Scherer, E. W. Entscheidung bei Maleme. Kreta 1941. Eine Insel wird aus der Luft erobert

75 years after "Operation Merkur", it is time for a balanced account of the conquest of Crete by German airborne troops in May 1941, which tries to do justice to all sides, but also does not conceal anything that belongs to the historical truth. In this vivid account, a mosaic, as it were, of the battle made up of documents, accounts of experiences and extracts from literature, the twelve days of dramatic events come to life again, marked by such serious contrasts as the defenders' complete knowledge of the attackers' intentions and the attackers' complete ignorance of the defenders' actions, such as the Germans' total domination of the air against the British' total domination of the sea.

It was a battle of 23,000 German paratroopers and mountain troops against 42,000 British, New Zealand, Australian and Greek soldiers as well as Cretan irregulars, which could actually only be won by the superior force, which was also better armed. It remains a phenomenon that the battle, in which both sides demonstrated high fighting morale, ended in victory for the Germans after an already threatening defeat. A victory, however, that was bought with horrendous losses. A chapter of war history that should not be forgotten. "The conquest of Crete by an invasion carried out exclusively by air was one of the most astonishing and audacious acts of the war. It was also the most remarkable airborne enterprise of the war," judged British military historian Liddel Hart. "Never before had the world seen a martial spectacle of this kind," wrote Britain's wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill in his memoirs. And so this spectacular event also received far greater journalistic attention in the English-speaking world than in the German-speaking world, probably because this battle was soon eclipsed in public perception in Germany by reports of the Russian war that began immediately afterwards. This was to remain a determining factor in the post-war period, so that there is still a lack of a comprehensive and comprehensibly written description of the battle. Yet Crete 1941 also stands for the first sea-air battle in the history of war and the beginning of partisan warfare in the Second World War.