Word: salonika
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...Greek valor did not entirely erase Greek realism. The Greeks had their promises from the British (see p. 26); perhaps the British would put on a show at Salonika which would help. But something else which would also help would be Turkish belligerency. Last week the Greeks were reported to have asked Turkey whether belligerency were possible, and if so, how much, where, when...
Even Italian Virginio Gayda, who habitually talks taller than all the Seven Hills of Rome, not only stopped trumpeting about the Greek war having been won by diplomacy, not only stopped talking about the huge force the British were supposed to be landing at Salonika, but even lent credence to "reports in Egypt" that now the Greeks were going to help the British in Libya. He wrote: "The British ... as well as Greek troops must abandon Balkan aid and rush to the weakened, endangered Wavell Army...
...neither Anthony Eden nor his Greek hosts were in a very poetical frame of mind. Adolf Hitler's great southeastern push had already shoved some 150,000 Nazi troops and 1,700 bombers down through Bulgaria to the very edges of Greece and Turkey, only 60 miles from Salonika and only 100 miles from the Dardanelles. Greece and Turkey had rushed troops to their Bulgarian borders (Greece an estimated force of 90,000). Anthony Eden had flown from Turkey to Greece to learn, among other things, whether that heroic nation would defy the oncoming Nazis as it had defied...
...hard going. The frontier is only 25 miles wide, the terrain is barren, forbidding, and 90,000 or more Greeks could put up stiff resistance against the heaviest odds. But if the Nazis also attacked through Yugoslavia's Vardar River Valley, west of the Struma. leading directly to Salonika, they could strike the Struma's defenders from the rear and probably crush any forces that Greece would be able to muster...
...shown it how to fight!" But widespread Balkan reports had it that the Nazi diplomats were especially hard at work in Greece, persuading her that it was unnecessary to die. They wanted Greece, it was said, to make an "honorable" peace with Italy and allow Germany to consolidate a Salonika Front before the British could do so. Or else...