On this day, 83 years ago on April 18th 1941, the German 3rd Regiment and 2nd Panzer Division crossed the Pinios River in Greece while the German 6th Mountain.

 Ladies and Gentlemen, fellow comrades.

Greek Tragedy

On this day, 83 years ago on April 18th 1941, the German 3rd Regiment and 2nd Panzer Division crossed the Pinios River in Greece while the German 6th Mountain Division reached Mount Olympus, putting the Australian and New Zealand troops at the Pinios Gorge in danger.

As German soldiers continued to advance south in Greece, Prime Minister Alexandros Koryzis committed suicide that evening; in response to this suicide, Athens was placed under martial law by the government to maintain stability.

The Greek campaign, codenamed: Marita by the Germans, commenced on April 6th 1941, when the Germans simultaneously attacked the Kingdom of Greece through the Kingdoms of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia in a pincer movement designed to encircle the Greek troops fighting the Italians on the Albanian front, as a result of the Kingdom of Italy’s declaration of war on Greece on October 28, 1940.

The Allies sent a token force of British, Australian, New Zealand, Cypriot and Palestinian troops to aid Greece, in what is often referred to as ‘The Second Gallipoli.

They began arriving in March 1941 under the codename - Lustre or ‘W Force’, named after its Commander, British Major General Henry Maitland Wilson.

Of the 65,532 Allied soldiers sent to Greece, the largest number of fighting troops came from Australia and New Zealand, the others were support troops, apart from one British Armoured Brigade.

In this campaign, the Allied forces were greatly outnumbered and outgunned by the Germans who had allocated 10 divisions for the invasion of Greece and had over 1,000 planes at their disposal.

What resulted was a fierce month-long campaign where the Allied troops fought valiantly but were under-equipped and had to evacuate Greece.