On October 28th 1940, at 5:30 a.m., an ultimatum was delivered to Greece by the Italian Embassy in Athens. They were required to cede various coastal positions and strategically important islands to the Italians within three hours. General Metaxas, head of the Greek Council of State, refused these demands and later on the 28th October an Italian invasion of Greece (from the previously conquered Albania) began.
Over the next few weeks, the Italians were repulsed by the Greeks and pushed back into Albania! Britain and the Commonwealth sent troops and equipment to help the Greeks, and Churchill's ideas of a "Balkan Confederation" seemed a little less far-fetched...
But then Hitler and the OKW, disturbed by this turn of events, sent German forces into Greece to prop up the faltering Italians. The Greeks and British/Commonwealth forces were pushed back, and Greece fell to the Axis.
But what were the forces of the Hellenic Kingdom, that trounced such a local power as Italy? Greece 1940 (apart from Crete) is largely a forgotten conflict in the English-speaking world, and perhaps I can redress this balance a bit with the following.
