assistance diverted to the Partisans and under constant attack by Tito's forces, the position of the Chetniks began to deteriorate. Though they still held Serbia and some of the Adriatic coastal regions, their strength waned with battle losses and desertions.
No doubt existed as to the loyalty of Mihailovitch himself to the royal Yugoslav Government-in-Exile. However, there is ample evidence that a number of his subordinates made armistice arrangements with the occupation forces and even assisted them on occasion. Certain the Germans and their allies would eventually be forced to withdraw from the Balkans, Mihailovitch regarded the Partisans, under the aegis of Moscow, as the greater of the two threats to the restoration of the former government.
III. Greece
With its more homogeneous population and a central government, however weak and collaborationist, Greece did not pose the occupation problem that Yugoslavia did during this period. The average German had considerable respect for the culture of ancient Hellas, and was better disposed toward the Greek population than toward the various Yugoslav peoples, whom he regarded as offshoots of the Russians and Slavic barbarians. Too, the economic situation in Greece, unable to raise enough food to sustain even its own population and reduced to abject poverty by the complete loss of its world-wide foreign trade of prewar years, did much to keep the Greeks under the control of the occupation forces and the puppet regime.
Major operations undertaken by the Germans during the period were the clearing of the Edessa–Florina road, west of Salonika, accomplished in conjunction with Bulgarian forces moved west for the purpose, and PANTHER, the elimination of guerrilla bands in the Metsovan Pass, Yannina–Arta, and Mount Olympus areas. (Map 4.) In the Edessa-Florina operation, the guerrilla forces melted away into the mountains, and neither side sustained casualties comparable to those suffered in the fighting in Yugoslavia. In Operation PANTHER, the guerrillas lost 1,400 men, 3 field pieces, and a considererable stock of small arms.
As of the end of the year, Army Group E had attached to it the XXII Mountain and LXVIII Corps, the former responsible for western Greece and the Peloponnesus and the latter for eastern Greece. In addition, Fortress Crete, raised to corps status and no longer under the theater headquarters, was directly responsible to the army group commander. A total of 6 divisions, 1 of them Bulgarian, formed the combat nucleus of the army group. In the event of major Allied landings, the 2 divisions from the Bulgarian corps in Thrace would also come under the control of Army Group E.
