Battle of Crete

File:German Fallschirmjäger landing on Crete, 20 May 1941.png

German Fallschirmjäger landing on Crete, 20 May 1941; "Crete had great strategic importance in the Mediterranean. It has a central position in the Aegean and it is the largest of the islands in the eastern Mediterranean. The harbour at Suda Bay was the largest in the Mediterranean Sea and an ideal base for naval operations. Control of the island was desirable to both the British and Germans. For the British, it would give them even greater control of the Mediterranean and consolidate their control of the northern end of the Suez Canal. British bombers could also use the airfields to bomb the oil plants at Ploesti in Rumania. The Germans could use the base to attack British shipping in the area and disrupt the British use of the Suez. Crete could also be used as a stopping off point for men heading to the North African theatre of war."

The Battle of Crete () was a battle on the Greek island of Crete in May 1941. It was to be the largest airborne operation of World War II and the definite end of the Balkans campaign.

History

File:Map of the German landing on Crete, May 1941.png

Map

File:Fallschirmjäger, Unternehmen „Merkur“, Mai 1941.png

Battle observation

File:Gefangennahme alliierter Soldaten durhc deutsche Fallschirmjäger auf Kreta.png

British POWs

The Greek were defeated in April 1941 and 57,000 Allied troops were evacuated by the Royal Navy, most of them were sent to Crete. The Germans knew that they had to conquer this enemy base with it's harbours in the eastern Mediterranean. The Wehrmacht thought the garrison was lightly equipped and that the civil population would be friendly. Little did they know that over 42,000 troops from the United Kingdom (18,047), Greece (10,258 – 11,451), New Zealand (7,702) and Australia (6,540) awaited them, dug in well with artillery covering the island. Only 15,000 paratroopers (Fallschirmjäger) should be landed in three waves awaiting support from 14,000 mountain troops (Gebirgsjäger) within the next three day.

Many of the German soldiers died, when their planes were shot down, others were shot while still floating to earth. Those that made it alive were suprised, how well preparded the enemy was, rich with supplies from the assisting Royal Navy. The commander of the 7. Flieger-Division, Generalleutnant Wilhelm Süßmann, never made it to Crete, his plane crashed on the island of Aegina. Only air superiority through the Luftwaffe and the bravery of the Fallschirmjäger, hardly having more than knives, pistols and grenades, made the difference between victory or death. Even the 25 % of paratroops armed with sub-machine guns were at a disadvantage, given the weapon's limited range. Many Fallschirmjäger were shot before they reached their weapons canisters.

The landing

It began on the morning of 20 May 1941, when Germany launched an airborne invasion of Crete with Fallschirmjäger and Gebirgsjäger under the code-name Unternehmen Merkur (Operation Mercury). Greek and Allied forces, along with Cretan civilians, defended the island.

After one day of fighting, the Germans, under the command of the Generals Kurt Student and Julius Ringel, had suffered very heavy casualties, and the Allied troops were confident that they would prevail against the German invasion. The next day Maleme airfield in western Crete fell to the superior Germans, enabling them to fly in reinforcements and overwhelm the defenders. The battle lasted about 10 days.

The Battle of Crete was unprecedented in three respects: it was not only the first battle where the Fallschirmjäger were used on a massive scale, but also the first mainly airborne invasion in military history; the first time the Allies made significant use of intelligence from the deciphered German Enigma code; and the first time invading German troops encountered mass resistance from a civilian population.

Because of the heavy casualties suffered by the paratroopers, Adolf Hitler forbade further large-scale airborne operations. However, the Allies were impressed by the potential of paratroopers and started to build their own airborne divisions.

Brothers von Blücher

^{Read more in the Main Article--> Von Blücher brothers}

File:Gebrüder Blücher auf dem Soldaten Friedhof im Maleme, Kreta, neu.png

Gravestone (Wolfgang and Hans-Joachim), German War Cemetery in Maleme, Crete

File:Links das Kreta-Denkmal, rechts die Errichtung des zentralen Denkmals auf der Kriegsgräberstätte des Fallschirm-Jäger-Regimentes 1 vor Heraklion, 1941.png

On the left the famous Crete memorial (Fallschirmjäger-Denkmal), on the right the erection of the central memorial in the war cemetery of the 1st Parachute Regiment near Heraklion, 1941

Prominent among the German dead were a trio of Brothers, relatives of the famous German-Prussian Field Marshal (Generalfeldmarschall) Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, the hero of the Waterloo.

The first to fall was Hans-Joachim Graf von Blücher, who was attempting to resupply his brother, Oberleutnant (First Lieutenant) Wolfgang Graf von Blücher, with ammunition when the latter and his platoon were surrounded by members of the British Black Watch. The 17-year-old Hans-Joachim had commandeered a horse which he attempted to gallop through British lines; he almost reached his brother's position, and in fact was shot before his brother's very eyes.

The same day, 21 May 1941, 24-year-old Wolfgang was killed with his whole platoon, followed by the younger brother, 19-year-old Leberecht Graf von Blücher, who was reported killed in action on the same day but whose body was never recovered.

Four weeks later the mother, Gertrud (Freiin Marschall) von Nordheim (widowed Gräfin von Blücher), who had lost her husband in 1924, was informed, that three of her four sons were killed on the same day in the Battle of Crete. Her forth son, Adolf Graf von Blücher, was released from duty and left the German navy (Kriegsmarine), to take care of the agricultural firm at home. Tragically he also died 1944 from a gunshot wound while stalking deer with a large hunting party in the vast forests of Mecklenburg.

For years afterward, Cretan villagers reported seeing a ghostly rider galloping at night down a road near the spot where Hans-Joachim was shot; yet until they were told the story of the von Blücher brothers, they had assumed that he was British. In 1974 Wolfgang and Hans-Joachim were reunited in one grave at the German War Cemetery on a hill behind the airfield at Maleme, Crete.

The Palais Blücher in Berlin was bombed in WWII and although restoreable it was demolished by the communists.

Civilian atrocities

Everywhere on the island, Cretan civilians – men, women, children, priests, monks, and even nuns, armed and otherwise – joined the battle with whatever weapons were at hand. In some cases, ancient matchlock rifles which had last been used against the Turks were dug up from their hiding places and pressed into Action.

In other cases, civilians went into action armed only with what they could gather from their kitchens or barns, and several German parachutists were knifed or clubbed to death in the olive groves that dotted the island. In one recorded case, an elderly Cretan man clubbed a parachutist to death with his walking stick before the German could disentangle himself from his parachute lines. In another, a priest and his son broke into a village museum and took two rifles from the era of the Balkan Wars and sniped at German paratroops at one of the landing zones. While the priest would aim and shoot at German paratroopers with one rifle, his son would re-load the other.

The Cretans soon supplemented their makeshift weapons with captured German small arms taken from the dead bodies of killed paratroops and glider troops. Their actions were not limited to harassment—civilians also played a significant role in the Greek counter-attacks at Kastelli Hill and Paleochora, and the British and New Zealand advisors at these locations were hard pressed to prevent massacres. Civilian action also checked the Germans to the north and west of Heraklion, and in the town centre itself.

This was the first occasion in the war that the Germans encountered widespread and unrestrained resistance from a civilian population, and for a period of time, it unbalanced them. However, once they had recovered from their shock, the German paratroopers reacted with equal ferocity, killing many Cretan civilians. Further, as most Cretan partisans wore no uniforms or identifying insignia such as armbands, the Germans felt free of all of the constraints implied by the Geneva conventions and killed both armed and unarmed civilians indiscriminately.

Aftermath

The victory of Crete reinforced in the mind of the Wehrmacht the value of the paratroopers it had. Hitler, however, was shocked by the number of losses and at the end of the campaign to capture Crete, he ordered that paratroopers should no longer be used to spearhead an attack on a major target.

"Paratroopers developed an elite image on both sides during World War Two. The British paras who fought with such bravery at Arnhem helped to cement this image even in defeat. The German Fallschirmjager’s attack on Crete did the same from the German perspective. [...] This was the first time that paratroopers were given the task of attacking and defeating a complete target. At the time, it was the largest airborne attack in history. Though the island was taken after heavy fighting and the attack passed into military folklore, the Germans took very heavy casualties (25%) and Hitler lost faith in this form of attack. On the orders of Hitler, German paratroopers were sent to Russia where they fought as ground troops. However, the British read more into this battle and with the support of Churchill, Britain soon had an airborne division."

German-British occupation (1945)

A little-known side note about the end of World War II is the "English-German occupation" of Crete, which lasted from 9 May 1945 to early July 1945. After the surrender of the Wehrmacht, the German units stationed in Maleme on the Greek island of Crete (approx. 1,600 men) surrendered to the British Army over the radio and then prepared themselves in an orderly manner for captivity. The British then docked at Heraklion harbor with a few landing craft and drove towards Maleme in jeeps and trucks to pick up the Germans. While the German soldiers in Maleme collected their weapons in a gymnasium to later hand them over to the British, the lightly armed British column was attacked by communist partisans. As the German defeat became apparent, the civil war had begun in Crete, as in the rest of Greece, with communist partisans fighting against royalists who were supported by the British.

The British, who had come under heavy fire, called the German troops over the radio for help, which immediately rearmed and rushed to the aid of the beleaguered British with freshly loaded armored personnel carriers. Because the British initially only had light weapons and vehicles, for the next three to four weeks all British columns that moved in Crete were protected by armored personnel carriers and former Wehrmacht soldiers. The German soldiers, no longer soldiers under international law, were heavily armed and under British command. On Crete these weeks are called the "German-British occupation period". When, after about five weeks, the British had brought enough weapons and material to the island, the German-British brotherhood in arms came to an end, which was to be expected. The Germans were finally disarmed and taken to POW camps on the British Isles. There they were among the first to be released by the British a few weeks later.

See also

• Crete Cuff Title/Cuffband "Crete" (Ärmelband „Kreta“)

Literature

• Stavros Vlontakis: The stronghold of Crete - Chronicle of the German occupation in Chania from October 1944 to May 1945 and the Anglo-German occupation from May 1945 to July 1945, published in Greek and German in Athens 1976
  • German title: Der Feste Platz Kreta - Chronik der deutschen Besatzung in Chania vom Oktober 1944 bis zum Mai 1945 sowie der englisch-deutschen Besatzung vom Mai 1945 bis zum Juli 1945
• Comeau, M. G.: Operation Mercury: Airmen in the Battle of Crete, J&KH Publishing, 2000. ISBN 1-900511-79-7
• Nasse, Jean-Yves: Fallschirmjager in Crete, 1941: The Merkur Operation, Histoire & Collections, 2002. ISBN 2-913903-37-1
• Guard, Julie: Airborne: World War II Paratroopers in Combat, Osprey Publishing, 2007. ISBN 1-84603-196-6, ISBN 978-1-84603-196-0
• Nigl, Alfred: Silent wings, Savage death, 2007 USA ISBN 1-882824-31-8
• Richter, Heinz A.: Operation Merkur. Die Eroberung der Insel Kreta im Mai 1941, Rutzen, 2011, ISBN 978-3-447-06423-1