Friday, November 12, 1943. The Germans land on Leros.

 The Germans invaded Leros in the Aegean's/

German paratroopers preparing to board for drop on Leros.  By Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-527-2348-21 / Bauer / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5412561

We tend not to think of the Germans engaging in offensive operations this late in the war, but they did, of which this was a successful example. After four days of fighting, they'd take the island from its British, Italian and Greek defenders.  The island had been occupied by a reduced British force as the Italians, during their Axis period, had heavy fortified the port facilities. The US had not approved of the British, i.e. Churchill, focus on the Aegean, so it had not participated with the British in the occupation of various Aegean islands, including this one.

According to some, the novel The Guns of Navarone is based contextually on the Battle of Leros, but I don't see that really.

Leros is extremely close to Turkey. So much so, that it's a bit amazing that the island wasn't transferred to the Turks in 1923.  It has a Greek population, but it became an Italian possession in 1912 following the Italo Turkish War, one of the pre World War One wars that's nearly wholly forgotten now, leading to the commonly cited falsehood that Europe had been "at peace for fifty years" prior to World War One breaking out.  It was annexed by Italy in 1923.  It became a Greek possession at the end of World War Two.

The Allies won the Battle of Treasury Island in the Solomon's.

The Japanese bombed Darwin, Australia for the last time.

Remaining Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft are withdrawn from Rabaul. The overwhelming majority had already been lost.

The Allies bombed Arezzo, Italy, for the first time.

Franklin Roosevelt left for the Tehran Conference on board the USS Iowa.

Women in Lebanon turned out in the streets in favor of their deposed government.

The U-508 was sunk in the Bay of Biscay by a US B-24.

Dauntless above the USS Washington, flying a mission in support of landings in the Gilberts.

Dreams of Past Glory

Last week I published an item here that showed a new map for Greece, published in 1920, which depicted the portions of Anatolia it believed it had separated from Turkey.  Cultural Greeks did live in those places, but they went far beyond those areas where Greeks were the majority.

And Greek troops went far beyond those places.

Italians took a set of islands off Anatolia as well.

Italy had already taken territory from the Ottomans by that time. More specifically, they'd taken Libya in 1912 as a result of the Italo-Turkish War.  Italians, in the form of Romans, had governed Libya at one time, but hadn't since the collapse of the Roman Empire.*  If a person wished to be more generous, Greco Roman culture hadn't governed there since the Byzantine Empire had been pushed out in 647, although at least one Christian city remained as late as the 1400s at the absolute latest.

Basically, both powers were asserting claims to territory they hadn't actually governed since 1453.

Yesterday we looked at the French conquest of Syria.  The French had been very influential in Syria. . . up until the 1190s.  At least that claim was there, however, which it really wasn't for Algeria which the French started colonizing in 1830.

What the heck, however.


*Italian immigrants would ultimately make up 20% of the Libyan population.