After Germany's defeat in Stalingrad in early 1943, the war, for them,
took a turn for the worse. The sweeping victories Hitler had become used to were no more—well,
for the most part. In the Aegean Sea, one late-1943 campaign went particularly well
for the Germans. Against superior numbers, they prevailed, dealing the defending Allied force,
which included thousands of Italians, a defeat as tragic as the one the British experienced
in Singapore the year before. In this video, we delve into the Battle of Leros, part of the
larger Dodecanese campaign and one of Germany's last major victories in the Second World War.
Seizing them from the Turks, the Italians had been in control of the Dodecanese islands since 1911.
The largest of the islands is Rhodes. The Italians turned this into a major airbase.
Rhodes's harbour, however, was too small for their navy, so they looked to the island of
Leros instead, turning the deep-water bay of Lakki into a heavily fortified naval base.
In February 1941, the British launched an offensive on the Italian-held islands, beginning
on the island of Kastelorizo and codenamed Operation Abstention. It did not go well.
Underestimating the Italian defence, the Brits were thrown back into the sea.
For now, they would lick their wounds and focus on other theatres of the war.
After the Allies defeated the Axis in North Africa, British PM Churchill now felt that
he could redirect some of his attention to the Aegean Sea. Taking the Dodecanese and Crete,
he could open a path through Turkey into the USSR, which could come in handy in Britain’s post-World
War II operations. He might also have been able to drag Turkey into the war, on Britain’s side. The
Americans weren't really interested in Churchill's Aegean ambitions, however. They were too busy with
the Italian campaign. If Churchill wanted to hit the Dodecanese islands, he'd have to do it alone.
If an Italian surrender hadn't seemed inevitable at this stage of the war,
Churchill may have abandoned his plans. But on the 3rd of September 1943, Italy signed the armistice,
giving Churchill his window. On the 8th, after the armistice had become public, a British
detachment hit Kastelorizo, and the Italians stationed there surrendered to this force.
This was a step in the right direction for Churchill, but Ulrich Kleemann, a German
generalleutnant stationed on Rhodes, wasn't going to lie down and let Churchill walk all over him.
Anticipating that the 40,000 Italian troops garrisoned on Rhodes would surrender to,
and then fight for, the Allies, he struck first, attacking with a force of 6,000 to 8,000 men
and taking 30,000 Italian prisoners. With this, Rhodes and its airbases were lost to Churchill.
There were other islands, though, and Churchill wasn't yet ready to give up on his Aegean dream.
Throughout September, he seized the islands of Kos (or some say Kosm), Kalymnos, Samos, Leros,
Symi, and Astypalaia, and was feeling pretty chuffed about it. Little did he know that Hitler
had sicced Generalleutnant Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller on him. On the 23rd of September,
Müller began preparations for invasions of Kos and Leros from where he was garrisoned on Crete.
First, making use of the 362 aircraft he had access to in the Aegean,
Müller atomised Kos's only airfield, further denying Churchill air support.
On the 3rd of October, the Germans invaded the island from the beaches and the sky,
taking some 1,400 British and 3,150 Italians prisoner. The survivors withdrew, and then
Müller massacred some 100 Italian officers whom he considered traitors. With that out of the way,
he set his sights on Leros, and Churchill started to sweat.
Defending Leros were, initially, some 7,600 Italians under Captain Luigi Mascherpa.
Over 6,700 of them were naval personnel,
while one infantry battalion and two heavy machine gun companies composed much of the remaining 900.
All in all, just 1,000 of the Italians were actual front-line troops. Later, reinforcements
from Rhodes and Alimia raised the number of Italians on Leros to around 8,300. In the water,
the Italians possessed a destroyer flotilla, a torpedo-boat flotilla, a minesweeper flotilla,
and some smaller naval units, which featured two minelayers and three landing craft.
The number of British on the island would reach over 3,500 throughout the Battle of Leros.
Command fell at first to British Major-General Frank Brittorous and then, on the 5th of November,
to Brigadier Robert Tilney. In the sky, their principal defensive units were 74 Squadron RAF
and 7 Squadron of the South African Air Force, supported by bomber units and other non-fighter
units flying out of the Middle East and Cyprus. This amounted to 260 aircraft, compared with
Müller's 360. Leros's 13 coastal batteries would be of some use, but most were poorly protected.
On Müller's end, he brought the German 22nd Infantry Division, a Fallschirmjäger division, and
a Brandenburg amphibious company to bear, and he could make use of the air bases on Rhodes. Still,
this amounted to just 2,800 soldiers. His invasion force gathered on Kos and Kalymnos in preparation
for what was called Operation Leopard, but Müller needed to soften Leros before his men could land.
On the 26th of September, he pummelled the island not with bombs but propaganda leaflets,
causing unrest among the defenders. Then the real bombs fell, with Junkers Ju 88s sinking a
British destroyer, the Italian torpedo-boat MAS 534, and a Greek destroyer inside the harbour.
Müller also bombed the naval base, five fuel depots, and some industrial targets. The
following day, Müller destroyed Leros's air base, further limiting the defenders' air potential.
The bombing went on like this throughout the rest of September,
all of October, and some of November. October saw the demise of the Italians' one destroyer,
Euro, and many other naval vessels. Leros's anti-air batteries exhausted
much of their ammunition trying to blast the Luftwaffe out of the sky,
with some luck. If that wasn't enough, batteries from German-held Kalimnos fired on Leros too.
British and Italian submarines brought supplies and reinforcements to Leros via submarines, but
they were far from enough. The British destroyers HMS Eclipse and HMS Petard tried to deliver some
550 British reinforcements in October but ran into mines on the night of the 24th and sunk,
taking some 250 men to the depths with them. The remaining 300 reached Leros by the 30th.
From then until the 7th of November, things were relatively quiet. But on the 7th,
Müller came back in full force, ordering over 40 raids with 187 bombers over the next five days,
further depleting the defenders' ammo supplies and disrupting their communication lines. When
those five days were up, the British and Italians were looking more than a little worse for wear.
To make matters worse, it was now Tilney's way or the highway.
He refused to let the Italians take command of their own men, which obviously caused tension
between him and Captain Mascherpa. Not exactly a recipe for success.
On the 12th, Müller's invasion fleet touched sand. Uncertain if the ships
were German or British because their communication lines had been destroyed,
the defenders didn't contest the landing on the island's northeast coast until it was too late.
Closer to the town of Leros, the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Irish Fusiliers held the Germans off
for a while but ultimately couldn’t stop them. Landings elsewhere on the island went, overall,
pretty well for Müller. Now that he had his bridgeheads, he just needed to close the noose.
A key component of this next stage of Müller's plan
was the Brandenburg company. But things did not go so well for these 600 men.
As a unit of Junkers 52s tried to deliver them via parachute over Mount Rachi,
Leros's AA batteries tore them apart, killing roughly 300 of them. Those Brandenburgers who
survived the batteries took heavy casualties as they fought for control of them.
On the 13th and 14th, the two sides played a bloody game of tug-of-war for control of
the AA batteries all over the island. Without them, the defenders could do virtually nothing
to stop the Germans in the air. On the 14th, the Germans advanced on the town of Leros,
while in the harbour, two British destroyers disgorged some 500 British reinforcements.
At about the same time, a further three British destroyers shelled the Germans on Leros and sunk
some of their landing vessels. But that did not indicate a turn of the tide—far from it.
In the night of the 15th, the Germans entered the town and attacked its castle.
The Italians defending the town asked Tilney if they could take charge
of the defence. But even with defeat on the horizon, he refused to relinquish control.
Only the next day did Tilney change up his tactics—by
surrendering. His men followed suit, but not all of the Italians were able to.
Cut off from Tilney and their allies, some of them kept fighting through to the 17th.
Lacking leadership, communication, and air support, the defence was doomed from
the start. At the end of the day, some 3,200 British and 5,350 Italians were taken as POWs.
A further 600 British were killed, and a further 250 Italians were declared dead or missing.
With this defeat, Churchill's Aegean dream was shattered.
The British report on the Dodecanese campaign read as follows:
We failed because we were unable to establish airfields in the area of operations. The enemy's
command of the air enabled him so to limit the operations and impair the efficiency of land,
sea and air forces. [I]t is doubtful if Leros could have been held indefinitely
without our embarking on a major operation for which no forces were available."
But had you heard of the Battle of Leros before today? Why do you think it was so disastrous for
the British and Italians? Do you know anything about it that we didn't cover in this video?
Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.