The concise encyclopedia of world war II 2 volumes (greenwood encyclopedias of modern world wars) ( PDFDrive ) 195

Balkan Pact (1933)

but on a much larger scale. German intervention in Yugoslavia now broke into the
Greek rear, forcing the Greeks to halt their assault on Italian positions and try to
fall back out of Albania as well. However, hesitation to withdraw allowed the Germans to cut off an entire Greek Army, dividing it from British and Commonwealth
forces. The British decided to evacuate from beaches at Thermopylae and Athens
on April 21. The cut-off Greek army mutinied and surrendered to the Germans
later that day. The British evacuation began on April 24, with heavy fighting continuing along a contracted perimeter. Although most Western Allied troops got
out of Greece, the evacuation was no second Dunkirk: it was another bitter and
serious British defeat. It was also the third time in just over a year that the British
Army was thrown off the continent by the Wehrmacht. With minimal RAF air
cover in the area, the Luftwaffe sank several troopships carrying evacuees to Crete
or Egypt. A German airborne operation then cut off some troops at Corinth, so
that a second evacuation had to be undertaken under heavy shelling and Luftwaffe
attack. The total removed from Greece by April 30 was nearly 51,000. About 7,000
British troops were left ashore and forced to surrender. Others took to the mountains individually or in small groups. Some were later killed or captured, but a few
eventually made it back to their units with the help of Greek partisans. The Greeks
lost nearly 13,500 killed in the Balkan campaign and over 42,000 wounded. Just
under 10,000 Greek soldiers left with the British for Crete, where they fought the
Germans again before evacuating from that island to Egypt.
BALKAN PACT (1933) In 1933 King Alexander of Yugoslavia tried to arrange an accommodation with Bulgaria, Greece, Rumania, and Turkey. Bulgaria
coveted too much of Macedonia to agree, but the other Balkan states formed
an entente that lasted until October 1940, when it was broken by the Italian
invasion of Greece. Whatever remained of the initiative was destroyed by Adolf
Hitler’s aggressive Balkan diplomacy and invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia in
April 1941.
BALLOONS All types of balloons were used in World War II: blimps, barrage
balloons, and Japanese high altitude Fugos. Barrage balloons were the most common. These large, unmanned, low-floating gas bags were tethered to steel cables
tied to ships or pegged near potential ground targets. Their function was passive defense: to deter and defend from low-flying bombing or strafing runs by
threatening collision with heavy cables. British barrage balloons were the most
numerous. They killed a handful of German aircraft that attacked through them,

only to have wings sheered off. They also knocked out a fair number of V-1 rockets. The Germans used barrage balloons extensively. All parties in Europe increasingly employed young women in balloon crews as they felt shortages of men taken
into the armed forces. The U.S. Navy used barrage balloons in the Pacific from
late 1943, but abandoned them when it concluded that balloons improved target
spotting by the radar-poor Japanese and hence drew the enemy toward the target
rather than protecting it. The Western Allies flew hundreds of barrage balloons

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