Monday, October 28, 1940 - Italy invades Greece

[Louis]

In Athens... An Italian ultimatum is presented to the Greeks during the night. It amounts to a declaration of war.

In the Balkans... At dawn, before the ultimatum expires, the Italian forces in Albania begin to cross the border into Greece. Patras is bombed. General Prasca leads eight of the 10 Italian divisions in Albania in the advance. They attack along three lines with the main effort being in the center from the Dhrina and Vijose valleys. General Papagos, the Greek Command in Chief, has not deployed his main force close to the border to avoid giving any provocation to the Italians. He hopes to use 8 divisions with the possibility of reinforcements being brought from the troops watching the Bulgarian border. The greatest obstacle to the Italians for the first two or three days is the very bad weather which grounds their air support. The Italians have chose a very unwise time of the year for their attack.

In Italy... Hitler and Mussolini meet at Florence. Hitler conceals his anger at not being kept informed of the Italian plans and says that German troops are available if it is necessary to keep the British out of Greece and away from the Romanian oil.

In Vichyt France... Laval become Foreign Minister of the Vichy government.

In the North Atlantic... U-32 completes the job and sinks the damaged Empress of Britain.

 

[Louis]

October 28 is a solemn day in the history of Greece.- Equivalent to December 7 and September 11 for USA, and in the history of humanity’s fight for Liberty. For it was the ‘Glory of Greece’ that illuminated the free world’s struggle because “right is more precious than peace,” especially “peace at any price.” The gallant stand of the 1940-41 Greek Epic which captured and inspired the imagination of the free world, and even its then-arch enemy: Nazi Germany, was not unique in the annals of world history. In fact, the significant factor of the Greek stand was that for at least the third time Greece’s heroic effort helped preserve Western Civilization, of which Greece is the chief architect.-

The ancient Greek stand against the million-strong Persian army of antiquity, and victories first at Marathon and ten years later at Thermopylae and ultimately at Salamis, preserved the birth of Western Civilization. Had the Persians won, the future of Europe might not have had the free thought that it developed from the Greek “age of reason.” Rather, it might have been influenced by the despotic and militant Persian order, a mark of later Middle Eastern dogmas, including the Turks of today. Thus, the Greeks stood their ground, for they believed that “right is more precious than peace.”

Nearly a millennium and a half later, it happened again, as the Greeks of Byzantium withstood the Turkish onslaught repeatedly until falling on that fateful day in 1453. But the long struggle was maintained as the enslaved Greeks continued to harass the Turkish occupiers via “kleftais and amartoloi.” Thus, when in 1683 a rather weakened Ottoman Empire -- but still in its zenith – arrived at the gates of Vienna, it was soundly defeated by the Polish King Sobieski. The goal of the Turks was to March to Paris, to burn it, in the systematic style of Turkish mentality.

A little over a century after Greek Independence, it happened again when Benito Mussolini’s Fascist forces invaded Greece on October 28, 1940 after receiving that famous declaration: “OXI!” Greece’s modern “golden-age” epic was heralded across the free world in appreciation for its commitment and as an inspiration to others to in their struggle for Liberty. The significance of the Greek stand has been praised by friend and foe, except of course for the Turks.

Some accolades that followed of Greece:

U.S. author Rupert Hughes: “Once more the Greeks are giving their blood for the freedom of the world.”

The famous American educator John Erskine: “Today, every American is a child of the Acropolis.”

U.S. Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles: “The Greeks shattered forever the myth of Axis invincibility.”

St. Louis Post Dispatch: “There speaks the Greece of Leonidas and the 300, the Greeks of Greece who never ask how many the enemy are but where they are.

Galveston Daily News: “No nation has excelled Greece in the valor of its defense against "aggression.”

Leigh White of CBS News: “It remained for those incurable optimists, those foolhardy patriots, the Greeks, to teach the world that it is better to fight against hopeless odds than to let the Axis swallow up homeland, spirit and national pride.”

U.S. Senator Sam Rayburn: “We, and all the world, remember the heroic resistance of the Greeks. The overwhelming Nazi forces pushed the gallant Greeks back inch-by-inch until that fateful day when the symbol of tyranny. The Swastika, flew over the proud Parthenon. We all know much too well that the lot of those brave people has since been starvation, agony and death.”

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill: “When you speak of Greek warriors, don’t say Greeks fight like heroes but that heroes fight like Greeks.”


from hellenicnews.com