The German invasion of Crete in May 1941 stands as a landmark in the history of airborne warfare. Until that point, airborne operations had been used mainly in a tactical and operational context to seize key objectives in advance of the ground forces, such as the seizure on 26 April 1941 during the Balkan campaign of the bridge over the Corinth Canal, and the seizure of the Belgium fortress of Eban Emael on the 11 May 1940. The German invasion of Crete, codenamed Operation Merkur, or Mercury, after the Roman god of communication, travel and theft – the counterpart of Hermes, the messenger of the gods in Greek mythology – remains the only operation in history in which a major strategic objective was assaulted and secured exclusively by airborne troops. The operation was the brainchild of Generalmajor Kurt Student, the commander and dedicated champion of the airborne forces (the Fallschirmjäger), who firmly believed that the paratroopers were capable of operating in their own right and not merely as a tool to support the Wehrmacht.
The immediate background to Operation Mercury lies in the events in Europe, and particularly the Balkans, during 1940 and 1941. With the postponement of Operation Seelöwe (Sealion), the planned invasion of Britain, Hitler decided to opt for a peripheral strategy as recommended by others in the Nazi hierarchy such as Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and Grossadmiral Erich Raeder. The aim was to bring Britain to the negotiating table before American assistance could prove effective, or the Soviet Union decided to enter the war on the Allied side. Even the army considered a Mediterranean strategy with the Chief of Staff, General Franz Halder discussing options with General Walter von Brauchitsch, in case Seelöwe proved impossible. In October 1940, Hitler attempted to cement a Mediterranean coalition by travelling on his personal train to visit General Franco, Spain’s Nationalist dictator, at Hendaye and Marshal Pétain, President of Vichy France – the only time Hitler left his headquarters for anybody other than Il Duce, a sign that he attached a great deal of importance to the plan. Neither meeting was entirely successful – Hitler’s meeting with Franco drawing a comment from Hitler that he would rather have several teeth removed – as both leaders were wary of losing colonial territory in order to persuade the other to join the Axis cause. These diplomatic efforts were designed to allow the Wehrmacht to conduct an assault on Gibraltar (Operation Felix), then deploy reinforcements to aid the Italian forces in Libya (an offer made personally to Mussolini) enabling Axis forces to drive for the Suez Canal.
Hitler had in fact vetoed earlier Italian designs on Yugoslavia as it was tied economically to the Reich, and he wanted to keep the Balkans relatively stable. He had intervened in a dispute between Hungary and Romania over the region of Transylvania, as Germany depended upon Romanian oil exports, and while he had allowed the transfer of some territory to Hungary (Hitler also settled the Bulgarian claim for Southern Dobrudja), he had guaranteed the remainder of Romania and sent a large military ‘training mission’ to the country. This upset the Soviets who had seen that part of the Balkans as traditionally in their sphere of influence, indeed they had annexed part of Romania – Bessarabia and Bukovina – during the Battle for France. Despite German diplomatic assurances, the Soviets accused them of breaching Article III of the Non-Aggression Pact that called for joint consultation.
Having established some form of stability in the Balkans, the Führer strongly recommended to the Italians that the status quo be maintained for the time being. Hitler was anxious that war with the Soviet Union be initiated under circumstances of his own choosing, not as a result of some crisis in the Balkans. This immensely annoyed Mussolini who was afraid that the war might end before the Italian Armed Forces could demonstrate their military prowess to the world. Greece seemed to be the exception to the Balkan rule, as it was technically part of the Mediterranean theatre and could serve as a strategic outpost to support the Italian drive against Egypt and the Suez Canal. Indeed, Hitler had tried to interest Mussolini in both Greece and Crete as early as July 1940. Both OKH (the Army High Command) and OKW (the High Command of the Armed Forces) had considered plans for a joint Italian–German offensive in the Mediterranean and concluded that an attack on Greece would be an essential part of any campaign. Such an attack would take place after the Italian capture of Mersa Matruh, giving the Axis airfields in North Africa from which to provide air support for a drive on Suez and an airborne invasion of Crete. Although the Greek leader, General Metaxas, maintained a neutral position, Greece was bound strategically and economically to Britain, and the Greek royal family had strong British connections. Occupying mainland Greece and Crete would pre-empt a British move into Greece that would directly threaten Italy, provide an additional base for operations against the Italian advance in North Africa and threaten the Romanian oil fields. Therefore an Italian attack on Greece suited Hitler’s overall plans, and he may have even given Mussolini a green light when the two met at the Brenner Pass on 4 October.
The Italian intelligence assessment of the Greek Armed Forces was unflattering at best, and therefore an easy victory was confidently predicted. British intervention would be forestalled by Marshal Graziani simultaneously launching the second stage of his North African offensive against Mersa Matruh. Mussolini launched his attack on 28 October after issuing an ultimatum to the Greeks. Unfortunately he had ignored warnings that the Italian forces in Albania were completely unprepared to conduct an autumn campaign and had not even been assigned engineers. The lack of a clear and sensible strategy – such as driving directly on the vital port of Salonika instead of pushing across the mountain range of the Epirus – exasperated Hitler almost as much as the campaign’s utterly inefficient and uncoordinated execution. He later stated that he had counselled against undertaking the expedition at that point. The Italian campaign in Greece quickly ground to a complete halt and the Greeks then launched a counter-offensive that drove the Italians out of their country and threatened Albania itself. The Italian position in the eastern Mediterranean then started to completely unravel. First the British damaged half of the Italian battle fleet in a daring raid on the port of Taranto on 11 November, then they intervened in Greece by sending RAF squadrons there and a battalion of infantry to Crete to secure Souda Bay. The latter move allowed the Greeks to transfer the Cretan V Division to the mainland. In a final blow the British took the initiative in the desert war after Marshal Graziani had stopped at Sidi Barrani to reorganise his supply lines. The British attack completely defeated the Italian force of ten divisions in Libya and threatened the entire Italian position in North Africa.
Soldiers from the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force, resting in a village street on Crete. (Alexander Turnbull Library, DA-01157)
British, Australian and New Zealand troops from a variety of units disembark at Souda Bay after their evacuation from Greece after the Balkan campaign in late April 1941. (Alexander Turnbull Library, DA-01611)
Troops from the 28th (Maori) Battalion, part of the 2nd NZEF at a transit camp in Egypt on the morning after their evacuation from Crete. (Alexander Turnbull Library, DA-06839)
At the same time as the Italians were facing crisis in the eastern Mediterranean, events elsewhere were to change the context of the situation entirely. The Germans faced continued Soviet intransigence and suspicions over their plans for Europe. Since late July 1940, Hitler had been toying with the idea of exactly when to attack the Soviet Union but had decided to defer the decision to try and secure the Balkan and Mediterranean theatres and, in the process, weaken the UK’s position, potentially forcing her to the negotiating table. Hitler therefore considered delaying the attack on the Soviet Union until 1942. Events towards the end of 1940 were to cause an irrevocable eastward shift of the emphasis in the German war effort and bring forward the timetable for the attack on the Soviet Union by a year. In November, the Soviet Foreign Minister, Molotov, visited Berlin for negotiations with Hitler and Von Ribbentrop to pave the way for Soviet membership of the Axis. Despite the Germans dangling the tempting carrot of a share in the British Empire, Molotov would not be deflected from Soviet demands to control Finland and Bulgaria, as well as the exits from the Baltic Sea. Hitler was staggered by the scale of Stalin’s demands and decided that the issue of when to attack the Soviet Union had been settled. The Soviet Union had to be destroyed in 1941 before the United States could enter the war decisively. With this decision, the nature of the peripheral strategy changed fundamentally. No longer was it part of the war against Britain, but rather part of the preparations for war against the Soviet Union. The southern flank had to be secured so that the British could not intervene effectively and threaten the Axis position in the Balkans.
In light of these events, and as a result of the new emphasis on an attack on the Soviet Union, the original staff plans for the Mediterranean were revised. Operation Felix was put on hold, possibly until late 1942, due to Franco’s bland lack of commitment to the Axis cause. However, the invasion of Greece had become more important than ever because of the need to secure the right flank of the advance into the Soviet Union. It would also act as a cover for the deployment of troops eastwards in preparation for Operation Barbarossa. In this light, the invasion of Greece can be seen as a limited operation, as was the sending of an expeditionary force, the Afrika Korps under Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel, to North Africa to bolster the Italian defence and contain the British advance. No-one, least of all Hitler, anticipated that Rommel would develop much more ambitious ideas.
Allied soldiers of the 5th New Zealand Brigade aboard the Glengyle leaving Greece from Porto Rafti in late April 1941. (Alexander Turnbull Library, DA-07493)
Göring and Raeder were both unhappy at the new emphasis on a move eastwards. Both men had wanted to see Britain knocked out of the war before Germany turned its attention east, in order to prevent the dreaded two-front war. Also, in Göring’s eyes, the Luftwaffe would probably play a subservient role to the army in Barbarossa, but in the Mediterranean, the Luftwaffe would still have freedom of action, and so planning continued for operations against Gibraltar, Malta and Crete – all potential targets of the airborne forces. Fliegerkorps X was transferred from Norway as they specialised in anti-shipping operations and scored their first success by crippling the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious on 10 January.
On 6 April 1941, while preparations were still underway for Operation Barbarossa, the Germans invaded both Greece (Operation Marita) and Yugoslavia (Operation Strafe), where a coup by a group of military officers had toppled the regime that had acceded to German demands and joined the Tripartite Pact. General Archibald Wavell had already despatched an expeditionary force, called ‘W’ Force after its commander Lieutenant General Henry ‘Jumbo’ Wilson. It consisted of the British 1st Armoured Brigade (Brigadier Harold Charrington) and the I Anzac Corps (Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Blamey), with the New Zealand Division (Major General Bernard Freyberg) and 6th Australian Division (Major General Sir Iven Mackay). In a few short weeks German intervention completely reversed the Axis fortunes in the area and forced the Allies to evacuate their forces after overrunning both Yugoslavia and Greece, while Rommel had launched an unexpectedly early offensive out of Tripolitania, advanced rapidly through Cyrenaica (capturing Major General Richard O’Connor in the process), laid siege to Tobruk and threatened to press on to the Suez Canal.
In a taste of things to come, two battalions of paratroopers under Oberst Alfred Sturm were used to capture a road bridge over the Corinth Canal, a waterway that ran through a deep gorge dividing the Peloponnese from the Greek mainland, and one of the main escape routes for Allied forces retreating south. The bridge was guarded by a ‘close bridge garrison’ of British troops and had been set for demolition by the Royal Engineers. The Germans hesitated over launching the operation but once decided, executed it with characteristic speed and flexibility. The British force was adequate for the task of defending the bridge, with a reinforced battalion concentrated on the south side of the bridge supported by AA guns and a few light tanks. There are typically two alternatives in an airborne operation. One is to land the troops some distance from the objectives, avoiding the strongest part of the defences and minimising disruption during the landing itself. This method also allows the paratroopers to form up and assault the objective in good order, and was the procedure adopted for Operation Market Garden – the Arnhem assault in 1944. The alternative is to drop the paratroopers as close to their objective as possible in order to maximise surprise and overwhelm the defenders before they can react effectively. This approach does risk greater disruption and heavier casualties while the paratroopers are still vulnerable.
New Zealand soldiers from ‘W’ Force, photographed by N. Blackburn during the retreat through Athens in mid-April 1941 during the Balkan campaign. (Alexander Turnbull Library, DA-10632)
The latter method was chosen for the assault on the Corinth Canal bridge. Early on the morning of 26 April, once the close air support had pounded the defenders, the German vanguard of parachute engineers, loaded in DFS 230 gliders, landed at either end of the bridge. Having seized the bridge they set to work on the demolition charges. They were followed minutes later by some 200 Ju-52 transport aircraft that dropped two battalions of paratroopers, one at each end of the bridge. The paratroopers quickly overwhelmed the defenders after a short but sharp battle. In almost the last act of the battle, a British Bofors gun fired at the engineers on the bridge and actually touched off some disconnected explosives, which seriously damaged the structure. This cut off Allied troops north of the bridge who were subsequently captured, bringing total Allied losses in Greece to over 11,000 men. However, some 18,000 were evacuated to Crete and another 23,000 eventually made their way to Egypt by various means. The Allies lost a large amount of equipment: almost 200 aircraft, over 100 tanks, some 400 artillery pieces, 1,800 machine guns and 8,000 vehicles. Total German casualties in the Yugoslav and Greek campaigns amounted to 11,000. The occupation of these two countries would prove a major commitment in terms of men and matériel needed for the rest of the war. With the Balkan campaign at an end, the countdown started to the only strategic use of airborne forces in history, an operation that would prove to be both the Fallschirmjäger’s most glorious achievement and their ultimate downfall.