British Intervention in Greece 1940-1941 : The anatomy of a grand deception

Abstract

After the Italian attack on Greece at the end of October 1940,
the British responded with limited air support and some supplies from
their meagre stocks in the Middle East. In January General Wavell was ordered to make a larger offer, which was limited to artillery, and
this Prime Minister Metaxas properly refused. But after the latter’s
death, Churchill and Eden in London pushed aid and active British
support into the Greek government. Wavell was a realist and an expert
at deception of the Allenby school, as he had already demonstrated
with his Western Desert defeat of the Italians. Understanding the
technical problems of making a stand in Greece, a country then devoid
of proper communications and especially of airfields and défendable
ports, he engineered a grand deception to send a token British
force to the AJiakmon Line hoping that the Germans would attack
long before they could be in place and thus save his resources. His
object was to deceive Churchill and thus prevent another Norway,
Dunkirk and Dakar.