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Hitler's Last Airdrop: Crete 1941By Robert M. Citino | MHQ | Single Page | 3 comments | Print This Post | Email This Post  While the Fallschirmjager had had some success with airborne assaults in the Low Countries and in Greece, the drop on Crete was a dearly bought victory. Hundreds of paratroopers like this one dies before reaching the ground, and scores of gliders were blown from the air. (Bundesarchiv, Bild 1011-166-0527-22, Photo: Franz Peter Weixler) While Hitler concluded that the airborne invasion of Crete was far too costly, it spurred the U.S. Army to create an entire American parachute corps This post contains only a snippet of this article. Please purchase the Winter 2010 issue of Military History Quarterly to read the entire article.
The German Wehrmacht continues to enjoy a high reputation as a fighting force, the finest professional army of modern times. Scholars, military professionals, and buffs alike obsess over its flexible system of command and control, its skill at combined arms, its meticulous planning, its drive, its aggression.
But anyone who thinks that "German planning" is synonymous with excellence or that any officer wearing a red stripe on his trousers (the simple, even spartan, indicator of membership in the elite German General Staff) could do no wrong, should take a closer look at what happened on the tiny Mediterranean island of Crete in May 1941.
Some of the finest minds in the Wehrmacht came up with just the sort of German operational plan that has been so beloved by military historians over the years. It was bold, aggressive, and pioneering. Yet the operation destroyed the division that carried it out. So high were the casualties in Operation Mercury that the German führer, Adolf Hitler—never one to spare the lives of the men under his own command—swore that he would never attack this way again. And while Hitler was wrong about a good many things in this war, it is hard to argue with his reasoning this time. Nevertheless, the Allies would draw a very different lesson from Crete.
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            Tags: Airborne Operations, Military History Quarterly, Tactics, U.S. Army, World War II
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3 Comments to “Hitler's Last Airdrop: Crete 1941”
But Hitler did use paradrop later in war. In 1944 in Raid on Drvar.
By Hipponos on Dec 4, 2009 at 4:49 am
Mr R.M.Citino,if you want to fault the German General Staff about an action or inaction there are many examples,but not Operation Mercury;
General Kurt Student(commander o the XIth Fliegerkorps) who planned the operation along with general
Loher,commander of the 12th army,made their planning on the strength of the information provided by Admiral Wilhelm Kanaris who atually underestimated the Greek-British forces on the island,despite his undoutable abilities.The operation was executed in three waves and Loher kept in reserve the 6th mountain division in Athens and Student substituted the airborn division with 5th mountain for greater punch,because neither gave full credit to the intelligence provided by Kanaris and they proved correct and the island fell.
Hitler was not against airdrop operations,that is why general Student's corps was augmented and we meet them again in 1944 in France as first Air army with Student as its commander.Hitler rather believed that jet fighters and bombers would give him again the lost air superiority which he had lost and that would make large scale airdrop operations again possible….
By John Merkatatis on Dec 16, 2009 at 5:03 pm
The article was very informative and well written but i found something very disturbing.You repeat the same accusations that Germans made right after the battle that their dead were mutilated by the Greek inhabbitants of Crete.This is completely false.Cretans were proud and independent people and they always had the tradition of bearing arms.However when Metaxas came to power he did everything he could to stop that.Hence when the Germans invaded the island the Cretans had to use whatever was at hand from agricultural tools to 19th century Gras 11mm rifles and even muskets or their bare hands and teeth!!This assortment of weapons don't produce neat wounds like the ones made by modern bullets,on top of that many dead paratroopers were found days after the battle and the hot sun did not helped preserveing them.The Germans used this as a pretext to cause severe reprisals against the inhabitants of the island.1st Lt Horst Trebes was among the first to extract revenge from the Greeks after the battle was over.
By John Athanasopoulos on Jan 15, 2010 at 7:51 pm