Editing History of Crete (section)

===World War II===

====Battle of Greece====
{{Main|Battle of Greece}}
In 1939, the United Kingdom guaranteed military aid to Greece if its territorial integrity was threatened.<ref name="Dalegre20">Joëlle Dalègre, op. cit., p.20</ref> The priority of the United Kingdom was to prevent Crete from falling into enemy hands, because the island could be used to defend Egypt, the Suez Canal and the route to India.<ref>Van Creveld, op. cit., p. 67.</ref> British troops landed on Crete with the consent of the Greek Government from 3 November 1940, in order to make the 5th Greek Division of Crete available for the Albanian front.

The invasion of mainland Greece by the Axis powers began on 6 April 1941 and was complete within a few weeks despite the intervention of the armies of the Commonwealth along with Greece. King George II and the Government of Emmanouil Tsouderos were forced to flee Athens and took refuge in Crete on April 23. Crete was also the refuge of Commonwealth troops that fled from the beaches of Attica and the Peloponnese to Crete to organize a new front of resistance.

====Battle of Crete====
{{Main|Battle of Crete}}
After the conquest of mainland Greece, Germany turned to Crete and the last stage of the Balkans campaign. After a fierce and bloody conflict between [[Nazi Germany]] and the [[Allies of World War II|Allies]] (United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, and Greece) that lasted ten days (between the 20 and 31 May 1941), the island fell to the Germans.

On the morning of 20 May 1941, Crete was the theater of the first major airborne assault in history. The Third Reich launched an airborne invasion of Crete under the code name of "Operation Mercury". 17,000 paratroopers under the command of General Kurt Student were dropped at three strategic locations with airfields: [[Maleme]], [[Heraklion]], and [[Rethymnon]]. Their goal was the capture and control of the three airfields to allow the arrival of reinforcements airlifted by the Luftwaffe from mainland Greece to bypass the Royal Navy and the Hellenic Navy who still controlled the seas.

On 1 June 1941 the Allies completely evacuated the island of Crete. Despite the victory of the German invaders, the elite [[Fallschirmjäger (Nazi Germany)|German paratroopers]] suffered such heavy losses, from the resistance of the Allied troops and civilians, that [[Adolf Hitler]] forbade further airborne operations of such large scale for the rest of the war.<ref name=Beevor231>Beevor, op. cit., p. 231</ref>

====The Cretan Resistance====
{{Main|Cretan Resistance}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-166-0527-04, Kreta, Kondomari, Erschießung von Zivilisten.jpg|thumb|right|Murder of Greek civilians in Kondomari by German paratroopers in 1941]]
From the first days of the invasion, the local population organized a [[Cretan resistance|resistance]] movement, participating widely in guerrilla groups and intelligence networks. The first resistance groups formed in the Cretan mountains as early as June 1941. In September 1943, a memorable battle between the troops of occupation resistance fighters led by "Kapetan" Manolis Bandouvas in the region of Syme resulted in the deaths of eighty-three German soldiers and another thirteen were taken as prisoners. There were [[reprisal]]s for resistance, German officers routinely used firing squads against Cretan civilians and razed villages to the ground. Standing out amongst the atrocities, are the holocausts of [[Holocaust of Viannos|Viannos]] and [[Holocaust of Kedros|Kedros]] in [[Amari Valley|Amari]], the destruction of [[Razing of Anogeia|Anogeia]] and [[Razing of Kandanos|Kandanos]] and the [[massacre of Kondomari]].<ref>Beevor, Antony. ''Crete: The Battle and the Resistance'', John Murray Ltd, 1991. Penguin Books, 1992. {{ISBN|0-14-016787-0}}.</ref>

==== Liberation ====
By late 1944 German forces were withdrawing from Greece to avoid being cut off by the advancing Russian army moving west across Europe. By the end of September, German and Italian troops began withdrawing from Crete. A small force of British troops landed on Crete on October 13, and both Rethymno and Heraklion were liberated as the occupying forces were withdrawn to the Chania area.

Following [[VE Day]] British SOE officer [[Dennis Ciclitira]] arranged for ''[[Generalmajor]]'' [[Hans-Georg Benthack]] to formally surrender all German forces on the island to Major-General [[Colin Callander]].<ref name="IWM">{{cite web |url=http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30109356 |title=Head Shawl (Seraki) |work=Imperial War Museum |year=2016 |accessdate=10 February 2016}}</ref> On May 9, 1945, Benthack signed an unconditional surrender at the Villa Ariadne at [[Knossos]] to Callander, effective "10 o'clock Greenwich Mean Time on the tenth day of May 1945"<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.shealtiel.com/shealtiel/thereunions/speech_mamalakis.pdf |title=Constantin E. Mamalakis. Crete during the Second World War. Speech at the Historical Museum of Crete 25 June 2009 |access-date=14 October 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131016061036/http://www.shealtiel.com/shealtiel/thereunions/speech_mamalakis.pdf |archive-date=16 October 2013 |url-status=dead |df=dmy-all }}</ref>