So how well did Germany and Italy do in the Balkans?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I was playing Panzer General last night (remember that game?) and played the Balkans scenario. 6 countries in this:

Axis:

Italy - apparentely they started when they invaded Yugoslavia and Greece. Later they called for help from Germany
Germany - The other major force here. Easily the most powerful of all the countries with the best units
Bulgaria - Allied with Italy and Germany and right across the border, but it's military units are nowhere near as good as the first two. Only a minor role.

Allies:

Yugoslavia - very weak units compared to Germany and Italy. Only has infantry, anti-tank guns and artillery (like Bulgaria). It does have two types of infantry though, standard and partisans which can fight in rougher terrain better and see further, but also have low supplies

Greece - very similar to Yugoslavia. Except their standard infantry is better and they don't have partisans.

Britain - A few planes, a naval fleet and a few tanks and better infantry units you have your side. They're the only units that can even compare to the Germans and Italians and your only way to challenge their naval and sea power, but are much more limited.

Anyway, the battle started out with German crushing most of the Yugoslavian forces in the east, while Italy plowed through the west.  Germany, with some mild help from Bulgaria then moved into eastern Greece while Italian forces reached the western part, and it looked like the two groups would coincide and march down to Athens. They had clear air superiority, and originally sea superiority. But then using my subs I was able to destroy most of the Italian fleet harrasing the Greek defense. This with a solid defense I set up severely slowed down the Italian advance.

Meanwhile in Yugoslavia the Germans and Italians captured all target cities. But the one of my few pockets I still had I used as a base to produce lots of partisans, and then used them to assault Belgrade. The Germans only left one infantry unit to defend Belgrade, and while it was much better equiped and entrenched than my partisan units, I was able to run it out of ammo, then wipe it out. After liberating Belgarde I produced more units to hit the southern target city, which the Germans left defended only by an anti-tank gun unit which was very weak against infantry. I took it easily.

Meanwhile down in Greece once the Italians lost sea superiority they had a much tougher time breaking the Greek defenses. This was close to the British base in Athens, so I started producing British tanks which ripped their tanks apart. Then the German forces came through. These were much tougher and I couldn't beat them, but I severely slowed them down. Then of course they had to send forces from this team to retake Belgrade and the other Yugoslavian target city I had, diluting their force down south. By keeping up a bottleneck, I was able to protect Athens and the two liberated Yugoslavian cities, and ran out the clock, winning the level.

So I was curious, what exactly happened in reality in the area? Did all of Yugoslavia fall? Did Athens ever fall?

[minionofmidas]

The Germans quickly rolled over the Balkans - I actually don't know why they ever bothered, but that's a different story.
They then got bogged down by partisan warfare. The war in the Balkans was extremely bloody and deadly.
Serbia just about ties with Belarus as the region that suffered most in WW II.
Yugoslavia and Northern Greece were in the end liberated by Communist Partisans, not by incoming armies from the South (the Americans landed in Greece towards the end of the war) and Northeast (the Soviets rolled into Romania and Bulgaria in the winter of 44/45)...which set the stage for the Greek civil war of 47-51, and for the fallout between Tito and Stalin...but that's yet another story.

[PBrunsel]

Germany did quite well. Unlike WWI they completely over ran Greece.

[ATFFL]

You can read a lot on it here:

The German Campaign in the Balkans

[J. J.]

First, the Italians invaded Albania, which had dominated by Italy since the 1930's, in 1939.  King Zog fled.

Second, in 1940, Italy invaded Greece from Albania.  The Greeks rallied and counterattacked, capturing about a third of Albania.  Birtish airforces destroyed a large part of the Italian Fleet in 1940 (13 months prior to Pearl Harbor, BTW).

In April of '41 Hitler invaded Yugoslavia, largely to help bail out the Italians.  It began April 6, followed by Italian Hungarian and Bulgarian troops on the 11th.  The Yugslavian Army surrendered on the 17th.  Greece, excepting Crete, was captured May 11.

Crete, occupied by the British, fell after an airborne invasion, fell on June 1.

The Soviet Union was invaded on June 22, 1941.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The Germans quickly rolled over the Balkans - I actually don't know why they ever bothered, but that's a different story.
They then got bogged down by partisan warfare. The war in the Balkans was extremely bloody and deadly.

It was very much so in the game. Even though I won I had around the equivalent of 100k troops killed. The opposing side had about 30k killed.

[J. J.]

There was basically a guerilla war in Serbia proper from the time of the invasion.  Croatia was mostly pro-Nazi.

The airborne invasion of Crete was so costly (4,000) that Hitler forbade all future large scale airborn assults.  Student, the parachute division general, was placed in command of forces in Belgium and Holland.

We can only imagine what possible effect this decision had on the Eastern Front.

[Erc]

Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary were German Allies (whether willingly or by political intrigue).

Yugoslavia was on the way to becoming one but the King (I believe) resisted.  Yugoslavia was overrun in about a week.

Albania had been annexed in 1939 by the Italians, who then proceeded to get bogged down in Greece.

After taking Yugoslavia, the Germans ran over Greece within the course of two-three weeks.  As they were mainly attacking from present-day FYROM, they outflanked the Metaxas Line on the Bulgarian border (General Metaxas refused to withdraw from his eponymous line) and took mainland Greece with ease.  Crete was the only tough nut to crack in the Balkans.

Of course, Yugoslavia got messy later, what with Tito...but that was 1943/44, after the Germans were already going downhill.


The entire process only took five weeks or so, but it did delay the invasion of the USSR (perhaps fatally so)