Dodecanese Campaign
| Dodecanese Campaign | |||||||||
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| Part of the Mediterranean and Middle East theatre of World War II | |||||||||
 Location of the Dodecanese Islands (in red) in relation to Greece |
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
 Kingdom of Italy United Kingdom South Africa Greece Poland
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 Germany
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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Robert Tilney (POW) Inigo Campioni (POW)
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Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller
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| Strength | |||||||||
| 55,000 Italians 5,300 British |
7,500 Germans | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
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Italian:5,350 killed & wounded 44,391 POWs British:4,800 casualties 113 aircraft lost 6 destroyers sunk 1 cruiser crippled 3 cruisers heavily damaged 4 destroyers severely damaged 3 submarines sunk 4 submarines damaged 10 minesweepers and coastal defense ships sunk |
1,184 men 15 landing craft |
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The Dodecanese Campaign of World War II was an attempt by Allied forces to capture the Italian-held Dodecanese islands in the Aegean Sea following the surrender of Italy in September 1943, and use them as bases against the German-controlled Balkans. Operating without air cover, the Allied effort failed, with the whole of the Dodecanese falling to the Germans within two months, and the Allies suffering heavy losses in men and ships. The Dodecanese Campaign, lasting from 8 September to 22 November 1943, resulted in one of the last big German victories in the war.
The Dodecanese island group lies in the south-eastern Aegean Sea, and had been under Italian control since the Italo-Turkish War in 1911. During Italian rule, the strategically well-placed islands became a focus of Italian colonial ambitions in the Eastern Mediterranean. Rhodes, the largest of the islands, was a major military and aerial base. The island of Leros, with its excellent deep-water port of Lakki (Portolago), was transformed into a heavily fortified aeronautical base, "the Corregidor of the Mediterranean", as Benito Mussolini, the Italian leader, boasted. An early British attempt to dispute the Italian control of the Dodecanese, codenamed Operation Abstention, was thwarted in February 1941, when Italian forces recaptured the island of Kastellorizo from British Commandos.
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