the first occasion he had to do it in OTL, and in ITTL as well.
(3) Similarly, a descent chunk of the ressources used against Malta are either in Crete or were eaten up back during Battle of Crete itself.
(4) He said more or less the same thing upon the end of the Tunisian Campaign in OTL.
(5) Army of Africa
(6) Commitee of National Salvation
(7) In OTL the Raid on Alexandria was arguably the most stunning Italian victory of the war, as one submarine and three manned torpedoes made it into Alexandria's harbour and disabled two battleships for good. ITTL the Brits got a bit of luck as they were about to set sail when the raid was launched, somewhat in advance from OTL to disorganise them as to prevent whatever response against the passing of the convoy to Tripoli they could have mustered, and therefore on some degree of alert. It served as cushion of a kind, but its still wasn't the proudest day of the Navy...
(8) The impression I got from OTL is that Ismay had Montgomery in mind as the commander he wanted in North Africa for a rather long time, hence why he was more or less held in reserve commanding forces in Britain for such a long time. With Slim having things in hand, however, Ismay abandonned the notion ITTL. As he still saw Monty as one of the great hopes of the British Army he pushed for Burma for him when tensions with Japan were ratching up.

Author Notes: All fronts not mentionned here have kept their broad strokes from OTL.

 

[phil03]

This is not an update yet, I am affraid. The next one would on the first stage of the islands campaign in the Aegean so I still have some maps of potential targets to peruse before we get there

I simply wanted to thank all those who nominated and/or voted for the Spirit of Salamis for the Turtledoves. It is great to feel one's work is appreciated and being nominated does, in and off itself, means allot to me!

No pressure, of course, but if you haven't voted yet and do believe this TL is worthy of your vote please consider taking the time to make a little detour by the thread to give your support to the Spirit of Salamis. While you are there, you may as well check some of the other wonderful TLs who have been nominated, if you haven't already in some cases and if any attract your interest

Here is the link: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...best-early-20th-century-timeline-poll.505710/.

I'll even try to get some (probably rather clumsy since I am not the best with paint) promotional posters up. Mainly because I feel it might be fun but if it does earn me a few extra votes... Eh! I am not gonna say no

Stay tuned for those and for the next update

Cheers!

 

[phil03]

Allied Poster Aluding to the Aegean Campaign​

June 1942 to March 1943: The Aegean Theater

The Aegean campaign has often been the subject of abuse by armchair strategists. A waste of time, an even worst waste of material, a strategic nonsense, an unknown front who utterly deserve to remain so have only been a few of the epitephs launched at it. To a more astute observers, however, it quickly become apperant that these criticisms are mostly unwaranted. To be sure, the Aegean campaign's strategic benefits were limited but so were the ressources invested. It our hope to show that the benefits, as they were, justified the expanses.

Above all, it is important to remember that while we know the Allies had no intention to launch themselves in a Balkanic campaign, mostly because the Americans would not suffer it, the Germans did not. The fear of Allied landing in Greece or in the Adriatic remained ever present at OKW and immobilised a significant number of troops in the area. By adopting an offensive posture in the Agean, even if it remained limited to a handfull of islands, the Allies did much to feed this particular fire and acted as a powerfull diversion, the troops Berlin felt forced to commit as a result far outnumbering those the Allies maintained in the area. Moreover, these landings also acted as general rehearsal, of a short, for landings later in the conflict and as such saved many life when troops were thrown at the southern shores of the Channel. Ankara also proved far from indifferent to this Allied demonstration of force in her backyard and, alongside the turning of the tide in the conflict, it played a key role in the Turkish decision to progressively, until it was not so progressive a process, diminish the delivery of Chromite to Germany. Furthermore, the liberation of even small portions of Greek territory powerfully encouraged the development of the Greek Resistance, making the spine in Germany's foot it represented more painfull then it already was, and gave the government of Fighting Greece further bases to coordinate with the resistance and smuggle men and material in and out of Continental Greece.

Excerpt of The Strategic Underpinning Behind the Agean Campaign in the Journal of Second World War Studies.

Beyond the simple desire to contribute the Allied cause much pushed the government of Fighting Greece to do anything in its power to see the troops under its command engaged in offensive operations. Above all, Kannepoulos' eyes remained fixated on mainland Greece and on the aftermath of the war, following the Allied victory that appeared more and more probable, as the continous strenght of ELAS on the continent was a cause of some disquiet. To be sure, Fighting Greece and its continental allies enjoyed a clear edge over the Communist resistance but the later was far from to be neglected and the possibility of seeing the Red Army make it to Hellas before the Western Allies seemed quite real at the time. To engage the forces of Fighting Greece in an island campaign would give them valuable experience, allowing them to carry more weight in a possible clash with the communists, and give the Heraklion's government even more valuable political credit in the eyes of the Greek population. Moreover, the alliance between the Venizelists and the Monarchists remained somewhat fragile, the later being rather unsatisfied at the former's domination of the government of Fighting Greece, and victorious offensives, even on a very small scale, could do much to solidify it.

To these internal political considerations, altough not completely separate from them, it is also necessary to add the geopolitical projects of the Kannelopoulos Government. While it had abandonned many of the most extravagant ambitions Tsouderos held in that regard it nevertheless still had a rather impressive of territorial revendications, projecting to annex the Dodecanese, Northern Epirus and Cyprus. While few concerns were raised against the first of these terriorial ambitions (after all, Italy had been a member of the Axis and the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the area were Greeks) it was not so for Northern Epirus, has London and Washington's official policies was that Albania was a victim of fascist agression who was to be liberated, and Cyprus, has the Western Allies remained warry of anything that might antagonise Ankara. Should Northern Epirus and and Cyprus become Greek the collaboration of the great Allied powers would be needed and anything augmenting Fighting Greece's credit with them was to be pursued.

To act on these reflexions Fighting Greece could count on a small reconstituted Greek Army, who would eventually reach four divsions in strenght. Its personnel was to recruited among those Greek forces who had been evacuated to Crete, those who would escape it later, the Cretans, Greek communities abroad and, after Italy's surrender, the Dodecanese...

Excerpt of From Heraklion to Athens: The Government of Fighting Greece.

Southernmost of the main islands of the Cyclades Milos had been the most effective of all German airbases during the Siege of Crete and remained a stone in the Allied's feeth in the Aegean as raids aiming at harassing the old Minoan island continue to be launched from its airfield. If the Allied projected to expand their power in the Aegean beyond Crete and its other southern islands Milos and its strategic situation needed to be turned from an obstacle in their path to an asset in their hand. Thus was Operation Frederic, the first Allied landing in the Aegean, was conceived. To deal with the two regiments, worth 3 000 men, left as garrison by the Wermacht a full brigade, another regiment and the newly trained elite unit of the reconstituted Greek Army, the Sacred Regiment, were to be engaged. These seven thousands men were to be, for the most part, launched on Provatas beach while the Sacred Batallion was to be used for launching a surprised attack against Milos' port when the German garrison's attention would be concentrated on the beach. Supported by the local greek resistance, as well as by air and naval power, the taking of the island was supposed to be mostly accomplished in 24 hours.

In the event, things did not go as planned for at the end of the first day the forces having landed on Provatas remained blocked by the German defenders, the later having retrenched themselves around the airfield and the hills in the center of the island. The Sacred Regiment, for its part, had comprehensively failed to take the harbour and only the eruption of a, generally unplanned, uprising in the city of Milos, to which the stranded infantrymen where now giving support. Unpleasant consequences were kept to a minimum, however, for thanks to a naval bombardement and air superiority, if not supremacy, the Greeks managed to break the German lines and obtain the surrender of the German commander of the island late on August 4, 1942, second day of the operation, having lost a bit more then three hundred men. Pockets of resistance would continue to fight for a few days in the western and northern parts of the island before being supressed. From Operation Frederick the Allies learned much on the difficulties to truly penetrate the hinterland following a landing, of the problems caused by the lack of custom made landing crafts and, as the harbour had been sabotaged by the Germans, of the problems an invasion force would face to supply itself. On the flip side notes had also been taken regarding the benefits offered by powerfull naval bombardments and predominance in the air, to which air supremacy might add much, as well as the assistance provided by the local Resistance. These lessons would prove most precious in the following years...

Map of Milos​

Excerpt of They Are Coming! Amphibious Landings During the Second World War

Unlike Milos, Kythera had not played much of a role in the Battle of Crete and the siege of the island, for Kythera had neither airfield nor naval instalations of much importance. Nevertheless, the island was well situated to serve as an advanced Allied base to communicate with the, very active, Peloponesian resistance while also providing early warnings of any air raids against Crete coming from the continent. While Crete's proximity would ensure that around a thousand men would be maintained on the island as garrison the Allies nonetheless fully enjoyed the effect of surprising on September 2, 1942, when the force assigned to the liberation of Kythera (Operation Clarence), half the size of the one which had freed Milos less then a month before, would land on the beach of Paralia Chalkos. Having also learned from Milos and enjoying the proximilty of Malemme airfield the Allies would also manage to prevent any effective reaction by the Luftwaffe and Kythera fell in short order.

Allied troops taking posession of a village in Kythera​

Excerpt of They Are Coming! Amphibious Landings During the Second World War

Following the liberations of Milos and Kythera, followed with smaller and equally successfully landings on Ios, Thera and Anasi, the Aegean campaign ground to a halt. Inside the Allied command debate raged between those who deemed it had, for the time being at least, served its purposes and could be wounded down due to the risk or the ressources involved and those willing to take the risk in Andros or, altough the advocates of such an option were less numerous, invest the ressources needed to make an attempt against the Dodecanese. As is often the case events would settle the debate instead of its participants for Italy's surrender in March 1943 would significantly alter the situation in the area...

Excerpt of The Forgotten Theater: The Aegean Theater During World War II

 

[phil03]

A GI receiving information from a Sicilian farmer during Operation Sunshine, such events showing the unpopularity of Mussolini's regime​

February-March 1943: Italy is Out!

The genesis of Operation Sunshine can be traced to the wanning moments of the North African Campaign, as a cursory glance at a map was probably more then enough for the Allied strategists to determine what would be the next logical next step.

Indeed, all seemed to push for a Sicilian campaign. Whether they where the victors of the Italians and the Afrikakorps, men who had been loyal to Vichy mere months before (altough in practice much of the Armée d'Afrique would need to be reequiped before being engaged in offensive operation) or those who had been supposed to participate in Operation Torch before French North Africa rallied the Allied cause, said cause had hundred of thousands of men in the southern shores of the Medditerannean, with powerfull fleets and air fleets ready to support them. As mighty America refused to even consider a Balkans campaign there was only one logical destination for these forces, in the short term at least.

Moreover, an attack of Sicily also presented obvious advantages. With Mussolini's regime, even if it did its utmost to hide it, shaken by the loss of its African colonies the Reich could not afford to not divert some of its troops to Sicily, even when the fighting in the Caucasus was raging. Even better, an Allied victory stood a good chance of not leading to Mussolini's downfall but to Italy's switch of alliances, forging Germany to not only face Italy as an ennemy, with all that it entailed in geopolitical consequences, but also to shoulder the burden Italy carried in the Balkans and replace its occupation troops there. Thus, on February 4, 1943, a mighty Allied fleet appeared near the shores of the Island, Operation Sunshine was about to begin.

Excerpt of The Medditeranean Strategy: Allied Strategic Thinking Between 1940 and 1944

Landing around the southeastern point of the island, the Americans near Gela and the British near Syracuse, the Allies proceeded to make their way further inland. At first, all seemingly went according to the plan. The Allied troops enjoyed the cover of the canons of the Royal and US Navies as well as of many fighter planes and most of the flower of the Italian army had been lost in Africa, the survivors' morale often being rather low as belief in Mussoloni's fascist regime was waning among their ranks. Then, things took a more indecisive turn.

As they approached the town of San Michelle the forces of the Seventh US Army were confronted to a powerfull counterattack by the Herman Goering and 15th Panzergrenadier Division, both part of the elite of the German forces and having been sent to the island from the Eastern Front to prevent the fall of the former (1). Inexperienced, far from the guns of their ships and having seen their air superiority dwindle as Luftwaffe's squadrons had headed to Southern Italy the American forces were soon forced to retreat. To the great displeasure of their commander, George S. Patton, they were only able to resume their advance when a British onslaught from the East forced the German's attentions to turn elsewhere, setting the stage for the eventual success of Operation Sunshine. Before its end, however, Patton did manage to get a revenge, of a short, on the commander of the British Eight Army. Slim had hope to be able that the doom of the Axis forces on the island would be marked by his taking of Messina but before he was able to make his to the strategic city the fate of most his ennemies, pushed back toward Western Sicily, had already been cealed by Patton's own push toward Palermo. Thus began the famous rivalry between the two generals...

Excerpt of The Fall of the False Rome: The Last Years of Fascist Italy

For 21 years Mussolini and his Fascist Party had dominated Italy utterly and completely. After more then two decades of arrest, surveillance, repression and brutality few indeed would have predicted that the dictatorship would fall in a few days, without nary a shot being fired. And yet, it was exactly such a scenario that came to pass. Lead by Grandi, most of the Fascist Grand Council voted to depose their ersthwhile leader, convinced that Grandi himself was to be designated by the king to replace him and that the Fascist Regime was to continue. They were soon to be disabused of this notion, however, for Victor Emmanuel III, the very monarch whom they had long used as an legal excuse for their regime, used the army to topple them instead and chose Marshall Badoglio as Mussolini's successor. Now hopelessly divided, the Fascist Party proved incapable of a coherent response.

Had it not been for the War and had Badoglio and his king proved to be rather competent the worst might have been over for Italy. The War was there, however, and they weren't. Thus the worse was yet to come for the Peninsula, as the eyes of the world turned toward it...

Excerpt of From the Axis to the Alliance: Italy During the Last Years of the Second World War

Supremely confident in their own self ascribed cleverness Badoglio and Victor Emmanuel III were convinced that they would be able to hide their intentions to the Germans and only reveal the armistice with the Allies when all would be ready. Unfortunately, the reality was far less pleasant, for mere days after Mussolini's arrest plans had already been drafted for the liberation of the former Duce, the capture of the Badoglio Government and of the whole of the House of Savoy, as well as the occupation of Italy and the disarming of its army, navy and aviation. Soon, everything was ready for the trap to spring on the unsuspecting monarch and marshall, who really should have been more suspecting.

Fortunately, wiser heads were present among the different Allied Headquarters and, as soon as approached by the new Italian regime, they had begun to draft plans of their own...

Excerpt of Spring of 1943: An Italian Tragedy

While the Allies' decision to turn their forces against Sicily had caused much disapointment in Heraklion, for rumours of a landing in the Peloponese had circulated in the Cretan following the liberation of Tripoli, the news of Mussolini's fall were the occasion of much rejoicing at the implication for Greece and the Aegean, as well as the wider war, could not be missed. Most of the country, including most of its island were in the hands of Italian garrisons and while most in Heraklion had now come to accept that a landing in mainland Greece was, for the time being at least, not in the realm of possibilities the latest turn of events was giving the Greek resistance a golden occasion to enlarge its fledging zone of controls as well as gain more weapons and perhaps even some well trained new recruits. Through the agents of Fighting Greece and of the SOE present on the mainland Heraklion intended to help the Greek Resistance do just that.

More conventional armed forces were also to take advantage of the, surely soon to come, chaos by making attempts against the Dodecanese and Andros. Mere weeks before those very ideas would have been opposed by all but the most ambitious of officiers and politicians but what might have been reckless under the form of amphibious invasions suddenly appeared far more reasonable when all that was needed was for the Allies to either beat the Germans to it, so to speak, or come in time to help the Italians to push the Wermacht back to the sea.

Thus were conceived operations Calico, Indigo and Magenta...

Excerpt of The Forgotten theater: The Aegean Theater During World War II

Greek and British Officers working on operations Caligo, Indigo and Magenta
​

Author Note: I am a bit ambivalent with this chapter, as most of it follow the OTL course of Mussolini's fall, only months ahead of schedule, but I felt it needed to be written as, one hand, I didn't have the material (in term of divergences from OTL) coming from other fronts to write a second wider war update yet on one hand. However, on the other hand I also felt I needed to set the stage for what was to come latter in Greece and in the Aegean as Italy being out is obviously a pretty big change...

Therefore we are now ready to catch up with the internal resistance and describe how the events further west changed things for them, as well as see how the attempts of Fighting Greece and the other Allied forces in the Aegean to take advantage of the fall of Mussolini's regime and its aftermath will fare.

(1) The two divisions who were sent to Sicily in OTL. I didn't see a reason for it to change from OTL.

 

[phil03]

Iaonnis Rallis, last and most infamous of all heads of the Hellenic State​

June 1942- March 1943: From the End of the Siege to the Surrender of Italy in Occupied Greece

By the summer of 1942 the Axis occupiers of Greece, the Germans first and most powerfull among them, had grown tired of the very puppet they had established in Athens. Not only had Tsokaglou's government failed to fulfill its promises in terms of bringing support from monarchists, as well as the broader conservative nebula of the Greek political scene, and army officers but it had shown a, from a German perspective, rather annoying degree of autonomous tought, as it had repeatedly protested against the annexation of Greek Macedonia to Bulgaria and the creation of the Principalty of Pindus and, worst, once again from a German point of view, had shown a tendency to try to negociate to lower the requisitions of agricultural and industrial product and equipment. Thus, in early June 1942 the Axis forces in Greece came to the conclusion that in the wake of the failed siege of Crete a firmer and more reliable hand needed to be put on the tilt of the Helenic State. As a result, Tsokaglou was forced to resign and was replaced by Ioannis Ralis.

In many regards Rallis' past had made him an unlikely candidate to be remembered in Greek History as the hated head of a brutal collaborationist government. Having occupied a seat in parliament from 1905 to 1936 he also held several important ministerial portfolios, therefore becoming a rather run of the mill proeminent member of the People's Party and of the Monarchist cause as a whole. In the one instance where he did significantly differ from the monarchist line it was in an appearent demonstration of moderation and of democratic scrupules as he proved to be one of the monarchists to denouce Metaxas coup. Few would have therefore expected him to offer his service to the collaborationist government put in place by Germany and fewer still would have imagined that he would become the leader of the hardliners inside it but, whether motivated by anti-communism, hatred for the Venizelists or, as it was more likely, both, he did both. In Athens Rallis gathered around him a small but fanatical clique of Metaxists hardliners who earnestlessly sympathised with Germany and had turned against the monarchy for they deemed that Georges II had betrayed them by surrendering to the Venizelists.

At first the Germans had resolved to give Rallis and his ilk multiple seats at the table but to keep them away from power, for they were convinced that to give them access to it would fatally turn away the Greek population from the occupiers and banish the possibility of a government able to at least gain the tolerant indifferance and docility of the population. With the growth of the Greek resistance and the survival of Fighting Greece the Germans decided that such a thing was now impossibly at any rate. Thus they choose terror and, in July 1942, forced out Tsokaglou and replaced him with Rallis. The first act of the leader of the Hellenic State was to found his infamous Security Battalions, who would often show themselves as brutal against their countrymen in the resistance then their German masters...

Excerpt of The Three Headed Tyranny: The Axis Occupation of Greece

From the few villages having been liberated by June 1942 the Mountain Governments, has they would become known colloquialy, had grown to occupy a sizable portion of Greece's harder of access zones by Italy's surrender. The EKKA always remained, and clearly so, the most powerfull of all movements but the EAM had also proceeded to carve significant zones of influence for itself and even smaller groups such as EDES and Omiros would create maquis that were not to be neglected. Parachuted and infiltrated from the coasts agents of the SOE, of Fighting Greece and even some of the Komintern and OSS served as the glue that kept these maquis toguether and concentrated in the fight against the occupiers instead of, all too often, each other. To be sure, such developments were the occasion of rejoicings in Heraklion and London but they nonetheless caused some worries as well.

Always warry of troubles following the end of Greece's occupation, the eventual victory of the United Nations revealing itself to be increasingly inevitable during this period, Kannelopoulos' government could not fail but to ask themselves what effects on the country's future might these growing and defacto self governing enclaves might have. While such ponders were usually mostly directed at the zones controlled by the EAM even more trusted group such as the EKKA and Omiris were deemed to be in dire need of Heraklion's guidance... The Commitee of the Mountains (1) was founded as a result. Under the, quite real, objective of ensuring coordination and unity among all the Greek forces working for the liberation of the country the Commitee was also seeking to eventually make resistance on the continent a wing of Fighting Greece's military and political aparatus, under Heraklion's orders and supervision. The EKKA and Omiris proved, naturally enough, willing to integrate the Commitee, as did EDAS after a few moments of hesitations. As one could have expected the EAM proved more sceptical but, pushed by the unwilingness of their own moderates to seem like the only ones unwilling to embrace unity against the occupier and by Moscow's silence, some of the EAM's maquis and commanders began to accept the Commitee's authority, beginning a process that would seriously undermine the communists' capacities to make a truly threatening bid for power at the liberation...

The Coat of Arm of the Commitee of the Mountain. Ironically, the Pheonix was used as a symbol by the colaborationist government as well​

Excerpt of The Three Headed Tyranny: The Axis Occupation of Greece

By the strenght of circumstances acts of resistance in the cities proved far less spectacular then their rural counterparts. After all, cities are, by their very nature, easy to access for conventional forces and often serve as their center of garrisons. As such, Resistance fighters in cities therefore did not benefit from the main advantage enjoyed by those of countryside: a refuge hard of access in which they may retreat and hide after having carried out an operation. Nonetheless, in Greece like in elsewhere in occupied Europe, urban resistance grew bolder and more efficient through the years, as Occupation took an ever bloodier turn, the Allies won ever more impressive victories and ever more equipment and funds were smuggled in, urban resistance grew bolder.

Assassinations, sabotages, exfiltration to either the islands or the maquis and even some bombings were the lot of Athens, Salonica and other major greeks cities in the period between the turning point of the war and the liberation of the country. A great prize was paid by the urban resistance for its accomplishments, for far too many of its members found dead on the streets or, unlikiest of all, as prisonners of the Germans. And yet, thanks to the action of the urban resistance the Wermacht had to spend more of its already thin ressources guarding Greece's cities while the maquis and Fighting Greece received precious reinforcements and the industrial output Germany managed to stole from Greece was diminished. The urban resistance of Greece had played its role in the Alliance's victory...

Excerpt of City Fighters: Resistance in Urban Environment During the Second World War

With both Venizelists and Monarchists leaders having either left the Continent for Crete and Fighting Greece or made it to the maquis and the Hellenic State holding no true allegiances save from a handfull of extremists supporters the Orthodox Church found itself in a role it had never truly played before in modern Greece: the only institution that was both able to act on the daily life of most Greeks and seen by most of them as holding moral authority. From the first moments of the Occupation it appeared that while this institution would not defy the occupiers openly, at least as an institution for individual acts of defiance were applenty, but that it would defy it all the same.

The tone was set rather quickly for the highest prelate of Greece, the Archbishop of Athens Chrystanthus, bluntly refused to administer the oath of office to Tsokaglou or any other official of the Hellenic State. Chrysanthus' successor, Damaskinos (whose early election had been forcibly cancelled by Metaxas) did not refuse to administer the oath but nonetheless made his feelings, and as a result those of the Church, clear by repeatedly protesting against the faith of both those hostages taken and massacred in retalion for the action of the Greek Resistance and of Greece's jewish community (2). Under his orders lawyers at the Church's employ would argue in front of German's martial courts for those imprisoned by them, using the occupiers' reluctance to clash with the influential Orthodox Church to avoid sharing the fate of their clients. Damaskinos himself, and as a result several of his prelates, often visited the condemned personally. As a result of such actions many priests in less proeminent, and therefore exposed, positions would found their way to the mountain and joined the maquis, several bishops among them...

Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens​

Excerpt of Saints and Disgrace : Christianity in Occupied Europe

In March 1943, in houses and fields all accross Greece the many Greeks of all classes, ages and occupations who had taken the habit of listening to Radio Heraklion heard a voice stating that ''the inhabitants of Brazil need to go back home, for their will be thundershower over Sao Paolo''. Only a few knew what such words mean: Italy's surrender was soon to be announced. The very fact that the Greek Resistance was warned is a testimony of the esteem in which she was held by the leaders of the Allied Cause...

Excerpt of Rome's Renewed Honour: The Tale of Italy's Defection from the Axis toward the Alliance.

(1) In OTL the ''Mountain Government'' was an organ created by the maquis themselves and, dominated by the EAM, a competitor of the government in exile until the British succeeded in forcing both of them in a government of national unity.
(2) Damaskinos' actions, as well as those of the resistance as a whole, to protect the Greek Jewish community will be covered in a chapter about the Shoah in Greece in ITTL which I plan to write more or less when we will get to the liberation of the country.

 

[phil03]

Posters of the Gun from Navaronne, a movie detailing the adventures of an Allied commando send to destroy a powerfull German battery threatening the incoming Allied landing on Leros. The winners of several Academy Awards, it proved to be the introduction of many among the later generations to the Aegean Campaign​

March-April 1943: Indigo and Magenta

Operations Indigo and Magenta have often been severely criticised by armchair strategists, and even some professional, as improvised messes that one would have expected from amateurs rather then the professional worthy of holding commands in a modern war, their eventual success being owned far less to their conceptual merits then to the weaknesses of the other side. Such a judgement is, as it happen, utterly unfair for it was uttered by men and women having all the time and tranquility in the mind to elaborate what they believe should have been the Allied strategy at Naxos and in the Dodecanese, luxuries that the officers at the time did not have.

Indeed, Indigo and Magenta owed their very existence to the window that was created by the successfull completion of Operation Sunshine and Mussolini's fall, allowing the Allies to hope to recuperate Naxos and the Dodecanese rather then invade them. Without the confusion coming from these events these landings could not be attempted with the ressources at the disposal of the Allies in the Aegean, or not without undue risks at any rate. The preparation of the two attacks should therefore be understood less as the usual process in such maters and more as a race against the clock to not let the occasion pass. In such circumstances Indigo and Magenta appear, if not a work of genius then at least the product of competent minds and the well-oiled machine that the Allied headquarter in Heraklion had become. It was good that it was so for the scale of what was prepared and the challenges at hand would severely tax the armed forces of Fighting Greece and its Allies...

Excerpt of The Strategic Issues Underpining the Aegean Campaign of the Journal of Second World War studies.

From its first moments the attack on Naxos faced significant challenges. The beach of Paralia, only site truly favourable to a landing of a significant proportion on the island, was not large enough to land more at once then the seven thousand Greek soldiers who had been throwed on Milos' beaches despite the fact that the Axis forces on the island were far more consequential then at Milos: the equivalent of two brigades of Fascists Blackshirts, still loyal to Mussolini, and now also to his German masters, and unlikely to give to the Allies the defections many had hoped for when the identity of the Italian units in the island was still unknown. Moreover, Naxos' geography favoured the defenders, for its mountainous reliefs ensured that the Blackshirts could dispose of solid positions from whom they needed to be dislodged for the Allies to make their way further inland. To make sure that such a landing could be accomplished without incidents and that the first wave could be quickly reinforced powerfull naval and air forces would have needed to be at hand and, while significant, what was indeed present in those regards at Naxos was not sufficient. Thus, for close to an hour the faith of Operation Indigo seemed to hang in the balance before salvation came, from what had at first been considered a mere diversion.

Two hours before the main landing on Paralia the Sacred Regiment had been landed further south, on Pyrgaki beach, to prepare the ground. The elite unit had been instructed to make their way as far inland with as little fuss as possible and then wreak havoc on the rear of the Blackshirts while also linking with any Italian soldiers loyal to Badoglio and the king or Greek resistance's fighters they might found. In an episode that would become part of the Sacred Regiment's legend it managed to accomplish its mission and then some, making their way through what defense existed on Pyrgaki without being detected, before the sun was up. Having managed such a feat the Sacred Regiment managed to not only learn of the dificulties of the forces on Paralia but also to localise and absorb, for the duration of the battle, the equivalent of another batalion of Italian stragglers and Greek resistants. With these reinforcements they made their way east, to Paralia, striking at the Blackshirts from the rear and turning what had seemed an inauspicious start in a breakthrough.

In the following days, supported by naval and air bombardments, the Greeks would manage to liberate the whole island, the last of the Blackshirts holding on Mount Zeus before the lack of munition would force their surrender. In spite of its less glorious moments Operation Indigo was a success and, mere hours after the last of the Fascists had been disarmed, some of its troops found themselves embarking once more, sailing eastward to take part in Operation Magenta.

Badge of the Sacred Regiment​

Excerpt of Epaminondas' Heirs: The History of the Sacred Regiment

In contrast with Indigo, Operation Magenta began rather well for the Allies for, in comparaison with those had landed on Naxos, they enjoyed one crucial advantage: the support of most Italian troops in the area. Indeed, unlike on Naxos most of the close to 50 000 italian infantrymen in the Dodecanese had welcomed Italy's changing of side or surrender, depending on how charitable one might feel, and deemed it as a necessary step for for national salvation. Any doubts or lingering loyalty to Mussolini and the German alliance that might have remained would have been obliterated by the news of the swift, and often violent, disarmement of Italian forces all over Southern Europe and the occupation of much of Italy. Lead by admiral Campioni at sea and general Marschepa on land the garrison of the Dodecanese adamantly refused the call of the Wermacht to join it and let it know that they would be opposed should they seek to land in the Dodecanese. Kasos and Karpathos fell in Allied hands with little fuss as a result of Marshepa's and Campioni's attitude and while Rhodes itself caused more trouble, for some of the men of the Regio Erscito on the island had elected to stand with the fallen Duce as they could not accept to see the Dodecanese become Greek, but it followed quickly enough.

Unfortunately, the last stages of Operation Magenta proved far more bloody. Taking advantage of their air cover provided by their occupation of the islands of the Northern Aegean the Germans had managed to land 5,000 men on the northern parts of the Dodecanese archipelago, and disarmed its italian garrisons, before the Allies could reach them. When these facts made their way to Heraklion they provoked a vigorous debate, for the prospect of an almost bloodless conquest had disapeared. Some were in favour of continuing, to attack fast and hard to prevent the Germans from fortifying themselves, to land as soon as the first Allied plane had established themselves in Rhodes, while others believed that more time was needed to prepare and a last group was in favour of stoping Operation Magenta altoguether. This third group was powerfully helped by the landing on Astypalae, as what had been planned as a minor framing operation had turned into a ferocious fourty eight hour battle who costed to the Greek army almost three hundred men she could ill afford to loose. Nonetheless, it was the optimistic who prevailed and plans to land on Kos and Leros, the two centers of the Axis presence in the area, where hastily updated.

It is beyond our purpose to speak in details of the operation on Kos and Leros. Suffice it to say that the fighting in Kos lasted for five days, as ferocious counterattack of the 1,500 strong german garrison first launched a series of ferocious counterattacks against the 5,000 strong Allied forces having landed before forcing it to conquer Kos one village or hill at the time with the casualties coming it. In Leros, in large part due to its mountainous relief, matters proved even worst, for even a weeks of combat had not allowed the 7,000 greeks landed on the island to truly make headway against the mountainous strongholds of the 2,000 men of the German garrison. Only the intervention of an Allied naval squadron, operating at night due to the presence of the Luftwaffe on Samos, and its canons would allow the situation to be resolved. Fighting Greece lost close to fifteen hundred men in its quest to complete the liberation of the Dodecanese, a price most military historians agree these islands were not worth the and that Heraklion could ill afford to pay it. In fact, were it not for the superior german looses, which the Wermacht could even less easily absorb then the Allied forces in the Aegean, one could have easily called the tail end of Operation Magenta a Phyric victory.

The Dodecanese Archipelago​

Excerpt of The Strategic Underpining of the Aegean Campaign in the Journal of Second World War Studies.

By all accounts the events of March and April 1943 would profoundly transform the status of Fighting Greece in the eyes and, to a lesser degree, of the population of continental Greece. Before the Fall of Mussolini Fighting Greece was the Kingdom of Crete, a symbol of tenacity, the true government of Greece but also an entity whose writ did not run far beyond the island, for all of the first successes of the Aegean campaign and of the Greek resistance. As May 1943 was dawning, however, the Kingdom of Crete was dead, to be replaced by the Kingdom of the Islands and of the Mountains, the authority of which ran over much of the southern Aegean and over the growing numbers of maquis of the Greek Resistance....

Excerpt of From Athens and Back: An History of Fighting Greece

 

[phil03]

General Geloso, commander of the Italian 11th Army in Greece​

March 1943: Operation Callico and Balkanic Aftershock

Perhaps even more then the landings on Naxos and in the Dodecanese Archipelago Operation Callico aimed at taking advantag of the window of opportunity created by Italy's surrender. While opinions in Heraklion regarding the ods of the Italian garrisons of Greece to manage to make it back to their homeland to defend it (or liberate it), with those more sceptical of the Badoglio Government's plans to be eventually vindicated by events, all recognised that some would unavoidably remain trapped behind and that soon most of the Italian occupation zone would fall under German (and Bulgarian) control.

Thus, Operation Calico was conceived as bid to salvage as much of possible of the Italian occupation zone for the Commitee of the Mountain, and ensure that as large a portion of the weapons of the Italian garrisons, and of the garrisons themselves, would be able their way to the Greek resistance. Guides were to be provided, lines of communication oppened, and assistance in making their way to safety provided. As the forces of generals Slim and Clark (1) landed on the Italian Pensinsula and the Armistice of Gela was announced the mad scramble began, at first in Greece but soon to spread accross the Balkans...

Excerpt of The Bloody Days: The Surrender of Italy and its Immediate Aftermath

In Greece most of the Italian forces were under the perview of the 11th Army, eight divisions strong and under the command of General Carlo Geloso. This last point proved critical for Geloso had spend much of the last few months feuding with his direct superior, Axis Army Group E commander Alexander Lohr, who deemed him too weak in the face of the Greek resistance. Thanks to the relationship between the two men Geloso (2) had elected to transfer his headquarter to the relative security of Thebes and was naturally weary of Lohr, to the point where the attempt of the later to convince the Italians to lay down their weapons only caused the commander of the 11th Army to issue a general order to all his subordinates, according to which any attacks on Italian forces or attempts to relieve them from their positions without authorisation from his headquarter were to be considered acts of war.

Sadly, the isolation of the Italian forces as well as the superior efficiency of the German forces would ensure the outcome of the, now inevitable, fight but the Italians would not go gently. All over continental Greece the Regio Erscito would be pushed out of the cities and the plains but the equivalent of four German divisions were essentially rendered incampable of offensive operations for long months. The 11th Brennero Division in Central Greece was destroyed its entirety but, in Epirus, and in the Peloponese the XXVI and VIII Corps would see many of their men manages to escape toward the maquis, helped by the members of the Greek Resistance send to guide them as part of Operation Calico and, in Thessaly, whole regiments would sometimes make their way to safety with rather impressive quantity of military equipments. In many regard Operation Calico and the Armistice of Gela would be remembered as a turning point in the history of the Occupation of Greece, the moment when even the most superficial of control over the country seemingly began to slowly slip from the grasp of the Axis forces.

Nonetheless, it is to Cephalonia that we must now turn to see the most famous events of these days...

Excerpt of The Three Headed Tyranny: The Axis Occupation of Greece

Most of the Axis garrison of Cephalonia was mainly composed of the 11,500 men of the Acqui Division, with only 2,000 Germans soldiers on the island. Upon hearing of the directives from Beotia the Aqcui's commander, General Antonio Gandin, adopted at first a rather timid attitude, holding his positions but taking no offensive action. Pressure from the rank and files and lower officers, as well as news, relayed by the local resistance, according to which 2,000 more Germans were on their way, would force his hand. By all accounts the fighting was fierce, costing the Acqui division several hundred men, but Italian numerical superiority and assistance from the inhabitants carried the day. Eventually relayed by Greek forces the Acqui would return to Italy to assist in its liberation and came to hold a special place in Italian memories of the war, for having managed to hold against the German onslaught and, by their actions, essentially liberated Cephalonia and Corfu (where similar events took place with smaller units of the Acqui and of the German Army).

Excerpt of Tale of an Italian Division: The Acqui and the Second World War

Memorial to the Acqui Division in Celaphonia​

While news of fighting further south would cause more Italian forces to resist their former allies then otherwise would have been the case most circumstances would unfortunately act against them. Mostly stationned around the Dalmatian coast, the 2nd Italian Army would spend its last days desperately looking toward the sea, waiting for an evacuation that would never come to pass, as the Allies refused to execute what would have been a risky operation far from their bases to save Italian troops. As it was outnumbered and had to fight both German and Ustachi forces the Italian forces in the northwestern corner of the Balkans did not manage to resist for more then two weeks.

Further south the Italian forces fared better, however. The 18th Messina Italian Infantry Division would disintegrate a mere few days after the Armistice of Gela but good portions of the 23rd Ferrara and 32nd Marche would manage to make their ways to the partisans of Tito and Mihailovic and join their ranks just as the 155th Emilia would defend the port of Kotor for eleven days, playing a key role in allowing the 19th Venezia and the 1st Alpine Taurinense to rejoin Tito in their entirety as the Garibaldi Partisan Division while the 51st Sienna (3) would do the same but rejoin the Tchenicks partisans of Mihailovic instead. Just like in Greece, the Armistice of Gela would play a key role in the rise in strenght of the Yugoslavians partisans.

Excerpt of Once there was a Country: An History of Yugoslavia

Albania was, in many regards, the greatest failure of Operation Geiseric. An attempt to surround and force the surrender of Army Group E headquarter degenerated into a firefight (4), with several Italian escaping and managing to warn the headquarter of the 9th Italian Army, who commanded the Italian occupation force in Albania, allowing Italian to be as ready as they could be in the circumstances. Out of the six divisions of the 9th Army four would either manage to make their way back to Italy or to the base of the Albanian Resistance in their entirety, alongside a good portion of the other two. The men who could not escape would notheless resist fiercely in Kruje and Tirana, only surrendering after inflicting over a thousand casualties to their german opponents. Enraged by their looses and their inhability to obtain the easy surrenders they sought some of the German occupiers of Albania would commit the greatest atrocity to take place as part of Operation Geiseric; in the hills surrounding Tirana more then 3,000 italian prisonners would be executed in cold blood, a glimpse of the many horrors that were to await North Italy as the inhabitants of these regions were seeing their former allies occupy them.

The failure of Geiseric in Albany would also have momentous consequences on the balance of power inside the Albanian Resistance. To be sure, the Communist partisans of Enver Hoxa would be significantly reinforced but most Italians would instead elect to reinforce the ranks of the Legaliteli, on paper supporters of a return of Zog I of Albania but in practice a coalition of the liberal resistance, allowing it to emerge from the shadows of the communists and the ultra nationalists of the Balli Kombetar (5). Needless to say, these events would carry much weight when the end of the war would herald the (official as many historians have noted numerous clashes between all three side before the liberation) beginning of the Albanian Civil War...

Excerpt of Hell is the Mountains: Albania 1939-1949

(1) I don't see why the Slap will not happen ITTL so Clark get the nod.
(2) In OTL Geloso was sacked and replaced by a commander friendlier to Lohr, who at first believed the German general when he was pretending that the Wermacht intended to transport the forces of the 11th Italian Army back to their home peninsula. Here the earlier surrender and the slightly worst relationships between Germany and Italy following Crete and events elsewhere in the Medditerannean Sea tip the balance and allow Geloso to stay put until the Italian surrender, with important consequences for the Italian forces in Greece. Mind you, Geloso should not be seen as anti-fascist, or even a moderate, in any shape or form as in OTL he once offered his services to the Salo Republic to get out of a German POWs camp but ITTL the circumstances have lead him to the right decision, even if it was for the wrong reasons.
(3) In OTL the Sienna garrisonned Crete.
(4) In OTL the quick capture of the headquarter worked out but ITTL the officers there are more vigilent due to having heard of Geloso's attitude in Greece, and have ensured that a bigger security force was there to guard the perimeter.
(5) The Balli Kombetar was an ultra nationalist guerilla force and political group who opposed the Italians but would later, and sometimes at the same time, support the Germans. By what little knowledge I posess on the subject the political situation in Albania during the last years of WWII seem to have been extraordinarely volatile.

 

[phil03]

Not sure if anyone would still be interested but I was reading another timeline that was left unfinished and I thought ''I fully understand and I am grateful to the author for what we got but still... A roundup would have been nice. Therefore, I decided to do one for my very own timeline, to provide closure if anyone would like to get it. Not that what is below is all the info I am willing to provide either: as long as anyone might have questions on the world ITTL I will be willing to answer them. The bar remains open until the last customers are ready to go home, so to speak.

Thank you to all who read, liked, and commented. This is what make writing timelines worth it at the end of the day. Right, without further ado...

End Game in Greece and the Aegean

-Operation Uppercut, the ITTL version of the raid on Ploeisti, still faced significant obstacles, as the airfields in Crete weren't ideal for a strike force of this size and Ploeisti remained a well-defended installation deep in enemy territory, losing 36% of its battle order and failing to significantly reduce production on the oilfield in the mid to long run. Nevertheless, the raid managed to cut the production by almost half for no less than two months and the casualty rates, while still high, were nonetheless significantly lower than in OTL. ITTL historians still debate whether Operation Uppercut was a success or not.
-In the Aegean the Greeks' pocket island hoping campaign continued, with Samos, Ikaria, the rest of the Southern Cyclades, Chios and Lesbos being liberated until Germany evacuated Greece in early fall 1944 due to the progress of the Red Army creating a domino effect in the Balkans, like in OTL.
-The Government of Fighting Greece returned home to the same iconic scenes of popular joy that were seen across Europe in 1944 (well, except some of the places ''liberated'' by the Soviets'') as the Allied tide carried all in its path.
-While the Holocaust still made many victims in Greece ITTL 35,000 of Greece's Jews would survive, as opposed to only ten thousand in OTL, thanks to a collaborationist government with less means at its disposal, a war in Europe finishing a bit earlier then OTL, an even stronger resistance overall with better means of coordination with the true government and the ability of the later to create escape roads through naval means and a Turkey that proved open to it later in the war, when it had become clear that the Allies would win and that the Greeks would be able to quickly transfer the evacuees to the territory they held.

Still greatly traumatized by the experience, many would end up choosing to move to Israel in later years. Among them were the parents of Ezra Tzon, who still holds the record for the most caps with the Israeli Men's Football Team ITTL, and is fondly remembered by Juventus' fans, and Isiah Weidensfeld, a physician and later aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who would save the Prime Minister's life after he was wounded in an assassination and thus allowing him to carry his peace policy to a successful conclusion.
-Despite Stalin's strong advice to the contrary, the EAM surmised that their position would only deteriorate with time, and with resistance groups being disarmed, and opted for an uprising. After a few rocky days, it was put down with relative ease. Instability will persist in some corners of Greece until the end of 1946 but broadly speaking the government in Athens had a good grip on the reins of power.
-While the above was going on Athens decided to send forces to Northern Epirus, ostensibly because of the instability in Albania and to protect ethnic Greeks in the area but in reality to set the stage for a good old annexation. Athens had surmised that London and Washington wouldn't welcome the move but would grudgingly accept the accomplished fact. They proved right on both grounds. Wider geopolitical events would delay things a bit but a referendum in 1954 would ratify the situation on the ground and pave the way for Northern Epirus' Enosis.
-A referendum in late 1945 would set the stage for a new Greek Republic. In his last public act Georges II, alongside his brother Prince Paul, would absolve his former subjects from their oaths to his house and exhorted them to be faithful to the new regime, ending on a more honorable note a career tainted by his collaboration with Metaxas.
-Just like in OTL the peace treaty with Italy would formalize the Dodecanese's Enosis.
-The true last note of Greece's WWII history would be played many nautical miles away, however. The Cypriot Turkish community had become increasingly alarmed in the immediate aftermath of the War, as it had seen the British allow the exiles of the 1931 revolt back on the island and close their eyes to the earlier then-OTL foundation of the EOKA, a guerilla group dedicated to the Enosis of Cyprus, alongside a core of veterans of the Greek army having been recruited on the OTL. Correctly surmising that Britain had given its agreement to an eventual Enosis, or at least to some kind of referendum or constituent assembly that was bound to bring it due to the island's demographics and believing that time worked against them they setted the stage for a confrontation. Unfortunately for them, the moment they chose to take up arms proved also to be the moment the Soviets chose to escalate the Straits Crisis, leaving Turkey unable to take the risks of too direct an intervention in what remained a British possession.

In those conditions, the few crates of weapons Ankara managed to provide could not change the final outcome, and the TMT, the Cypriot Turkish organization hastily founded, proved unable to withstand both the British garrison and the EOKA for very long. In 1948 the island would vote for Enosis by a strong majority and sovereignty over Cypris was transferred to Athens in 1950. Thanks to American mediation the Turkish minority was provided significant guarantees, including a degree of local governance and reserved seats in the Greek parliament. This arrangement has managed to ensure peace on the island until the current day ITTL.

The Rest of WWII

-In Europe, things progress under broadly OTL lines (except in one regard...), with a somewhat stronger position than OTL for the WAllies compared to the Soviets and a somewhat worsened German position overall.
-The war in Europe would end in late March, and the need to stop and deal with supply issues proved the main roadblock for the Allies in the later stage of the conflict like in OTL.
-The key difference is that the memories of Crete would ensure that no Market Garden equivalent would come into being ITTL and the Allies would prioritize the clearing of the Schedt instead, which went far more smoothly than OTL, thanks to the Germans not having nearly as long to prepare for the assault, thus somewhat speeding up the WAllies' advance eastwards.
-Thanks to this situation, and with the 1st Airborne Division being available for Churchill for a politically expedient drop in the waning moment of the conflict due to not having been sent to Arnhem, the WAllies managed to beat the Soviets to Vienna and Prague ITTL. This would set the stage for Austria to join the Western Bloc and leave Czecoslovakia's status in a bit of a blur...
-In the Pacific itself the island hoping the campaign will proceed mostly as OTL.
-In Asia, however, butterflies are afoot. Thanks to Monty's crisis management the Allies were able to limit the damages in Burma in 1942, keeping Rangoon alongside much of the country and setting the stage for an Allied counteroffensive which proved to be as successful as in OTL and a bit ahead of schedule, although not enough to allow it to land in Malaya before the Atomic Bombs where dropped.
-That is not to say that the Allies' performance in Burma had no effect elsewhere, however, for it had managed to keep the Burma Road open, therefore preserving the flux of weapons and advisors going to China that was cut in OTL.
-Combined with lesser Chinese losses in Burma, the survival of the Burma Road would allow the Nationalists to capitalize on their victory at Changsa and continue to rebuild their forces, winning the Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign and generally giving more trouble to the Japanese forces then in OTL. The ITTL version of Operation Ichi-Go, which was to also take place throughout most of 1944 like its OTL counterpart, would result in a hard-fought Japanese victory, and not in the disaster for the Chinese Nationalists of OTL.

The Cold War and Beyond

-Without having to deal with a civil war of its own Greece can give more attention to the political situation of its neighbors, and so does the Western Bloc as a whole for that matter. The result, alongside the butterflies of a less successful version of Operation Alaric (Operation Geiseric ITTL), was an Albanian Civil War between Communists and Anti-Communists, with the West also trying to modify the balance of the Anti-Communists forces at the expense of the once-collaborationist Balli Kombetar and toward the far more palpable Legilateli. The conflict proceeded to degenerate into a four-way fight following the Staline-Tito Split and the faling out of the Ballists and Legaliteli (not that the former prevented Tito from collaborating with the West against Staline in other ways like in OTL because that's the Cold War for you). The Legaliteli emerged victorious in early 1949, anchoring Albania to the West.
-Unsatisfied with the country's fuzzy status between East and West and seemingly heading toward Finlandization, the Soviets prevailed on the Czechoslovak Communists to launch the ITTL equivalent of the Prague Coup, which failed and pushed Prague westward instead after a tense diplomatic-military standoff between Moscow and Washington won by the later. Just like in OTL, it would set the stage for the creation of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
-Thanks to a military in better shape and far more prestige due to its better wartime performance the KMT won the Chinese Civil War ITTL and after that we are in a whole new world.
-Broadly speaking the West was in a significantly stronger position throughout the Cold War. The world of the last seven decades, and the present day, has been kinder and fairer ITTL, still quite flawed and not lacking in terrible injustices and atrocities, but better than OTL nonetheless.
-With Market Garden having never taken place A Bridge Too Far never existed ITTL and was replaced by The First Victory, a film on the Battle of Crete.
-Every year on May 25, the anniversary of Case Ares, the bloodiest day of the Battle of Crete, a formal ceremony is held at the Monument to the Creforce. As years have passed the ranks of the veterans attending the ceremony have grown ever tinner, as it is the case for all such ceremonies. The Cretans still come in large numbers though, and when asked why they say that these men had been willing to go through hell and endanger their very lives to save their island and help their fellow humans live in a kinder world, so coming every year and tending to the graves of those who never left the island was the least the Cretans of today could do.