The Art Of Tank Warfare - Chris Keeling

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Italy, meanwhile, as Germany’s ally, had annexed Albania and subsequently invaded Greece, where
Mussolini’s forces were still stalled, as they were in North Africa. In order to save the Italian forces, and to
secure the mineral-rich Balkans prior to the upcoming attack on the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht invaded
Yugoslavia from Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Austria, all of whom were now members of the Tripartite
Pact, commonly known as the Axis. From the outset of the battle on April 6, 1941, the 31 Yugoslavian
divisions were outclassed. Hostilities against Greece were also opened on this date from Bulgaria. The entire
Balkan campaign lasted less than three weeks, and eliminated the last ally of the British in the region.
Finally, the Greek island of Crete was captured in a battle initiated by large airborne drops. Starting on May
20th, the operation lasted just over a week and inflicted horrendous losses on the attacking German
paratroopers. The campaign ended just in time for the majority of the German troops involved to be
transferred to the east, where they would participate in the invasion of the Soviet Union, commencing
in June.
The Desert War. Once again coming to the aid of an ally, Germany sent the Afrika Korps to Libya in an
attempt to support the failed advances of the Italian forces there against the British and Free French. General
(later Fieldmarshall) Erwin Rommel, a hero of the First World War and winner of the Pour le Merite, or
“Blue Max,” arrived in Tripoli with two divisions on February 12, 1941. By the 11th of April, Rommel had
recaptured all of the territory lost to the British offensive of four months prior, and Tobruk was under siege.
After a series of abortive counterattacks in 1941, Rommel withdrew. He resumed the offensive on January
21, 1942 and chased the British back into Egypt. By October, he had exhausted most of his supplies, which
had been arriving only occasionally since the domination of the Mediterranean by the British Navy. The
British counterattack in October, combined with Anglo-American landings in French North Africa on
November 8, 1942, forced Rommel back to Tunisia. The last German forces in Tunis surrendered on
May 13, 1943.
The Eastern Front. Having conquered or intimidated nearly every major nation in Europe, Hitler decided
to move east, into the open country of the Soviet Union. Although Stalin, General-Secretary of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its de facto leader, had known there would be a clash eventually,
he had hoped it would come later, and with the Soviets on the offensive. Operation Barbarossa, as the
invasion was codenamed, therefore came as a surprise to the Soviet forces. It involved the use of nearly the
entire Wehrmacht: almost 4 million soldiers in 180 divisions, over 3,000 tanks, 7,000 artillery pieces, and
2,000 aircraft, plus more than 20 allied divisions. On June 22, 1941, the first day of the attack, over 1,200
aircraft of the Soviet air forces were destroyed on the ground and in the air. In the first two weeks, 89 Soviet
divisions were eliminated, with 300,000 prisoners captured, and 2,500 tanks and 1,400 artillery pieces seized
in just the central region. By July 20, another 310,000 prisoners, 3,200 tanks, and 3,100 artillery pieces had
been captured in Smolensk alone. Although Soviet industry was producing 1,000 tanks and 1,800 planes
every month, their losses were even higher. Three months into the engagement, German troops had taken
the remains of Poland, conquered Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, the majority of the Ukraine, and had
moved the front to a line with Leningrad at its northern tip and the Crimea at its southern end.