Official Reckoning

Last week the unhappiest figures man can tabulate--the casualties of war--began to pour in from Britain and Germany as an aftermath of the Greek campaign. Even though these official figures probably could not be taken at their face value, they totted up a serious material defeat for Britain.

Men. The respective chiefs of state gave their reckonings on troops. Winston Churchill said:

"In view of extravagant claims made by the enemy, I think right now I shall give the figures, so far as they are known to us, of the evacuation of Empire forces from Greece. Up to the time when evacuation was seen to be inevitable, we had landed about 60,000 men in Greece,* including one Australian and one New Zealand division. Of these, about 45,000 have been evacuated. ... In the actual fighting, principally at Mt. Olympus and around Grevena and Thermopylae, about 3,000 casualties--killed and wounded--are reported to have been suffered by our troops."

Adolf Hitler said:

"The German armed forces have, in fighting against Yugoslavia and Greece as well as against the British in Greece, lost:

"Army and SS troops--57 officers and 1,042 noncommissioned officers and men killed, 181 officers and 3,571 noncommissioned officers and men wounded, and 13 officers and 372 noncommissioned officers and men missing.

"Air Force--ten officers and 42 noncommissioned officers and men killed and 36 officers and 104 noncommissioned officers and men missing."

If Hitler was not resorting to Napoleon's trick of announcing losses of only a fraction of those actually incurred, these were amazingly low figures for German casualties. Herr Hitler also announced that his troops had captured 320,062 "purely Serbian prisoners," 218,000 Greeks, all of whom may be freed, and over 9,000 British Empire troops.

Materiel. Winston Churchill admitted that it had been impossible for the men to get their heavy equipment off. Apparently the British lost most of the armament of the one armored brigade and whatever heavy artillery was on hand. Previously Prime Minister Churchill had said that the Libyan border had been left to the defense of one armored brigade. This sounded as though there were precious little armored equipment left the British in the Near East.

The Germans, on the other hand, claimed great gains from their Balkan enemies: "more than half a million rifles, far more than 1,000 guns, many thousand machine guns and anti-aircraft machine guns, vehicles and large amounts of ammunition." Most of this booty was taken from the Yugoslavs and Greeks; the British destroyed most of what they left behind.

Ships. German claims and British admissions of merchant shipping lost in the evacuation were even more divergent than Atlantic claims and admissions. The Germans claimed 305,000 tons "destroyed." The British admitted losing a destroyer, an escort vessel, one loaded and three empty transports (see p. 38): probably not more than 30,000 tons. The Germans doubtless counted in much Greek and Yugoslav shipping which was either caught in harbor or bombed while evacuating civilians.

Even with due allowance for exaggeration and minimization, these claims and counter-claims showed that Britain's pride in the Empire troops' exceptionally competent military job seemed pretty small return on a pretty expensive venture.

*It takes nearly 75,000 people to fill the Yale Bowl.

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