Churchill's folly : Leros and the Aegean : the last great British defeat of the Second World War / Anthony Rogers.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [276]-277) and index.

Through vivid eyewitness accounts from British, German, and Italian veterans, along with many photographs (some never before published), follow the dramatic events of Churchill's doomed attempt to open up a new front in the Eastern Mediterranean. The clash took place in 1943 in Greece's Dodecanese Islands; with no air cover for the British troops, and the fierce opposition of Germany's most able soldiers, men and materiel were sacrificed in three months of operations that ended with the Aegean under Nazi control until the end of the war. Churchill's Folly' is a book published relatively recently, dealing with the British operations in the Aegean in the autumn of 1943. These are interesting both in a strategic sense, showing Churchill at his worst as an interfering politician with a difficult to understand feeling that the key to victory is in the eastern Mediterranean theatre, and in a tactical sense, because the campaign saw the last combat drop of German paratroopers in WW2. The book is a detailed account of the fiasco that destroyed the Long Range Desert Group, and severely weakened British forces in the Mediterranean at a time when the struggle for Italy was getting underway. There is a day-by-day account of the battle for Leros, and a very detailed account of flight and naval operations in the battle. Rogers has gone to great length with his research, finding German veterans, going through German primary sources, and trying to splice together the story giving equal weight to both sides. That he could walk the ground on a Greek holiday island must have been a bonus. The book has some great, previously unpublished pictures, and a good array of maps. In the appendix there are various primary documents, and the whole book is superbly documented and annotated. In my opinion it is a shining example of how battles should be researched - balancing veteran accounts, primary sources, and secondary sources, with a good understanding of the lay of the land. What is particularly interesting is his attempt to confirm claims for downed aircraft from the opposing side's war diaries.