Next week will see the 82nd anniversary of the Battle of Crete, and numerous ceremonial and cultural events are planned in the Chania area. A list of events published by the Cretan Regional Authority is given in a second post.
Historical background
By the end of April 1941, Crete remained the only part of Greece not under German occupation. Although preoccupied with the forthcoming invasion of the Soviet Union, the Germans saw the island as strategically useful, and potentially dangerous if it remained in Allied hands. Since the Royal Navy controlled the seas, the only option was an airborne invasion, which was adopted after some hesitation by the German High Command, who were convinced by the head of the German paratrooper force, the Fallschirmjäger, Kurt Student, that such an operation could be successful.
The Crete campaign, code-named “Operation Mercury” or “Merkur” by the Germans, was ferocious and lasted ten days, from 20th to 30th May 1941. Unlike the campaign on the Greek mainland, the Allies outnumbered the Germans on Crete, however they were poorly equipped, the majority having been evacuated from the mainland without heavy equipment, and an attempt by the Royal Navy to deliver supplies in the first two weeks of May having been largely foiled by Luftwaffe attacks.
The Commonwealth forces under Major-General Bernard Freyberg VC, a New Zealand Army officer, were organised to defend the island’s three airfields – Maleme, Rethymnon and Heraklion – as well as Souda Bay and the port of Chania. The first waves of the airborne invasion on 20th May were repulsed. However, miscommunication led to the defenders of Maleme airfield abandoning it after the first day, allowing the Germans to land reinforcements, and by the end of the month they had taken control of the island. The majority of the Allied forces retreated south to Sfakia, where they were evacuated by the Royal Navy to Egypt.
There were heavy losses on both sides. The German troops in the initial airborne landing were vulnerable to attack while in the air, and landing without their equipment were virtually unarmed against the defenders, including the local population who attacked them with whatever weapons they had to hand. As a result the Germans never again used paratroopers as a method of invasion.
The German occupation
Many of the local war memorials which will be the scene of ceremonies in the coming week record the names of Cretan soldiers who lost their lives both on the island and in other theatres of war. Others record the loss of civilian life during the German occupation. As reprisals for their heavy losses and ongoing attacks by the Cretan resistance, the Germans carried out systematic executions of able-bodied males in the Cretan villages. More than 2,000 Cretans were reported to have been executed during the first month of occupation alone and 25,000 more later.
Things reached such a pass that a deputation of locals went to General Alexander Andrae, the German Commander of the Occupation Forces, requesting that the executions cease as civil life on the island had become impossible, and seeking a general amnesty. As reported by Cretan author Giannis Tsivis, in his book Chania 1941-45: Occupation and Resistance, the General replied that the resistance of the Cretan people was unjustified and “illegal”:
“It is unjustified because while you did not fight against the English who came to occupy you, you fought against us, whose sole aim was to rid Crete of the English, in which we succeeded.
“Your fight against us is also illegal, because it was the citizens and not the army which fought us, in contravention of International Law. Also the struggle of the Cretan people was illegal and worthy of great punishment because you maltreated German prisoners of war and, what was worst, mutilated our dead soldiers.”
In rebuttal of these accusations, the bishop interpreting for the Cretans declared that:
“The English did not come to Crete as conquerors. They came as allies of the Greek government.
“The Cretan people was officially requested by the Greek government, with orders to fight in accordance with its thousand-year-old tradition of freedom and deliverance of their homeland.
“Vandalism, mutilation of corpses and ill-treatment of prisoners are actions entirely unknown in the history of the Cretan people.”
The General, unmoved, stated that a general amnesty would only be possible if the Cretans showed absolute obedience, and entered into “close, friendly and honest cooperation” with the German forces.
The meeting had no outcome, except the continuation of the executions by the Germans. General Andrae was captured by the British after the war, and extradited to Greece, where he was tried for war crimes and condemned to four life sentences. His sentence was commuted to four years by King Paul in 1951, and he was released in 1952 and returned to Germany.
Purpose of the commemorations
The repetition of these commemorative events year after year serves to preserve the memory of the Cretans’ struggles during and after the Battle of Crete, and to cement the image of Cretan heroism especially in the minds of the young – with schoolchildren often playing a part in the ceremonies. It is notable that the Cretans and other Greeks, while welcoming German tourists and treating them with the same hospitality as other visitors, are quick to react to anything suggestive of a celebration of the German part in the struggle,
In 2014 the German historian Heinz Richter, a highly-regarded academic who had been professor of Greek and Cypriot modern history at the University of Mannheim from 1991 to 2003, was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Crete following the publication of a book which claimed to give a more balanced view of the struggle. According to Wikipedia: “The award provoked protests by some Greek historians and other academics who claimed that Richter, in his work, had ‘smeared’ the reputation of Cretan resistance and assigned ‘noble incentives’ to the Nazi invaders.” Additionally, the Athens public prosecutor indicted Richter under a 2014 anti-racism and hate speech law, for “denying Nazi crimes against the people of Crete”. He was tried in absentia and found not guilty in 2016. Having initially rejected claims of bias against Richter, the University of Crete eventually yielded to a formal protest from other Greek universities, and revoked his honorary doctorate in the same year.
More recently, in 2021, an organisation calling itself The European Paratroopers Association, was reportedly planning to hold a celebration of the Battle of Crete in Chania by carrying out parachute jumps to mark the 80th anniversary of the German invasion. The organisation normally offers “military-style” parachute training to all comers, and the militaristic overtones of the plan were too much for local opinion. The event seems to have been called off after protests.
In March of this year, a visit to Crete by a party of German teachers, organised by the German Embassy in Athens, drew a sharp reaction from the inhabitants of Kandanos and Selino on learning that their tour would include a visit to the Wehrmacht memorial near Agioi Apostoli west of Chania. The villages in the vicinity of Kandanos and Selino were the scene of a number of mass executions during the German occupation, and the municipality’s cultural associations addressed an open letter to the teachers, reminding them of the circumstances of the occupation and decrying recent attempts by some German politicians to play down German war crimes in order to blunt the impact of Greece’s ongoing requests for reparations.