World War: MEDITERRANEAN THEATER: Worse Than Greece

“After twelve days of what has undoubtedly been the fiercest fighting in this war, it was decided to withdraw our forces from Crete. . . . Some 15,000 [of our] troops have been withdrawn to Egypt but it must be admitted that our losses have been severe.” With this bleak announcement the British War Office signalized the end of not only the fiercest but also some of the most crucial fighting in World War II—the airborne invasion of Crete. After the fall of this British outpost, the Mediterranean no longer was a British lake. The concept of the Mediterranean as the Empire’s commercial life line has been dead since Italy’s entrance into the war forced merchant ships to sail around the Cape of Good Hope. Now, even as a military seaway, choked by two such bottlenecks as the 100-mile strait between Sicily and Tunisia and the 250-mile stretch between Crete and Libya, it was of little use.

Italy could now get oil and cereals from Russia through the Aegean. The Axis would now be able to supply and support ventures in Africa and the Middle East much more easily.

It was still important for the British to keep trying in the Middle East. Only thus could the British hope to achieve the end of all British strategy: delay and more delay, until such day as parity and then superiority might possibly be won over the Axis. Therefore, as soon as Crete had fallen, the British began to murmur about taking Syria.

Destruction. Crete was worse than Greece. It was worse strategically, for the Germans were now within striking distance of British main bases, and British naval power was no longer freely master of the eastern Mediterranean. It was worse psychologically, for Crete was the first island stronghold which the Germans had successfully invaded. It was, above all, worse physically.

The three main towns of Crete were flattened, just as the center of Rotterdam was last May. Greek Premier Emmanuel Tsouderos said: “The principal towns—Canea, Candia and Rethymno—were literally plowed up by bombing, which was carried out with mathematical precision laterally and diagonally, so that eventually there was not one stone left standing.”

Here, as in Greece, but worse than in Greece, the factor of defeat was the Luftwaffe. All day long dive-bombers and strafers kept the British immobilized under cover. Anything which moved—man, woman, child, tank, gun, sheep, cow—was strafed until it stopped moving. The only time the British could attack was by night, and even then the Luftwaffe dropped flares and death. “I was in Greece,” said one dust-caked, ragged soldier, “but what their aircraft did to us there was absolutely nothing compared to the concentrated attack by hundreds of planes at once which was made in Crete.” The British came out of Crete still convinced, as they had been after Greece, that they were individually as good fighters as the Germans; but they were more amazed than ever at German military efficiency. They were particularly amazed at how precisely the German aerial and ground combat teams cooperated.

Glory, of which the Battle of Greece was made, was not in the Cretan fabric. This fight was all grimness. The ruses here were dastardly. The British charged that the Germans would make captives walk before them as human shields; the Germans charged that disguised British would wave the swastika in apparent triumph on a hilltop, and when the Germans rallied around the British would cut them down. The British charged that the Germans used Anzac uniforms; the Germans charged that the British tortured prisoners.

At times the claims and counter-claims bordered on the ridiculous. The British announced that the ex-world’s champion heavyweight boxer Max Schmeling, who though a little overage and a lot overweight had volunteered as a parachutist, had been killed; the Germans replied that he was ill of a “tropical disease” in an Air Force hospital and quoted him ironically: “Many of the Tommies showed true soldierly spirit even toward their German prisoners. A British Army sergeant captured by us promptly assisted us in treating our wounded.” As a sort of reprisal the Germans announced that Major General Bernard Cyril Freyberg, commander of Crete’s defenses, had been killed while “cravenly” attempting to flee Crete in a plane; the British denied it.

On the waters Britain came out much worse than at Greece. The tonnage which Admiral Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham lost in the Cretan operation was twelve times as high as that lost off Greece. The horror off Crete was also many times as great—for while most of the damage suffered off Greece was suffered by night, the converse was true off Crete; here the terror was all too visible.

Wrote one correspondent, who had the temerity to ride into the struggle on a battleship: “Hardened seamen on the battleship . . . cursed and shook their fists as German bombers, roaring in for the kill after scoring a hit in the magazine of a destroyer, dumped bombs around sailors struggling in the water and swooped down with their machine guns blazing.”

Evacuation was as much more difficult than Greece as Greece was than Dunkirk. At Dunkirk the British had good air protection and good beaches. At Greece they had fair protection and fair evacuation points. At Crete they had no protection and abominable jumping-off places.

The British had almost no heavy equipment in Crete, so they did not have to worry about preventing that from falling into enemy hands. The only thing to get off was men—straggling, struggling men with dried sweat and dust caked in their beards, clutching water bottles as if they were purses of gold; men who had had nothing to eat for twelve days but grimy cold food; men half-crazed with fatigue, who had fought at night and been hounded by day; soldiers of defeat who nevertheless were still sure they could beat the Jerries man to fighting man. The evacuation was a race against time and the Nazis. The hurrying enemy surrounded and captured some 10,000 of these bedraggled men before the British were able to get them off. Crete was lost. It would be hard now to hold Iraq, Trans-Jordan, Palestine and Egypt. The Mediterranean was no longer Admiral Cunningham’s Pond. And yet the British were apparently not downhearted. They were confident that Crete was the last place where Germany would have undisputed air superiority. An R.A.F. spokesman in Cairo said: “There is no chance for further German operations like those in Crete.” But there still was Cyprus.

Already headed for Cyprus was the first Nazi detachment. From Ankara came report of arrival of a Nazi infantry unit, with armored cars and field guns, at the Syrian port of Latakia. Reported objective: Beirut, Lebanon capital, 100 miles southward.