Battle of Crete

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 (German: Luftlandeschlacht um Kreta) 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

Map

Map II

Small groups of daring German paratroopers attack vastly superior enemy forces Maleme airport, which had been built for the Royal Air Force; Major General Sandy Thomas broke his silence in 2011: "'It's something I've kept to myself for 70 years. It's time to tell the truth about how we New Zealanders performed on Crete.' [...] the troops on the ground slaughtered paratroopers in their hundreds in the first few hours of fighting and knew they had the battle won by 10am on May 20. 'The problem was the commanding officers responsible for the defence of Maleme – Andrew and Hargest – did not recognise what was happening on the ground. In our first major battle [of World War II] our commanders were fighting a war which they did not understand. [...] My Battalion alone killed 300 Germans. Our soldiers were in great heart.'"

Top: A German Ju-52 transport burns fiercely as it plunges earthward on 21 May 1941. Heavy British antiaircraft fire brought down numerous German planes over Crete, some still carrying their complement of paratroopers. This action took place in the skies above the Akrotiri Peninsula. Bottom: Dead German assault troops lie sprawled alongside the wreckage of their glider in a wooded area on Crete. Casualties among the elite German soldiers who participated in the battle were horrendous and prompted Hitler to forbid their use in future airborne operations.

Battle observation

British POWs

Left: Wounded of both sides being treated; right: New Zealand prisoners of war carry the bodies of German paratroopers for burial.

In the early months of 1941, Italy's weak offensive had stalled and a Greek counter-offensive pushed into Albania. Germany was, although reluctant, once again forced to aid Mussolini and Italy by deploying troops to Romania and Bulgaria and advancing into Greece from the east. Meanwhile, the British landed troops and aircraft to shore up Greek defences. 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.

After their successful conquest of Greece in April 1941, the Germans turned their attention to the island of Crete. Its capture would give them a useful base in the eastern Mediterranean and deny its use to the British. Hitler was more concerned with his forthcoming invasion of the Soviet Union, but he approved of General Kurt Student's plan for a daring airborne attack using his elite Luftwaffe parachute and glider-borne forces. There were about 40,000 British, Dominion and Greek troops on Crete, many of whom had been evacuated from Greece. 'Creforce', as it was known, was commanded by the New Zealander Major-General Bernard Freyberg VC. The mountainous island was difficult to defend and Freyberg had no aircraft – only a handful of tanks and few radios. Despite this, intelligence gave him ample warning of the German attack and he had powerful support from the Royal Navy. These two crucial advantages offered the possibility of winning a morale-boosting victory. [...] Crete was a humiliating defeat for the British.

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.

The air throbbing to the drone of heavy engines, a seemingly endless procession of Junkers 52 transports lumbered low over the island, haemorrhaging streams of black that separated into trails of canopied V-shapes. A racket of Bren gun and rifle fire swelled beneath the helplessly dangling paratroopers. For many disgorged over concealed positions, this was their last jump. Some finished their descent as corpses, others were dispatched on the ground before they were able to struggle free of their harness. Yet more were cut down as they tried to reach the heavy-weapons canisters dropped with them. A few fell in the sea and drowned. Parachutes hung like shrouds from olive trees, telegraph poles and the roofs of buildings. Not only New Zealand soldiers, but Cretan civilians—men, women and children, armed with ancient guns, knives and spades—stalked the scattered and momentarily vulnerable Germans. But the turkey shoot was short-lived. The survivors were soon giving a deadly account of themselves as they formed into units. Most immediately threatening were those of the Assault Regiment (Luftlande-Sturm-Regiment 1), Student’s largest formation, who came down on undefended ground west of the Tavronitis River. [...] That the Germans didn’t move in immediately was ironic. Andrew had pulled back fearful that his forward-most units, with which he’d lost contact, had been wiped out, and that without support his remaining forces would be decimated when the Luftwaffe returned in the morning. In fact, along the western edge of the airfield and the Tavronitis side of Hill 107, men were still grimly hanging on. The order to pull back never reached them. For their part, the Germans feared the battle was all but lost. Reconnaissance had failed to spot most of the camouflaged positions on the ground, so their descent, into unexpectedly fierce opposition, had been highly disorienting, and they had failed to reach a single one of their objectives. Their appalling losses—come nightfall they had just 57 fighting fit facing the airfield—included most platoon, company and battalion commanders. The survivors awaited the expected counter-attack with trepidation. Both battle commanders, too, were deceived as to the true state of affairs. At his headquarters in Athens, Student came under enormous pressure to abort what was considered to have been a disastrous operation. Maleme was as good as it got. In Agia Valley, south-west of Hania, 3 Regiment had secured another foothold but been forced onto the defensive. The attacks on Rethimno and Iraklio, meanwhile, which had been carried out in the afternoon, had failed to seize either town or airfield, and the outlook for the following day was bleak.

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.

German parachute troops found the resistance from Commonwealth soldiers particularly brutal, but prevailed at terrible cost in the fight for Crete. [...] The 22,000 troops to be deployed were deemed sufficient to deal with the Allied garrison, estimated to be fewer than 5,000 disorganized, ill-equipped troops likely to surrender at the first opportunity. The reality would be far different. [...] General Freyberg, one of the last to be evacuated, was landed at Suda Bay on April 29, expecting only a brief stay before moving on to Egypt. Soon after his arrival the matter of commanding Crete was placed squarely in his lap like a poisoned chalice. He was completely taken aback by the proposal, and the subsequent briefing he received did little to endear him to the task. The island, he was told, could expect air attacks almost immediately, followed up within weeks by major airborne landings supported by a seaborne invasion carrying tanks. His forces, numbering over 41,000 men, were gravely short of equipment, particularly artillery and antiaircraft guns, and could count on little help from the Royal Air Force or Royal Navy. Freyberg, who could not understand why Crete was being defended at all, felt that with most of his New Zealand command already on Crete he had no alternative but to take the assignment. From his new headquarters outside Canea, the stouthearted Freyberg faced formidable difficulties. In spite of knowing little about Crete, he set to work bringing order to the confusion, processing and organizing the thousands of demoralized troops he now commanded. Recognizing that the close-combat encounter that loomed would be for fighting men only, he saw to it that the wounded and most of the non-essential personnel were evacuated to Egypt. Those that remained amounted to approximately 17,000 British, 7,750 New Zealanders, 6,500 Australians, and 10,200 poorly equipped Greek troops. [...] Heavy British antiaircraft fire brought down numerous German planes over Crete, some still carrying their complement of paratroopers. [...]

Having lost the element of surprise, the Germans were in trouble almost immediately. Many of the gliders were systematically shredded by intense machine-gun fire while others crashed on the rocky terrain, wounding and killing many of the occupants. Those troops that scrambled to safety quickly rallied to overrun the AA guns south of the airfield, but most found themselves isolated and pinned down by heavy and accurate ground fire. The men of the Air Assault Regiment fared little better, descending helplessly into a hail of bullets from strong New Zealand defensive positions beneath them. Hundreds of paratroopers, killed before they hit the ground, were paying the ultimate price for inadequate intelligence. [...] The airborne forces that had landed near the village of Kastelli encountered an even more hostile reception when they were mercilessly set upon by Cretan villagers as they struggled in their harnesses or while caught in the olive trees. [...] Meanwhile, at Maleme the paratroopers that landed unscathed regrouped in a dried-up riverbed near the western edge of the airfield and provided covering fire for other survivors to link up with them. Instead of quickly subduing a disorganized rabble, they found themselves in a parched, dusty hell pitted against battle-hardened veterans clearly capable of holding their own. [...] With most of the senior German officers already casualties, the operation at Maleme was in turmoil. The situation worsened as reinforcements in the Air Regiment’s 3rd Battalion were slaughtered by ground fire within moments of jumping. The few survivors who managed to link up with forces near the airfield were too dazed to offer much fight. [...] While the troops at Maleme Airfield were paying a heavy price, the men of Group Center in the Canea-Suda Bay sector suffered a similar fate as airborne and gliderborne troops descended into the muzzles of the defenders. Hundreds were killed in the air or captured soon after landing, while many others were dragged to the bottom of a nearby reservoir. The survivors who had landed outside the New Zealand defensive areas quickly converted a prison into a strongpoint to which stragglers from other landing sites soon converged. [...] These tough, resourceful troops gained their bearings and managed to force their way into Heraklion itself. Throughout the night, the ancient town echoed with the sounds of automatic gunfire as running battles raged up and down the narrow streets and lanes. As at Retimo, the Germans found themselves battling hard against Cretan police and civilians, who eventually forced the paratroops to fall back with heavy losses. [...] Preceded by a massive combination of dive-bomber and artillery bombardment, the Germans pressed the attack at Maleme in the early hours of May 21. Boosted by fresh troops and supplies, the paratroopers launched a surprise attack that drove the New Zealand forces off Hill 107. [...] After 12 days of what had been regarded as the fiercest fighting of the war, the Allies had once again been defeated, but it had been a pyrrhic victory for the Germans. Of the 22,000 German soldiers involved, 6,698 were casualties including 3,352 killed. Allied losses were equally grim, with the Army and Navy suffering a combined loss of over 3,500 dead and nearly 2,000 wounded, while 11,835 became prisoners.

Casualties

3,579 British and Dominion soldiers had been killed or were missing (presumed dead), a further 1,918 had been wounded. The Royal Navy also suffered heavy losses. One aircraft carrier (HMS Formidable), six cruisers (among them HMS Ajax, HMS Dido, HMS Orion, HMAS Perth, and the heavy cruiser HMS York) and nine battleships (among them HMS Warspite and HMS Barham) as well as the submarine HMS Rover were badly dammaged, and three cruisers (HMS Gloucester, HMS Fiji, and HMS Calcutta) and six destroyers had been sunk. All together 12 fleet and 7 auxiliary ships were sunk, 22 damaged. Just over 2,000 men had been lost at sea and a further 500 had been wounded.

By 1 June 1941, the eastern Mediterranean strength of the Royal Navy had been reduced to two battleships and three cruisers, against four battleships and eleven cruisers of the Italian Navy. For the British, the Battle of Crete was the costliest naval engagement of the entire war. The Royal Air Force losses were: 21 aircraft shot down and 12 aircraft destroyed on ground. The number of Greek toops and partisan casualties has never been precisly established, estimates are between 500 and 2,500. A large number of civilians were killed in the crossfire or died fighting as partisans. 12,254 British Commonwealth soldiers and 5,225 Greeks were captured. This adds up to ~23,000 total casualties.

The Battle for Crete was an unmitigated disaster for the British. Half of the surviving Allied force was captured by the Germans. More than 4,000 Allied troops had been killed and 3,000 wounded. The Royal Navy lost 2,000 sailors killed, as well as crippling losses of major ships, which resulted in its withdrawal from the Aegean. The battle for Crete was, in fact, the costliest British naval engagement of the Second World War. As the very title of MacDonald’s book, The Lost Battle, implies, the struggle for Crete should not have ended in failure for the Allies. The Greek and New Zealand troops, in particular, fought with exceptional ferocity. Yet neither the bravery of individual soldiers, nor the tenacity of the Allied troops as a whole could make up for the shockingly poor leadership of the British and Commonwealth commanders, whose blunders and inertia doomed the defense of the island.

In 1956, Major General Flynn Playfair and the other British official historians, gave figures of 1,990 Germans killed, 2,131 wounded, 1,995 missing, a total of 6,116 men "compiled from what appear to be the most reliable German records". Other sources state 1,353 ⚔, 2,421 missing (majority presumed dead), and 2,120 wounded. British propaganda became immediately active: Inflated reports of German casualties began to appear after the battle had ended. In New Zealand, The Press on 12 June 1941 reported that "The Germans lost at least 12,000 killed and wounded, and about 5,000 drowned." Churchill claimed that the Germans must have suffered well over 15,000 casualties.

The official historians recorded 147 Luftwaffe aircraft destroyed and 64 damaged beyond repair by enemy action, with 73 destroyed due to extensive non-combat damage, for a total of 284 aircraft. Another 84 planes had repairable non-combat damage. A total of 311 Luftwaffe aircrew were listed as killed or missing and 127 were wounded. The Italian losses were: 1 destroyer and 1 torpedo boat damaged.

Because of the heavy casualties suffered by the German 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.

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

Brothers von Blücher

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 hundreds of wounded or unconscious 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.

When Germans came down near the villages the Cretans were awaiting them. Their guns had all been seized by the authorities after a brief revolt two years before. With axes, spades, clubs, knives, stones, and bare Hands women and men fell on the enemy before they could release their parachutes. [...] Two hundred Greeks, a mob of women, children, and old men, yelling and screaming, armed with sticks and knives led by a fair haired English officer charged the Germans, who took one look and ran. [...] The day before, some German troops had dropped near to Kastelli, on the northeast coast, close to a strong battalion of Greek troops. Half of the Greeks had guns, for which they had three bullets each, but they attacked bravely, knifing the German troops and clubbing them with rifle butts.

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.

23 May 1941. On the west of the island, one battalion had progressed towards Kastelli, and reported hard fighting against armed civilians. These partisans had carried out frightful atrocities on the wounded and dead Germans. 135 out of 550 had been mutilated beyond recognition.

However, once they had recovered from their shock, the German paratroopers reacted with equal ferocity, killing many armed Cretan civilians. Further, as most Cretan partisans wore no uniforms or identifying insignia such as armbands, the Germans were free of all of the constraints implied by the Geneva conventions and executed insurgents as criminals according to the international laws of war.

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."

Cuffband "Crete"

The Crete Cuff Title or Cuffband "Crete" (Ärmelband „Kreta“) was established in 1942 for the brave fighters of Luftwaffe, Army (mountain troops) and Kriegsmarine. The final date for the awarding of the “Crete” cuffs was set for 31 October 1944, although this date should not apply to prisoners of war, missing persons and internees. Only those soldiers who had actually jumped off over or landed on the island up to and including 27 May 1941 or who had actually gone to sea with the light ship squadron on 19 May 1941 were eligible to receive the award.

The cuff title is 32mm wide and consists of a yellow-edged white cloth band, embroidered in yellow silk or cotton thread with the word KRETA flanked on both sides by a spray of acanthus leaves. The design was the same for all three armed services. The band was worn on the lower left sleeve of the uniform, including on greatcoats. Where two or more campaign cuff titles were awarded, the earliest qualified for was correctly worn above later awards, although this regulation was not always followed.

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.

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

External links

Videos

• Stuka pilot interview 21: Attack on Crete, YouTube
• Unternehmen Kreta: German Invasion Of Crete (1941)
• German Airborne Invasion of Crete | 1941 | World War 2 Documentary