This work offers the first complete retelling of an important but little-known campaign. It features eyewitness accounts from a colourful cast of German SS troops, British commandos, partisans, spies, Greek pirates, and more. Both Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler wanted the Aegean Sea in 1943. The British prime minister saw an opportunity to force neutral Turkey into the Allied camp and tie up German forces as the war in Europe gained speed, while the Nazi leader wanted to keep Turkey neutral and maintain Germany’s foothold in the Mediterranean and Greece. The conflict came to a head with British naval and amphibious assaults, primarily on the islands of Cos and Leros, and culminated in a German victory.