In his criminal invasion of Ukraine, it appears that Vladimir Putin has underestimated Ukrainian resistance and overestimated his own Russian military.  History is full of such folly.

Take a war, any war, and you will find this same hubris at work.  The First World War was supposed to wrap up in six weeks; Hitler thought he could avoid a 2-front war while Britain was on its knees; LBJ’s generals convinced him the Viet Cong would succumb to helicopters and firepower; the list goes on.  Using an Italian angle, Putin’s debacle in Ukraine mirrors Mussolini’s war against Greece in 1940-41.

It was supposed to be a cakewalk.  Launched on the auspicious anniversary of his successful October “March on Rome” eighteen years earlier, Mussolini had it on good authority – from his political experts and his own son-in-law, Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano – that the Greek Army and population were awaiting Italian liberation from their own dictator.  Putin likewise believed Ukrainians shared his dream of rejoining Mother Russia.

Mussolini was playing 3-dimensional chess in the Balkans.  His tricky ally Hitler had occupied Romanian oilfields in September, 1940 encroaching on Italy’s sphere of influence, and the British were securing naval and air bases from the Greeks.  Mussolini had to act fast; just as Putin feared imminent NATO membership for Ukraine and U.S. political intrigue there.  Both men succumbed to haste.

In 1939, Italy had conducted a preemptive takeover of Albania to guarantee entry to the Balkans as Europe edged closer to war (just as Putin used Belarus to surround Ukraine).  With an Albanian beachhead, Italian troops and supplies could cross the Adriatic to sustain an advance into Greece.  (Putin didn’t have this added obstacle of a sea to cross.)  The whole operation seemed doable, and Mussolini asked his military chief of staff what he needed to attack and occupy all of Greece.  His answer: 20 divisions and 3 months.

Italy was already engaged in North Africa attacking British Egypt across the desert.  Besides, Italy had demobilized thousands of soldiers to keep up morale and bring in the 1940 harvest.  So, Mussolini could only spare 5 divisions – what could go wrong?  Everything.

The Greeks got wind of the threat and mobilized their army, stationing 8 divisions on the Albanian border (220,000 men!).  The British were providing air support.  To make matters worse, two days before the attack the rains came, torrents of it.  Unlike Putin’s army, the Italians didn’t have tanks.  The mountainous Balkan terrain required mules and small artillery which the Italians had.  So, attack they did against impossible odds, penetrating sixty miles into Greece.  Then, literally out of the blue, a British naval air squadron made a surprise attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto in Italy’s in-step on November 11th.  Luckily, the damage wasn’t a knock-out but the raid gave the Japanese the idea to bomb Pearl Harbor the following year.  By December, rain, frostbite, and masses of Greek troops and artillery drove the woefully outnumbered Italians back into Albania.

Mussolini was pissed.  He took his wrath out on his son-in-law and Fascist Party members who instigated the invasion.  He ordered them to the Albanian Front to show the Italian people that the whole nation must sacrifice.  His own daughter Edda, while serving on a hospital ship in the Adriatic, was torpedoed and later rescued.  He ordered reinforcements but the storm-tossed Adriatic and clogged Albanian ports wreaked havoc with the resupply.  But Italian air power and his army’s expertise in mountain warfare (honed during Alpine battles in the last war) checked the Greek advance.

Swallowing his pride, Mussolini asked Hitler to open a second front in Greece to draw off the Greek and British troops (Brits now numbered 58,000, diverted from North Africa, which happily relieved the hard-pressed Italian forces in that theater).  But, Hitler wouldn’t risk an attack in the winter, so Mussolini had to wait until April, 1941 for help.  The Italian army, navy, and air force were on their own for five months battling the elements as well as the whole Greek Army and the British expeditionary force.  Once the Germans arrived and split the Greco-British defenders, Mussolini’s forces swept through Greece and occupied most of it until war’s end. The valor and doggedness of the Italian troops overcame the crisis.

Of course, World War II ended badly for Mussolini, will Putin fare any better? -JLM

[Note: A more detailed version of the war in Greece can be found in issue XXXII of The Italic Way “Capt. Corelli’s War in Greece,” in our Research Library at italic.org