The Lost Battle: Crete 1941

by Callum A. MacDonald

Spine creased. Orders received by 3pm Sent from the UK that weekday.

Genres: History, Military History, Nonfiction, World War II, Military Fiction

368 pages, Paperback

First published October 22, 1993

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

About ½ of the book deals with the development of airborne employment theory/troops before getting to the actual assault on Crete. The airborne operations in May 1940 are briefly covered as the Eben-Emael capture is seen as a template but the failures of other airborne ops in Holland are ignored. The book covers both German and British plans for the Crete battle. Churchill is a driving force behind defending Crete but is not well treated in the book. There is a good description of the logistics challenges on both sides that impact the battle.

The battle itself is covered adequately. I was very disappointed in the lack of maps, which would have made the narrative much more interesting. It would not have been hard to place pertinent maps showing the progress of the campaign. The battle hinged on the failure of the British/ANZAC/Greek forces to immediately destroy any attempts to control an airfield. The Germans capture Maleme airfield and are able to airland enough forces to turn the tide of battle. The role of the expected seaborne phase of the German attack has an outsized impact on the defensive plans. The German forces are decimated in the initial parachute/glider attack. The German tactics included having all their weapons except a pistol in separate containers dropped from the aircraft wings during the drop. At least one paratrooper complained that the defenders didn’t let the Germans get to their rifles and other armament before slaughtering them, “not fair”.

The part of the battle that was really informative was the experiences of the Royal Navy in bringing the troops to Crete, supplying them and taking them back off at the end. The navy was tasked to do impossible missions and often rose to the occasion, at the cost of ships and lives. While the Royal Navy’s part in the campaign is covered well, the RAF does not get much coverage and what they get is pretty bad. Unfortunately, the RAF couldn’t contribute because they had few planes and the Luftwaffe had air superiority. Giving this one 4 Stars for the bravery of the forces involved.

Goering’s private army gets its start:

In the autumn of 1935 the Luftwaffe Chief of Staff, General Walther Wever, persuaded Goering that a battalion of the new Hermann Goering Regiment should be trained as parachutists. Since this was considered a particularly dangerous activity, it was decided that the men must all be volunteers. In order to show them what was involved, the entire unit was paraded around the perimeter of the airfield at Juterborg on a grey autumn morning to witness a demonstration jump by a corporal, the only member of the regiment with any experience of parachuting. With more enthusiasm than skill, the man leaped from the wing of an ancient biplane and plunged downwards, misjudging his height from the ground and injuring himself badly on landing. As the white parachute canopy slowly collapsed over his unconscious figure and a military ambulance raced across the airfield, there were a few thoughtful faces in the ranks of the audience.

Despite this eventful initiation, 600 men volunteered for parachute training the following day and were formed into a battalion under Major Bruno Brauer. They were influenced by a variety of considerations. Some wanted adventure and a break from normal military routine, others simply followed the example of their friends or a popular company officer. At the beginning of 1936 a parachute school was established at Stendal in central Germany and the following year the first experiments with gliders took place.

The RAF doesn’t play much of a part in Greece and later in Crete.

Anger about the performance of the RAF in Greece was widespread. As a New Zealand private complained in his diary, ‘What the hell happened?...Not a single plane of the British or Greek forces has been seen since we came to Greece. This is no doubt that we…. could have held the Hun at bay if we had any reasonable backing from the RAF.’ The feeling was summed up in a popular piece of doggerel by an unknown Australian:

We marched and groaned beneath our load,
Whilst Jerry bombed us off the road,
He chased us here, he chased us there,
The bastards chased us everywhere.
And whilst he dropped his load of death,
We cursed the bloody RAF.
And when we heard the wireless news,
When portly Winston aired his views
The RAF was now in Greece
Fighting hard to win the peace;
We scratched our heads and said, ‘Pig’s arse,’
For this to us was just a farce,
For if in Greece the air force be —
Then where the bloody hell are we?

Sid Raggett, an Australian gunner, thought the bitter joke complete when the first British aircraft he had seen in weeks, a Blenheim bomber, attacked his evacuation ship by mistake.

Went back and read the Crete section of Martin Pöppel's Heaven & Hell: The War Diary of a German Paratrooper

[Scottnshana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had the privilege this weekend of climbing into a Junkers 52 at the Auto & Technik Museum up at Sinsheim, Germany, and marveled at the small size of this aircraft's cabin. I imagined being hunched over in there with 6 or 7 of my friends in full combat kit, doomed to being shot out of the sky by the RAF or the Royal Navy's anti-aircraft pickets. If I could get out the door with a good parachute canopy there was a good chance I'd be blown into the ocean to drown or onto the cold steel of the New Zealand infantry or Cretan villager. MacDonald speaks to all these outcomes in his narrative on OPERATION MERCURY and reveals why the Luftwaffe never again attempted a mass drop to seize an objective in the Second World War--most importantly the Island objective across the English Channel. There were, however, important operational lessons that later airborne forces gleaned from the Germans' horrible experience in the Cretan campaign that are elucidated in this history--the need to put pathfinders down early and seize airfields for the follow-on air-landing forces; the importance of jointness (i.e., when moving infantry to the jobsite or providing fire support via ships or aircraft); and the essential coordination with indigenous and sympathetic assets ("[Special Operations Executive] officers on Crete wanted to channel Cretan anger into organized resistance. The Foreign Office sympathized with this view but hesitated to tread 'on military toes' by pursuing the issue."). The author documents these lessons well. At the same time, he illustrates the precarious geostrategic situation of the British Empire in this focal season on the cusp of BARBAROSSA and Pearl Harbor. This, however, exposes a critical shortcoming in the book. As the reader is taken on a tour of British interests in Norway, the Netherlands, North Africa, and the necessary stop in Greece itself, he is treated to just one orientation map on page x of the preface. As MacDonald focuses in on the tactical fighting, the provided inset map of Crete is hardly adequate--presenting neither described terrain markers or unit symbols--and this would add quite a bit to the narrative on this key military event. What he does well, though, is in his description of the discussions that occurred at the highest civil and military levels in both the Third Reich and His Majesty's government. "The Lost Battle" is also certainly not a Churchill hagiography. He is presented as at best an unwelcome meddler in the prosecution of military operations--for example when he appoints Freyberg as his on-the-spot commander on the eve of the assault, a decision evidently based on a man-crush developed during the First World War. To be fair (and MacDonald expresses this), the Prime Minister needed to hold onto both the Suez Canal and the secrecy of the British access to encrypted Luftwaffe message traffic, and each of these goals held serious influence on his communiques from London: "The immediate question was whether to fight for Crete, in an attempt to save something from the Greek fiasco, or to withdraw British forces and concentrate on stopping Rommel in North Africa." It is easy to Monday-morning quarterback, though, with seven decades of hindsight and the knowledge that we eventually vanquished the Nazis. In the concluding chapter, there is a fine description of each side's combat losses as well as recognition that "For the rest of the war Student's [paratroopers] fought mainly as infantry [and] it was Ringel, the traditional soldier [and commander of the mountain infantry ferried to Crete on barges and Junkers 52 airlifters] who had finally rescued OPERATION MERCURY and transformed defeat into victory." Further, this 'victory' was always a side objective, as "for Hitler the importance of the island had always been related to its value as a fortress guarding the Balkan flank of BARBAROSSA." I have personally waited to jump from the more comfortable ride in a C-130, having underwent training for surviving a water landing and forming up into a defensive perimeter if I survived the drop into an area already secured by men braver than myself. But my airborne experience began 50 years after OPERATION MERCURY, and I did not know then how much we owed to the study of this innovative and important campaign in military history.

[Hans · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book describes the battle for Crete in great detail. But it covers far more ground than the battle alone.

The book also tell the story of the Fallschirmjäger from its creation to the end of the battle for Crete. From the first steps of building up this arm, part of the Luftwaffe and not of the Wehrmacht, to the first operations in Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and more. How Student became one of Hitler's favorites, and how German propaganda made use of this new arm. But Crete would also see its downfall.

This was one of the first books that showed the role played by Ultra during the war and how it influenced what happened on Crete. It makes painfully clear that Ultra was a highly protected tool, that would have to be kept hidden whatever the cost.
It does also do a great job in showing how Churchill was obsessed with the Balkans and how his 'voice' overshadowed what happened. The role that Crete played in this theater, and also in the preparations for operation Barbarossa, is described in a clear and concise manner. Making the understanding of this whole battle, and how the various factions reacted on it, easier to better understand.

It also shows how German intelligence lacked solid information of the Allied forces present on the island, and how the Fallschirmjäger paid the price for it. And how this battle could have run a different course if the Allied HQ's had made better use of the available information, despite the fact that they had to protect the Ultra intelligence. The crucial role of the Royal Navy during the battle and the evacuation, and the impossible task faced by the RAF, make the coverage complete.

This is also the first time that I have read about the Greek forces and the Cretans themselves and the role they played in the battle. And the high price that the Cretans paid during and after the battle.

Absolutely a great read which I still rate at 5-stars, despite the fact that the lack of maps makes following along, and interpreting the military situation, somewhat hard at times.

[Erik Empson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good balanced account of the battle, which begins with quite a lengthy discussion of the development of airborne forces under the tutelage of General Kurt Student. I found this a little annoying at first but on reflection I think it was useful to show the extent that the battle for Crete issued from general's desire to prove his pet concept and his success in convincing Goering to support it with Hitler. On this point Macdonald has some differences with Beevor's account, emphasising Hitler's support in so far as the island would prevent the Balkan flank for Barbarossa, whereas the latter I seem to remember reported more hostility towards it. In sum, I think the Nazis needed the island because it was of great strategic importance to the British, rather than it serving any real purpose for them. Regardless, it is interesting to note the extent to which, as Macdonald reports, North Africa was a sideshow for the Germans, one that they were content with abandoning in favour of eastern ambitions.
Macdonald is lighter on Freyberg than Beevor, exonerating him more for his failure to substantially reinforce and counterattack at Maleme, which was really the turning point of the whole war. He does admit that Freyberg was to ready to defer to Puttick and Hargest on this front, and the latter are admonished some for their failure to perceive how crucial preventing the Germans from seizing the airfield was. I think the argument that Freyberg did not commit more strongly here and was reserving troops for the seaborne assault because he was protecting Ultra a little flimsy.
Overall, however, a book that reflects the excitement of the battle and the obstacles faced by the defence of Crete in the light of German air superiority. It suffers, like many of these books from a lack of decent maps, just one of small scale, which will make the action harder to follow for readers unfamiliar with the island.

[Dulcie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Fixated (fascinated?) By the German side of the story, MacDonald is full of bluster and bullshit.
Full disclosure, my grandfather was amongst the AIF who died on Crete, so the subjugation of any Australian input into the defence of Crete to just the brave Maori & NZ battalions is just pure malicious bullshit.
Waugh deals with the drama of the withdrawal and evacuation many times better than the fool who wrote this.
Callum MacDonald tells a one sided, one eyed history of the battle for Crete and deserves utter condemnation.
This is not history it is garbage.

[Mick Maye · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book, many good points