Editing Battle of Crete (section)

==Aftermath==
===Analysis===
[[File:Triple Occupation of Greece.png|thumb|Map of occupied Greece showing the {{legend-inline|#eb1414|'''German'''}} and {{legend-inline|#d49300|'''Italian'''}} occupation zones on Crete]]
The German Air Ministry was shocked by the number of transport aircraft lost in the battle, and Student, reflecting on the casualties suffered by the paratroopers, concluded after the war that Crete was the death of the airborne force. Hitler, believing airborne forces to be a weapon of surprise which had now lost that advantage, concluded that the days of the airborne corps were over and directed that paratroopers should be employed as ground-based troops in subsequent operations in the Soviet Union.<ref name="Beevor_p229-230"/>

The battle for Crete delayed Operation Barbarossa but not directly.{{sfn|Willmott|2008|pp=128–129}} The start date for ''Barbarossa'' (22 June 1941) had been set several weeks before the Crete operation was considered and the directive by Hitler for Operation Mercury made it plain that preparations for ''Merkur'' must not interfere with ''Barbarossa''.<ref name="Schreiber 1995 530–531"/> Units assigned to ''Merkur'' were intended for ''Barbarossa'' and were forced to redeploy to Poland and Romania by the end of May. Movement of surviving units from Greece was not delayed. The transfer of [[8th Air Corps (Germany)|''Fliegerkorps'' VIII]] north, ready for ''Barbarossa'', eased the Royal Navy evacuation of the defenders. The delay of Operation Barbarossa was exacerbated also by the late spring and floods in Poland.<ref>''Germany and the Second World War, Volume IV, The Attack on the Soviet Union'', Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt ed, (1995), see especially p.376; McDonald, C. (1995) ''The Lost Battle: Crete 1941'', pp. 63–84.</ref>

The Air operation impact of the Battle of Crete to Operation Barbarossa was direct.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |title=PART FIVE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CAMPAIGNS IN THE BALKANS AND |url=https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/balkan/20_260_5.htm |access-date=6 June 2021 |website=history.army.mil |archive-date=24 June 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210624060431/https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/balkan/20_260_5.htm |url-status=dead}}</ref> The considerable losses of the Luftwaffe during the operation Mercury, specifically regarding troop carrier planes, affected the capacity of air power operations at the start of the Russian campaign. Additionally, with German parachute troops being decimated in Crete, there was an insufficient number of men that were qualified to carry out the huge-scale airborne operations that were necessary at the beginning of the invasion. Furthermore, the delay of the whole Balkan campaign, including the Battle of Crete, did not allow for exploiting the strategic advantages that German forces had gained in the Eastern Mediterranean. With the VIII Air Corps ordered to Germany for refitting before Crete was secured, significant command and communication issues hampered redeployment of the whole formation as the ground personnel was directly redeployed to their new bases in Poland.<ref name=":0" />

The [[last battle of the battleship Bismarck|sinking of the German battleship ''Bismarck'']] on 27 May distracted British public opinion but the loss of Crete, particularly as a result of the failure of the Allied land forces to recognise the strategic importance of the airfields, led [[Churchill war ministry|the British government]] to make changes.<ref>{{harvnb|Pack|1973|p=57}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Vick|1995|p=21}}</ref> Only six days before the initial assault, the Vice Chief of Air Staff presciently wrote: "If the Army attach any importance to air superiority at the time of an invasion then they must take steps to protect our aerodromes with something more than men in their first or second childhood". Shocked and disappointed with the Army's inexplicable failure to recognise the importance of airfields in modern warfare, Churchill made the RAF responsible for the defence of its bases and the [[RAF Regiment]] was formed on 1 February 1942.<ref>{{cite web |title=A Brief History of the RAF Regiment |publisher=Ministry of Defence |year=2012 |url=http://www.raf.mod.uk/rafregiment/history/ |access-date=29 May 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120406170752/http://www.raf.mod.uk/rafregiment/history/ |archive-date=6 April 2012 }}</ref> Allied commanders at first worried the Germans might use Crete as a springboard for further operations in the Mediterranean East Basin, possibly for an airborne attack on [[Cyprus]] or a seaborne invasion of Egypt, in support of [[Western Desert campaign|Axis forces operating from Libya]]. Operation Barbarossa made it apparent that the occupation of Crete was a defensive measure to secure the [[Axis powers|Axis]] southern flank.{{sfn|Playfair|Flynn|Molony|Toomer|1956|pp=148–149}}

===Ultra===
[[File:Enigma 04.jpg|thumb|[[Enigma encryption machine]], 1940]]
For a fortnight, Enigma intercepts described the arrival of ''Fliegerkorps XI'' around Athens, the collection of 27,000 [[Register ton|registered tons]] of shipping and the effect of air attacks on Crete, which began on 14 May 1941. A postponement of the invasion was revealed on 15 May, and on 19 May, the probable date was given as the next day. The German objectives in Crete were similar to the areas already being prepared by the British, but foreknowledge increased the confidence of the local commanders in their dispositions. On 14 May, London warned that the attack could come any time after 17 May, which information Freyberg passed on to the garrison. On 16 May the British authorities expected an attack by 25,000 to 30,000 airborne troops in {{nowrap|600 aircraft}} and by 10,000 troops transported by sea. (The real figures were 15,750 airborne troops in {{nowrap|520 aircraft}} and {{nowrap|7,000 by}} sea; late decrypts reduced uncertainty over the seaborne invasion.) The British mistakes were smaller than those of the Germans, who estimated the garrison to be only a third of the true figure. (The after-action report of ''Fliegerkorps XI'' contained a passage recounting that the operational area had been so well prepared that it gave the impression that the garrison had known the time of the invasion.{{sfn|Hinsley|1994|pp=82–84}})

The Germans captured a message from London marked "Personal for General Freyberg" which was translated into German and sent to Berlin. Dated 24 May and headed "According to most reliable source" it said where German troops were on the previous day (which could have been from reconnaissance) but also specified that the Germans were next going to "attack Suda Bay". This could have indicated that Enigma messages were compromised.<ref>{{cite book |last=Sebag-Montefiore |first=Hugh |title=Enigma: The Battle for the Code |orig-date=2000 |year=2017 |publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson |location=London |isbn=978-1-4746-0832-9 |page=181}}</ref>

[[Antony Beevor]] in 1991 and P. D. Antill in 2005 wrote that Allied commanders knew of the invasion through [[Ultra (cryptography)|Ultra]] intercepts. Freyberg, informed of the air component of the German battle plan, had started to prepare a defence near the airfields and along the north coast. He had been hampered by a lack of modern equipment, and the lightly armed paratroopers had about the same firepower as the defenders, if not more. Ultra intelligence was detailed but was taken out of context and misinterpreted.<ref>{{harvnb|Beevor|1991|loc= Appendix C}}.</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Handel |first1=Michael I. |year=1990 |editor1-last=Handel |editor1-first=Michael |title=Intelligence and Military Operations |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zZLcAAAAQBAJ |series=Studies in Intelligence |location=Abingdon, Oxfordshire |publisher=Routledge |publication-date=2013 |page=47 |isbn=978-1-135-17934-2 |access-date=23 July 2018 |quote=It appears that General Freyberg was introduced to Ultra only shortly before the battle of Crete began and therefore had no time to become familiar with its proper interpretation. This situation was exacerbated by the fact that 'he was forbidden to show it (the information derived from Ultra) to anyone or to discuss it with his intelligence staff.' [...] Moreover, tight security regulations prohibiting him from taking action on the basis of uncorroborated Ultra evidence limited its value. |archive-date=28 September 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190928073132/https://books.google.com/books?id=zZLcAAAAQBAJ |url-status=live}}</ref>
While emphasis was placed on the airborne assault, the German messages also mentioned seaborne operations; Freyberg, expecting an amphibious landing, garrisoned the coast – which reduced the number of men available to defend the airfield at Maleme, the principal German objective.<ref>{{harvnb|Antill|2005|p=36}}.</ref> In 1993, [[F. H. Hinsley]], the official historian of British intelligence during the war, wrote that the Germans had more casualties in the conquest of Crete than in the rest of the Greek campaign; the 7th ''Fliegerdivision'' was decimated, leaving the Germans with a crippled airborne arm. <!-- I can only find the 1979 original edition, on archive.org https://archive.org/details/britishintellige00hins_0/page/420/mode/1up, p. 420 which seems to have much the same content. Can't be arsed to rebuild the cite and all the sfns, sorry--> It was the only unit of its kind and was not rebuilt.{{sfn|Hinsley|1994|p= 84}}

Hinsley wrote that it was difficult to measure the influence of intelligence gained during the battle, because although Ultra revealed German situation reports, reinforcement details and unit identifications, and although more intelligence was gleaned from prisoners and captured documents, it was not known how swiftly the information reached Freyberg or how he used it. The German parachute warfare manual had been captured in 1940, and after the war Student said that he would have changed tactics had he known this. Field-signals intelligence was obtained, including bombing instructions and information from the ''Fliegerkorps'' XI tactical code. Lack of air cover prevented much British air reconnaissance north of Crete, but on 21 May signals intelligence enabled an aircraft to spot a convoy. After midnight the navy sank twelve ships and the rest scattered, which led to a second invasion convoy being called back. The second convoy was intercepted during the morning of 22 May, despite the cost to the navy of a daylight operation, and no more seaborne attempts were made.{{sfn|Hinsley|1994|pp=84–85}}

===Casualties===
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-166-0527-22, Kreta, toter Fallschirmjäger.jpg|thumb|A dead German paratrooper May 1941; picture by Propaganda Kompanie 690]]
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 141-0848, Kreta, Soldatengräber.jpg|thumb|German soldiers pause before the graves of their comrades]]
[[File:Maleme airfield after the Battle of Crete.jpg|thumb|Damaged and destroyed [[Junkers Ju 52]]s at [[Maleme Airfield]]]]
[[File:Suda Bay War Cemetery.JPG|thumb|[[Souda Bay Allied War Cemetery]]]]
[[File:Hellenic Australian Memorial Rethymno.jpg|thumb|Memorial for Greek and Australian soldiers in the centre of [[Rethymno]]]]
Official German casualty figures are contradictory due to minor variations in documents produced by German commands on various dates. Davin estimated 6,698 losses, based upon an examination of various sources.<ref name="Davin, pp. 486-488">{{harvnb|Davin|1953|pp=486–488}}.</ref> <!--, which are summarized as follows:
new table to come:[''table of German casualty source documents to come''] !--> Davin wrote that his estimate might exclude lightly wounded soldiers.<ref>{{harvnb|Davin|1953|p=488}}.</ref>

{{blockquote|Reports of German casualties in British reports are in almost all cases exaggerated and are not accepted against the official contemporary German returns, prepared for normal purposes and not for propaganda.|Davin<ref>{{harvnb|Davin|1953|p=486}}.</ref>}}

In 1956, Playfair and the other British official historians, gave figures of 1,990 Germans killed, 2,131 wounded, 1,995 missing, a total of 6,116 men "compiled from what appear to be the most reliable German records".{{sfn|Playfair|Flynn|Molony|Toomer|1956|p=147}}

Exaggerated reports of German casualties began to appear after the battle had ended. In New Zealand, ''[[The Press (Christchurch)|The Press]]'' on 12 June 1941 reported that
{{blockquote|The Germans lost at least 12,000 killed and wounded, and about 5,000 drowned.|Taylor{{sfn|Taylor|1986|p=299}}}}

Churchill claimed that the Germans must have suffered well over 15,000 casualties. Buckley, based on British intelligence assumptions of two enemies wounded for every one killed, gave an estimate of 16,800 casualties. The [[United States Army Center of Military History]], citing a report of the Historical Branch of the British [[Cabinet Office]], concluded that military historians accept estimates from 6,000 to 7,000 German casualties.{{sfn|Anon|1952|pp=139–141}} The Australian Graves Commission counted about 4,000 German graves in the Maleme–Souda Bay area, and about 1,000 more at Rethymno and Heraklion, that would have included deaths during the German occupation due to sickness, accidents, or fighting with partisan forces.<ref>{{harvnb|Davin|1953|pp=486–487}}.</ref>

The official historians recorded 147 Luftwaffe aircraft destroyed and 64 damaged beyond repair by enemy action, with 73 destroyed due to extensive non-combat damage, for a total of 284 aircraft. Another 84 planes had repairable non-combat damage. In 1987, Shores, Cull, and Malizia recorded losses of 220 aircraft destroyed and 64 written off due to damage, a total of 284 aircraft between 13 May and 1 June: 147 in combat, 73 non-combat, 64 written-off, and 125 damaged but repairable.{{sfn|Playfair|Flynn|Molony|Toomer|1956|p=147}}<ref name=shores403>{{harvnb|Shores|Cull|Malizia|1987|p=403}}</ref> A total of 311 Luftwaffe aircrew were listed as killed or missing and 127 were wounded.<ref name=shores403/> In a 1948 RAF staff publication, Luftwaffe losses were given as about 4,500 parachute and glider troop casualties and about 170 Ju 52s lost or severely damaged; losses in fighter and bomber units were small due to the lack of air opposition.{{sfn|Air|2001|p=125}}

The British lost 1,742 killed, 1,737 wounded, and 11,835 taken prisoner from a garrison of slightly more than 32,000 men; and there were 1,828 dead and 183 wounded Royal Navy personnel.{{sfn|Playfair|Flynn|Molony|Toomer|1956|p=147}} Of a force of more than 10,000 men, 5,255 Greek troops were captured.<ref>{{harvnb|Long|1953|p=316}}.</ref> After the war, the Allied graves from the four burial grounds that had been established by the Germans were moved to Souda Bay War Cemetery. A large number of civilians were killed in the crossfire or died fighting as [[Partisan (military)|partisans]]. Many Cretan civilians were shot by the Germans in reprisal during the battle and in the occupation.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.patris.gr/articles/133978/ |title=Οι ωμότητες των Γερμανών στην Κρήτη |website=www.patris.gr |access-date=10 April 2009 |archive-date=19 July 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110719060125/http://www.patris.gr/articles/133978/ |url-status=live}}</ref> One Cretan source puts the number of Cretans killed by Germans at 6,593 men, 1,113 women, and 869 children. German records put the number of Cretans executed by firing squad as 3,474 and at least 1,000 civilians were killed in massacres late in 1944.<ref>{{harvnb|MacDonald|1995|p=303}}.</ref>

The Luftwaffe sank the cruisers {{HMS|Gloucester|62|6}}, {{HMS|Fiji|58|6}}, and {{HMS|Calcutta|D82|6}} and the destroyers ''Kelly'', ''Greyhound'' and ''Kashmir'' from 22 May – 1 June. Italian bombers from 41° Gruppo sank the destroyer {{HMS|Juno|F46|6}} on 21 May and on 28 May damaged another destroyer, {{HMS|Imperial|D09|6}}, beyond repair.<ref>{{harvnb|Higham|2006|p=166}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Cloutier|2013|p=71}}</ref> The British also lost the destroyer {{HMS|Hereward|H93|6}} on 29 May, when she was attacked by German [[Junkers Ju 87]] "Stuka" dive-bombers.<ref>{{harvnb|English|1993|p=107}}</ref>

Damage to the [[aircraft carrier]] {{HMS|Formidable|67|6}}, the battleships {{HMS|Warspite|03|6}} and {{HMS|Barham|04|6}}, the cruisers {{HMS|Ajax|22|6}}, {{HMS|Dido|37|6}}, {{HMS|Orion|85|6}}, and {{HMAS|Perth|D29|6}}, the submarine {{HMS|Rover|N62|6}}, the destroyers {{HMS|Kelvin|F37|6}} and {{HMS|Nubian|F36|6}}, kept them out of action for months. At anchor in [[Souda Bay]], northern Crete, the heavy cruiser {{HMS|York|90|6}} was disabled by Italian explosive motor boats and beached on 26 March; and was later wrecked by demolition charges when Crete was evacuated in May.<ref>{{harvnb|Whitley|1999|p=94}}.</ref> By 1 June, the eastern Mediterranean strength of the Royal Navy had been reduced to two battleships and three cruisers, against four battleships and eleven cruisers of the Italian Navy.<ref name="Pack 1973 91"/> For the British, the Battle of Crete was the costliest naval engagement of the entire war.<ref name="thenationalherald.com">{{cite web |url=https://www.thenationalherald.com/5641/how-british-bungling-lost-the-battle-for-crete-in-wwii/ |title=How British Bungling Lost the Battle for Crete in WWII |website=www.thenationalherald.com |access-date=2 March 2018 |archive-date=2 March 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180302163938/https://www.thenationalherald.com/5641/how-british-bungling-lost-the-battle-for-crete-in-wwii/ }}</ref>

Royal Navy shipborne anti-aircraft gun claims for the period of 15–27 May amounted to: "Twenty enemy aircraft&nbsp;... shot down for certain, with 11 probables. At least 15 aircraft appeared to have been damaged&nbsp;..."; from 28 May – 1 June, another two aircraft were claimed shot down and six more damaged, for a total of 22 claimed destroyed, 11 probably destroyed and 21 damaged.<ref>Cunningham, Paragraph 78 and Paragraphs 1–54 of the last section</ref>

{|class="wikitable"
|-
! style="width:22%;"|Crete Military Casualties{{ref label|Note|f|f}}
! style="width:13%;"|[[Killed in Action|Killed]]
! style="width:13%;"|[[Missing in action|Missing]] <br />(presumed dead)
! style="width:13%;"|Total [[Killed in Action|Killed]] and [[Missing in action|Missing]]
! style="width:13%;"|[[Wounded in action|Wounded]]
! style="width:13%;"|[[Prisoner of war|Captured]]
! style="width:13%;"|Total
|-
|align="left"|[[Commonwealth of Nations|British Commonwealth]]
|{{right|3,579}}<ref>Davin, p. 486 and Playfair, p.147, for RN Casualties. This number includes those missing in action.</ref>
|align="right"|
|{{right|3,579}}<ref name="Davin, p p.147">Davin, p. 486 and Playfair, p.147, for RN Casualties.</ref>
|{{right|1,918}}<ref name="Davin, p p.147"/>
|{{right|12,254}}<ref>Davin, p. 486. The total number excludes several hundred RN PoWs.</ref>
|{{right|17,754}}<ref>Davin, p. 486 and Playfair, p.147, for RN Casualties. The total number excludes several hundred RN PoWs.</ref>
|-
|align="left"|German<ref name="auto1"/>
|{{right|1,353}}
|{{right|2,421}}
|{{right|3,774}}
|{{right|2,120}}
|
|{{right|5,894}}
|-
|align="left"|Greek<ref name="ReferenceA"/>
|{{right|426}}
|{{right|118}}
|{{right|544}}
|
|{{right|5,225}}
|{{right|5,769}}
|}

=== Occupation ===
For the German occupation of Crete, see [[Fortress Crete]].