Product Description

Crete's invasion by German paratroopers in 1941 became and remains the role model for all airborne military operations in the twentieth century. Crete was a military centre with major naval strategic importance, and the Allies had expected an Axis seaborne invasion to capture it. Instead, an elite attack force of crack airborne troops, followed by transport aircraft, took the island in hours and the Luftwaffe's dominance of skies ensured that no Allied naval retaliation was possible. This book explains the organisation of the operation and proceeds to document with first hand accounts from actual participants in the invasion force each step of the battle.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #120222 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 144 pages

Customer Reviews

Wonderful treatment of the airborne assault on Crete
This book is a very beautiful book. But it's also a bit of a mixed bag to me. I guess I need to explain this, and also why the book still got five stars from me.

Well, first of all it's a book about the invasion of Crete. But it doesn't show pictures of the German mountain troops that were involved, these just have to make do with some mentioning in the text. The pictures focus completely on the Fallschirmjäger, though the Allies do get their share of attention. This may be a bit of a let-down, but the book doesn't claim to give a full treatment of the campaign, it deals with the German Airborne troops and their part in the invasion.
Secondly most Histoire and Collection books I own show real uniforms in colour. But you won't find any here. The book is filled with wartime black and white photographs, and the colour bits are limited to some photo's of wartime documents and a few maps.

Despite all that I still think the book is very successful in what it tries to do. After a short introduction, explaining why the invasion took place the book moves on to giving the bigger picture of the operation and then quickly goes on to describe events at the assorted landing areas. The text consists for a large part of eye-witness accounts, which makes vivid reading. But nearly all of them are from German airborne troops. There are very few Allied accounts.

What makes things special to me is that the pictures really support the text and the accounts, because they show the people that are mentioned. This is something that's lacking in many other books and makes this title stand out.

To round it off the final pages give the Orders of Battle of the forces that participated.

All in all this title is recommended to anyone with an interest in Fallschirmjäger and/or the invasion of Crete.