War in the Aegean

Book excerpt: "In telling the story of the war in the Aegean, we have endeavored to lay before the reader all the arguments, and the decisions, that resulted before, during, and after the ... campaign in the Dodecanese in the autumn of 1943 ... The Aegean disaster has puzzled the world in one respect more than most, as indeed it has puzzled those who participated in it at a local level: why, at a time of undeniable Allied superiority in the Mediterranean, were the Germans, hard-pressed on all fronts and abandoned by their principal ally, allowed to exercise local domination to such an extent that they not only inflicted a grievous defeat on the British forces, but also frustrated attempts to draw in Turkey on the Allied side and were successful in securing their vulnerable southeastern flank for the rest of the war, all at minimal costs?"--Introduction.