Seems to me like Crete was a pretty near-run thing. Most of the airfields were held by the Allies, the German paratroopers took heavy casualties, and the Royal Navy repulsed attempts to reinforce them by sea.

Results: Turkey enters war on Allied side sooner? Balkan front reopened? Yugoslavia given more aid? Greek Civil War averted? Towards the end of the war, if the Allies get further into the Balkans they might have made a case for aligning more than just Greece with the West.

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Sole founder of Encyc.org, now covering World War II.

I went to crete last Summer. Just by looking at the landscape I could easily imagine that the Germans never really controled the whole area. There was a strong resistance movement and the British regulary sent agents from Egypt. The Germans suffered heavy losses while assaulting the island. It would have been interesting to send more allied forces there. This could be a nice "what if" topic.

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Yes I think that if just a few more Allied units escaped from the mainland, or if they simply caught a few breaks while defending the island, the initial assault could have been repulsed. After that, I don't think the Germans would have tried again.

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Sole founder of Encyc.org, now covering World War II.

Good old Crete we knew it all every part of the German plan thanks to breaking the Enigma codes, so why did it end the way it did? Because if we stopped the Germans cold they would had known or had strong suspicion there Enigma codes were not as safe as they belied. From our point of view Churchill did not want to tip off the Germans, another interesting point is when it was all over the Germans found documents on what we knew but lucky for us the Germans dismissed them.

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Regards, Richard


"Open channel D"

Now that is a good question. Had they held their ground for one more day, it would have ended with a British victory. Nothing factual but I believe it was lost due to the leadership. I read an account written by van der Heyte in which he states that they were done for but all of a sudden the British were pulling back and it was not by pressure from the Fallshirmjagers.

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American by birth, TEXAN by the grace of GOD!

good remark. generally speaking i think that the allies worried too much about keeping enigma code breaking secret. But, on the other hand, how could the british imagine that the nazis were so stupid?? (what happened in the atlantic is simply unbelievable).

Nevertheless, the more i read about the emigma affair the more i realise that many in germany understood what was going on but didn't do anything... maybe some believed they could gain personal advantege from this. I don't know... well, certainly most nazi leaders were plotting against each other.

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If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons
- Winston Churchill

I doubt Allied code breaking had a role in it. This was still in its infancy and Benchley Park was not reading every message nor were they really able to "real time" results.

On the other hand had Crete held it would have had interesting possibilities for the air war. The Allies would have now possessed a site sufficently far forward to launch bomber strikes on Polesti regularly. This would have seriously hurt the Germans. As it was bombing Polesti was difficult due to the length of the flight and terrain over which the bombers had to travel. A closer base means a shorter flight and heavier bombload.
Could have been a real danger to the German war machine.

Correct. There are pleanty of good books concerning ULTRA & they make it clear the Enigma derived intellegence had good stratigic value in 1941, but limited operational or tactical utility. I think in this case other British signals intellegence is being confused with Enigma intercepts. Ordinary radio traffic analysis gave the Britsh the key information for negating suprise.

Would Crete have had any value as a forward bomber base for the Allies? That is in 1943 or 43 would it have been useful for attacking Rumanian oil refinerys or something?

It certainly would have been usefull as a fake invasion base for deception ops like Mincemeat. Perhaps another armys worth of German soldiers could have been drawn to the Balkans with commando raids and deceptive radio broadcasts from Crete.

It is futher away from Ploesti than Foggia (600+/- miles vs 725+/-)., which is not necessarily in the time frame you reference. It is closer than North Africa by a large margin.

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Best Regards,
JW

Back in the early 1990s I met a squadron commander who flew on the Ploesti raid. His command flew some 1600 miles to reach the target. Challenging.

I believe that the allies had some 45,000 to 50,000 defenders on Crete and that a total of 15,000 Germans attacked, makes you wonder the effectiveness of the allied commander in chief capabilities.

Cut them some slack. They'd left all their heavy stuff on the mainland and the Germans had pretty good control of the air.

I think the idea that Crete was sold out to protect the Enigma secret is a bit far-fetched. The Royal Navy tore itself up repelling the German transports and later evacuating the British survivors from the island.

I agree the situation in the Balkans and the air war in southeastern Europe would have been more interesting. If Turkey comes in on the Allied side sooner, then the airbases are even closer to the oil fields.

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If 45,000 troops on Crete with rifles or hand guns took out one German each then there would be no need to evacuate, Crete holds, no the British general staff on the island paniced and fled. I will never cut anyone slack if they out number their opponent three to one and still with weapons and still capitulate. Imagine they stood fast and wiped out those 15,000, i bet Hitler would not even try to attack Crete again, it was after this that Hitler forbade the deployment of the Fallschirmjeager ever again.

I don't know about your numbers, or your hasty judgement, but you have to remember the German paratroopers were fresh, elite troops with all their equipment, with an undefeated record and air superiority. On the other hand, the Allied armies had really expected to hold the mainland, so by the time they retreated to Crete they were pretty beaten-up. There actually was some pretty hard fighting but the problem with the numbers is that once the Germans got the airfield, they could pretty much continue to reinforce and resupply, whereas the Allies had to run a gauntlet just to get there by sea. 15,000 would have rapidly turned into enough troops to overwhelm the remaining defenders.

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Sole founder of Encyc.org, now covering World War II.