September 1940
Now that he had enough ressources to feed the greek industrial monster, Arystos Pamphilios could envisage the future serenely. Yet his objective was glory for his country and this half lost albanian campain was far from glorious. He had to find a new foe to fight, and rather quickly, before he'd ally with one of the major powers...
Willing to change his mind a bit and get some distance from day to day work, he decided to make a trip to Delphos, the well known oracle of ancient Greece and one of the most beautyfull landscape of the country.
There, he walked through the ruins, wandering without any but, only taking the majesty of the site and falling under the charm of the old stones... Suddenly he came in front of a little building, a "tresor" build by a victorious city to honnor Appolo, the local god. With his cultural background, he immediatly identified the buildind as the one called "The Thracian" because it had been erected by habitants of what had later become Bulgary.
Bulgary ! He had an answer to his questions ! It was a wonderful target, not too powerful and not allied yet... Adressing a mental prayer to the gods, he ran to his car where he startled his chauffeur who was told to drive as fast as he could...
Once in his office, he asked for his aide.
Nikolaos Aristides came immediatly and was stunned to hear a string of orders whose objective was the capture of the Bulgarian kingdom.
But, in his precipitation, Arystos had forgotten to look at his manpower stocks which were very close to zero...
The inital plan called for two multi-pronged attacks on Plovdiv and Sofia, the capital. In order to do so, an agreement was signed with Yougoslavia which agreed to give free acces to greek forces.
But the well reharshed plan failled due to the poor equipement of the men and the poor strategies of the generals who fought the war as a defensive one... Losses were severe, even if no unit was lost. A second assault proved as ill fated as the first. But this time they were no men to reinforce the depleted units...
Luckily, a mass of war refugee coming from Yougoslavia provided fresh troops in november who were able to fill the ranks. At the same time, Bulgaria allied with Germany and Yougoslavia came to the side of the Allies... The whole northern border of Greece was at risk !
Immediatly units were redeployed to Albania where 12 divisions took guarnison in Tirana. The tree others corps defended Vlore, Thessaloniki and Ioannina. No troops were left to guard the coasts, protect Athens or repel a turquish attack...
In this grim situation came in october a small miracle, the unplanned discovery of Basic Artillery.
During this time, civilian morale was at an all time low and dissent hight : 28% in september 40 !
The situation was critical, with the Germans ready to strike at the heavily bombarded Tirana when a war errupted between the Nazis and the Communists. immediatly, the pressure on the greek front lowered as forces were sent in the north, leaving shaken but still fighting Greeks in their fortress, the only problem being the german and italian aviations.
The 25 of may 1941, a Bulgarian scientist decided to leave his country for the land where Democracy had been invented. Under his arm was a thick report detailling the principle of the motorized warfare, an invaluable document for the technology starved greek army.
Speaking of technology, Arystos had decided by then that all availlable funds would be allocated to research, giving new and revolutionary weapons like flamme throwers and 100mm artillery guns...
This situation perdured until augustus 41...
