The Campaign for Crete

German campaigns and battles 1919-1945.

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Freiritter
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The Campaign for Crete

Post by Freiritter »

I've studied the Crete Campaign and I'm puzzled on a few points. Now if I understand it correctly, the FJ plan was to simultaneously seize all four main objectives by parachute/glider assault on the first day. These objectives were: 1) Maleme Airfield, 2) the port of Suda Bay, 3) Retimo Airfield and 4) Heraklion Airfield. An ambitious plan. But, from what I've gathered, the airborne assault was hampered by the short preparation time ( If I'm not mistaken, one of the 7. Flieger Division's regiments didn't make the drop ) and faulty intelligence of British/CW dispositions. So, the battle initially developed into a chaotic battle for survival that nearly wiped out the initial drop forces. The regiments tasked with the Retimo and Heraklion targets were hemmed in and nearly destroyed by the British/CW responses. ( I'm probably wrong, but, I think the Black Watch was originally posted with the Heraklion garrison and was shifted to the Maleme/Suda area, once the German paras were defeated. ) While in the Maleme area, the New Zealanders held Hill 107 and with a view of the German held airfield, prevented airlanding reinforcements from Greece. Then, the New Zealand battalion holding Hill 107 had withdrawn, thus allowing the Germans to secure Maleme Airfield and bring in vital supplies and troops of the 5. Gebirgsjager. Why did the New Zealanders withdraw? Was there a shift in the tactical situation that forced the NZ commander to withdraw, or was it the chaotic nature of the action up to that point? Also, another problem that I see from the Germans is that both the parachute ( The worst design put into service on both sides. ) and the German jump methods which relied on drop canisters to carry each man's weapons and gear into combat. If I'm not mistaken, the FJ at the time, jumped with only a pistol, his gravity knife and maybe a few grenades, though, platoon leaders jumped with MP-40s. Why didn't the Germans field a better method/parachute? It seems to me that the whole action in the Crete Campaign ( Before the Gebirgsjager had stabilized the German position. ) was done by scattered pockets of Allied and German troops, with the accordingly difficult command/control problems and an incomplete picture of the battle for both sides.

Cordially,

Freiritter
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Re: Crete

Post by Joe Cleere »

The New Zealand battalion commander probably felt like his battalion was in an exposed position and decided to withdraw before he was surrounded.
The Germans should have concentrated all of their drop zones in the Maleme area instead of trying to tackle Retimo and Heracklion. They came close to being completely annihilated. What saved the German operation was air superiority. As for why the Germans adopted that particular parachute: I think it was to allow for low level drops, which would shorten the amount of time the paratroopers would be exposed to ground fire and prevent scattering. About 1/4 of German paratroopers dropped armed with submachine guns. They were supposed to drop in areas away from enemy troop concentrations, but the British, I think, may have benefited from Ultra decrypts of orders sent out by Enigma.
The British were ready for the German airborne assault and should have been able to defeat it. That they did not says alot about the British commander and the German paratroopers.
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Post by sid guttridge »

Hi Guys,

Crete certainly should have been a British victory. However, the British situation was not as comfortable as might appear. For example, the New Zealanders had had to leave their transport and heavy equipment behind in Greece and the equipment shortage was so serious in the Middle East that part of what was sent to Crete to replace it had been captured off the Italians. The Greeks also had a problem not usually remarked upon: They had more Italian soldiers on their ration strength as POWs than they had Greek soldiers under arms themselves.

Cheers,

Sid.
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Hill 107

Post by 4444 »

Freiritter wrote:Why did the New Zealanders withdraw?
I spent my 2002 holiday in the Xania area and I was about to bore myself to death. Fortunately, in one of the local bookstores I got a (fairly thin) book on the Crete air assult. The Hill 107 clash was indeed depicted as the turning point of what seemed to be a doomed German attempt. From what I remember, the New Zealanders were decimating the Germans for around a day. When the night came, the NZ commander ordered his troops to abandon the hill as he did not realise the hopeless position of the Germans and feared encirclement. The following morning, when the paras resumed their desperate attack, they found the hill empty.

I tried to get to the top of the hill myself, but either I got lost, or indeed the place is within the Greek military area, off-limits to the public.
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Post by Freiritter »

That makes sense. From what I understand, the fog of war had much to do with the withdrawal of the New Zealanders from Hill 107. I saw earlier that Sid had mentioned that the Greek units in Crete had more Italians than Greeks. What were these Italians doing in those Greek units? Were they POWs under guard?

Cordially,

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Post by Enrico Cernuschi »

Yes, they were POWs, more than 20.000, from the first stages of the Greek campaign.

I would like very much to know something about the Greek units at Crete during the May 1941 battle. How many battalions? Were them a part of a single division? What losses? Why the British do not remember them, they only mention them before the battle, then everything is silent.

The Crete campaign is, by itself, an absurd. The British fleet, according Adm. A.B. Cunningham, commander of the Mediterranean Fleet, was unable to supply the island for lack of escort anf harbour unaviability. The troops. not to mention the inhabitant of that fine and poor island (I visited it in 1990), had less than a month of food and the problem of deliveries was considered an imposisble one yet in at the beginning of May 1941.
It was Churchill battle (he dedicated two chapters of his history of the second world war at that battle, net even El alamein had such an honour. My personal opinion is that he consiered that campaign the song of the swan of his personal war before the very probable, next end of the conflict. A victory there could help, as a matter of faxct, the peace terms and, above all, the pages of the history books.

Any opinion, gentlemen?

Bye EC

PS For Freiritter, I think that any encounter is a "...cahotic battle for survival". Before everyone is shooting, later the historian discover a logival order in what was simply a damned mess. Do you remeber the battles of Austerliz and Borodino by Tolstoy "War and Peace" ? EC
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Post by Lupo Solitario »

Enrico Cernuschi wrote:Yes, they were POWs, more than 20.000, from the first stages of the Greek campaign.
Enrico, where is possible to find some data about italian POWs in greece? It's a pratically unknown matter
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Post by Enrico Cernuschi »

Some lines, no more, in Plancia Ammiraglio, by Adm. Vittorio Tur, ed. canesi, Rome, 1957. They do not add anything.
About 4.000 POWs were carried by the British in Egypt, the others come back free after the Crete conquest. The poor guys were quite in a miserable state (no new uniforms and they had still the winter items in May 1941; no food since a week and so on) the Germans treated them quite in an harsh way (like the British and Greek new prisoniers). Commander Marc'Antonio Bragadin (You can see this detail in his Che ha fatto la marina, ed. garzanti, 1947), who with his four MAS boats had been the first to arrive at Suda and Agios Nikolaos, did what he could for that people (very little, of course) and his harsh report made torpedo the geran responsable for the unuseful violences and humiliation (it was not a matter to supply them, ther's was nothing but the bad taste of the Germans was great indeed) the ex POWs had to endure for some weeks before to be able to come back home.
Bye EC

Bye EC
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Post by sid guttridge »

Hi Enrico,

This is what I have on the Greeks on Crete.

Normally 5th division was based on the island, but had been captured on the mainland.

On 12 April King George had suggested that 40,000 Greek recruits in training should be evacuated from the mainland to Crete, but no shipping was available. This only left Cretan mampower on the island.

5th Division already had three, poorly equipped, depot battalions on the island. In addition, all other Cretan manpower was called up, creating eight further battalions, which were even more poorly equipped and contained numerous older men not normally eligible for service.

In total the Greeks had 11,000 army troops, 2,800 gendarmes and 1,100 air force personnel on Crete.

General Freyberg thought that, if captured Italian weaponry was sent from Egypt, he could equip 12 Cretan infantry battalions and three artillery batteries. They could later be formed into one, possibly two divisions.

During the campaign on Crete, Cretan forces were mixed with British forces in the west and centre of the island, but were in sole control of the eastern end, where the Italians landed from Rhodes.

The Germans later captured 5,255 Greek troops on Crete. The rest escaped home.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Greeks had captured about 20,000 Italians in Albania. About a third were apparently kept in the Peloponnese, where they were presumably released by the Germans at the end of April. The other 14,000 Italian prisoners were on Crete. The British persuaded the Greeks to transfer Italian officer POWs to Egypt, but all the other ranks were released when German-Italian forces conquered the island.

Cheers,

Sid.
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Re: Crete

Post by wiltaz »

Joe Cleere wrote:They were supposed to drop in areas away from enemy troop concentrations, but the British, I think, may have benefited from Ultra decrypts of orders sent out by Enigma.
The British were ready for the German airborne assault and should have been able to defeat it. That they did not says alot about the British commander and the German paratroopers.
I just finished reading a book about german airborne ops. The British had the complete plan from Ultra. The Germans were stunned that the British were in the perfect defensive positions to counter all their attacks anmd intercepted the seaborne invastion fleet. Not knowing the British knew the plan Hitler actually told Student after the battle at an awards cermony that the key to airborne operations was surprise and that the surprise factor was used up from their earlier successes. I guess from the German point of view the logical conclusion was that the British suspected an airborne drop and positioned their units accordingly and that any future operations would meet the same resistance. The only reason the British failed on Crete was that alot of the men had no equipment and units as a whole didn't have any heavy equipment.

The German intel had failed in what they thought was on the island. They didn't know any of the troops had landed on Crete from the evac of Greece. They thought they all went to Egypt. Yes it was a bold plan but it would have been alot different without Ultra. The seaborne assault probably wouldn't have been intercepted and the airborne landings wouldn't have been contested as much.
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Post by Enrico Cernuschi »

Hello Sid,
I knew about 26.000 Italian POWs who were recovered after the Greek campaign, 15.000 on them in Crete. The British were able to carry about 4.000 in North Africa just before Athens' surrender so the total had to be around 30.000.
Bye EC
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Post by sid guttridge »

Hi Enrico,

From memory, isn't 30,000 higher than the official Italian histories give for their total of missing, which presumably included POWs?

Cheers,

Sid.
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Post by Enrico Cernuschi »

Hi Sid,
officially:13.755 deads, 50874 wounded (the usual Keegan ratio 1/4), 12368 frostbite, 25.067 missing, 52108 ills.
4/5 of the the missing would be, so, POWs, 15.000 of them recovered.
Any info about the Greek casualties?
Bye EC
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Post by Das Reich »

I suggest the article in I think May's World War II History Magazine.
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Post by sid guttridge »

Hi Enrico,

I have the official Greek casualties somewhere. If memory serves me correctly, they were similar to Italian losses in dead and wounded, but much smaller in missing and prisoners. I will get back to you on that.

Cheers,

Sid.
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