France was an even bigger success for the Fallschirmjäger. In early May 1940, the strength of German airborne forces was nearly that of a light infantry division. But their impact on the opening moves of one of the most important battles of World War II was out of all proportion to their size. In the southern Ardennes, Fieseler Fi-156 Storch light reconnaissance planes dropped members of the Brandenburg Regiment on the bridges immediately to the south of the 10th Panzer Division’s route of march. In Belgium a small group of German gliderborne troops landed on top of the great Belgian fortress of Eben Emael on the morning of May 10. The supposedly unconquerable fortress fell to the glidermen in a matter of hours, opening the way for Colonel-General Fedor von Bock’s Army Group B to advance into northern Belgium, which fatally fixed the attention of the French high command there.

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An even greater success came with two simultaneous airborne operations during the invasion of Holland. The first involved a strike that was quite similar to what Mitchell had first proposed in 1918. In this case, German paratroopers landed at the airport near The Hague, the intention being that they would be reinforced by troops brought in by Ju-52s. The aim was to seize the Dutch government and effect a surrender of its forces before the fighting even began. While the paratroopers initially seized the airfield, Dutch troops quickly drove them off before they could be reinforced. The attack, however, resulted in the Dutch high command’s focusing on the defense of the capital and rushing its reserves to The Hague.

Meanwhile, a far more dangerous German drive, led by paratroopers, was gathering steam on the Netherlands frontier. In an operation that resembled the later Operation Market-Garden in conception, if not in execution, the Germans dropped small packets of paratroopers to seize the crucial bridges that led directly across Holland and into the heart of the country. They opened the way for the 10th Panzer Division. At every point they succeeded, while the German armored force showed none of the hesitation that would later mark the Allied armored drive in September 1944. Within a day, the Dutch position was hopeless.

How important were these opening moves by airborne troops? In and of themselves they were, of course, not decisive. But airborne incursions throughout France and the Low Countries helped to create a climate of fear and promoted the idea that the Germans were invincible. Moreover, the rumors that swirled around their use, some of which were spread by German propaganda — such as paratroopers disguised as nuns — helped to further the disintegration of Allied morale and cohesion. But perhaps most important of all was the fact that their achievements in the Low Countries contributed substantially to Army Group B’s success in keeping the French high command focused on northern Belgium and the Netherlands, while the great German armored drive crossed the Ardennes and smashed its way across the Meuse River between May 13 and 15.

Crete
The next major use of Fallschirmjäger occurred in May 1940, when the Germans confronted the fact that, while their invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece had been an enormous success, the British still held the strategically important island of Crete. There is considerable disagreement among historians about whether Crete or Malta should have been the German target in late May 1941. But the evidence is clear, at least to this author, that the Germans made the right decision. They could not afford to allow the British to keep a base from which the Royal Air Force (RAF) could attack the Romanian oil fields, which were absolutely essential to the German war effort throughout World War II.

Operation Merkur, the invasion of Crete, on May 20, 1941, came very close to being the first major German ground defeat of the war. Aided by Ultra — the breaking of the high-level German ciphers — the British had advance warning that the Germans were preparing to launch a large-scale airborne operation against the island. That information was passed along to Maj. Gen. Bernard Freyberg, the island’s commanding officer, who paid no attention to the intelligence. Instead he deployed the majority of his forces to guard the beaches against a seaborne landing, despite the Royal Navy’s assurances that it could prevent such an occurrence.

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