Comments on: Hitler's Last Airdrop: Crete 1941

By: John Athanasopoulos

John Athanasopoulos — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 23:51:00 +0000

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 Merkatatis

John Merkatatis — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:03:18 +0000

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: Hipponos

Hipponos — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:49:31 +0000

But Hitler did use paradrop later in war. In 1944 in Raid on Drvar.