The Second World War Read online

  Because of delays in the delivery of aviation fuel, the operation was postponed from 17 May until the 20th. And during the last days before the attack, the onslaught from Richthofen’s Stukas and Messerschmitts increased dramatically. Their main target was anti-aircraft gun positions. The Bofors gunners had a terrible time, except at Heraklion airfield, where they were told to abandon their guns and make them appear to have been destroyed. Very wisely, 14th Infantry Brigade wanted to hold them in readiness for when the transports arrived with the paratroopers. But in an another example of confused thinking, Freyberg, although warned by Ultra intercepts that the Germans did not want to damage the airfields as they intended to use them immediately, failed to sabotage the runways with craters.

  At dawn stand-to on 20 May, the sky was clear. It was to be another beautiful and hot Mediterranean day. The usual air attacks began at 06.00 hours and lasted an hour and a half. Once they were over, soldiers climbed out of their slit-trenches and brewed up for breakfast. Many thought that the airborne invasion, which they had been warned would come on 17 May, might never come at all. Freyberg, even though he knew it was now scheduled for that morning, had decided not to pass on the information.

  Just before 08.00 hours, the sound of a different sort of aero-engine could be heard as Junkers 52 transports approached the island. Men grabbed their rifles and ran back to their positions. At Maleme and on the Akrotiri Peninsula near Freyberg’s headquarters, strangely shaped aircraft with long, tapering wings swished low overhead. The shout of ‘Gliders!’ went up. Rifles, Bren guns and machine guns opened fire. At Maleme forty gliders were seen to sweep over the airfield and land beyond the western perimeter in the dead ground of the Tavronitis riverbed and on the far side. A number of the gliders crashed, several were hit by ground-fire. Freyberg’s failure to position troops west of Maleme became immediately apparent. The gliders carried I Battalion of the Fallschirmjäger Storm Regiment, commanded by Major Koch, who had led the assault on the Belgian fortress of Eben-Emael the year before. Very soon afterwards an even greater sound of aero-engines heralded the arrival of the main force of paratroopers.

  To the surprise of more junior officers at Creforce headquarters, General Freyberg, on hearing the sound, carried on with his breakfast. He glanced up, simply remarking: ‘They’re dead on time.’ His imperturbable attitude was both impressive and worrying to some of those present. His staff watched through binoculars as the waves of Junkers transports dropped paratroopers and the battle erupted up and down the coastal strip. Several of the younger officers joined the hunt for glider crews which had crashed just to the north of the quarry in which Creforce headquarters was established.

  The New Zealanders set to killing the paratroopers with gusto as they descended. Officers told their men to aim at their boots as they came down to allow for the speed of descent. At Maleme, two more German battalions dropped beyond the Tavronitis. The New Zealand 22nd Battalion responsible for the airfield had positioned only a company around the airfield, with a single platoon on the vulnerable western side. Just south of the airfield was a rocky feature known as Hill 107 where Lieutenant Colonel L. W. Andrew had sited his command post. The company commander on the west side of the hill directed his men’s fire to great effect, but when he suggested that the two coastal guns should also be brought into action, he received the reply that they were for use only against targets at sea. Freyberg’s obsession with a ‘seaborne invasion’ made him refuse to use his artillery and deploy his reserves, a profound error since the wisest tactical response was to launch an immediate counter-attack before enemy para-troopers had a chance to organize.

  Many of the Germans dropping south-west of Chania into what was known as Prison Valley faced a massacre as they fell right on to well-camouflaged positions. One group dropped on to the 23rd Battalion’s headquarters. The commanding officer shot five and his adjutant shot two from where he was sitting. Cries of ‘Got the bastard!’ could be heard in all directions. Very few prisoners were taken in the heat of the fighting.

  None were more merciless in their determination to defend the island than the Cretans themselves. Old men, women and boys, using shotguns, old rifles, spades and kitchen knives, went into action against German para troopers in the open and those caught in olive trees by their chutes. Father Stylianos Frantzeskakis, hearing of the invasion, ran to the church and sounded the bell. Taking a rifle himself, he led his parishioners north from Paleochora to fight the enemy. The Germans, who had a Prussian hatred of francs-tireurs, ripped shirts or dresses from the shoulders of civilians. If any showed marks from the recoil of a gun or were found with a knife, they were executed on the spot, whatever their age or sex.

  Creforce was hampered by bad communications due to a shortage of wireless sets, since none had been shipped out from Egypt in the three weeks before the attack. As a result, the Australians at Rethymno and the British 14th Infantry Brigade at Heraklion had no idea until 14.30 hours that the invasion had begun in the west of the island.

  Fortunately for the British, problems in refuelling on the airfields in Greece had delayed the departure of Oberst Bruno Bräuer’s 1st Fall-schirmjäger Regiment. This meant that the preliminary attack by Stukas and Messerschmitts was well over before the wave of Junkers 52 transports began to arrive. Buglers sounded the General Alarm just before 17.30 hours. Soldiers threw themselves into their well-camouflaged positions. The Bofors gun crews, which had again avoided reacting during the air raid, now traversed their barrels, ready to take on the lumbering transport planes. They were able to shoot down fifteen of them in the next two hours.

  Bräuer, misled by the bad intelligence, had decided to spread his drops, with the III Battalion dropping south-west of Heraklion, the II Battalion landing on the airfield to the east of the city, and the I Battalion around the village of Gournes even further to the east. Hauptmann Burckhardt’s II Battalion faced a massacre. The highlanders of the Black Watch opened a murderous fire. The few survivors were then crushed in a counter-attack with a troop of the 3rd Hussars in Whippet tanks running over and gunning down any who tried to flee.

  Major Schulz’s III Battalion, having dropped into maize fields and vineyards, fought its way into Heraklion despite a fierce defence of the old Venetian city walls by Greek troops and Cretan irregulars. The mayor surrendered the city, but then the York and Lancaster Regiment and the Leicestershire Regiment counter-attacked, and forced the German para-troopers back out. By nightfall, Oberst Bräuer realized that his operation had gone drastically wrong.

  At Rethymno, between Heraklion and Chania, part of Oberst Alfred Sturm’s 2nd Fallschirmjäger Regiment also dropped into a trap. Lieutenant Colonel Ian Campbell had spread his two Australian battalions on the high ground overlooking the coast road and the airfield, with the ill-armed Greek troops in between. As the Junkers flew along parallel to the sea, the defenders opened a withering fire. Seven aircraft were shot down. Others, trying to escape, dropped their paratroopers into the sea where a number drowned, smothered by their chutes. Some paratroopers dropped on rocky ground and were injured, and several suffered a terrible death by dropping into cane breaks where they were impaled on the bamboo. Both Australian battalions launched counter-attacks. The German survivors had to escape eastwards where they took up position in an olive-oil factory. And another group which had dropped closer to Rethymno withdrew into the village of Perivolia to defend itself when attacked by Cretan gendarmerie and irregulars from the town.

  As night fell rapidly on Crete, troops on both sides collapsed in exhaustion. Firing died away. German paratroopers suffered agonies of thirst. Their uniforms were designed for northern climates and many experienced severe dehydration. Cretan irregulars laid ambushes for them near wells and continued to stalk them all night. A large number of German officers, including the commander of the 7th Fallschirmjäger Division, had been killed.

  In Athens, news of the disaster spread. General Student stared at the giant map of the island on the wall of the ballro
om in the Hotel Grande Bretagne. Although his headquarters lacked detailed figures, they knew that casualties had been very heavy and that none of the three airfields had been secured. Only Maleme still seemed possible, but the Storm Regiment in the Tavronitis Valley was almost out of ammunition. Generalfeldmarschall List’s Twelfth Army headquarters and Richthofen’s VIII Fliegerkorps were convinced that Operation Mercury had to be aborted, even if that meant abandoning the paratroopers on the island. One captured officer had even acknowledged to an Australian battalion commander: ‘We do not reinforce failure.’

  General Freyberg, meanwhile, signalled to Cairo at 22.00 hours to say that as far as he knew his troops still held the three airfields and the two harbours. He was woefully misinformed, however, about the situation at Maleme. Colonel Andrew’s battered battalion had fought as well as it possibly could, but his requests for a counter-attack on the airfield were effectively ignored. Andrew’s superior Brigadier James Hargest, presumably influenced by Freyberg’s emphasis on a threat from the sea, did not send help. When Andrew warned him that he would have to withdraw if he did not receive support, Hargest replied: ‘If you must, you must.’ Maleme and Hill 107 were thus abandoned during the night.

  General Student, determined not to give up, came to a decision without warning Generalfeldmarschall List. He sent for Hauptmann Kleye, the most experienced pilot in his command, and asked him to make a test landing on the airfield at first light. Kleye returned to report that he had not come under direct fire. Another Junkers was also despatched to take ammunition to the Storm Regiment and evacuate some of its wounded. Student immediately ordered Generalmajor Julius Ringel’s 5th Mountain Division to prepare to be flown out, but first he sent every available reserve from the 7th Fallschirmjäger Division under the command of Oberst Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke to be dropped near Maleme. With the airfield secured, the first troop carriers began landing at 17.00 hours with part of the 100th Mountain Regiment.

  Freyberg, still expecting an invasion fleet, refused to allow any of his other reserves to be used in a counter-attack apart from the 20th New Zealand Battalion. The Welch Regiment, his largest and best-equipped unit, was to be held back because he still feared a ‘seaborne attack in area Canea [Chania]’. Yet one of his own staff officers had told him from captured German plans that the Light Ships Group, bringing reinforcements and supplies, was heading for a point west of Maleme, some twenty kilometres from Chania. Freyberg had also refused to listen to the assurance of the senior naval officer on the island that the Royal Navy was perfectly capable of dealing with the small boats coming by sea.

  At dusk, once the Luftwaffe had disappeared from the Aegean, three Royal Navy task forces returned at full steam round both ends of the island. Thanks to Ultra intercepts, they knew the course of their prey. Force D, with three cruisers and four destroyers using radar, ambushed the flotilla of caiques escorted by an Italian light destroyer. The searchlights flashed on and the massacre began. Only one caique escaped their net and made it to shore.

  Watching this naval action on the northern horizon, Freyberg became carried away with excitement. One of his staff officers remembered him jumping up and down with schoolboy enthusiasm. When it was over, Frey-berg’s remarks indicated that he thought that the island was now safe. He went to bed relieved, having not even asked about progress on the counter-attack against Maleme.

  The attack was due to start at 01.00 hours on 22 May, but Freyberg had insisted that the 20th Battalion should not move until it had been replaced by an Australian battalion from Georgioupolis. Lacking sufficient transport, the Australians were delayed, and as a result the 20th Battalion was not ready to join the 28th (Maori) Battalion in the advance until 03.30 hours. The precious hours of darkness had been wasted. Despite the great bravery of the attackers–Lieutenant Charles Upham won the first of his two VCs, Britain’s highest award for bravery during the battle–they stood little chance against the reinforced paratroopers and mountain battalions, to say nothing of the constant strafing from Messerschmitts once the sun rose. The exhausted New Zealanders had to pull back in the afternoon. They could only watch in fury as the Junkers 52 troop carriers carried on landing at a terrifyingly impressive rhythm of twenty planes an hour. The island was now doomed.

  Disaster also extended to the war at sea that day. Cunningham, determined to hunt down the second Light Ships Group which had been delayed, sent Force C and Force A1 into the Aegean in daylight. Finally, they sighted the group and inflicted some damage, but the intensity of German air attack led to greater and greater losses. The Mediterranean Fleet lost two cruisers and a destroyer sunk. Two battleships, two cruisers and several destroyers suffered heavy damage. The navy had not yet learned the lesson that the age of the battleship was over. Another two destroyers, Lord Louis Mountbatten’s HMS Kelly and HMS Kashmir, were sunk the following day.

  On the evening of 22 May, Freyberg decided not to risk a last all-out counter-attack with his three uncommitted battalions. He clearly did not want to be remembered as the man who lost the New Zealand Division. The anger among the Australians at Rethymno and the British 14th Infantry Brigade at Heraklion can be imagined as they thought that they had won their battles. A terrible withdrawal began over the rocky paths of the White Mountains as the footsore, thirsty and exhausted members of Creforce made their way to the port of Sphakia, where the Royal Navy was preparing yet again to take off a defeated army. Brigadier Robert Laycock’s commando brigade, arriving as reinforcements, landed at Suda Bay only to hear that the island was being abandoned. They watched in disbelief as stores were burned on the quayside. An unamused Laycock found that his men were to form the rearguard against Ringel’s mountain troops.

  The Royal Navy never flinched despite its heavy losses around Crete. The 14th Infantry Brigade was evacuated on two cruisers and six destroyers after a brilliantly concealed withdrawal to Heraklion harbour on the night of 28 May. Officers thought of the burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna, a poem about the most famous evacuation in the Napoleonic Wars which they had almost all learned to recite at school. But everything had gone too well. Slowed by a damaged destroyer, the ships had not cleared the channel round the eastern end of the island as the sun began to rise. Stukas attacked after dawn. Two of the destroyers were lost and two cruisers badly damaged. The squadron limped into Alexandria harbour piled with dead. A fifth of 14th Brigade had been killed at sea, a far higher proportion than in the fight against the paratroopers. A Black Watch piper, lit by a searchlight, played a lament. Many of the soldiers wept unashamedly. The Germans saw the losses inflicted on the Royal Navy during the Crete campaign as revenge for the sinking of the Bismarck (see next chapter). Richthofen and his guest General Ferdinand Schörner toasted the victory with champagne in Athens.

  The evacuation from the south coast also began on the night of 28 May, but the Australians at Rethymno never received the order to withdraw. ‘Enemy still shooting,’ the German paratroopers reported back to Greece. In the end, just fifty of the Australians got away by crossing the mountains, and they were not taken off by submarine until some months later.

  At Sphakia there was chaos and disorder caused mainly by the mass of leaderless base troops who had swarmed ahead. The New Zealanders, Australians and Royal Marines who had retreated in good order set up a cordon to prevent the boats being rushed. The last ships left in the early hours of 1 June as the German mountain troops closed in. The Royal Navy had managed to take off 18,000 men, including almost all the New Zealand Division. Another 9,000 men had to be left behind and became prisoners.

  Their bitterness is easy to imagine. On the first day alone, Allied troops had killed 1,856 paratroopers. Altogether, Student’s forces suffered some 6,000 casualties, with 146 aircraft destroyed and 165 badly damaged. These Junkers 52 transports would be sorely missed by the Wehrmacht later in the summer during the invasion of the Soviet Union. Richthofen’s VIII Fliegerkorps lost another sixty aircraft. The Battle of Crete represented the greatest blow which the W
ehrmacht had suffered since the start of the war. But, despite the Allies’ furious defence, the battle had then turned into a needless and poignant defeat. Bizarrely, both sides drew very different lessons from the outcome of the airborne operation. Hitler was determined never to attempt a major drop again, while the Allies were encouraged to develop their own paratroop formations, with very mixed results later in the war.

  11

  Africa and the Atlantic

  FEBRUARY–JUNE 1941

  The diversion of Wavell’s forces to Greece in the spring of 1941 could not have come at a worse time. It was another classic British example of stretching insufficient resources in too many different directions. The British, and above all Churchill, appeared to be incapable by character of matching the German army’s talent for ruthless prioritization.

  The opportunity for the British to win the war in North Africa in 1941 was lost as soon as forces were withdrawn for Greece and Rommel landed in Tripoli with leading elements of the Afrika Korps. Hitler’s selection of Rommel was not welcomed by senior officers in the OKH. They would have far preferred Generalmajor Hans Freiherr von Funck, who had been sent out to report on the situation in Libya. But Hitler detested Funck, mainly because he had been close to Generaloberst Werner Freiherr von Fritsch, whom Hitler had dismissed as head of the army in 1938.

  Hitler liked the fact that Rommel was no aristocrat. He spoke with a marked Swabian accent, and was something of an adventurer. His superiors in the army and many contemporaries considered him an arrogant publicity seeker. They also distrusted the way he exploited the admiration of Hitler and Goebbels to bypass the chain of command. The isolated campaign in Africa, as Rommel quickly sensed, presented the perfect opportunity to ignore instructions from the OKH. In addition, Rommel did not make himself popular by arguing that, instead of invading Greece, Germany should have diverted those forces to North Africa in order to seize the Middle East and its oil.