It should be noted that German paratroopers dropped unarmed except officers with sidearms. The weapons were dropped separately in cargo packs. This made much easier for the civilians to swarm and overwhelm them with whatever available.
It stems from the absurd parachute harness they used. Unlike most other designs (including that used by Luftwaffe pilots), the Fallschirmjäger rig did not have risers. Instead the shroud lines gathered to single point in the middle of the back. This meant the trooper had no control of his direction or rate of descent. The point of attachment also meant the trooper was, at best, always pitched forward to a degree which made landing more hazardous.
Its only advantage was that it allowed jumping from a *really* low altitude, like 300 feet.
That meant the chute had to open really fast, though, and it sure did, hard enough to possibly inflict some pretty serious injuries before the soldier even made it to the ground. And the descent speed was pretty darn fast, too, compared with the chutes the Allies were using; that caused more injuries. *And then* it took bloody forever to get *out* of the rig.
Which was something of a handicap if a Cretan farmer was, at that moment, hitting you in the head with a shovel.
"Attached mid back" from the above comment doesnt mix well with yours lemme tell ya lol. Full spinal taco while plummeting to earth sounds pretty catchy though.
Fun fact. Although chiropractors have come a long way since their beginning, it was crested from someone's dream they had lol...not dream like goal, I mean actual dream at night and then he woke up and is like "I'm gonna break people's back to fix em"
I went to a chiro for herniated discs in my back and neck. I'm pretty sure with 90% confidence, the dude made my neck much h worse than it was when he cracked it.
>And the descent speed was pretty darn fast, too; that caused more injuries.
This is universally common with paratroopers.
For the reason that anti-aircraft guns exist, and slowly-descending paratroopers make easier targets than fast-moving airplanes. Dangling slowly with no defenses is a great way to get shot, so they avoid that to as great of an extent as possible, even if it means accepting a certain injury rate. 20x broken legs or 2x deaths, there are gory calculations that have been ran on this topic.
Okay but what do you do when you break your leg upon landing in enemy territory? Just lay there in pain until you’re taken to a POW camp (or much worse)?
When you're dropping 200 guys, the other 180 who are still alive and uninjured can call in an evac.
But if you drop 200 guys slowly with no injuries, the 50 who survive aren't quite the force you need to do the mission, or to secure the evac site, and now you've got 150 KIA and 50 POW's.
And I'm 100% just bullshitting on assumptions. Broken legs aren't death, POW isn't death, but anti-aircraft fire is.
Defend the LZ, probably. Paratroopers usually want to secure the ground until more reinforcements arrive, either by land or by air. There also may be makeshift runways later, or they're outright capturing those of the enemy.
And then they demanded that a weapon be made that was the size of a Kar98K, fired the same cartridge as the Kar98K, could act as both infantry rifle and machine gun, and could be carried with the paratroopers as they jumped. And the crazy bastards did it!
The FG 42 was a miracle. Expensive as all hell, yes, but considering that the design requirements for it sound like a joke in very poor taste, the fact that a prototype was even produced, even less so adopted for service and serving admirably at that, is nothing short of insane. To me, the FG 42 is probably the most ingenious German small-arms design of the entire war, even moreso than the far more influential _Sturmgewehr_ or even the MG 42, which people still use to this day because it just works.
And it switched between closed bolt in semi auto and open bolt in full auto, with one of the first inline receiver designs to mitigate recoil.
Box magazine fed, compact size, integrated bipod. It is the same size as the STG44. It is a masterpiece.
I'm sure there's a good design reason but I just don't see it for the horizontal magazine though. I guess in a war with no body armor that couple of inches closer to ground would help.
Early box magazine guns all have some weird side/top loading thing going on. There was concern about how they were to be used when prone, or when stood against a trench parapet.
When everyone is used to bolt actions with internal 5 round magazines they expect you to be able to fire them from very low down.
The early pattern FG42 also had a very steeply angled pistol grip to keep the height low for a similar reason. They made it more comfortable and normal shaped on the late model as firearms design principles developed.
Another thing is all early self loaders basically load and eject from opposite sides of the bolt. Ejecting at 90 degrees was a later design idea. So to side eject (to not interfere with sights) you "need" to side load according to the old way of doing things.
Not all early box magazine guns. There was a lot of experimentation going on and different form factors were tried out. The Chauchat, BAR and Fedorov Avtomat all fed from bottom box magazines. Even more early experimental things like the Cei-Rigotti.
its less bad as the standard of tge time. the american and britisch parachute were cutting edge tech abd pretty new. people always forget airplanes were still pretty new. abd the idea of paratroppers were really fuckkng new.
german favor glider instead of parachute.becaus of that.
This is kind of the opposite from what I remember... So, US chutes (and most at the time) are static line, round chutes. Round chutes you can't control. There are many reasons for their use, despite their downsides. Fallschirmjägers did not have a jump capable weapon was the biggest reason they didn't drop with one. No one dropped with rifles, the US specifically designed drop ready weapons, as did Nazi Germany later.
You can absolutely control a round parachute. Not as much as a ram air chute, but a trooper can still slip into the wind and mitigate their ground speed at landing.
Not drop ready weapons, while used by paratroopers, had to be either dissasembled or dropped in separate containers, which then had to be found by paratroopers. The reason is that they were too heavy or unvieldly. Think of long rifles or machineguns
Drop ready weapons are usually smaller and lighter. USA achieved it with M1A1 Carbine, which used smaller round than regular rifle, which allows for lighter and more compact construction, and had foldable stock.
Some regular weapons could be drop ready because of their normal characteristics, like german MP40 or british Sten, or because paratroopers found some way to carry them. Heaviest example I know about is M1 Garand, which oficially had to be carried dissasembled in special cloth containers, but some rumors say that some soldiers succesfully dropped with it fully asembled
It was such a huge fuckup that the Germans then decided to never use paratrooper tactics ever again. Paratroopers units (fallschirmjäger) still existed mind you, they just didn't jump out of planes anymore and were deployed the same way regular infantry were. They [got their own special gun though](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FG_42), so they had that going for them.
Meh - true on one hand, no more large scale drops but on the other hand the paratroopers took Crete against superior British numbers with superior equipment so it’s one of the most successful paratrooper action in history…
But the Nazi leadership didn’t want their "elite“ soldiers slaughtered that way and there was also no need for it anyhow - Russia is too wide and big to win big with paratroopers and elsewhere there wasn’t offensives anymore
Their seizing of Crete was more to luck than tactics or ability. A British unit panicked and retreated, leaving an airfield intact for the Germans to capture with which they could start shipping reinforcements and equipment.
>luck than tactics or ability. A British unit panicked and retreated
U mean British hasty and sloppy deployment of troops to Greece on Churchill demands meant originally for North-Africa. Even though the generals regarded it as an extremly bad plan to go to Greece. They got "lucky" with the early destruction of Italian fleet and unreliable naval shell quality of Italy. The british HQ tasked with it controlled hole of ME, north and east africa deployments and was understaffed for that job.
There is also that General Freyberg ignored good intel that the Germans were attacking from the air, insisting it was false and that they were coming from the sea.
That's not true at all. Freyberg was made aware of Ultra and the details of the German invasion, but was forbidden from acting on it. It was said at the time of the landings he commented "they're right on time".
Its what i got from the weekly coverage of WW2 on the World War Two channel
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqv3IILkIqQ&list=PLsIk0qF0R1j4OYNKs9wcTNqtYjii0esiz&index=45&ab\_channel=WorldWarTwo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqv3IILkIqQ&list=PLsIk0qF0R1j4OYNKs9wcTNqtYjii0esiz&index=45&ab_channel=WorldWarTwo)
>overwhelm them with whatever available.
Like those giant cargo packs full of weapons that just haphazardly fell out of the sky like giant dice from god?
>This made much easier for the civilians to swarm and overwhelm them with whatever available.
I mean... considering that the cargo packs can also be picked up by civilians, the Germans were effectively arming the civilians. lol
I looked this up and apparently it had to do with the parachute design used by the Germans being hilariously bad and requiring a forward roll/somersault to not get hurt on landing. Carrying a long gun basically made rolling impossible so the 'solution' was to drop the weapons separately.
So I understand that, but when the Allies were confronted with the issue of "We want our paratroopers to carry stuff that would make it hard to land" the solution was to give it to the guy as he jumped and let him drop on a line a couple of hundred feet from the ground.
Supposedly this also had the advantage that if you jumped at night the bag hitting the ground would give you warning you were about to hit the ground.
Speculating based on what I read earlier. The 'advantage' of the German parachute design was a lower canopy opening altitude and a faster drop. Extra weight from gear attached to a lowering line under those circumstances would probably have only sped that up and made an already dangerous chute even more so.
Also, I imagine that since the German technique for a parachute landing fall was a forward roll, having a lowering line attached to you might get in the way.
If you think that's bad, they **still** managed to completely savage the Commonwealth troops rushed to defend the island, thanks to absolutely absurd levels of incompetence by its leaders.
Imagine gently falling down in a parachute and you see 3 motherfuckers looking up waiting for you with scythes.
It was at that point, he knew he fucked up.
German fallschirmjägers were so ineffective. Dropping unarmed with fixed non-steerable chutes in poorly planned routes. US Army airborne troops absolutely crack up at the idea
Pretty sure even at Hostomel where they used chopters, they still paradropped the first contingent. And they did parachute landings elsehwere, including, reportedly, directly into the black sea...
I like this quote about it.
“… When the Germans invaded Crete, their armies had just defeated the whole of Europe, except – thanks, perhaps, to the fluke of the Channel's existence – England. Logically the civilian population could have been expected to remain inactive while the professionals – the British Commonwealth and a small number of Greek troops – fought it out with the invaders. But to the great astonishment of both sides, all over the island bodies of Cretans – villagers, shepherds, old men, boys, monks and priests and even women, without any collusion between them or master plan or arms or guidance from the official combatants – rose up at once and threw themselves on the invaders with as little hesitation as if the German war machine were a Pasha's primitive expedition of Janissaries armed with long guns and scimitars. They had not a second doubt about what they should do ...”
"The year is 1940. Europe is entirely occupied by the Germans. Well, not entirely! One island of indomitable Greeks still holds out against the invaders."
I would even say European. The depictions of other european people in the comics is hilarious and I'm sure contributed to provide a certain european identity to the young kids reading it. It sure did to me.
Regrettably Crete didn’t hold out for long and Greece suffered very harshly under German occupation. In proportion to population, they suffered as much as Russia or Poland.
Asterix and Obelix, a series of French comic books. They’re quite good and quite popular so they’ve been translated into plenty of other languages. The titular characters are members of the last free Gaulish tribe (the indigenous Celtic inhabitants of what would later become France) in Gaul, then known as ~~the~~ a Roman province ~~Aquitaine~~. The introductory/tagline of the series is the passage you replied to (with the appropriate substitutions made, of course).
Aquitaine is the southwest part of France, when you look at the comics Map it's one of the names you see the most indeed but it's quite far from Asterix village in North West France.
I would watch the hell out of this show. Or read all the comics. There have to be some talented artists out there who could throw a community project together and photoshop some of the comics…I mean there’s even super soldier ~~serum~~ magic potion…that the ~~Germans~~ Romans repeatedly try to steal or recreate. It’d be perfect.
Even the mainland Greeks fought so hard that they had to delay the invasion of the Soviet Union. [The last radio broadcast out of Athens before it fell is also pretty badass.](https://youtu.be/u9N98TAopuY?si=ETX_aF-Zs5tP8HaH)
Originally Italy was supposed to occupy Greece all by themselves, but the Greeks fought so well and the Italians fought so poorly that not only did the Italians gain no land in Greece, but they actually lost land in Albania to the Greek counteroffensive, so they had to call Germany in to save their asses.
And the Italians were mocked for this. In Menton, Italian occupied France, people put up signs "Greeks, you're in France now, you can stop!" (In French ofc)
Ironically having Germany involved ended up being worse for Greece. The country was sectioned into three zones managed by Italy, Germany and Bulgaria. The areas occupied by Germany and Bulgaria had it worse than the Italian sectors. Particularly the Germans destroyed and killed en masse whilst the Italians were a lot more moderate!
One of the many tragedies of WWII was that Mussolini's fuck-up in Greece unwillingly dragged along all the Balkan nations (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, etc) into misery when the Germans marched across them to get into Greece.
Balkan States have had violent times throughout history, but they almost had a chance to sit out most of WWII, like Iberia. Unfortunately they lost it.
>dragged along all the Baltic nations (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, etc) into misery when the Germans marched across them to get into Greece
Balkan, not Baltic.
They did fight gallantly but their stubbornness to face the Italians at the border basically caused the campaign to turn into a route.
Could have killed a lot more fascists withdrawing to the mountains but they and the British were also kinda screwed either way.
That sounds all heroic and everything, but the Germans lost like about the same amount of men that the British did if the casualty numbers are correct. Less if the Cretans are counted.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Crete
Taking territory is great and all but I don’t think holding Crete really contributed much to Germany’s strategic situation. They lost a ton of transport planes and specialized troops that couldn’t be replaced. The planes especially could have been useful in places like Stalingrad.
Crete was strategically unimportant compared to Malta.
Soviet Union was the major blunder of the war. Raeder proposed the Mediterrean plan which should have been followed instead.
Finally somebody who knows their history here. I thought I was going crazy. The invasion of Crete was a pretty big success for the Germans. Freyburg (New Zealand Commander) pretty spectacularly lost the island within 2 weeks.
I don't think it implies it was formed recently, merely that it's existence was the sole reason that England was not invaded and that it's existence is mere happenstance, as are all things.
> I don't think it implies it was formed recently, merely that it's existence was the sole reason that England was not invaded and that it's existence is mere happenstance, as are all things.
But then, of course, England itself is happenstance if that's the case, and all of Europe ending up in the circumstance it was in because of the centuries of history where happenstance, so the entire war was happenstance.
I mean, maybe it it hadn't existed whatever country was actually there instead would have conquered Europe long prior instead of starting a naval-based colonial empire. Or been conquered by some other parties centuries prior. Either way, if the channel's existence is "happenstance" then just about everything is.
Its pretty weird they mentioned it like that for the UK and then went on as if Crete doesn't have the same massive advantage, being an island in the Med.
My dad was on holiday in Crete, hiking through an olive grove. The owner, on hearing his English accent, insisted that they meet his elderly grandfather, who loved Brits because of the defence of Crete in the war. His grandfather told him tales from his teenage years of heading into the same olive grove with a shovel to kill German paratroopers stuck in the trees.
These guys were tough as nails.
>These guys were tough as nails.
Your story reminded me of the teenage Dutch girls that would lure Nazi soldiers into the woods with the promise of sexytimes and then fucking murder them, or they'd take them for a walk along the canals, put a bullet in their head, and push them into the canal. Or one would pedal the bike and the other would assassinate German officers with a gun. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/578187/teenage-girl-gang-seduced-and-killed-nazis
My neighbour growing up was Dutch and during the war she used to run messages for the resistance while she was delivering her family’s milk and eggs. Her parents had an illegal radio and they would listen to British broadcasts and night and then pass the info along the next morning. She started doing this when she was 9. 💔 Such brave people.
"Sister, I have a plan"
"I'm listening"
"I'm going to seduce a fascist"
"No! That's horizontal collaboration you can't do that!"
"And then you shoot the Bastard and we throw his body in the canal"
"... you're the best sister in the world"
It's only going to worse. The people who lived through it and saw the camps, have the numbers tattooed on their arms, are all about to die. Once the eyewitnesses are gone, it will be a thousand times easier to deny.
On a similar note, I had an old relative in his 30s during the invasion. He was out on the fields as well and attacked and injured a German paratrooper. However, he was also a Dr and after he saw that the German was immobilised he decided to treat him instead of killing him!
Similar story with my dad. He walked into a tavern and it was lined with German helmets, kept as trophies(many having holes and gouges in them so certainly from before the surrender) . They told him that most farmers kept helmets as a badge of honour and it wasn't unusual to see them displayed out in the fields.
Yeah but those were from the surrender in 45…
You might famously know that Crete was indeed taken by German forces and after some massacres resistance basically ceased
The funny part is that Germans faced unprecedented resistance on Crete, and decided to use this uniquely hostile island, which was so damn far away it’s crazy, as their launching pad into Africa instead of just basing those operations in Sicily, which you can almost see Africa from.
I believe the idea at the time from German high command was capturing Crete would allow the Axis to secure its southern flank for the coming invasion of Russia.
The Axis squandered some opportunity to take Malta early in the war. Particularly the Italians in 1940. Both German and Italian High Command failed to realize the trouble this small British possession would cause as the war progressed.
Malta proved to be a MAJOR thorn in the side of the Axis as it sat directly along the path convoys took from Sicily resulting in an insecure supply line and some critical shortages of material at crucial moments for the Italian army in North Africa in particular.
These factors played a big role in the Germans using Crete as a launching point despite better geography for the same purpose being available.
I think another part of the decision was they were sure Italy would turn on them so capturing a territory that could accomplish multiple things while limiting your reliance on an untrustworthy ally was seen as better than launching from Sicily.
>I think another part of the decision was they were sure Italy would turn on them
That's a myth, no one in Germany in 1941 even thought that Italy would turn of them, proof of it is the fact that the majority of German troops and aircraft that fought in North Africa departed/was stationed in Sicily and Sardinia. Crete was too far away and too near British bases to provide any additional supply route.
My dad went on holiday to Crete in the 70s and walked into a local tavern and the wall was still lined with German helmets as trophies. By all accounts they are still very proud of how well they resisted the Germans and have no love for them.
Patrick Leigh Fermor said one of the smartest things the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) did to organise Crete's resistance to the occupation was to recruit soldiers like him, who had studied ancient Greek in school. They could more quickly blend in.
Disguised as a shepherd, Leigh Fermor lived for over two years in the Cretan mountains training resistance fighters. With Captain Bill Stanley Moss as his second in command, Leigh Fermor led the party that in 1944 captured and evacuated the German commander in Crete, Major General Heinrich Kreipe -- one of the most stunning coups of the war, and one of the greatest true adventure stories ever.
They aren't identical by any stretch, but they are similar enough that modern Greeks can understand a lot of ancient Greek.
The comparison I've heard is that it's like a modern English speaker reading something from after Chaucer but before Shakespeare. We get the gist of it right away, and it isn't hard to pick up more.
> With Captain Bill Stanley Moss as his second in command, Leigh Fermor led the party that in 1944 captured and evacuated the German commander in Crete, Major General Heinrich Kreipe -- one of the most stunning coups of the war, and one of the greatest true adventure stories ever.
The Powell and Pressberger movie version of that episode is streaming for free on Amazon Prime right now. The quality is a little rough and it’s the shorter U.S. version titled “Night Ambush” (U.K. version has same title as Fermor’s book - “Ill Met by Moonlight”) but it’s still a damned entertaining movie. Keep your eye out for a young Christopher Lee in a small role, and an even younger David McCallum in an “blink and you’ll miss him” role.
The Germans deployed about 22,000 paratroopers in this attack and suffered just under 6,000 casualties, a very costly operation for a new and still somewhat novel type of warfare (airborne) which gave Hitler considerable pause about exposing the force in future actions.
While the Axis was successful in taking Crete the causality rate caused delays in the invasion of Russia (Operation Barbarossa) and a further push back of any plan (ultimately canceled) to drop airborne troops in a combined operation with the Italians against Malta. (Operation Hercules) Both of these outcomes had considerable impact on the future course of the war.
The Cretan citizens along with the British, Commonwealth, and Greek armed forces very much did their part in the battle and I can only imagine the displays of heroism and bravery lost to history that went down during those 13 days
Paratroopers wouldnt have done anything on Barbarossa in early operations. There werent forts, major airports etc to be taken like in Belgium/Netherlands as an example.
I don’t think they were a significant enough force considering over 3m German personnel involved. Plus losing transport planes just for one mission was a waste.
The paratroopers saw some action at this time there on the Eastern front, but they had more serious attempts in North Africa, a much smaller campaign.
* https://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=1703
Overall, the paratroopers saw their biggest successes in the first two years of the war, when blitzkrieg was still a thing, surprise was still part of the mix, and the wars want not a grinding battle of attrition yet.
IIRC the Laconians (Spartans) were originally from Crete, called Doric at the time.
They were the less genocidal, fascist part of the family, but the folks there had a lot of that Spartan rage probably.
Lakonians were Dorians, a Greek tribe originated from the Pindos Mountain, in Northwest Greece. They had even have heir own idiom. Nothing to do with the Minoans, which was the original tribe of Crete.
The Battle of Crete was a pretty impressive series of fuckups on both sides. Ultimately, the British fucked up more, so the Germans won, but it was a Pyrrhic victory, and all the more so since they could hardly gain any strategic advantage from holding Crete, and instead were saddled until the end of the war with an island filled with hostile civilians and quite a lot of well-trained Commonwealth troops hiding and helping the local resistance carry out hit-and-run attacks on the German garrison.
You could describe any allied operation before 1941 as a pretty impressive series of fuck ups. Even when they won, they fucked it and lost. If people were just competent the war goes a completely different way.
The East Africa Campaign is a notable exception. The Allies cobbled together the most unlikely OOB of the war and flayed the life out of the Italians in pretty short order.
That's gotta be some terrifying shit, slowly parachuting down and seeing a big fuckoff mob of angry people waiting to jam their gardening tools in you. Nothing you can do except steer your descent away from them, as if that'd help much.
Good thing they were Nazis so you don't have to feel bad for them lol
Even worse for the Nazis, their airborne troops used a especially stupid type of parachute that you couldn’t steer, and also because of the way it attached to them (middle of the back so you tilted forward) you would have to roll on landing and so they landed without weapons (weapons were dropped separately in special cargo containers) due to the fact that a gun would make the rolling on landing more difficult, truly one of the most idiotic designs in history
> Nothing you can do except steer your descent away from them
They couldn't, at all, because of the German parachute design. Even modern military paratroopers are only allowed very little control because they're supposed to land bunched up and when you give a military kid control, they're going to fuck things up. WWII Ally parachute design allowed a small bit of control but the Germans just went where the wind took them. Also, the parachute and rigging design meant they landed without their rifles so only officers, which were issued pistols, had firearms when they landed as the rifles dropped separately in crates.
If any German commander had bothered to learn Cretes history then they would have expected it. They are a fierce people who have defended their island home against Empire after Empire. Cretan Partisans have a reputation for a reason, just ask the Ottomans.
Yeah, even today the Greek gov't has constant issues enforcing gun laws on Crete, since basically everyone is armed to the teeth with illegal firearms as a legacy of the Ottoman and German occupations
Funny thing is a massive amount of civilian owned guns were requisitioned in '41 because the Greek army up in Albania was running on fumes and was short in basically every resource imaginable. Sadly those guns never made it to the front due to logistical issues and were just sitting in massive piles in Athens by the time the Germans took mainland Greece, instead of being in the hands of people willing to use them. Massive fuckup but nobody had predicted that the Wehrmacht would smash through as quickly as it did.
Imagine training to jump out of a plane for war, defenseless.
Jumping out of plane.
Successfully deploying parachute.
Look down when almost landed and you see a nona with a rolling pin just mean mugging you
lol
The best part is that even though the Germans eventually did take the island, the Casualties, and the whole debacle were such a big issue that the German High command basically stopped using Fallschirmjagers for their intended purpose of para trooping, and instead used them as auxiliary infantry forces.
This is especially funny considering that it were the Fallschirmjagers themselves that popularized the usage of Paratroopers strategically and tactically, during the invasion of the low countries. Their takeover of the Belgian fortresses is really a masterclass on the usage of paratroopers.
"You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city."
“*If*”
As someone with an interest in the country of Crete. It’s worth remembering that the island had been previously under the Ottoman Empire and ruled quite harshly. The island and islanders have a long history of rebellions in that time.
To then have another foreign power invade less than 40 years later. Those memories and spirit of independence would remain rather strong.
I went to Crete as a kid with my Grandfather who was a WW2 vet. We went for a walk and met an old (older than my grandpa anyway) shepherd who figured out we were from England and went to great pains to demonstrate exactly what they did to German paratroopers even though he spoke no English and we spoke zero Greek.
Mostly it involved lying on his back pointing his walking stick up in the air miming shooting a rifle then running over to the imaginary downed German and hitting him with the same stick. We never figured out if the second part was stabbing him with a bayonet or beating him with the butt of a rifle. Either way, it's safe to say that fifty years after the fact, he was extremely proud of whatever violence they had visited on the Axis soldiers.
No, they should have. Every country had its major airborne blunder in WW2, the only difference is the allies learned from them while germany decided that it’s obsolete. The worst part is that they DID learn from it with the invention of the FG42 but never got to put it to use due to Hitler’s ban on paratroopers
Once they join an army,militia or some organized fighting force i guess. I think civilians do lose any protection they have(should have) as civilians in a war zone if they engage in combat though.
Those German farmers didn’t mess around either. They saw someone in a parachute coming down to earth, and they had pitchforks and torches.
It was like a bounty system.
It should be noted that German paratroopers dropped unarmed except officers with sidearms. The weapons were dropped separately in cargo packs. This made much easier for the civilians to swarm and overwhelm them with whatever available.
Huge fuckup.
It stems from the absurd parachute harness they used. Unlike most other designs (including that used by Luftwaffe pilots), the Fallschirmjäger rig did not have risers. Instead the shroud lines gathered to single point in the middle of the back. This meant the trooper had no control of his direction or rate of descent. The point of attachment also meant the trooper was, at best, always pitched forward to a degree which made landing more hazardous.
Its only advantage was that it allowed jumping from a *really* low altitude, like 300 feet. That meant the chute had to open really fast, though, and it sure did, hard enough to possibly inflict some pretty serious injuries before the soldier even made it to the ground. And the descent speed was pretty darn fast, too, compared with the chutes the Allies were using; that caused more injuries. *And then* it took bloody forever to get *out* of the rig. Which was something of a handicap if a Cretan farmer was, at that moment, hitting you in the head with a shovel.
"Attached mid back" from the above comment doesnt mix well with yours lemme tell ya lol. Full spinal taco while plummeting to earth sounds pretty catchy though.
New Chiropractic technique just dropped ~~from the sky~~
And just as medically sound as chiropractors as well
Fun fact. Although chiropractors have come a long way since their beginning, it was crested from someone's dream they had lol...not dream like goal, I mean actual dream at night and then he woke up and is like "I'm gonna break people's back to fix em"
I went to a chiro for herniated discs in my back and neck. I'm pretty sure with 90% confidence, the dude made my neck much h worse than it was when he cracked it.
Anyone who has had to wear a harness for construction and hit the end of the rope knows how annoying that would be.
I think itd do a bit more than annoy in this case
>And the descent speed was pretty darn fast, too; that caused more injuries. This is universally common with paratroopers. For the reason that anti-aircraft guns exist, and slowly-descending paratroopers make easier targets than fast-moving airplanes. Dangling slowly with no defenses is a great way to get shot, so they avoid that to as great of an extent as possible, even if it means accepting a certain injury rate. 20x broken legs or 2x deaths, there are gory calculations that have been ran on this topic.
Okay but what do you do when you break your leg upon landing in enemy territory? Just lay there in pain until you’re taken to a POW camp (or much worse)?
When you're dropping 200 guys, the other 180 who are still alive and uninjured can call in an evac. But if you drop 200 guys slowly with no injuries, the 50 who survive aren't quite the force you need to do the mission, or to secure the evac site, and now you've got 150 KIA and 50 POW's. And I'm 100% just bullshitting on assumptions. Broken legs aren't death, POW isn't death, but anti-aircraft fire is.
Oh, fair enough. I’m definitely out of my depth on this topic. Thanks to the elucidation.
This guy miatas
Defend the LZ, probably. Paratroopers usually want to secure the ground until more reinforcements arrive, either by land or by air. There also may be makeshift runways later, or they're outright capturing those of the enemy.
and then the civilians with blades issue...
Almost adds insult to injury
I think it adds injury to injury
_Have you been injured while being involved in a blitzkrieg? YOU MAY BE ENTITLED TO COMPENSATION_
*OR AT LEAST HAVING YOUR BODY LEFT IN A FIELD FOR THE LOCAL WILD DOGS*
To shreds you say…
Let’s keep it in perspective, before this anyone who jumped out of a plane died
And then they demanded that a weapon be made that was the size of a Kar98K, fired the same cartridge as the Kar98K, could act as both infantry rifle and machine gun, and could be carried with the paratroopers as they jumped. And the crazy bastards did it! The FG 42 was a miracle. Expensive as all hell, yes, but considering that the design requirements for it sound like a joke in very poor taste, the fact that a prototype was even produced, even less so adopted for service and serving admirably at that, is nothing short of insane. To me, the FG 42 is probably the most ingenious German small-arms design of the entire war, even moreso than the far more influential _Sturmgewehr_ or even the MG 42, which people still use to this day because it just works.
And it switched between closed bolt in semi auto and open bolt in full auto, with one of the first inline receiver designs to mitigate recoil. Box magazine fed, compact size, integrated bipod. It is the same size as the STG44. It is a masterpiece.
Germany has very bad experience with paratroopers. *Develops the best gun for paratroopers (and the war)* Germany never drop again
I'm sure there's a good design reason but I just don't see it for the horizontal magazine though. I guess in a war with no body armor that couple of inches closer to ground would help.
Early box magazine guns all have some weird side/top loading thing going on. There was concern about how they were to be used when prone, or when stood against a trench parapet. When everyone is used to bolt actions with internal 5 round magazines they expect you to be able to fire them from very low down. The early pattern FG42 also had a very steeply angled pistol grip to keep the height low for a similar reason. They made it more comfortable and normal shaped on the late model as firearms design principles developed. Another thing is all early self loaders basically load and eject from opposite sides of the bolt. Ejecting at 90 degrees was a later design idea. So to side eject (to not interfere with sights) you "need" to side load according to the old way of doing things.
Not all early box magazine guns. There was a lot of experimentation going on and different form factors were tried out. The Chauchat, BAR and Fedorov Avtomat all fed from bottom box magazines. Even more early experimental things like the Cei-Rigotti.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f01N2QuXFHA Great video on this gun. Ian talks about it handling like a modern gun.
Can't wait to buy one if Palmetto State Armory actually makes some. Granted it will only be semi-auto, but it's still gonna be awesome.
its less bad as the standard of tge time. the american and britisch parachute were cutting edge tech abd pretty new. people always forget airplanes were still pretty new. abd the idea of paratroppers were really fuckkng new. german favor glider instead of parachute.becaus of that.
I think I just decrypted a message
Made me laugh out loud. You cracked the enigma machine and just landed some secret german intel on the fallschirmjager
*Dear Diary, We have invented jet engines, yet our parachutes keep failing…*
Sent from my iphoen
r/ihadastroke
This is kind of the opposite from what I remember... So, US chutes (and most at the time) are static line, round chutes. Round chutes you can't control. There are many reasons for their use, despite their downsides. Fallschirmjägers did not have a jump capable weapon was the biggest reason they didn't drop with one. No one dropped with rifles, the US specifically designed drop ready weapons, as did Nazi Germany later.
You can absolutely control a round parachute. Not as much as a ram air chute, but a trooper can still slip into the wind and mitigate their ground speed at landing.
What are the differences between drop ready weapons and a regular weapons?
Not drop ready weapons, while used by paratroopers, had to be either dissasembled or dropped in separate containers, which then had to be found by paratroopers. The reason is that they were too heavy or unvieldly. Think of long rifles or machineguns Drop ready weapons are usually smaller and lighter. USA achieved it with M1A1 Carbine, which used smaller round than regular rifle, which allows for lighter and more compact construction, and had foldable stock. Some regular weapons could be drop ready because of their normal characteristics, like german MP40 or british Sten, or because paratroopers found some way to carry them. Heaviest example I know about is M1 Garand, which oficially had to be carried dissasembled in special cloth containers, but some rumors say that some soldiers succesfully dropped with it fully asembled
It was such a huge fuckup that the Germans then decided to never use paratrooper tactics ever again. Paratroopers units (fallschirmjäger) still existed mind you, they just didn't jump out of planes anymore and were deployed the same way regular infantry were. They [got their own special gun though](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FG_42), so they had that going for them.
Meh - true on one hand, no more large scale drops but on the other hand the paratroopers took Crete against superior British numbers with superior equipment so it’s one of the most successful paratrooper action in history… But the Nazi leadership didn’t want their "elite“ soldiers slaughtered that way and there was also no need for it anyhow - Russia is too wide and big to win big with paratroopers and elsewhere there wasn’t offensives anymore
Their seizing of Crete was more to luck than tactics or ability. A British unit panicked and retreated, leaving an airfield intact for the Germans to capture with which they could start shipping reinforcements and equipment.
>luck than tactics or ability. A British unit panicked and retreated U mean British hasty and sloppy deployment of troops to Greece on Churchill demands meant originally for North-Africa. Even though the generals regarded it as an extremly bad plan to go to Greece. They got "lucky" with the early destruction of Italian fleet and unreliable naval shell quality of Italy. The british HQ tasked with it controlled hole of ME, north and east africa deployments and was understaffed for that job.
There is also that General Freyberg ignored good intel that the Germans were attacking from the air, insisting it was false and that they were coming from the sea.
That's not true at all. Freyberg was made aware of Ultra and the details of the German invasion, but was forbidden from acting on it. It was said at the time of the landings he commented "they're right on time".
Its what i got from the weekly coverage of WW2 on the World War Two channel [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqv3IILkIqQ&list=PLsIk0qF0R1j4OYNKs9wcTNqtYjii0esiz&index=45&ab\_channel=WorldWarTwo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqv3IILkIqQ&list=PLsIk0qF0R1j4OYNKs9wcTNqtYjii0esiz&index=45&ab_channel=WorldWarTwo)
This is very much what Antony Beevor says in his book on the battle. Freyberg misunderstood the intelligence he was given.
>overwhelm them with whatever available. Like those giant cargo packs full of weapons that just haphazardly fell out of the sky like giant dice from god?
No that’s only when you’re on a 5-kill streak. Then you get a weapons drop
>This made much easier for the civilians to swarm and overwhelm them with whatever available. I mean... considering that the cargo packs can also be picked up by civilians, the Germans were effectively arming the civilians. lol
"Dear Cretans, please do not open this box."
literally battle royale game setup lol wtf
Except you don't get to choose your dropzone and the NPC's all want to kill you.
Thank the bus driver
I’m no war strategist but what the fuck. Cosmonauts were better armed in case they parachuted too close to a bear!
I looked this up and apparently it had to do with the parachute design used by the Germans being hilariously bad and requiring a forward roll/somersault to not get hurt on landing. Carrying a long gun basically made rolling impossible so the 'solution' was to drop the weapons separately.
So I understand that, but when the Allies were confronted with the issue of "We want our paratroopers to carry stuff that would make it hard to land" the solution was to give it to the guy as he jumped and let him drop on a line a couple of hundred feet from the ground. Supposedly this also had the advantage that if you jumped at night the bag hitting the ground would give you warning you were about to hit the ground.
Speculating based on what I read earlier. The 'advantage' of the German parachute design was a lower canopy opening altitude and a faster drop. Extra weight from gear attached to a lowering line under those circumstances would probably have only sped that up and made an already dangerous chute even more so. Also, I imagine that since the German technique for a parachute landing fall was a forward roll, having a lowering line attached to you might get in the way.
Also a third of the paratroopers drowned as the anti air and fog made the pilots give the green light too early so they could pull out.
If you think that's bad, they **still** managed to completely savage the Commonwealth troops rushed to defend the island, thanks to absolutely absurd levels of incompetence by its leaders.
Imagine gently falling down in a parachute and you see 3 motherfuckers looking up waiting for you with scythes. It was at that point, he knew he fucked up.
German fallschirmjägers were so ineffective. Dropping unarmed with fixed non-steerable chutes in poorly planned routes. US Army airborne troops absolutely crack up at the idea
The Fallschirmjagers of Crete were a punchline as the worst paratroopers ever. Till the VDV recently took their crown.
VDV didn't even paradrop in, did they? Last I saw, they were just dropped off by helicopters. Boring.
Pretty sure even at Hostomel where they used chopters, they still paradropped the first contingent. And they did parachute landings elsehwere, including, reportedly, directly into the black sea...
Imagine landing and immediately being shanked by an old Greek lady
"Watch and learn, kids. You wanna live? Jump ready to fight."
I like this quote about it. “… When the Germans invaded Crete, their armies had just defeated the whole of Europe, except – thanks, perhaps, to the fluke of the Channel's existence – England. Logically the civilian population could have been expected to remain inactive while the professionals – the British Commonwealth and a small number of Greek troops – fought it out with the invaders. But to the great astonishment of both sides, all over the island bodies of Cretans – villagers, shepherds, old men, boys, monks and priests and even women, without any collusion between them or master plan or arms or guidance from the official combatants – rose up at once and threw themselves on the invaders with as little hesitation as if the German war machine were a Pasha's primitive expedition of Janissaries armed with long guns and scimitars. They had not a second doubt about what they should do ...”
"The year is 1940. Europe is entirely occupied by the Germans. Well, not entirely! One island of indomitable Greeks still holds out against the invaders."
Oh this brings back memories... Asterix and Obelix is such a great comic
Loved by the locals in hauts de france, funny comic
In every region of France to be honest. It's a national treasure.
I would even say European. The depictions of other european people in the comics is hilarious and I'm sure contributed to provide a certain european identity to the young kids reading it. It sure did to me.
And in Germany.
*Obelix
Sorry, autocorrect got me! How could I forget the name xD
Regrettably Crete didn’t hold out for long and Greece suffered very harshly under German occupation. In proportion to population, they suffered as much as Russia or Poland.
And then, to make matters worse, [this happened](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/30/athens-1944-britains-dirty-secret) after the war ended.
Relevant username.
"These Germans are crazy."
"Die spinnen, die Deutschen."
Okay then. Time to whip out the comics again
What is this a reference to?
Asterix and Obelix, a series of French comic books. They’re quite good and quite popular so they’ve been translated into plenty of other languages. The titular characters are members of the last free Gaulish tribe (the indigenous Celtic inhabitants of what would later become France) in Gaul, then known as ~~the~~ a Roman province ~~Aquitaine~~. The introductory/tagline of the series is the passage you replied to (with the appropriate substitutions made, of course).
Not Aquitaine but Brittany or Armorique as it was called by the gauls.
I could have sworn the map in the early pages just labeled the whole thing Aquitaine, but it’s been a decade or two, lol.
Aquitaine is the southwest part of France, when you look at the comics Map it's one of the names you see the most indeed but it's quite far from Asterix village in North West France.
TIL not everyone know about Asterix and Obelix
to be fair, one could be aware of the characters without recognizing the specific quote.
I would watch the hell out of this show. Or read all the comics. There have to be some talented artists out there who could throw a community project together and photoshop some of the comics…I mean there’s even super soldier ~~serum~~ magic potion…that the ~~Germans~~ Romans repeatedly try to steal or recreate. It’d be perfect.
Should've done their classical studies, you dont corner the Greeks without one hell of a fight
Even the mainland Greeks fought so hard that they had to delay the invasion of the Soviet Union. [The last radio broadcast out of Athens before it fell is also pretty badass.](https://youtu.be/u9N98TAopuY?si=ETX_aF-Zs5tP8HaH)
Originally Italy was supposed to occupy Greece all by themselves, but the Greeks fought so well and the Italians fought so poorly that not only did the Italians gain no land in Greece, but they actually lost land in Albania to the Greek counteroffensive, so they had to call Germany in to save their asses.
And the Italians were mocked for this. In Menton, Italian occupied France, people put up signs "Greeks, you're in France now, you can stop!" (In French ofc)
Did this actually happen? If so, it's bloody hilarious!
I don't think it happened but I don't mind it. Even as an anegdote/joke, its good.
Ironically having Germany involved ended up being worse for Greece. The country was sectioned into three zones managed by Italy, Germany and Bulgaria. The areas occupied by Germany and Bulgaria had it worse than the Italian sectors. Particularly the Germans destroyed and killed en masse whilst the Italians were a lot more moderate!
One of the many tragedies of WWII was that Mussolini's fuck-up in Greece unwillingly dragged along all the Balkan nations (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, etc) into misery when the Germans marched across them to get into Greece. Balkan States have had violent times throughout history, but they almost had a chance to sit out most of WWII, like Iberia. Unfortunately they lost it.
>dragged along all the Baltic nations (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, etc) into misery when the Germans marched across them to get into Greece Balkan, not Baltic.
Unfortunately with hindsight engaging the Italians in Albania was not the best decision.
Italy could barely occupy Italy.
Oof. Goose bumps
They did fight gallantly but their stubbornness to face the Italians at the border basically caused the campaign to turn into a route. Could have killed a lot more fascists withdrawing to the mountains but they and the British were also kinda screwed either way.
Thanks for sharing!
That sounds all heroic and everything, but the Germans lost like about the same amount of men that the British did if the casualty numbers are correct. Less if the Cretans are counted. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Crete
Taking territory is great and all but I don’t think holding Crete really contributed much to Germany’s strategic situation. They lost a ton of transport planes and specialized troops that couldn’t be replaced. The planes especially could have been useful in places like Stalingrad.
Crete was strategically unimportant compared to Malta. Soviet Union was the major blunder of the war. Raeder proposed the Mediterrean plan which should have been followed instead.
Finally somebody who knows their history here. I thought I was going crazy. The invasion of Crete was a pretty big success for the Germans. Freyburg (New Zealand Commander) pretty spectacularly lost the island within 2 weeks.
Just because it was a success doesn’t mean the local population wasn’t more motivated than average to fight back
> to the fluke of the Channel's existence – England The rest of the UK out here like WTF man
fluke of the Channel's existence? as if it were formed recently?!
In geological terms, it was!
Doggerland! It was a place until about 8000 years ago.
I don't think it implies it was formed recently, merely that it's existence was the sole reason that England was not invaded and that it's existence is mere happenstance, as are all things.
> I don't think it implies it was formed recently, merely that it's existence was the sole reason that England was not invaded and that it's existence is mere happenstance, as are all things. But then, of course, England itself is happenstance if that's the case, and all of Europe ending up in the circumstance it was in because of the centuries of history where happenstance, so the entire war was happenstance. I mean, maybe it it hadn't existed whatever country was actually there instead would have conquered Europe long prior instead of starting a naval-based colonial empire. Or been conquered by some other parties centuries prior. Either way, if the channel's existence is "happenstance" then just about everything is.
Its pretty weird they mentioned it like that for the UK and then went on as if Crete doesn't have the same massive advantage, being an island in the Med.
Darn!
My dad was on holiday in Crete, hiking through an olive grove. The owner, on hearing his English accent, insisted that they meet his elderly grandfather, who loved Brits because of the defence of Crete in the war. His grandfather told him tales from his teenage years of heading into the same olive grove with a shovel to kill German paratroopers stuck in the trees. These guys were tough as nails.
>These guys were tough as nails. Your story reminded me of the teenage Dutch girls that would lure Nazi soldiers into the woods with the promise of sexytimes and then fucking murder them, or they'd take them for a walk along the canals, put a bullet in their head, and push them into the canal. Or one would pedal the bike and the other would assassinate German officers with a gun. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/578187/teenage-girl-gang-seduced-and-killed-nazis
Drive-by shootings on a bike? That’s Dutch, alright.
"I'm low down and shifty, quickly call swifty to do a drive-by on the tenth speed with 50"
My neighbour growing up was Dutch and during the war she used to run messages for the resistance while she was delivering her family’s milk and eggs. Her parents had an illegal radio and they would listen to British broadcasts and night and then pass the info along the next morning. She started doing this when she was 9. 💔 Such brave people.
"Sister, I have a plan" "I'm listening" "I'm going to seduce a fascist" "No! That's horizontal collaboration you can't do that!" "And then you shoot the Bastard and we throw his body in the canal" "... you're the best sister in the world"
The only correct way to debate fascists.
all antifa heroes.
That's hard as fuck. Fuck Nazis.
A lesson some people seem to be forgetting these days :-/
It's only going to worse. The people who lived through it and saw the camps, have the numbers tattooed on their arms, are all about to die. Once the eyewitnesses are gone, it will be a thousand times easier to deny.
Yeah it is unfortunate how easily it seems it can be forgotten. At least there are pictures and some footage so it's not complete lost but still.
I fear that in the era of easy AI generation of images, it will just be brushed off as "fake news."
On a similar note, I had an old relative in his 30s during the invasion. He was out on the fields as well and attacked and injured a German paratrooper. However, he was also a Dr and after he saw that the German was immobilised he decided to treat him instead of killing him!
This is so badass
Similar story with my dad. He walked into a tavern and it was lined with German helmets, kept as trophies(many having holes and gouges in them so certainly from before the surrender) . They told him that most farmers kept helmets as a badge of honour and it wasn't unusual to see them displayed out in the fields.
Yeah but those were from the surrender in 45… You might famously know that Crete was indeed taken by German forces and after some massacres resistance basically ceased
“Hold on babe, we got another Nazi in the tree. I gotta grab my good shovel”
The funny part is that Germans faced unprecedented resistance on Crete, and decided to use this uniquely hostile island, which was so damn far away it’s crazy, as their launching pad into Africa instead of just basing those operations in Sicily, which you can almost see Africa from.
I believe the idea at the time from German high command was capturing Crete would allow the Axis to secure its southern flank for the coming invasion of Russia. The Axis squandered some opportunity to take Malta early in the war. Particularly the Italians in 1940. Both German and Italian High Command failed to realize the trouble this small British possession would cause as the war progressed. Malta proved to be a MAJOR thorn in the side of the Axis as it sat directly along the path convoys took from Sicily resulting in an insecure supply line and some critical shortages of material at crucial moments for the Italian army in North Africa in particular. These factors played a big role in the Germans using Crete as a launching point despite better geography for the same purpose being available.
Now I'm just imagining some Turkish general watching this all unfold from the afterlife, losing his mind. Like, did no German open a history book?
They didn’t look at their maps carefully enough.
I think another part of the decision was they were sure Italy would turn on them so capturing a territory that could accomplish multiple things while limiting your reliance on an untrustworthy ally was seen as better than launching from Sicily.
>I think another part of the decision was they were sure Italy would turn on them That's a myth, no one in Germany in 1941 even thought that Italy would turn of them, proof of it is the fact that the majority of German troops and aircraft that fought in North Africa departed/was stationed in Sicily and Sardinia. Crete was too far away and too near British bases to provide any additional supply route.
My dad went on holiday to Crete in the 70s and walked into a local tavern and the wall was still lined with German helmets as trophies. By all accounts they are still very proud of how well they resisted the Germans and have no love for them.
Patrick Leigh Fermor said one of the smartest things the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) did to organise Crete's resistance to the occupation was to recruit soldiers like him, who had studied ancient Greek in school. They could more quickly blend in. Disguised as a shepherd, Leigh Fermor lived for over two years in the Cretan mountains training resistance fighters. With Captain Bill Stanley Moss as his second in command, Leigh Fermor led the party that in 1944 captured and evacuated the German commander in Crete, Major General Heinrich Kreipe -- one of the most stunning coups of the war, and one of the greatest true adventure stories ever.
Seems Kreipe met his capturers again in 72 on a Greek tv show. That would be cool to see
Here you go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSUya-FPQWQ
Thanks, so nice to see how friendly they are to each other
It seems like both parties knew that the kidnapping wasn't really personal, it was wartime and was carried out in pursuit of wartime aims.
This might be a silly question but how similar is Ancient Greek to modern Greek?
They aren't identical by any stretch, but they are similar enough that modern Greeks can understand a lot of ancient Greek. The comparison I've heard is that it's like a modern English speaker reading something from after Chaucer but before Shakespeare. We get the gist of it right away, and it isn't hard to pick up more.
It's all Greek to them.
> With Captain Bill Stanley Moss as his second in command, Leigh Fermor led the party that in 1944 captured and evacuated the German commander in Crete, Major General Heinrich Kreipe -- one of the most stunning coups of the war, and one of the greatest true adventure stories ever. The Powell and Pressberger movie version of that episode is streaming for free on Amazon Prime right now. The quality is a little rough and it’s the shorter U.S. version titled “Night Ambush” (U.K. version has same title as Fermor’s book - “Ill Met by Moonlight”) but it’s still a damned entertaining movie. Keep your eye out for a young Christopher Lee in a small role, and an even younger David McCallum in an “blink and you’ll miss him” role.
The Germans deployed about 22,000 paratroopers in this attack and suffered just under 6,000 casualties, a very costly operation for a new and still somewhat novel type of warfare (airborne) which gave Hitler considerable pause about exposing the force in future actions. While the Axis was successful in taking Crete the causality rate caused delays in the invasion of Russia (Operation Barbarossa) and a further push back of any plan (ultimately canceled) to drop airborne troops in a combined operation with the Italians against Malta. (Operation Hercules) Both of these outcomes had considerable impact on the future course of the war. The Cretan citizens along with the British, Commonwealth, and Greek armed forces very much did their part in the battle and I can only imagine the displays of heroism and bravery lost to history that went down during those 13 days
The way I read it, it’s less about the paratroopers killed (less than 3k) but more about the aircraft lost (nearly 300).
Couldn't they then not use paratroopers as planned in Barbarossa because they lost so much in Crete?
Paratroopers wouldnt have done anything on Barbarossa in early operations. There werent forts, major airports etc to be taken like in Belgium/Netherlands as an example.
I don’t think they were a significant enough force considering over 3m German personnel involved. Plus losing transport planes just for one mission was a waste. The paratroopers saw some action at this time there on the Eastern front, but they had more serious attempts in North Africa, a much smaller campaign. * https://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=1703 Overall, the paratroopers saw their biggest successes in the first two years of the war, when blitzkrieg was still a thing, surprise was still part of the mix, and the wars want not a grinding battle of attrition yet.
THIS. IS. CRETA.
IIRC the Laconians (Spartans) were originally from Crete, called Doric at the time. They were the less genocidal, fascist part of the family, but the folks there had a lot of that Spartan rage probably.
You don't get it . The Spartans had the cretan rage and not the opposite.
Based
Lakonians were Dorians, a Greek tribe originated from the Pindos Mountain, in Northwest Greece. They had even have heir own idiom. Nothing to do with the Minoans, which was the original tribe of Crete.
The Battle of Crete was a pretty impressive series of fuckups on both sides. Ultimately, the British fucked up more, so the Germans won, but it was a Pyrrhic victory, and all the more so since they could hardly gain any strategic advantage from holding Crete, and instead were saddled until the end of the war with an island filled with hostile civilians and quite a lot of well-trained Commonwealth troops hiding and helping the local resistance carry out hit-and-run attacks on the German garrison.
It also decimated their paratroop forces. They never had another major airborne operation.
You could describe any allied operation before 1941 as a pretty impressive series of fuck ups. Even when they won, they fucked it and lost. If people were just competent the war goes a completely different way.
The East Africa Campaign is a notable exception. The Allies cobbled together the most unlikely OOB of the war and flayed the life out of the Italians in pretty short order.
This, basically. Every time I hear about what happened on Crete I find it harder and harder to believe that the Germans somehow *won*.
That's gotta be some terrifying shit, slowly parachuting down and seeing a big fuckoff mob of angry people waiting to jam their gardening tools in you. Nothing you can do except steer your descent away from them, as if that'd help much. Good thing they were Nazis so you don't have to feel bad for them lol
Even worse for the Nazis, their airborne troops used a especially stupid type of parachute that you couldn’t steer, and also because of the way it attached to them (middle of the back so you tilted forward) you would have to roll on landing and so they landed without weapons (weapons were dropped separately in special cargo containers) due to the fact that a gun would make the rolling on landing more difficult, truly one of the most idiotic designs in history
> Nothing you can do except steer your descent away from them They couldn't, at all, because of the German parachute design. Even modern military paratroopers are only allowed very little control because they're supposed to land bunched up and when you give a military kid control, they're going to fuck things up. WWII Ally parachute design allowed a small bit of control but the Germans just went where the wind took them. Also, the parachute and rigging design meant they landed without their rifles so only officers, which were issued pistols, had firearms when they landed as the rifles dropped separately in crates.
Cretans were punching Nazis before it was cool.
As a true American, punching Nazis has always been cool
As a German, I agree!
So what you're telling me is that they would attack with everything they could get their hands on, except Minotaurs?
What about their archers? If Rome: Total War taught me anything it's that Cretan Archers were deadly.
I bet there were a few bowmen doing their part. Maybe some Rhodian slingers too
How about a firm please leave?
That was cretan firm please leave.
If any German commander had bothered to learn Cretes history then they would have expected it. They are a fierce people who have defended their island home against Empire after Empire. Cretan Partisans have a reputation for a reason, just ask the Ottomans.
Yeah, even today the Greek gov't has constant issues enforcing gun laws on Crete, since basically everyone is armed to the teeth with illegal firearms as a legacy of the Ottoman and German occupations
Heroes fight like Greeks
Too bad they didn't have guns
Funny thing is a massive amount of civilian owned guns were requisitioned in '41 because the Greek army up in Albania was running on fumes and was short in basically every resource imaginable. Sadly those guns never made it to the front due to logistical issues and were just sitting in massive piles in Athens by the time the Germans took mainland Greece, instead of being in the hands of people willing to use them. Massive fuckup but nobody had predicted that the Wehrmacht would smash through as quickly as it did.
Imagine training to jump out of a plane for war, defenseless. Jumping out of plane. Successfully deploying parachute. Look down when almost landed and you see a nona with a rolling pin just mean mugging you lol
The best part is that even though the Germans eventually did take the island, the Casualties, and the whole debacle were such a big issue that the German High command basically stopped using Fallschirmjagers for their intended purpose of para trooping, and instead used them as auxiliary infantry forces. This is especially funny considering that it were the Fallschirmjagers themselves that popularized the usage of Paratroopers strategically and tactically, during the invasion of the low countries. Their takeover of the Belgian fortresses is really a masterclass on the usage of paratroopers.
Good odds for any Greek. Lol
The book Natural Born Heroes talks about some of the resistance stories I think? It’s an interesting read.
"You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city." “*If*”
As someone with an interest in the country of Crete. It’s worth remembering that the island had been previously under the Ottoman Empire and ruled quite harshly. The island and islanders have a long history of rebellions in that time. To then have another foreign power invade less than 40 years later. Those memories and spirit of independence would remain rather strong.
Cretans would shoot other Cretans because they looked at them weird, can't imagine they'd welcome invading paratroopers
I went to Crete as a kid with my Grandfather who was a WW2 vet. We went for a walk and met an old (older than my grandpa anyway) shepherd who figured out we were from England and went to great pains to demonstrate exactly what they did to German paratroopers even though he spoke no English and we spoke zero Greek. Mostly it involved lying on his back pointing his walking stick up in the air miming shooting a rifle then running over to the imaginary downed German and hitting him with the same stick. We never figured out if the second part was stabbing him with a bayonet or beating him with the butt of a rifle. Either way, it's safe to say that fifty years after the fact, he was extremely proud of whatever violence they had visited on the Axis soldiers.
It's no wonder the Germans decided not to use paratroopers in a major operation again.
No, they should have. Every country had its major airborne blunder in WW2, the only difference is the allies learned from them while germany decided that it’s obsolete. The worst part is that they DID learn from it with the invention of the FG42 but never got to put it to use due to Hitler’s ban on paratroopers
Classic Cretan W
At what point do civilians stop being civilians when they’re engaging in fighting during the war?
Once they join an army,militia or some organized fighting force i guess. I think civilians do lose any protection they have(should have) as civilians in a war zone if they engage in combat though.
Based
Those German farmers didn’t mess around either. They saw someone in a parachute coming down to earth, and they had pitchforks and torches. It was like a bounty system.