Tuesday, July 07, 2020

What the "Dominion Office" told Mr. Fadden, in Australia, is that they decided on the Greek operation as their only chance at forming a "Balkan Front". They still had hopes of persuading Turkey and Yugoslavia to join the Allies. The same message was sent to the government of New Zealand, as well. In the following week, events in the Middle East were causing unease in "London". The situation with the Greek government and their unwillingness to follow the British plan were one thing. Another event was that enemy aircraft dropped mines in the Suez Canal, necessitating its closure. A British attack on the Dodecanese island of Castellorizo failed. They also received an report that indicated that the Germans had transported armored forces to Tripoli. On 4 March, Mr. Menzies requested that the Greek operation be reconsidered. An Australian component of the force for Greece were planned to sail on 6 March. Churchill sent Anthony Eden a message on 6 March that was pessimistic about their chances of success in Greece. Churchill was concerned that they were asking Australia and New Zealand to send troops on what was likely to fail. They only reason that Churchill might think that there was any chance of success was if Generals Dill and Wavell thought that there was. Churchill mentioned that he was thinking that they should be planning on an attack on Tripoli. Anthony Eden responded that "they were all agreed that they should continue with the move into Greece. General Wavell felt that there were problems with any attempt to cancel the move into Greece, if only because of the troop convoys at sea. This is based on the account in "Greece Crete and Syria" by Gavin Long.

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