The invasion of Albania, Greece, and Yugoslavia instigated a Balkan campaign fought by Greek, British, and Yugoslav forces. Italy invaded Albania in April 1939, more than a year before Benito Mussolini took his country into World War II. Much as Adolf Hitler had done with the Sudetenland, Mussolini gave assurances that the invasion would stop with Albania and that he had no intention of invading Greece. The Allies, France and Great Britain, did not take this disclaimer at face value but responded to it with pledges to defend the sovereignty of Romania and Greece. It was a response that moved Italy squarely into the German camp as the two nations concluded the Pact of Steel. Yet even after Italy declared war against the Allies on June 10, 1940, Mussolini continued to assert his intention not to invade Greece. However, on October 28, 1940, claiming that Greece had in its relations with Great Britain forfeited its status as a neutral, Mussolini moved troops from Albania into Greece.

The Italian dictator did not anticipate much resistance. France had already lost the fight for its life, and, with British forces preoccupied with home defense and Mediterranean Sea naval operations, he had no reason to believe that Great Britain would be in any position to honor its earlier pledge of aid. Accordingly, the invasion force was understrength, and it was quickly brushed aside by Greek resistance, which was bolstered by five Royal Air Force (RAF) squadrons providing close air support. On November 14, the Greeks turned the tables on the Italians, staging a counteroffensive that drove them back into Albania. British bombers braved miserable weather to bomb Italian port facilities and communications as the Greeks advanced against Valona.

As Italy reeled under this humiliating counteroffensive, German planners, recognizing the need to secure the Romanian oilfields and also to protect the southernmost flank of the planned invasion of the Soviet Union, decided to stage their own invasion of Greece. In January 1941, Germany began a troop build-up in Romania, a nation now aligned with the Axis. Luftwaffe units were also dispatched to Bulgaria. In the meantime, German diplomats fruitlessly attempted to intervene in the ongoing combat between Greece and Italy. . .

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