Dodecanese campaign

The Dodecanese campaign was the fighting for the Italian islands in the eastern Aegean Sea that broke out after Italy’s surrender was announced on 8 September 1943 and lasted until 22 November. The British, urged on by Winston Churchill, tried to take the Dodecanese archipelago from Germany’s former ally and turn it into a base for operations in the Balkans and a bargaining chip in their dealings with Turkey. The Germans forestalled them on Rhodes and then – enjoying decisive superiority in the air over the area – recaptured Kos and Leros in turn. It was one of the last clear-cut British defeats of the war and one of the last German victories.

Name and dates

English-language literature speaks of the Dodecanese campaign, Italian of the campagna del Dodecaneso. It comprises several separate engagements with names of their own: the fighting on Rhodes on 9–11 September, the Battle of Kos on 3–4 October (German codename Unternehmen Eisbär, “Polar Bear”) and the Battle of Leros on 12–16 November (an operation first planned as Leopard and carried out as Taifun). The British plan to seize the islands was codenamed Accolade.

The starting date is 8 September 1943, when the Armistice of Cassibile was announced and the Italian garrisons on the islands suddenly found themselves caught between the Germans and the Allies; on the same day or within the next two days a British detachment occupied Megisti, or Kastellorizo, the easternmost islet of the archipelago. The end date is taken to be 22 November, when the Italian garrison of Samos surrendered. The Germans occupied the smaller islands – Patmos, Fournoi and Ikaria – on 18 November, and the last British troops were taken off Kastellorizo on 28 November, although the islet itself remained in Allied hands.

Background

The Dodecanese – a dozen or so islands off the coast of Asia Minor, the largest of them Rhodes – had belonged to Italy since the war with Turkey in 1912, a position confirmed by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. Mussolini built up airfields on Rhodes and, on Leros, a naval base in the harbour of Portolago (today Lakki), which propaganda called the “Corregidor of the Mediterranean”. In practice the islands gave Italy little in the war, and supplying them became a burden. The British had already once tried to gain a foothold here: in February 1941 their landing on Kastellorizo was quickly repulsed by the Italians.

Since 1940 Churchill had wanted to bring Turkey into the war. Turkish participation would open the way into the Balkans, threaten Romanian oil and cut Germany’s routes across the Black Sea. Control of the Dodecanese, lying right off the Turkish coast, was to be the first step. The Americans were reluctant: they regarded the Aegean as a sideshow that would draw forces away from Italy and from the invasion of France, and at the Quebec Conference in August 1943 they refused to agree to any major undertaking in the region.

Planning for Operation Accolade was entrusted to Middle East Command in Cairo, headed by General Henry Maitland Wilson. The main objective was Rhodes with its three airfields. The problem was the same from the outset: the nearest British airfields were on Cyprus and in Cyrenaica, several hundred kilometres from the islands, beyond the range of single-engined fighters. The Germans, meanwhile, had airfields on Crete, on Karpathos and in Greece. As the Salerno landing (Operation Avalanche) drew near in August 1943, General Dwight Eisenhower withdrew the promised ships, transport aircraft and long-range P-38 Lightning fighters. By the end of August it was clear that British forces alone could carry out at most an unopposed landing. Wilson was therefore instructed to act “opportunistically”: to exploit the collapse of Italy if a chance arose.

The Germans had been preparing for just such a situation for months. After the fall of Mussolini on 25 July the Wehrmacht high command combined its plans for taking over Italy and the Italian occupation zones in the Balkans into Operation Achse, and German division after division was entering Italy. In Greece and the islands the commander was Colonel General Alexander Löhr, at the head of Army Group E from August. On Rhodes, from the beginning of 1943, Generalleutnant Ulrich Kleemann’s Sturm-Division Rhodos had been building up – a motorised division of 6,000–7,000 men with tanks and assault guns. Crete was held by Generalleutnant Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller’s 22nd (Air Landing) Infantry Division.

There were far more Italians on the islands. The Governor of the Aegean Islands and commander of the armed forces was Admiral Inigo Campioni; on Rhodes alone he had, by various counts, 34,000–40,000 men, including General Michele Scaroina’s 50th Infantry Division Regina. These garrisons, however, were poorly armed, dispersed and – as throughout Italy – wholly unprepared for the news of the armistice.

Course: the loss of Rhodes (8–11 September)

News of the armistice arrived on the evening of 8 September. The British had only small-scale undertakings ready: detachments of the Special Boat Service and the Long Range Desert Group were to sail to the islands, persuade the Italian garrisons to cooperate and reconnoitre the ground. Within a few days Kastellorizo was occupied without a fight, and on the night of 9–10 September three men parachuted onto Rhodes: Major George Jellicoe, son of the First World War admiral, Major Julian Dolbey and a wireless operator. Their task was to persuade Campioni to resist the Germans until the British 234th Infantry Brigade arrived.

By then, however, it was too late. Kleemann had struck as early as 9 September, before the Italians could get organised. The Germans seized the airfields, surrounded the headquarters and captured General Scaroina, whom they forced to order his division to surrender. In some places the Italians fought effectively, and their batteries shelled German troops at Maritsa airfield, but the command was paralysed by the lack of orders from Italy. Jellicoe was told by Campioni that the island could be held only if the British landed within a few days – and they could send their first troops after a week at the earliest. On 11 September Campioni accepted the German terms and surrendered. Several tens of thousands of Italian soldiers were taken prisoner by a few thousand Germans. Jellicoe managed to get off the island.

Kleemann then forced Campioni to issue a surrender order to the garrison of Karpathos; the admiral did not issue a similar order for Kos and Leros. By 19 September the Germans had occupied Karpathos, Kasos and the Italian-held islands in the Cyclades and the Sporades. The loss of Rhodes killed Accolade in its original form: without that island’s three airfields, the entire subsequent campaign depended on a single airfield on Kos.

Course: the British on the islands (13 September – 2 October)

Even so, the British decided to occupy the remaining islands. On 13–14 September Major David Sutherland’s SBS detachment reached Kos and came to an understanding with the Italian commander, Colonel Felice Leggio. On 14 September Spitfire fighters of No. 7 Squadron of the South African Air Force landed at the airfield at Antimachia, and on the night of 14–15 September a company of the 11th Parachute Battalion was dropped there. From 16 September the 1st Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry, anti-aircraft artillery and airfield personnel were flown in by transport aircraft. By the end of September there were about 1,500 British troops on Kos, only around 680 of them infantry, and about 3,500 Italians of the Regina Division’s 10th Infantry Regiment.

From 17 September companies of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Irish Fusiliers, arrived on Leros aboard destroyers, and on 20 September the commander of the 234th Brigade, Major General Francis Brittorous, arrived. The Italians there – mainly sailors manning the batteries and the base – numbered between 7,500 and 8,500 according to various sources, under Captain Luigi Mascherpa, who soon asked to be promoted to rear admiral so as not to be outranked by the British officer, and was granted it. Brittorous’s proclamation placing all Italian authorities under his command caused friction from the start. Small British detachments and the Greek Sacred Band (Ieros Lochos) also occupied Samos, and SBS and LRDG patrols occupied Kalymnos, Symi, Astypalaia and other islets. Caiques carrying supplies sailed through neutral Turkish waters.

Course: the Luftwaffe offensive and the fall of Kos (18 September – 4 October)

The Germans quickly realised that the key was Antimachia – the only Allied airfield in the area. From 18 September Junkers Ju 88 bombers and Bf 109 fighters attacked it daily, and the Luftwaffe command brought reinforcements into the Aegean, including from France; according to historians’ studies, by 1 October it had some 360 serviceable aircraft there. The stony ground made it impossible to dig in, and the Italian anti-aircraft defences were negligible. By 26 September the South African squadron had only four serviceable Spitfires left; that day the British No. 74 Squadron was sent to Kos, but losses continued to mount. The same day Ju 88s sank the Greek destroyer Vasilissa Olga and the British HMS Intrepid in Lakki harbour on Leros – from then on Allied warships ventured deep into the Aegean only at night.

On 23 September Müller’s division on Crete was assigned to attack Kos and Leros. Operation Eisbär began at dawn on 3 October. A convoy of several transports, landing barges and escorts, which the Allies had failed to intercept, put troops ashore in Marmari Bay and near Tigaki on the north coast and in Kamari Bay in the south-west, while paratroopers, including a company of the Brandenburg Regiment, landed near the airfield. By midday there were some 1,200–1,500 Germans on the island with artillery and armoured cars, and by evening – according to British estimates – as many as several thousand. Ju 87 dive-bombers destroyed one position after another. Antimachia fell in the afternoon, and by evening the defenders had been pushed back towards the town of Kos.

On the night of 3–4 October the British tried to withdraw into the hills; on 4 October their resistance ceased. A total of 1,388 British and 3,145 Italian soldiers were taken prisoner. Over the following nights SBS men took about a hundred British soldiers off the island by boat.

A war crime followed soon afterwards. On Müller’s orders, Italian officers who had fought against the Germans were deemed traitors and shot between 4 and 7 October. Colonel Leggio was among those killed. The figures given by historians range from about 90 to 103 murdered (according to Italian findings, 103 of the 148 officers taken prisoner were shot). The remains of 66 of them were found in mass graves in February 1945.

The loss of Kos deprived the British of their last airfield in the area and called into question the point of holding Leros. Churchill pressed Roosevelt and Eisenhower to lend forces for the capture of Rhodes, but on 9 October the Allied commanders in the Mediterranean decided that they could spare nothing from the Italian campaign; help was limited to a few days’ support from American bombers and P-38 fighters. Wilson nevertheless decided to hold Leros and Samos.

Course: the war at sea and in the air (October – November)

After the fall of Kos the Italian garrison of nearby Kalymnos surrendered, giving the Germans a springboard for an attack on Leros, a few kilometres away. The landing on Leros, originally planned for 9 October, was delayed by a Royal Navy success: on 7 October British cruisers and destroyers smashed a German convoy bound for Kos, sinking a transport and most of the heavy landing barges. The Germans needed several weeks to bring new vessels from Europe by rail. They dispersed and camouflaged their light barges on various Aegean islands, so that Allied aircraft and destroyers, despite numerous night sweeps and bombardments of harbours, failed to destroy them.

The fleet paid the price. By day German aircraft dominated the Aegean, and Allied warships had to withdraw before dawn beyond their reach, under the cover of fighters from Cyprus and Africa. On 9 October Ju 87s sank the destroyer HMS Panther and badly damaged the anti-aircraft cruiser HMS Carlisle, which was never repaired. On the night of 22–24 October the destroyers HMS Hurworth and HMS Eclipse (the latter carrying troops bound for Leros) were sunk in a German minefield off Kalymnos, and the Greek Adrias lost her bow but reached the Turkish coast. The cruisers Penelope, Sirius and Aurora were also damaged. In November the Luftwaffe used Henschel Hs 293 guided missiles, launched from Dornier Do 217s, for the first time in these waters: on 11 November they damaged the destroyer Rockwood, and on 13 November they sank HMS Dulverton. The Polish destroyer ORP Krakowiak also took part in the night operations against German-held harbours, shelling Kalymnos on the night of 10–11 November. Supplies for Leros were brought in at night by destroyers, caiques and submarines.

The war at sea also claimed the lives of Italian prisoners, whom the Germans shipped off the islands in overcrowded vessels. On the night of 22–23 September HMS Eclipse sank the steamer Gaetano Donizetti, carrying some 1,600 prisoners, off Rhodes; according to various sources between about 1,200 and more than 1,700 people died. On 19 October British aircraft torpedoed the ship Sinfra off Crete, with the loss, according to various sources, of some 2,000 people, mostly Italians. The worst of these disasters, the sinking of the steamer Oria in February 1944, cost the lives of more than 4,000 prisoners.

Course: the Battle of Leros (12–16 November)

From 26 September Leros was bombed almost daily. The garrison was reinforced to three British battalions – the 2nd Royal Irish Fusiliers, the 4th Buffs and the 1st King’s Own – totalling some 3,000 men, who were joined during the battle by companies of the 2nd Battalion, Royal West Kent Regiment, from Samos. They were supported by several thousand Italians, mainly from the coastal battery crews. On 5 November Brigadier Robert Tilney took command. Instead of holding his reserves on the hills in the centre of the island, he spread his forces along the coast to defend every beach – which was later judged one of the reasons for the defeat.

Early on the morning of 12 November German barges approached the island from two sides. Some of the landings were repulsed by the Italian batteries, but in the north-east, below Mount Clidi and near Pandeli Bay, the Germans secured beachheads. In the early afternoon Ju 52 aircraft dropped – according to various sources – between about 470 and 600 paratroopers (PL) onto the Rachi ridge, at the island’s narrowest point, between Gourna and Alinda Bays. They suffered heavy losses but held on and cut Leros in two, isolating the 4th Buffs in the south from the rest of the garrison. British counter-attacks on 13 and 14 November, carried out by battered companies with poor communications between them, retook some positions but did not eliminate the beachheads. The commander of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, Lieutenant Colonel Maurice French, was killed in the fighting for Mount Appetici. The Germans brought in reinforcements every night; British destroyers shelled their positions at night and landed several hundred troops, but by day the Luftwaffe bombed unhindered.

On 16 November the Germans reached Tilney’s headquarters on Mount Meraviglia. Judging the situation hopeless, the brigadier surrendered in the late afternoon; Admiral Mascherpa surrendered late in the evening, and isolated Italian batteries that had not been informed of the capitulation fought on into 17 November. Some 3,200 British and 5,350 Italian soldiers were taken prisoner. After capturing several Italian batteries the Germans shot their officers, and after the surrender they shot others, including the commander of the destroyer Euro. General Wilson reported to Churchill that Leros had fallen “after a very gallant struggle against overwhelming air attacks” and that success had been within reach.

Course: the evacuation of Samos and the end of the campaign (17–22 November)

After the fall of Leros there was no sense in holding the remaining islands. On 17 November Ju 87s bombed Samos, including the town of Vathy. On the night of 19–20 November the British and Greek troops were evacuated through Turkish waters, and some 2,500 Italians of the garrison surrendered on 22 November. Earlier, on 18 November, the Germans had occupied Patmos, Fournoi and Ikaria. Only the islet of Kastellorizo remained in Allied hands, and most of its garrison was withdrawn on 28 November.

Losses

Casualty figures are incomplete and vary from source to source. According to British tallies, some 4,800 British soldiers were killed or captured in the campaign as a whole; in the Battle of Leros alone the British lost about 600 killed and missing, fewer than two hundred of whom fell on the island, the rest being lost at sea. The RAF lost 115 aircraft. The Royal Navy and the Greek navy lost six destroyers (Vasilissa Olga, Intrepid, Panther, Hurworth, Eclipse and Dulverton), two submarines and a dozen or more smaller vessels, and four cruisers were damaged. The Greek submarine Katsonis had already been sunk on 14 September.

German losses were smaller, though not insignificant. The German communiqué issued after the capture of Leros gave 1,109 killed, wounded and missing, and the British historian Ian Gooderson sets this figure against the roughly 4,500 Germans who took part in the landings; Müller gave a combined total for Kos and Leros of 260 killed, 746 wounded and 162 missing. The Germans lost a dozen or more merchant ships, at least 20 barges and other small craft and – according to various estimates – between about 120 and more than 150 aircraft.

The heaviest losses were suffered by the Italians, most of them after the fighting was over. Tens of thousands of soldiers from Rhodes, Kos, Leros and Samos went into German captivity, and thousands died during transport by sea. On Kos the Germans shot about a hundred officers, on Leros several more. Admiral Campioni and Rear Admiral Mascherpa, handed over by the Germans to the collaborationist Italian Social Republic, were condemned in a show trial and shot in Parma on 24 May 1944 – for having defended the islands against the Germans.

Significance

The Dodecanese campaign was the last major German victory in the Mediterranean and is sometimes described as the British Army’s last great defeat of the Second World War. The decisive factor above all was the Luftwaffe’s command of the air. The British final report stated bluntly that the campaign had been lost because it had proved impossible to build airfields in the area of operations. Thanks to this the Germans, though numerically weaker, could choose the time and place of their attacks and supply their troops without hindrance, while Allied warships and garrisons were exposed to their blows without cover.

Churchill, who believed that after Italy’s surrender it was “the time to play high”, was the chief advocate of the venture, and much of the criticism fell on him. Even at the time it was compared with the failed Gallipoli operation of 1915, for which Churchill had also been responsible. In his memoirs he defended his strategy, blaming the American refusal of support, and maintained to the end that the modest forces taken from the Italian campaign would have made it possible to capture Rhodes. The Americans saw the defeat as proof that the Prime Minister’s Balkan plans were a risky diversion. Turkey, which the campaign was meant to draw to the Allied side, did not change its position. At talks with Churchill and Roosevelt in Cairo in December 1943, President İsmet İnönü still refused to enter the war.

For the Germans the victory meant tying down tens of thousands of troops on the Aegean islands until the end of the war; the garrisons of Rhodes and Leros did not surrender until May 1945. For the islanders the German occupation brought hunger and repression, and for the local Jews – annihilation: in July 1944 the Germans deported to Auschwitz some 1,700 members of the old Jewish community of Rhodes and about a hundred Jews from Kos; fewer than two hundred survived. After the war Müller was sentenced by a Greek court for crimes on Crete and Kos and shot in Athens in 1947, while Löhr was executed in Belgrade the same year. The Dodecanese, liberated in 1945, passed to Greece under the 1947 peace treaty with Italy.