Saving an ally bogged down in the mountains

At the end of 1940, Adolf Hitler watches the collapse of an initiative he had not commissioned. On 28 October, Mussolini launched Italy in an assault on Greece from Albania, without any real coordination with Berlin, hoping for a swift success.

The result is a disaster. Poorly prepared, poorly commanded, the Italian army has run up against the relief of Epirus and a Greek counter-offensive that has driven it back into Albanian territory. As winter approaches, the front freezes in the snow and the mud, and the prestige of the Axis suffers in the eyes of the world.

For Hitler, the danger exceeds the humiliation of his ally. Squadrons of the Royal Air Force are beginning to establish themselves in Greece; from these bases, British bombers could threaten Italy and, above all, the Romanian oilfields of Ploiești, vital for a German war machine secretly preparing the invasion of the USSR. To let the situation rot is to risk a south-eastern flank exposed in the spring. To intervene is to open a new Balkan theatre, mobilise divisions and negotiate passage through neighbouring states, at the very moment when the bulk of the forces must turn towards the East.