War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its

size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Thank you. your host, James Early. Hello and welcome to another episode of Key Battles of World War II in Europe, our 10,000-foot

survey of the Second World War in Europe and the areas around it.

I'm your host, James Early, as always. And my co-host, as

always, is Sean McIver. In our last episode, we talked about Ilduchay's gamble. We talked about

the various efforts that Il-Ducce or Benito Mussolini, the leader of Italy, made to try to conquer

territory, and how pretty much every one of those ended in

disaster. We saw how in North Africa, the British pushed the Italian forces back out of Egypt and even

into Libya somewhat. And then we saw how the Italians completely lost the territory that they

controlled in East Africa. And we saw how they launched an invasion into

Greece, which was repelled by the Greeks. Now, in this episode, we're going to talk a little bit about

Greece, but we're also going to talk about the other countries in the Balkans. I'm calling this

episode securing Hitler's flank, the Balkans, 1939 to 1941.

You know, the Balkans don't always get a lot of attention when people talk about World War II,

but nevertheless, they were very important and they had a huge effect on German war plans

and the results of the war in general.

So let's dive right into it.

...