Bulgaria WWII Part l

After the fall of Stamboliiski the strategy of Bulgarian foreign policy had been to redress Neuilly through 'peaceful revisionism' via the League of Nations with Italy as its patron within that body, the first objective being the implementation of article 48 giving Bulgaria economic access to the Aegean. The relationship to Italy had been symbolised by the marriage of Boris to an Italian princess in 1930 , but in other respects reliance on Italy had not produced results. In the early 1930 s Italy began to move away from Bulgaria whilst the League of Nations declined in effectiveness, particularly after the Nazis took power in Germany. By then Bulgarian policy makers were looking towards Yugoslavia as a means of avoiding isolation but with little hope of real success as long as the Macedonian enclave in Petrich continued to operate. That problem had been resolved by the devetnaiseti and Boris and his advisors were anxious to maintain the momentum towards better relations with their western neighbour. In 1936 , as a gesture of goodwill to Belgrade, Kioseivanov banned all demonstrations calling for the dismantling of the treaty of Neuilly, and in January 1937 Bulgaria received its reward when a pact of friendship with Yugoslavia was signed. This was of little more than symbolic significance but it did procure Yugoslav diplomatic backing and in July 1938 the Salonika agreements allowed Greece to remilitarise Thrace and Bulgaria to disregard the arms limitation clauses of the treaty of Neuilly, which in fact the Sofia government had been doing for some time.

By 1938 all European diplomacy was dominated by the German resurgence. The Munich settlement in September and the Vienna award which followed it in November, by virtually destroying Czechoslovakia, ruined the little entente upon which Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania had relied for their security; both Yugoslavia and Romania now became more conciliatory towards Bulgaria. But Munich had another effect. After the Vienna award Bulgaria was the only power defeated in 1918 not to have received back some of its lost territory. It was a point frequently made by the more vociferous of Bulgarian nationalists and especially by those amongst them who championed a pro-German foreign policy.

Boris would not listen to them, fearing that Germany might plunge Europe once more into war. Boris believed Bulgaria's best interests were served by peace or, failing that, neutrality without commitment to any great power; he once despairingly remarked, 'My army is pro-German, my wife is Italian, my people are pro- Russian. I alone am pro-Bulgarian.'

When war did come in September 1939 he immediately declared Bulgaria's neutrality. And for months he remained deaf even to the most alluring of siren calls. In October 1939 the Soviets approached him with the suggestion of a Soviet-Bulgarian mutual assistance pact and Soviet support for Bulgarian claims in the Dobrudja, but Boris refused. He did so again, this time to the Balkan entente powers when they offered Bulgaria membership in February 1940 , Boris calculating that this would commit Bulgaria too much to the allied side.

Yet the pro-axis pressures were mounting, not least because the Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939 meant that friendship with Germany would not mean offending Russia and therefore disturbing the majority of peasants who still revered the liberating power of 1877 -8 . Early in 1940 Bulgaria concluded a commercial treaty with Moscow which allowed the import of Soviet books, newspapers, and films, and in August of the same year the first visit for many years of a Soviet football team occasioned widespread popular pleasure.

In September 1940 Nazi-Soviet cooperation brought the Bulgarians their first territorial revision. After the Nazi conquest of Scandinavia and France Stalin demanded compensation in the east. This was made at the expense of Romania which was so much weakened that it also lost northern Transylvania to Hungary and in the treaty of Craiova signed on 7 September 1940 , was forced to return the southern Dobrudja to Bulgaria.

Whilst these benefits were being reaped a number of internal changes appeared to bring Bulgaria closer to Germany, on which it was already heavily reliant for manufactured goods, including armaments. A youth organisation, Brannik (Defender) was established to instil discipline and patriotic sentiments; one of Bulgaria's very few outspoken anti-semites, Petûr Gabrovski, was made minister of the interior in February 1940 ; and in the summer the masonic lodges, to which most Bulgarian politicians belonged, were dissolved. In October the defence of the nation act consolidated these measures and others which had been taken against the communists. It also extended anti-semitic legislation enacted earlier in the year. At the same time steps were taken to increase Bulgaria's war-readiness. In May the compulsory labour service was placed under military control; a directorate of civilian mobilisation was set up which had the right to regulate manufacturing in time of war; and, again in the event of war, the ministry of agriculture was given much greater powers to requisition food and control prices.

Bulgaria had been placed on a potential war footing, but it was not yet known if it would go to war and, if so, on which side. After the fall of France and the treaty of Craiova, however, pressures from Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union outweighed those from the west. In October Mussolini offered Boris access to the Aegean if Bulgaria would join in the forthcoming Italian assault on Greece. Boris refused. In the following month another offer of a mutual assistance pact came from Moscow. This time the deal was for Bulgaria to take Thrace and the USSR the Dardanelles; the Soviets were also to have use of Bulgarian naval bases on the Black Sea. Boris knew that the Soviets had used different language in Berlin when talking of this deal, nominating Bulgaria as 'a Soviet security zone'. The Baltic states had been described in those terms shortly before they were incorporated into Stalin's empire a few months earlier.

The situation changed early in December when for the first time Hitler had a pressing reason for direct help from Bulgaria. Mussolini's attack on Greece had not prospered and Hitler, fearing an allied landing in the Peloponnese, had decided to occupy Greece, whence he could also harry British supply lines through the Mediterranean. His troops would need the right of passage through Bulgaria. On 8 December 1940 some forty German staff officers arrived in Sofia for secret discussions. Thereafter an increasing number of German tourists entered Bulgaria; they were all male, they all had short hair and shiny boots, and it was not the tourist season. The Americans made a last effort to persuade Boris that in the long run Britain, with the moral and material backing of the USA, was bound to win the war, but it was to no avail. In February Bulgaria consented to the construction of a pontoon bridge across the Danube and on 2 March agreed to allow German forces to cross Bulgaria en route to Greece. The day before Filov had travelled to Vienna to sign the agreement by which Bulgaria became a member of the German-Italian-Japanese tripartite pact.

Bulgaria was in effect now a member of the German alliance and the British minister left Sofia. Not until after the attack on Pearl Harbor, however, did Bulgaria declare what it chose to describe as 'symbolic' war on Britain and the United States. Immediately after the sûbranie ratified this declaration the king disappeared. He was found hours later deep in prayer in a remote and dark corner of Sofia's Aleksandûr Nevski cathedral.

Bulgaria WWII Part ll

The Germans attacked Yugoslavia and Greece in April 1941 . By the end of that month the Balkans had been partitioned between the axis powers, and Bulgaria's share was the western territories lost in 1918 , western Thrace including the islands of Samothrace and Thassos, and Serbian Macedonia except for an undefined strip in the west under Italian rule. The Germans retained control of Salonika and Bulgaria was not given full ownership of its new territory lest it pocket its gains and leave the axis. The Bulgarians, however, saw this as the reunification of their nation, and if liking for the Germans was far from universal, British attempts to incite the Bulgarians to revolt against them met with no response whatever.

In Thrace the Bulgarian occupation produced terrible savagery. In September 1941 the local Greek population staged a rising and committed atrocities against Bulgarians; the latter took fearsome revenge in an effort, some believe, to drive the Greeks out of the region. There was no such confrontation in Macedonia. Here the Bulgarians were initially warmly received as they were a welcome relief to the centralising and serbianising policies of the Yugoslav government; a Bulgarian archimandrite officiated at the 1941 Easter service in Skopje cathedral and Bulgarian nationalists everywhere rejoiced that 'unified Bulgaria' had been recreated. The Bulgarians set about building schools and in Skopje opened Macedonia's first institute of higher learning, the King Boris University. The Bulgarian church did all it could to restore or introduce exarchist organisations, and all former exarchist priests were urged to forsake retirement and work in Macedonia or Thrace. Church leaders in Sofia hoped that now national unity had at last been achieved a patriarch might be elected for the Bulgarian church; all Bulgarian communities, acting through their church, would take part in the election of a patriarch who would remain as a symbol of national unity regardless of what political or territorial changes might come about. The king, however, feared an elected patriarch might be a potential rival and he and Filov therefore filibustered and the holy synod did not receive permission for the election of a patriarch, nor were bishops chosen for the sees of Macedonia and Thrace. This caused some frustration in the newly acquired lands which also felt resentment at the alleged insensitivity of Sofia-appointed administrators. By 1944 there was evidence of growing resentment at the over-centralisation practised by the Bulgarian authorities.

After the occupation of Thrace and Macedonia the dominant issue for Bulgaria's leaders, and in particular for King Boris, was not the nature of Bulgarian rule in the new territories but the degree to which Bulgaria would retain its freedom of action. This applied both to foreign and domestic affairs.

In foreign affairs the critical question was what Germany would require of Bulgaria in the military sphere. Boris was anxious that the Bulgarian army should not be deployed outside the Balkans, and this feeling was immeasurably strengthened when the Germans launched their attack upon the Soviet Union in June 1941 . Boris argued that his army was not modern enough for a Blitzkrieg , and the peasant conscripts would not fight well far from home, particularly if they were pitted against their beloved Russians. Much better, said Boris, to keep the men in the Balkans where they could help deter a Turkish invasion or a Soviet descent on the Black Sea coast. The Germans did not object and agreed to supply the modern equipment which the Bulgarians insisted was necessary even for these limited tasks.

The German failure to take Moscow at the end of 1941 and the beginnings of partisan activity in occupied Yugoslavia changed the picture. The Wehrmacht had to call upon troops from the Balkans to reinforce the eastern front and pressed the Bulgarians to help garrison parts of German-occupied Yugoslavia. To this Boris agreed and a new Bulgarian army corps of three divisions was formed and placed under German command. The new Bulgarian army guarded railways, mines, ammunition dumps, and other strategic installations, and was later to take part in operations against the growing partisan movement; Bulgarian troops had not been deployed outside the Balkans but they had been used outside areas under Bulgarian political control in support of a non-Bulgarian civil authority. It was a qualitative change in Bulgaria's involvement in Germany's war.

This was not the end of German pressure for Bulgaria to extend its duties. In May 1943 Hitler asked the Bulgarians to take over an area in north-eastern Serbia to release more German troops for duty on the eastern front. He also wanted the Bulgarians to take over most of Greek Macedonia. Boris declined to accept all of the latter on the grounds that for Bulgaria to take Salonika would be too much of a provocation to the Turks and the Italians, but he agreed to help garrison Serbia on the grounds that the German troops so released might prevent a Soviet landing in Bulgaria, an eventuality which would bring about what Boris and Filov feared most: full Bulgarian involvement in the German-Soviet war. As a result of the May meeting Bulgarian soldiers assumed guard duties along the Belgrade-Salonika railway and replaced the Germans in northern Serbia and along much of the Aegean coast of Thrace. In August Hitler asked for two more divisions for northern Serbia to which Boris agreed.

Boris had succeeded in avoiding any commitment in the east beyond voluntary contributions to the Winterhilfe fund and the provision of one Red Cross train. He had refused to allow the recruitment even of a volunteer legion for duty on the eastern front and when the Germans asked for permission to use fifteen Bulgarian pilots trained in Germany Boris agreed only on condition that they served in North Africa, and even this permission was soon revoked. Boris was no doubt sincere in arguing that his forces were not equipped, materially or emotionally, for service in the Russian war, but there was another reason for this policy. He feared a victorious general might return and, with German connivance, depose him. Right-wing groups which had the sympathy of German officials in Sofia had been very active in the spring of 1942 , and in May Boris said he had heard from Berlin that Gestapo sources favoured a government led by General Lukov because the king was anti-German and the present administration was dominated by masons who were protecting the Jews. In September Boris refused General Lukov permission to travel to Berlin.

There was fear of the left as well as the right. The attack on the Soviet Union mobilised the communists in Bulgaria and exiled comrades were landed in an attempt to help them. The government clamped down hard, and in the next three years over eleven thousand people were detained as suspected communists, six thousand of them being sent to internment camps and the remainder to labour battalions. On 5 April 1942 communist conspiracies were unearthed in the 1st and 6th regiments of the Bulgarian army. Swift action was again taken against the conspirators and on 6 April it was decided to close the Soviet commercial mission in Varna.

There was, of course, no disagreement between the Bulgarians and the Germans on the need to contain any communist threat. Where German and Bulgarian views and jurisdiction did clash in domestic Bulgarian affairs was over the Jewish question. In October 1941 the German minister in Sofia, Beckerle, had begun pressing for more restrictions on the Bulgarian Jews. Further measures were introduced early in 1942 with a 20 per cent levy on Jewish property, the enforcement of the wearing of the yellow star, the compulsory sale of Jewish businesses with the proceeds being deposited in blocked accounts, and the disbandment of almost all Jewish organisations. Yet so unpopular were these measures amongst the general population that the press was forbidden to report on them immediately but had to let out the information gradually. After yet more pressure from Beckerle the sûbranie agreed in August 1942 to pass a bill depriving Jews in the occupied territories of their Bulgarian citizenship; it was a decision which was to cost most of those Jews their lives.

After the Wannsee conference and the decision to implement the final solution Nazi pressure intensified. A deputy of Eichmann's arrived in Sofia as assistant police attaché in the German mission with the brief to implement the next stage of the final solution. True to the agreement of the previous summer the Bulgarians did not impede the deportation in March 1943 of the Jews in the occupied lands. In the following months there was much less cooperation over the Jews with Bulgarian citizenship living in Bulgaria proper, at least 6 ,000 of whom the Nazis had wished to deport in the first wave of transports. The question was taken up by Dimitûr Peshev, a deputy from Kiustendil where preparations were being made to concentrate the putative deportees. He drafted a petition to the king which was signed by over forty deputies from the government party; Boris then forbade the deportations. In May of the same year the persecutions were fiercely opposed by the Orthodox Church and once again no deportations took place. The protests were backed by organisations representing every section of Bulgarian life from authoritarian, profascist MPs to the trade unions and the illegal communist party. In the light of such strong and united feelings in the nation the king found no difficulty in standing firm against further pressure from the Nazis. The deportations never took place and Bulgaria's fifty thousand Jews survived the war.

The German minister in Sofia acknowledged in August 1943 that the Nazis would not persuade the Bulgarians to deport their Jews. At the end of that month the Jewish question faded into the background even for such a dedicated Nazi as Beckerle. On 15 August King Boris had returned exhausted and greatly depressed from a visit to Hitler. Sources close to the king indicate that there had been a terrible row when Hitler demanded a Bulgarian commitment to the eastern front, but no confirmation of this demand can be found in German documents. Whatever the cause of his dejection Boris hoped to dispel it by climbing Bulgaria's highest peak, Musala. He returned in a worse state and declined rapidly. On 28 August he died aged forty-nine. Mystery has surrounded his death ever since but there is no firm proof that it was due to foul play.

Bulgaria WWII Part llI

On the day before Boris's death a perceptive senior official in the German ministry in Sofia had noted, 'In the eyes of the Bulgarian people the king is less a monarch than a leader. He is a symbol of national unity and his disappearance could . . . lead both to an internal crisis and to external realignments.'

Boris's successor, King Simeon II, was a minor and therefore a regency was formed, though without the constitutionally proper Grand National Assembly to confirm it. The dominant figure in it was Filov, the other members being Boris's brother, Prince Kiril, and a soldier, General Mihov. Filov chose the pliant Dobri Bozhilov as prime minister.

In the summer of 1943 the war was at a critical juncture for Bulgaria as for other powers. In the west Italy was facing collapse and was soon to surrender, whilst in the east the relaxation of German pressure on the Caucasus gave Turkey greater freedom of manoeuvre and made it more likely that it would join the allies. Towards the end of the year the war was brought to Bulgaria itself in the form of allied bombers. There had been some light raids on Sofia and other towns earlier in the war but in November the capital experienced its first heavy bombardment; on 9 January 1944 there was an even larger raid and in March Sofia was subjected to a series of incendiary attacks, culminating in a huge onslaught on 30 March. The raids had been intended to produce social chaos and push Bulgaria towards changing sides. At least in the first objective they were successful; after the January raid many Sofiotes fled in terror and the government had to order civil servants back to their posts.

By this time Bulgaria's urban population was facing privation similar in kind if not in intensity to that endured during the first world war, and for much the same reasons. Food shortages were causing inflation and a flourishing black market where in early 1944 goods were nine times their pre-war price. The shortages were caused by over-enthusiastic requisitioning, by German soldiers sending home more than they should have done, by peasants refusing to hand over to the official procurement agencies produce which they knew would command a much higher price on the black market, by widespread corruption, and by the general dislocation of the distribution system.

The growing plight of the cities together with a general war weariness encouraged the opposition forces. Of these there were two: the legal opposition, consisting of small groups of moderates and rightists from the old parties; and the Fatherland Front (FF). The FF had first been formed in 1941 but had made little progress because few parties were willing to cooperate with the communists who were demanding control of the organisation. In the summer of 1942 a second FF emerged, consisting of communists, zvenari, a social democrat faction, and the left agrarians under Nikola Petkov, son of the premier assassinated in 1907 . The new FF broadcast regularly to Bulgaria from the Soviet-controlled Hristo Botev radio station. As relayed in these broadcasts the FF programme called for absolute neutrality on the part of Bulgaria, the withdrawal of Bulgarian troops from operations against the partisans in Yugoslavia, the removal of the army from royal control, a ban on the export of food to Germany, the guarantee of a decent standard of living for all Bulgarians, the full restoration of civil liberties, and a ban on all fascist organisations. In 1943 a new central committee was established which included Petkov, Kimon Georgiev, a communist and two social democrats. The loyal opposition, however, was still not ready to work with the FF. The democrats refused to work with the communists, and the non-petkovist agrarians could not cooperate with Georgiev and his associates who had been involved in the coup of 1923 . Another weakness of the FF was that, despite its own propaganda, it had little in the way of military muscle, the partisan movement in Bulgaria not assuming any significance until well into the summer of 1944 .

Within the political establishment the feeling that Germany had lost the war and that Bulgaria should therefore seek an accommodation with the western allies had been current since before Boris's death; indeed, Boris himself had shared that view. After his death approaches were made to the Americans in October 1943 but their terms were too harsh: unconditional surrender, the evacuation of all occupied territory, and an allied occupation. The allied raids on Sofia strengthened the desire to escape from the war. In February and March 1944 further approaches were made to the western allies but their terms were unchanged. Filov and Bozhilov continued to believe that the nation would not tolerate the loss of Macedonia and Thrace and that, in any case, there was no possibility of unconditional surrender with German troops still in the country. Bulgaria, said Bozhilov, would join the allies when the allies joined Bulgaria by landing in the Balkans. That illusion was finally dispelled on 6 June 1944 when the allies landed not in the Balkans but in Normandy.

By then Bulgaria had come under increasing pressure from the Soviets. They had refused a Bulgarian request to intercede with the allies for a cessation of the air bombardment, and instead launched a diplomatic offensive in Sofia. Notes from Moscow arrived in the Bulgarian capital on 1 March, 17 April, 26 April and 18 May, insisting that Bulgarian territory cease being used by anti-Soviet forces. The Bulgarians were prepared to make some concessions over the construction of naval vessels in Varna and they also decided to turn down a German request that German troops be withdrawn westwards via the Bulgarian railway system. In April there were further concessions to the Soviets when Sofia accepted in principle their demands that Soviet consulates be opened in Burgas and Ruse´. The consulates were the subject of the next Soviet note, that of 18 May, and this time Moscow threatened the breaking of diplomatic ties if the consulates were not opened, said Filov.

Soviet pressure, backed as it was by the rapid advance of the Red Army through Ukraine, raised the ultimate nightmare of the Bulgarian administration: involvement in the Russo-German war. What the Soviet pressure amounted to was that if Bulgaria did not break with Germany she would suffer Soviet occupation. But if she obeyed the Soviets and broke with Germany she would suffer German occupation; the experience of Hungary in March 1944 proved that beyond reasonable doubt.

Seeing these dangers Bozhilov resigned on 1 June 1944 to be replaced by Ivan Bagryanov, who had been educated in Germany and had served with the German army in the first world war, but who was generally regarded as pro-western. He was anxious to secure an armistice with Britain and the USA and to placate the Soviets before relations with them deteriorated any further. In the meantime a direct break with Germany could not be risked. Beckerle was informed on 18 June that Bulgaria would fulfil all its obligations under the tripartite pact but in order to avoid complications with the Russians the Germans should remove their troops from Varna. The Germans, suggested Sofia, could surely not wish another front to be opened in the Balkans by the Soviets, or by the Turks who were now pouring armour into Turkish Thrace. This was an argument which struck home and on 13 July the Germans signified their willingness to remove their steamers and hydroplanes from Varna to make it easier for Bulgaria to pursue 'a policy of peace, friendship and loyalty vis-á-vis the Soviet Union'.

As an indication of his goodwill to the allies, on 17 August Bagryanov declared strict neutrality, granted an amnesty to all political prisoners, repudiated the policies of his predecessors, and repealed all anti-Jewish legislation. It was too late. On 20 August the Red Army crossed into Romania and three days later King Michael locked Marshal Antonescu in a safe containing the royal stamp collection and changed sides. At a stroke the Russians were on the lower Danube and astride Bulgaria's northern frontier.

The pressures from the Soviets were now overwhelming and the Bulgarian government had to bend to them. On 25 August Sofia demanded the evacuation of all German troops and the following day the Bulgarian armies were ordered to disarm German forces arriving from the Dobrudja; there was little resistance and by 7 September over 14 ,000 German personnel had been interned in Bulgaria. The Soviets were not to be placated. On 30 August the Kremlin announced that it would no longer respect Bulgarian neutrality. Bagryanov was defeated and resigned to make way for Konstantin Muraviev, an agrarian.

Muraviev knew that he had to make the final concession to Moscow. On 5 September, therefore, whilst German troops in Bulgaria were still being disarmed, the Bulgarian cabinet decided to break off diplomatic relations with Berlin, though the war minister successfully argued for a delay of seventy-two hours to enable him to bring Bulgarian forces back from the occupied areas. At around 15 .00 hours on 7 September the last German vehicles crossed the border and three hours later Bulgaria declared war on Germany with effect from 18.00 hours on 8 September. But by then the Soviet Union had declared war on Bulgaria which for a few chaotic hours was therefore at war with all the major belligerents of the second world war except Japan.

On the same day, 8 September, Soviet troops crossed the Danube and entered Bulgaria to a wildly enthusiastic welcome. Their arrival greatly encouraged the FF, whose partisan units had grown considerably in the chaotic summer months, as had their support amongst the population as a whole, particularly the intelligentsia. On 4 September a series of strikes had been staged to put pressure on Muraviev to break with Germany, and when he did so on the following day there were massive desertions from the army to the partisans. But, contrary to the post-1944 communist school of history, the action which brought the FF to power on 9 September was not carried out by partisans but by units of the army loyal to the war minister Marinov. He it was who, with those practised coupsters Georgiev and Velchev, arranged for the door of the war ministry to be unlocked so that the rebels could take this key point in the city. With no resistance the Muraviev government was deposed within a few hours and a new administration formed by the FF. The new cabinet, which was led by Kimon Georgiev, consisted of five zvenari, four agrarians, three social democrats and four communists. The communists held the key ministries of the interior and justice.

In October, after Marshal Tito had withdrawn his prohibition on Bulgarian troops entering Yugoslav territory, Bulgaria continued fighting, this time on the allied side. Its army joined with Marshal Tolbukhin's Third Ukrainian Front and fought with that army through Hungary and into Austria. Thirty-two thousand Bulgarians died in this campaign.

Sea Gladiator at Malta

When it debuted, the Gladiator represented the culmination of three decades of biplane evolution. However, it was a tactical anachronism once the newer, more capable monoplanes began to arrive. By 1939 most Gladiators had been supplanted by infinitely better Hawker Hurricanes and Supermarine Spitfires. However, several were actively engaged in the early days of World War II and gained a public reputation rivaling another biplane holdover, the Fairey Swordfish. Gladiators performed well in Norway by operating off of frozen lakes. They also gained a measure of immortality when four Royal Navy machines (three of them named Faith, Hope, and Charity) briefly defended Malta against the Italian Regia Aeronautica (Italian air force) in June 1940.

Thirty-eight Gladiator Mk lIs were fitted with arrester hooks and transferred to the Fleet Air Arm in December 1938, these being an interim replacement for Hawker Nimrods and Ospreys until the delivery of 60 fully-navalised Sea Gladiator fighters. These latter aircraft had an arrester hook, catapult points and a ventral dinghy stowage fairing.

Gladiator production totalled 746, with orders from Belgium, China, Eire, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden covering 147 Gladiator Mk Is and 18 Mk ils. Gladiators were first issued in February 1937 to No. 72 Squadron at Church Fenton, and although most of the squadrons that received the type had been re-equipped with Hawker Hurricanes or Supermarine Spitfires by September 1939, some of their aircraft had been reissued to home-based auxiliary units, four of which were fully operational when war broke out. Two of them, Nos 607 and 615 Squadrons, were posted to France in November 1939 as part of the Advanced Air Striking Force. No. 263 Squadron, together with No. 804 Squadron, Fleet Air Arm, participated in the Norwegian campaign; and the handful of aircraft of Hal Far Fighter Flight and of No. 261 Squadron, took part in the defence of Malta between April and June 1940. In the Middle East Gladiators said service during the war with Nos 6, 33, 80, 94,112 and 127 Squadrons and with No. 3 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force. In addition to No. 804 Squadron, Fleet Air Arm Sea Gladiator units included Nos. 769. 801, 802. 805, 813 and 855 Squadrons. After withdrawal from front-line units, the Gladiator continued in RAF use for communications, liaison and meteorological reconnaissance until 1944.

Israeli Military

Orde Wingate

A Haganah poster from the 1940s.

Israel’s armed forces have evolved from prestate vigilante bands to the paramount strike force in the Middle East. In 1908 Jewish settlers formed an ad hoc society of armed sentinels, called Ha-Shomer, or Guardsmen, to replace mercenary, untrustworthy hired Arab watchmen in thwarting robbery, cattle-rustling, and poaching. The Jewish farm laborers on the settlements (the Shomrim would not protect farms with an Arab or mixed workforce) comprised a reserve to assist the patrol cadres, who were equipped with a motley collection of obsolescent firearms. Another armed band, the Jaffa Group, provided security for the Jews of that community and Tel Aviv.

These organizations kept a low profile during World War I, as the Turks (and Palestine) were formally allied with Germany, and Jewish loyalties were suspect. Nevertheless, the Palestine-based spy ring NILI—an acronym for the Hebrew verse Netzah Yisrael Lo Yeshaker (The strength of Israel will not lie [1 Sam. 15:29]), which served as its password—comprised of a former Zionist youth corps, worked for British interests, while other Palestinian Jewish adolescents were conscripted into the Turkish army. Zionists expelled from Palestine by the Turks formed the Zionist Mule Corps, providing logistic support in the Gallipoli Campaign. Veterans of the Mule Corps created the nucleus of new all-Zionist battalions, the British 38th and 39th King’s Fusiliers, which met the test of fire in Allenby’s Palestine Campaign, 1917–1918.

All of these ventures provided valuable military experience for a proficient cadre, which returned to postwar Palestine, now under the British Mandate, whereby a Jewish homeland was to be established alongside an Arab nation. The British high commissioner encouraged the Zionist administration in Palestine to set up an executive framework under the auspices of the formally sanctioned Jewish Agency for Palestine. Independent of but allied to these was the Histadrut, nominally a populist labor society, but in reality the linchpin of Zionist industrialization and agricultural expansion in Palestine.

Established by the labor mainstream, Histadrut, after the murderous Arab riots in 1920, set up the Hagganah (self-defense force), which rapidly became a country-wide Jewish army as Jewish immigration swelled to a flood upon the rise of Hitler, and Palestinian Arab resistance hardened in response. Armed defense organizations were illegal under the mandate, so Hagganah had to organize, train, and procure weapons covertly. The organization even managed to establish a backyard armaments industry producing bullets and crude submachine guns and mortars.

After the Arab riots of 1929, Hagganah was transferred from the authority of Histadrut to the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency, which had formerly spurned any connection with outlawed clandestine groups. This progression entailed splitting Hagganah high command into left and right political factions. Although illegal, every Jewish town and neighborhood in Palestine was affiliated with a district command of Hagganah. Elements of the conservative wing split from the labor-left mainstream and allied themselves with Zeev Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Party, the foundation of today’s Likud, thereby forming the renegade National Military Party, or Etzel (alternately, Irgun).The latter, at most consisting of 250 firebrands, were ruthless in their attacks on Arabs, while Hagganah counseled restraint so as to forestall unwelcome British attention.

The Palestinian Arab Revolt of 1936–1939, largely directed at the British Mandatory government, brought a measure of unusual cooperation between the colonial counterterrorism effort and specially constituted Jewish Supernumerary Police, developing commando expertise under the able direction of the New Testament Zionist Orde Wingate. In 1938 and 1939, Hagganah benefited by the appointment of a nonpartisan nationwide commander and the establishment of a professional military general staff to coordinate the formerly diversified elements.

During World War II, Hagganah and segments of the Irgun collaborated with the British authorities in fighting the Nazi menace; however, a renegade sector of the Irgun, Lehi, informally the Stern Gang, rashly attacked British and Arab civilians. (The British high commissioner for Egypt was assassinated by Jewish terrorists in 1944.) Also during the war, the left wing of the Hagganah formed an elite strike force, or Palmach, sanctioned because it would embody a potential guerrilla resistance to Rommel’s advancing Afrika Corps. In addition, 30,000 Palestinian Jews gained invaluable experience serving with the British armed forces, including a Jewish Brigade Group. Hagganah meanwhile developed a field corps, a medical service, a signals corps, an arms industry, and an intelligence section, the last assisting illegal immigration of Holocaust refugees. Intelligence became paramount in the postwar years when Hagganah conducted an effective insurgency campaign against British military and police logistics, while the Irgun and Stern groups focused on terrorizing British individuals.

During the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, Israeli political leader David Ben-Gurion remodeled Hagganah as the national defense force of the newborn state. Early in the war, Irgun was forcefully integrated into the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), the new designation for the armed forces of Israel. In the course of desperate fighting, the patchwork geographical structure of company-sized lots amalgamated into battalions, then regiments, which nonetheless retained their regional identification. Makeshift aviation and naval assets were likewise “born in battle” and integrated into the whole. The IDF would win every one of its subsequent conflicts against its hostile Arab neighbors, and such success would be studied in some detail by military academies around the world (with the conspicuous exception of Arab military academies). But the reason for the IDF success, aside from the numerous Arab military deficiencies (lack of coordination, unprofessional officers, untrained troops, etc.), came down to a simple point: Israel had no alternative to victory. Defeat meant literal death.

References and further reading: Allon,Yigal. The Making of Israel’s Army. New York: Universe Books, 1971. Dupuy, Trevor N. Elusive Victory: The Arab-Israeli Wars, 1947–1974. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–1999. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. Schiff, Zeev. A History of the Israeli Army (1870–1974). San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1974. Van Creveld,Martin. The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force. New York: Public Affairs, 1998.

British Newspaper Reports on Syria 1941

The Syria-Lebanon campaign, also known as Operation Exporter, was the Allied invasion of Vichy French-controlled Syria and Lebanon, in June-July 1941, during World War II.

Time Magazine referred to the fighting as a "mixed show", while it was taking place, and the campaign remains little known, even in the countries that took part. There is evidence that Allied censors acted to suppress or reduce reportage of the fierce fighting. Senior Allied commanders and/or politicians believed that knowledge of fighting against French forces could have a negative effect on public opinion in Allied countries.

Mussolini attacks Greece

Greece While British troops seized Keren and Massawa in East Africa, in the spring of 1941 the bloody Grecian campaign ended in Europe.

Mussolini attacked Greece on the eighteenth anniversary of the March on Rome, October 28, 1940. He authorized the war because Greece, in spite of its neutrality, allowed the Royal Navy to refuel in its national waters. Second, after the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939, Stalin was free to move against Romania by occupying Bessarabia (Moldova). In late summer 1940, Moscow presented Bucharest with an ultimatum. Romania had little choice but to accept it. Although this was not perceived as a problem when Hitler agreed to the pact in 1939, the speed of conquest pushed up his war schedule and it became apparent that with the invasion of the Soviet Union on the horizon, the Soviet air force could now reach the Ploesti oil fields within thirty minutes from their bases in Bessarabia and Germany acquired practically all of its oil from Romania.

In order to secure Romania, Hitler sent a German military mission to Bucharest. Mussolini was informed of this on October 12, 1940. He reacted badly. According to existing Italian-German agreements, after the war, Romania and the Balkans were to be in the Italian zone. If the Germans entered Romania, Italy needed to consolidate its position, and the best way was to secure control of the Black Sea egress by seizing Greece. Greece could be easily attacked from Albania; and Mussolini ordered his chiefs of staff to plan accordingly.

Meeting on October 17, 1940, the Regio Esercito told Badoglio, chief of the general staff, that the lack of railways and the poor road system in Albania required 500 trucks to keep materials moving from the ports and 1,250 more trucks to supply the army in the interior. Moreover, Italian troops in Albania were outnumbered in case they had to act against the whole Greek army. Badoglio asked the Regia Marina for support. Despite optimistic reports coming from Albania about the enthusiastic Greek welcome to the Italian invaders, Admiral Cavagnari said that the lack of good ports on Greek and Albanian shores in the Adriatic created a logistical nightmare. Badoglio asked the Regia Aeronautica to provide air transport. General Pricolo declared that he had sufficient aircraft to fight, but none capable of transporting supplies. Badoglio cut off the discussion and arguments, stating, “The Duce has judged and declared that for him the occupation of Greece is of major importance. So no more discussion.”

On October 28, 1940, 105,000 Italians of the XXV and XXVI Corps and the “Littoral Group” crossed the Greek frontier. Within two weeks their advance was stopped by a lack of supplies; and the Greeks counterattacked. The Italian front collapsed. Italy had the Eleventh and Ninth Armies in Albania. They had nine divisions and could receive no more than two additional divisions per month because of the poor capacity of the Albanian ports. These reinforcements could do no more than replace the casualties taken, but not increase overall Italian strength. The Greek army, however, deployed no fewer than thirteen divisions, three brigades; and a task force. Moreover, Greek divisions had more soldiers than Italian divisions. Finally, when the Greek government realized it did not have to fear Bulgarian or Turkish intervention, it concentrated the entire army against the Italian invasion. Shortly thereafter, a British Expeditionary Force landed in Greece from North Africa. Overwhelmed by enemies, and not adequately supplied because of logistical problems, the Italian troops fought a terrible campaign. The terrain added further difficulties to Italian operations. Albania and northern Greece have mountain chains running from north to south. The front ran from west to east, perpendicularly cut by the mountains. Due to the lack of personnel, the Regio Esercito concentrated its divisions in the valleys to stop Greek attacks on the valley floors, along the roads. The Greeks, however, attacked along the ridgelines and prevailed on the local small garrisons. If the Italians garrisoned the ridges, the Greeks concentrated troops in the valleys and smashed the front.

By December the Italian Army had been ejected from Greece and lost one-third of Albania, too. As soon as reinforcements landed in Durazzo or Valona, troops were sent here and there to fill new gaps in the line, even if they were only company or platoon strength. Complete regiments were dismembered after landing; and colonels simply did not know where army headquarters had sent their soldiers. In horrible conditions, lacking uniforms, food, and ordnance, Italian troops were able to stop the Greeks only during the Christmas period. Between January 26 and February 12, 1941, the situation improved. The Greeks and Italians reached a stalemate. A first Italian counteroffensive on March 9 ended with no result after five days. The strategic situation in the Balkans, however, was changing. Bulgaria and Yugoslavia joined the German-Italian alliance when, on March 27, a British-supported plot upset the philo-Axis Yugoslavian government. This opened a new front to the rear of the Italian troops in Albania and rendered Hitler furious. On March 27, Hitler ordered his generals to attack Yugoslavia. On April 6, German troops entered northeastern Greece, too. The invasion went smoothly, because the Greek army was concentrated against the Italians. In only fifteen days the Germans defeated both the British and Greek forces and reached the rear area of the Greek army fighting the Italians. The Italians attacked on April 15 and were able to reach the old Albanian-Greek border before the end of operations.

On April 21 the war in Greece was over. Mussolini’s criminal improvidence cost the Regio Esercito 13,755 dead, 25,067 missing in action, 50,784 wounded, 13,368 frostbitten, and 52,108 ill. Total casualties were 155,172 men, the strength of an army. On June 25, after seizing Crete, too—with a little Italian support from the Dodecanese—the Germans left the Italians in command of occupied Greece. It lasted until September 8, 1943.