It took Germany exactly three weeks to conquer Yugoslavia and Greece. To most of Britain, Australia and the U.S., that seemed a matter for profound gloom. But although the campaign had been lost, there were indications that after details of the Battle of Greece became known, the Greek campaign might possibly go down in history as one of the most brilliant tactical operations of British Empire arms. Although Hitler's men have not yet been stopped, this battle showed that if ever Britons confront Germans on anything like equal terms, Britain stands a good chance of winning.
The British and Greeks were beaten on the third day of fighting—with the Yugoslav collapse in the Vardar Valley. From the information so far available, it appears that from then on less than three full divisions of British-Anzacs troops and perhaps five divisions of Greeks (perhaps ten Greek divisions were facing the Italians on the Albanian front) bore the brunt of the best attack that could be mounted by 40 divisions of Germans. Under these conditions the Allies had virtually no reserves except a British tank division which backstopped the line wherever it weakened. The British and Anzacs held the anchor position on the right wing at the Aegean coast where the best road and the only railroad led south to Athens. Time & again they were outflanked on the land side and forced to retire from threatened positions.
There are few more difficult military operations than fighting a rearguard action against an aggressive enemy; under the strain most armies collapse. But the British, Australians and New Zealanders fought for 18 days and 245 miles—from Salonika to Olympus to Larissa to Thermopylae to Thebes to Athens—and not once did they allow the Germans to break through their lines in any force.
This was not another Dunkirk. At Dunkirk a British Army which had been ingloriously outmaneuvered and beaten without pitched battle, escaped after abandoning its tanks, its artillery, its ammunition dumps, even its rifles.
This was not another Narvik. There the British were not outnumbered. They just arrived too late, and never established a fighting front.
In Greece there was, for the first time, a test of ready British against ready Germans, and though the odds were 4-to-1 against the British, the outcome could not be called a disaster. The British had proved themselves.
But wars are not won with return tickets. The British will not win World War II by squeezing miniature forces into defensive crannies at the last moment, and withdrawing them brilliantly. Some sardonic wit in London last week figured out what B.E.F. meant: Back Every Fortnight. There was just enough truth in this interpretation to point up the real significance of the Battle of Greece. Britons can fight, but they will not be able to make an expeditionary force stick until some way, somehow, they get enough men, enough planes and enough tanks to approximate Nazi strength.
The Flight of Kings, the tragic symbol of imminent collapse, came last week when two monarchs, Peter of Yugoslavia and George of Greece, hobbled far away from their thrones. Each uttered as he fled the anguished formulas of determination—echoes of words spoken in varying degrees of clarity by other monarchs in other defeats, by Haakon, Leopold, Wilhelmina, Boris, Carol.