 During the six @-@ month fight against Italy , the Hellenic army made territorial gains by eliminating Italian salients . Greece did not have a substantial armaments industry and its equipment and ammunition supplies increasingly relied on stocks captured by British forces from defeated Italian armies in North Africa . To man the Albanian battlefront , the Greek command was forced to withdraw forces from Eastern Macedonia and Western Thrace , because Greek forces could not protect Greece 's entire border . The Greek command decided to support its success in Albania , regardless of the risk of a German attack from the Bulgarian border . 
