What was the Battle of Crete?
The Battle of Crete, code-named Operation Merkur (Mercury) by the Germans, was the German airborne invasion of the Greek island of Crete from 20 May to 1 June 1941. Paratroops and glider troops landed at four points on the north coast, held by British, Australian, New Zealand and Greek troops under Major General Bernard Freyberg. They took Maleme airfield, flew in reinforcements and drove the defenders to the south coast, from where the Royal Navy evacuated some 14,800 to 16,500 men. A US Army study calls it the first major operation carried out by airborne forces acting independently of a ground army.11
Crete was won from the air in less than two weeks. The German Air Force dropped and flew in an army, then drove the British Mediterranean Fleet out of the waters north of the island. For the Germans it was a victory, but the losses in their elite parachute division were so heavy that the official Australian historian judged them a crippling blow to that formation.12
Why Crete mattered
After the Italian attack on Greece in October 1940, the British occupied Crete and built up a naval refueling base at Suda Bay. When the Germans overran Greece in April 1941, the island became the collecting point for many of the British and Commonwealth troops brought out of the mainland, at the end of the Balkan campaign that began on 6 April 1941 with the German attack on Greece and Yugoslavia.13
A US Army study, written after the war from German records and the accounts of German officers, sets out the stakes. In British hands Crete kept the eastern Mediterranean under British naval and air control and put the Romanian oil fields within bombing range. In German hands it would cover Greece and the Aegean and serve as a base against Egypt and the Suez Canal. The Australian War Memorial makes the same point: from Crete, Axis naval and air forces would dominate the eastern Mediterranean.14
On 15 April 1941 a proposal to take the island from the air went to Göring. The US Army study credits it to General Kurt Student, the commander of XI Air Corps, while Long credits his superior, General Alexander Löhr of the Fourth Air Force. By the US study's account, on 20 April Hitler chose Crete over Malta, and five days later Directive No. 28 gave the operation its code name, MERKUR (Mercury). Buckley adds that the same astronomical theme ran through the three attack groups, called Mars, Komet and Orion.15
Freyberg's garrison
Major General Bernard Freyberg, the commander of the New Zealand Division, reached Crete from Greece on 29 April and expected to go on to Egypt to rebuild his division. Instead General Wavell, the British commander in chief in the Middle East, gave him command of the island garrison.16
The numbers depend on who counted. Middle East Command's final figures, printed by Buckley, give 28,614 British, Australian and New Zealand troops on 20 May. The US Army study counts about 27,500, and Gavin Long, the Australian official historian, gives 17,000 British, 7,700 New Zealand and 6,500 Australian troops. Greek forces came on top: 2,500 gendarmes, 7,500 soldiers and 1,000 reservists at the end of April by Long's account, or 14,000 men by the US study's. Many of the men from Greece had saved nothing but their rifles.17
Heavy weapons were scarce. The US study lists eight medium and sixteen light tanks, some captured Italian guns, ten 3.7-inch howitzers and a few anti-aircraft batteries, while Buckley counts sixteen light and seven infantry tanks sent from Egypt in mid-May. Freyberg placed his troops around the three airfields at Maleme, Retimo and Heraklion and around Suda Bay, with the New Zealanders holding the vital western sector from Maleme to Canea. The RAF could not keep fighters on the island against the German air force, and it withdrew its last few aircraft the day before the invasion.18
The attack came as no surprise. The US study says British agents in Greece reported the German build-up accurately, and Admiral Cunningham wrote that intelligence pointed to an attack about 17 May. The British planned on the belief that an airborne landing could not succeed unless heavy weapons and supplies followed by sea, and that the fleet could stop them.19
20 May: gliders and parachutes
The heaviest air attack yet seen fell on the Maleme, Canea and Suda Bay areas early on 20 May, beginning at about 6:30 by Buckley's account and 6:45 by Long's. Many of the anti-aircraft guns were knocked out. Then gliders came down near Maleme airfield and on the beaches near Canea, and parachutists jumped in waves behind them. The German study times the first landings at 8:00.20
Freyberg watched from a hill. Long quotes his account of the troop carriers circling over Maleme "when they were only a few hundred feet above the ground" and of "clouds of parachutists" floating down. At Retimo, the Australian War Memorial records, a company commander, Ralph Honner, saw "a spectacle that might have belonged to a war between the planets".21
The paratroops jumped into heavy fire, and many were killed in the air or soon after landing. Cut off from their weapons containers, many had only pistols, grenades and knives. The commander of the 7th Airborne Division, General Wilhelm Süssmann, was killed on the way when his glider crashed, and General Eugen Meindl, leading the Maleme group, was badly wounded. Cretan civilians joined the fighting with whatever weapons they had.22
In the afternoon a parachute force of regimental strength dropped near each of Retimo and Heraklion. Both suffered heavy losses and took neither airfield. By the evening of 20 May, the US study concludes, not a single airfield was securely in German hands.23
The night Maleme was lost
Maleme airfield lay under Hill 107, held by the 22nd New Zealand Battalion. By 9 p.m. on 20 May the Germans had a weak grip on the western edge of the field, and the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel L. W. Andrew, out of touch with most of his companies, decided to pull back. By dawn his men were moving east, and Hill 107 was given up.24
On 21 May the Germans dropped fresh paratroops near Maleme, and from about 4 p.m. transports began landing men of the 5th Mountain Division on the airfield while it was still under artillery fire. From that point, says the US study, reinforcements and supplies kept pouring in "and the fate of Crete was sealed".25
The New Zealanders counterattacked toward the airfield in the early hours of 22 May with the 20th Battalion and the 28th (Maori) Battalion. The attack started late, was caught in daylight under fire from the ground and the air, and failed. That day General Julius Ringel of the 5th Mountain Division took command at Maleme, and his troops began working round the defenders' flanks through the hills.26
The fleet against the Luftwaffe
The Royal Navy's task was to stop any landing from the sea. On the night of 21 to 22 May a British force caught the first German convoy of small motor sailers and steamers north of Crete, off Cape Spatha by the US study's account, the headland off which HMAS Sydney had fought the Italians in 1940. The US study says most of the convoy was sunk, while a German report quoted by Long says only a small part of it was caught, with the loss of about 320 men. Cunningham called the encounter "a heavy blow to the Germans". A second convoy was turned back, and no German troops reached Crete by sea while the battle was being decided.27
Then the German Air Force turned on the ships. On 22 May, wrote Cunningham, "things commenced to go awry": the destroyer Greyhound and the cruisers Gloucester and Fiji were sunk. Early on 23 May all forces were ordered back toward Alexandria after a misread signal suggested the battleships had no pom-pom ammunition left, and that morning dive bombers sank the destroyers Kelly and Kashmir.28
Cunningham judged that the Navy had done its duty, since no enemy ship reached Crete in those critical days, and wrote that he had "never felt prouder of the Mediterranean Fleet". The US study draws the wider lesson: in this trial of strength air power won a decisive victory over a fleet maneuvering in restricted waters.29
Galatas, 42nd Street and the retreat
On 25 May the Germans attacked in strength near Galatas, west of Canea, and broke into the village. That evening Colonel Howard Kippenberger launched a counterattack with two companies of the 23rd New Zealand Battalion, men from other units and two light tanks. They fought through the streets with bayonets and grenades and drove the Germans out. Freyberg later called it one of the greatest efforts in the defense of Crete, but the New Zealanders were too weak to hold the line and fell back that night.30
On 26 May Freyberg reported that in his opinion "the limit of endurance" had been reached. On 27 May the Germans broke into Canea, overrunning a British rearguard force of the Welch Regiment, the Rangers and the Northumberland Hussars. That same morning, on a sunken road west of Suda known as 42nd Street, the 28th (Maori) Battalion and the 2/7th Australian Battalion charged an advancing German battalion with the bayonet and threw it back.31
The troops around Suda now fell back across the mountains toward Sphakia on the south coast. At Heraklion the garrison was taken off by sea on the night of 28 to 29 May, but the ships paid on the way home. The damaged destroyer Imperial had to be sunk, and after sunrise German dive bombers drove the destroyer Hereward ashore and hit the cruisers Orion and Dido, killing many of the troops packed aboard.32
At Retimo two Australian battalions still held the airstrip, cut off and with no orders to leave. On 30 May their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Ian Campbell, surrendered. Many men of the 2/11th Battalion chose to escape into the mountains instead, and Cretans who sheltered them risked death.33
The evacuation and the cost
From the night of 28 to 29 May to the night of 31 May to 1 June the Navy took men off the open beach at Sphakia, under constant air attack. The rearguard, including the 2/7th Australian Battalion, was left behind when the last ships sailed. On 1 June the Germans reached the south coast and the fighting ended.34
Counts of those saved differ: 14,967 by Middle East Command's figures in Buckley, about 14,800 in the US study, about 16,500 in Long. In the Commons on 10 June 1941 Churchill spoke of 17,000. Long puts the cost to the British, Australian and New Zealand force at about 15,900 men, about 4,000 of them killed or wounded and the rest taken prisoner. The US study adds that the Greek troops were all left behind, dead or captured.35
The Mediterranean Fleet lost the cruisers Gloucester, Fiji and Calcutta and six destroyers, and about 2,000 sailors were killed. Two battleships, an aircraft carrier and other ships were badly damaged.36
German losses remain disputed. According to the US study, German after-action reports gave between 3,986 and 6,453 killed, wounded and missing. Buckley prints the official German total of 6,453, and Long the Fourth Air Fleet's report of 3,986 killed or missing and 2,594 wounded. Buckley, starting from the German graves counted by the Australian War Graves Commission in June 1945, argues that the losses can scarcely have been fewer than 8,000, while Churchill, quoted in the US study, put them at well over 15,000. Long notes that more than 3,000 of the German dead came from the 7th Air Division, and Buckley and Long both put the German aircraft destroyed at 220.37
Civilians paid too. Long records that German reprisals against the Cretans began during the battle itself, after reports that paratroops had been mutilated. A later German inquiry, he writes, found far fewer cases than had been claimed, blamed them on civilians and found that no Allied soldier had taken part.38
Why the battle still matters
The US Army study calls Crete the first major operation carried out by airborne forces acting independently of a ground army, and the attackers beat a garrison that outnumbered them. The island was won from the air: no further seaborne landing was attempted until the fate of Crete had been decided, and Cunningham wrote that no enemy ship reached the island in those critical days.39
Both sides drew lessons. Long concluded that once an airfield was firmly in German hands there was no hope of holding the island, that months had been lost for want of a clear policy for its defense, and that a garrison fully equipped with heavy weapons would probably have beaten the first German attack in every sector. The US study adds that the British fleet, by stopping the convoys, slowed the German advance enough to let thousands of troops escape. Both the US study and Buckley record that the cost of Crete left Hitler distrustful of airborne operations, and in Long's judgment the losses of the airborne division persuaded him not to try the same kind of attack on Cyprus.40
Crete stayed in Axis hands until the end of the war. For the wider war in the region see our guide to the Mediterranean in World War II, for the other great fight of 1941 there the Siege of Tobruk, and for the Allies' own great airborne gamble Operation Market Garden.41
