In contrast to the punitive attack on Yugoslavia, Hitler’s interest in the conquest of Greece was purely strategic. He forbade the bombing of Athens, and regretted having to fight against the Greeks. If the British had not intervened there (sending troops in early March to assist the Greek struggle against Mussolini’s forces), he would never have had to hasten to the help of the Italians, he told Goebbels.152 Meanwhile, the German 12th Army had rapidly advanced over Yugoslav territory on Salonika, which fell on 9 April. The bulk of the Greek forces capitulated on 21 April. A brief diplomatic farce followed. The blow to Mussolini’s prestige demanded that the surrender to the Germans, which had in fact already taken place, be accompanied by a surrender to the Italians. To avoid alienating Mussolini, Hitler was forced to comply. The agreement signed by General List was disowned. Jodl was sent to Salonika with a new armistice. This time the Italians were party to it. This was finally signed, amid Greek protests, on 23 April.153 Greeks taken prisoner numbered 218,000, British 12,000, against 100 dead and 3,500 wounded or missing on the German side. In a minor ‘Dunkirk’, the British managed to evacuate 50,000 men — around four-fifths of their Expeditionary Force, which had to leave behind or destroy its heavy equipment.154 The whole campaign had been completed in under a month.155
A follow-up operation to take Crete by landing parachutists was, while he was in Mönichkirchen, somewhat unenthusiastically conceded by Hitler under pressure from Göring, himself being pushed by the commander of the parachutist division, General Kurt Student.156 By the end of May, this too had proved successful. But it had been hazardous. And the German losses of 2,071 dead, 2,594 wounded, and 1,888 missing from a deployment of around 22,000 men were far higher than in the entire Balkan campaign. ‘Operation Mercury’ — the attack on Crete — convinced Hitler that mass paratroop landings had had their day. He did not contemplate using them in the assault the following year on Malta.157 Potentially, the occupation of Crete offered the prospect of intensified assault on the British position in the Middle East. Naval High Command tried to persuade Hitler of this.158 But his eyes were now turned only in one direction: towards the East.
On 28 April, Hitler had arrived back in Berlin — for the last time the warlord returning in triumph from a lightning victory achieved at minimal cost. Though people in Germany responded in more muted fashion than they had done to the remarkable victories in the West, the Balkan campaign appeared to prove once again that their Leader was a military strategist of genius. His popularity was undiminished. But there were clouds on the horizon. People in their vast majority wanted, as they had done all along, peace: victorious peace, of course, but above all, peace. Their ears pricked up when Hitler spoke of ‘a hard year of struggle ahead of us’ and, in his triumphant report to the Reichstag on the Balkan campaign on 4 May, of providing even better weapons for German soldiers ‘next year’. Their worries were magnified by disturbing rumours of a deterioration in relations with the Soviet Union and of troops assembling on the eastern borders of the Reich.159
What the mass of the people had, of course, no inkling of was that Hitler had already put out the directive to prepare ‘Operation Barbarossa’ — the invasion of the Soviet Union — almost five months earlier. That directive, of 18 December, had laid down that preparations requiring longer than eight weeks should be completed by 15 May.160 But it had not stipulated a date for the actual attack. (In one of the military conferences preceding the directive, on 5 December, Hitler had envisaged the end of May as the time to strike. But, so far in advance of a campaign which would be dependent upon weather conditions for the vital initial advantage, this was no more than a date to aim at.161) In his speech to military leaders on 27 March, immediately following news of the Yugoslav coup, Hitler had spoken of a delay of up to four weeks as a consequence of the need to take action in the Balkans.162 Back in Berlin after his stay in Mönichkirchen, he lost no time — assured by Halder of transport availability to take the troops to the East — in arranging a new date for the start of ‘Barbarossa’ with Jodl: 22 June.163
