ABSTRACT
So the armistice was signed and the Italians were out of the war. Indeed they were now approaching the status of co-belligerents. Those of us who had been engaged against the Italians since the start, in the days before the Germans came along, no doubt felt even greater satisfaction. First of all, in the peninsula itself we did hope that the German position would be made more awkward. It was not so much that we expected the aid of Italian troops but it seemed to us that if the Italians withheld their labour and refused to cooperate with the Germans it ought to make the latter’s lines of communications difficult and perhaps oblige a withdrawal. We did not really hope to get much more than Naples but it looked as though we might get there fairly quickly. Looking at the Balkans one began to sigh over opportunities which would have to be foregone. The Jugoslav partisans would undoubtedly receive a considerable accession of arms and equipment if they moved quickly to take over from the Italians; but unfortunately there was nothing we could do to get in touch with them. Crete had a mainly German garrison and was too big a mouthful to take on as a sideline. The Dodecanese looked a more hopeful prospect. There the garrison was almost entirely Italian and in considerable strength. Moreover it was within reasonable range of our Middle East Forces. The trouble was that G.H.Q. Middle East had got practically no forces left and fewer means of transporting them. Unfortunately too, the Italian Commander-in-Chief in Rhodes was not a man of great resolution. When after the capitulation the Germans made an air attack on his headquarters, he broadcast in dear ‘Every bomb is chipping a little piece off my heart,’ and surrendered immediately. British troops were sent to Cos and Leros, but without proper air defence or proper communications they were unable to hold them. It is incidentally remarkable, and symptomatic of Hiders preoccupation with the Balkans, that at a time when he was hastily evacuating Sardinia and Corsica and withdrawing up the leg of Italy, he turned and struck with great violence, diverting large air resources from the Russian front, at this minor British incursion. Equally forceful efforts were directed at Corfu where the Italian commander was a man of courage and resolution and his troops fought well. Without Allied aid, however, which we were powerless to give, their resistance could not be long.
