London: John Murray, 2005 (1st published 1991) ISBN 9780719568312
I found this book - the first in Antony Beevor's justly celebrated histories of various campaigns of World War II - incredibly hard to read. Not because Beevor's writing is flawed - far from it: but because the story of Crete in World War II is a tragic one of flawed tactics, wrong-headedness and missed opportunities on both sides, and an appallingly unnecessary loss of life.
After the debacle of the Greek Campaign, which Beevor briefly touches on, there was little doubt that the Wehrmacht intended to take Crete. In fact the British knew, thanks to their ability to read the German code, not only the German's intentions, but also to a great extent the timing and size of the attack.
One would think that, even with troops still recovering from retreat and defeat on the mainland, this advantage would be decisive, especially considering they outnumbered the German troops by a factor of almost 2:1. The problems stemmed from the top: General Freyberg, whilst undoubtedly brave and caring of his men, was very fixed in his ideas and not gifted tactically. He seems to have almost willfully mis-interpreted the Ultra signals, and fixed his mind on the idea that the main invasion force was to come by sea, with the paratroop drop merely a precursor. This mistaken view was the main reason the Allies lost the island.
And what of the German side? General Student's plan of drops at all airfields on the Northern coast meant that his forces were stretched dangerously thin, with little ability to co-operate if they were hard pressed. The appalling lack of intelligence meant that Student was deceived into thinking the numbers of Allied troops were much less than the actual numbers on the island, and so he thought his paratroops could take the island purely by airborne assault (it is one of the ironies of war that Student was the officer commanding troops at Arnhem, troops the Allies didn't know was there because of an intelligence failure).
Both sides were heinously deficient in radio equipment, vital in a country both mountainous and with poor transport infrastructure. The lack of communication would affect the British very much in the first days of the invasion.
The upshot of all these failings is that most German paratroops dropped into a hail of gunfire, and while their losses were appalling, Freyberg's misjudgment and the lack of communication between his troops meant that one airfield was taken by German troops, and this was enough to allow them to bring in enough re-inforcements to win the battle. Beevor describes this disaster well, describing some very heroic (and some not-so-heroic) actions on both sides.
The second part of this book describes the four years of occupation and resistance to Nazi control over Crete, focusing mainly on the work of the British SOE operatives that were in constant touch with the bands of Cretan resistance forces that based themselves in the mountains and kept pressure on the occupying forces. Beevor covers the politics of the various Cretan forces: republican, nationalist, and communist, as well as the politics of the special forces, with their jealousies and rivalries affecting at different times not only operations in Crete, but across the Balkans.
The heroism of the Cretans, from the armed bands to the village women who risked all to shelter Allied soldiers, is hard to fathom in the modern world, but is as admirable as any other sacrifice made in those much harder times.
While Crete might have only been headline news during the War in the few short weeks when it was the frontline (and after Leigh-Fermor kidnapped General Kriepe, which Beevor covers briskly and well), there was much activity there for a long period. It is hard to think of a book that covers it better than this one.
Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell
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