Italian spring offensive

Not to be confused with Spring 1945 offensive in Italy.

Italian Spring Offensive
Part of the Greco-Italian War
The Italian Spring Offensive (red arrows)
Date 9–16 March 1941 Location Albania, south-east of Berat 40°20′32″N 20°06′19″E Result Greek victory
Belligerents
Kingdom of Italy	Kingdom of Greece
Commanders and leaders
Carlo Geloso	Alexander Papagos
Strength
9 divisions	6 divisions
Casualties and losses
12,000 casualties	1,243 killed 42 missing 4,116 wounded

The Italian Spring Offensive, also known as Operazione Primavera (Operation Spring), was an offensive of the Greco-Italian War that lasted from 9 to 16 March 1941. The offensive was the last Italian attempt of the war to defeat the Greek forces, which had already advanced deep into Albanian territory. The opening of the offensive was supervised by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini but ended a week later in complete failure.

Background

On 28 October 1940, Fascist Italy declared war upon Greece. The Italian 9th Army and 11th Army invaded north-west Greece from Albania. They were soon pushed back and the Greek army launched a counter-attack deep into Albanian territory. In February 1941, intensive preparations to strengthen the Italian front line began. By the end of the month, the 15 Italian divisions fighting in Albania had been reinforced by an additional ten divisions. In order to raise the morale of the soldiers, Benito Mussolini ordered the units to be accompanied by the most aggressive fascist cadres and also by government ministers and high-ranking officials.

Operations

The operation was to be directed and observed by Mussolini, who arrived in Tirana on 2 March 1941; Italian radio announced that Mussolini lead the Italian attack. Operazione Primavera, the spring offensive began on 9 March, under General Carlo Geloso and started with heavy bombardment of Greek positions by artillery and aircraft. Eleven infantry divisions attacked with the support of the 131st Armoured Division Centauro.

The attack was mainly directed against the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 11th, 15th and 17th divisions of the Greek army and was followed by repeated infantry assaults between the rivers Osum and Vjosë, an area dominated by Trebeshinë. On 14 March, Italian General Ugo Cavallero, realizing that the attacks had failed, advised Mussolini to stop the offensive. Fierce fighting occurred on height 731, which was assaulted by the Italians at least 18 times. The Greek forces maintained an active defence, which included counter-attacks and systematic exploitation of advantageous terrain. Decisive factors in the Greek success were that Greek artillery was not neutralized and the high morale of the Greek troops.

Aftermath

Main article: Battle of Greece

After the Italian failure the Germans could no longer expect any appreciable support from their Italian allies when they marched against Greece, since Greek forces were only 16 kilometres (10 mi) away from the strategic port of Vlorë. With the German intervention and the subsequent capitulation of Greece in April 1941, the sector around height "731" was proclaimed a holy area by the Italians and a monument was erected by them, due to the heavy casualties they suffered.

Although it failed, the Spring Offensive further exhausted the Greeks and "revealed a chronic shortage of arms and equipment" in the Greek Army, which had been fighting a much larger power continuously for the past six months. The Greeks were, in the words of Stockings and Hancock, "rapidly approaching the end of their logistical tether," despite significant British material support in previous months. Following the offensive, the Greek Army as a whole possessed only a single month's supply of heavy artillery ammunition and insufficient supplies to equip its reserves; requests were immediately sent to their British allies for millions of artillery shells and tens of millions of rifle rounds. This proved to be a logistical impossibility for the British.

After German intervention ensured a quick Axis victory, Hitler later acknowledged that the German invasion of Greece was greatly facilitated by the Italians holding down and bleeding white, the greater part of Greece's limited military forces. In fact, Hitler would never leave his war partner, Fascist Italy, to be defeated in the war against Greece, so he issued orders for Third Reich's military intervention (Operation Marita), already from December 1940.

References

• Chatzēpateras, Kōstas N.; Maria S., Phaphaliou; Leigh Fermor, Patrick (1995). Greece 1940–41 Eyewitnessed. Athens: Efstathiadis Group. ISBN 978-960-226-533-8.
• Cruickshank, Charles Greig (1976) [1975]. Greece, 1940–1941. London: Davis-Poynter. ISBN 0-70670-180-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Dear, I.; Foot, M. R. D. (2001). The Oxford companion to World War II. London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-860446-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Electris, Theodore; Lindsay, Helen (2008). Written on the Knee: A Diary from the Greek-Italian Front of WWII. Minneapolis, MN: Scarletta Press. ISBN 978-0-9824584-4-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Gervasi, Frank (1975). Thunder over the Mediterranean. New York: McKay. ISBN 978-0-679-50508-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Keegan, John; Mayer, Sydney L. (1977). The Rand McNally Encyclopedia of World War II. Chicago: Rand McNally. ISBN 0-52881-060-X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Manchester, Richard B. (1994). Incredible Facts: The Indispensable Collection of True Life Facts and Oddities. New York: BBS Publishing Corporation. ISBN 978-0-88365-708-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Sakellariou, M. V. (1997). Epirus, 4000 years of Greek history and civilization. Ekdotike Athenon. ISBN 978-960-213-371-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Zapantis, Andrew L. (1982). Greek-Soviet relations, 1917–1941. East European Monographs. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-88033-004-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Zapantis, Andrew L. (1987). Hitler's Balkan Campaign and the Invasion of the USSR. Eastern European Monographs. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-88033-125-8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Zōtos, Stephanos (1967). Greece: The Struggle for Freedom. New York: Crowell. OCLC 712510.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)

Further reading

• Sadkovich, James (May 1994). "Italian Morale during the Italo-Greek War of 1940–1941". War and Society. 12 (1). ISSN 0729-2473.