How Hitler Could Have Won World War II (8 page)

The first of 53,000 British troops, mostly motorized forces from Australia and New Zealand, landed in Greece on March 7 and moved forward to help their new Greek allies. Off Cape Matapan south of Greece on March 28, the British fleet destroyed three Italian cruisers in a night battle, thereby ensuring that Mussolini's battle fleet never dared challenge the Royal Navy again.

The Yugoslavs meanwhile had been under intense pressure to join the Axis. But the Yugoslav people, especially the Serbs, were violently opposed. The Yugoslav premier and foreign minister slipped out of Belgrade by night to avoid hostile demonstrations and signed the Tripartite Pact in the presence of Hitler and Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in Vienna on March 25.

The next night in Belgrade, a popular uprising led by air force officers under General Dusan Simovic overthrew the government and the regent, Prince Paul, who had agreed to join the Axis. They packed Prince Paul off to Greece. Prince Paul had intended to kidnap Prince Peter, the eighteen-year-old heir to the throne, but Peter escaped down a drainpipe, and the rebels at once declared him king.

The coup threw Hitler into a wild rage. He ordered an immediate attack on Yugoslavia from all quarters.

At dawn on April 6, 1941, German armies of overwhelming strength fell on Yugoslavia and Greece. Maximilian von Weichs's 2nd Army in Austria and Hungary rushed into Yugoslavia from the north and east.

Wilhelm List's 12th Army in Bulgaria had the crucial task. While its 30th Corps pressed to the Aegean against no opposition near European Turkey, parts of the 18th Mountain Corps smashed against the Metaxas Line, but bounded back in repulse. This was Greece's main defense in the northeast, held by six divisions.

Meanwhile the motorized 40th Corps under Georg Stumme and Panzer Group 1, five divisions under Ewald von Kleist, drove westward into southern Yugoslavia and split the Yugoslavs from the Greeks. Kleist's panzers turned north, captured Nish, and raced down the Morava River valley toward Belgrade, meeting Georg Hans Reinhardt's 41st Panzer Corps pressing on the capital from Romania.

The Yugoslav army in theory had thirty-five divisions. But it was poorly armed, and Yugoslavia was about to rip apart into its separate ethnic groups. Only about half the reservists, mostly Serbs, had answered the call to mobilize. The remainder, largely Croats and Slovenians, had remained at home.

The army command tried to concentrate its scattered Serbian troops around Sarajevo, but the German 41st Panzer Corps cut through Bosnia and forced about 300,000 men to surrender. Simovic and young King Peter flew out, first to Greece, later to Palestine.

Meanwhile, the German 40th Corps pressed into the Vardar River valley, seized Skopje in southern Yugoslavia, then turned through the Monastir Gap into Greece, about seventy-five miles west of Saloniki.

At the same time, parts of the 18th Mountain Corps slipped around Lake Dojran, twelve miles west of the point where the Greek, Yugoslav, and Bulgarian borders joined. Thereby flanking the Metaxas Line, they drove down the Vardar (Axios) valley to the Aegean and seized Saloniki. This isolated the Greeks on the Metaxas Line, and forced them to surrender.

The British expected the Germans to advance directly southward from Saloniki past Mount Olympus and along the Aegean. This is where they placed most of their troops. Instead, the Germans thrust southwestward from the Monastir Gap toward the west coast of Greece, cut off the Greeks in Albania, and turned the western flank of the British. This produced the quick collapse of resistance.

General Wavell, with agreement of London, ordered the expeditionary corps to evacuate. British warships and transports ran into harbors around Athens and the Peloponnisos, to which the British and some Greeks were hurrying, and began taking out troops, leaving most of their weapons behind. The Royal Navy evacuated 51,000 men by the end of April. Around 13,000 British were killed or forced to surrender.

As King George II of Greece, his family, and high officials flew out on British flying boats, German panzers rolled into Athens on April 27 and hoisted the swastika over the Acropolis. Most of the Greek army capitulated.

It had taken the Germans only three weeks to overrun Yugoslavia and Greece and drive the British once more off the Continent. Field Marshal List's 12th Army alone had captured, in addition to the British, 90,000 Yugoslavs and 270,000 Greeks, at a cost of barely 5,000 killed and wounded.

6 ATTACKING THE WRONG ISLAND

ADOLF HITLER NOW MADE A DECISION THAT FLEW IN THE FACE OF LOGIC, DISREGARDED the actual military situation in the Mediterranean, and revealed his inability to see a different way to pursue the war than by attacking the Soviet Union.

He decided to use his highly trained parachute and glider troops to seize the relatively unimportant island of Crete in the eastern Mediterranean, but he refused to capture Malta, which lay directly on the seaway between Italy and Libya.

This absurd choice—made over the objections of Admiral Raeder, the navy high command, and elements in the OKW—marked Hitler's final rejection of a Mediterranean strategy that could have brought him victory. If a campaign to conquer North Africa was going to be waged by the Axis, it was imperative to secure Malta. If, on the other hand, Hitler was sending troops to Libya merely to mollify Mussolini, with no large strategic aim, then German brains, men, and equipment were being wasted in a foolish and reckless manner.

Crete, home of the ancient Minoan civilization, is a large Greek island (3,200 square miles) 180 miles south of Athens, and some 250 miles north of Egypt and eastern Libya, or Cyrenaica. It is 152 miles long, but only 8 to 35 miles wide.

Once the Balkans had been seized by the Germans, Crete strategically fell into a twilight zone. For the British, long-range bombers based on Crete could reach the Ploesti oil fields in Romania, 675 miles north, but RAF bases on the island could be blasted by German aircraft a hundred miles away in southern Greece. For the Germans, occupation made no more sense, because aircraft based there would be farther from Cairo and Alexandria than planes in eastern Cyrenaica.

The situation was entirely different in regard to Malta. This small British-ruled island group (122 square miles), only 60 miles south of Sicily and 200 miles north of Tripoli, was a dagger sticking into Italian and German backs in North Africa. Here the British had based airplanes, submarines, and warships with the explicit purpose of interdicting traffic to Libya.

The danger of Malta was emphasized to everyone when the British sank a transport meant for Rommel's Africa Corps on the night of April 15–16, 1941. British threats from Malta soon made nearly every passage to Libya a throw of the dice. Sometimes the ship got through, sometimes it didn't. Sunken Italian and German cargo vessels began to litter the seabed of the Sicilian Narrows between the two continents.

Hitler didn't consider the question of Crete seriously until the RAF landed air and army units on the island on November 1, 1940. Soon thereafter Hitler's attention focused on Malta. After Marshal Graziani's humiliating defeat, Hitler decided to send German forces to Libya. Mussolini, fearing loss of his possession, now wanted help.

Officers examined the possibility of neutralizing Crete and Malta solely by air raids. But any successful bombing campaign lasts only as long as it is continued. The only certain way to eliminate a threat is to seize the ground with troops, and Admiral Raeder and the navy high command agitated for an assault on Malta. Capture of this island, they asserted, was “an essential precondition for a successful war against Britain in the Mediterranean.”

Raeder and his senior officers were trying to reverse a preliminary decision of February 22, 1941, when the OKW informed them that Hitler planned to delay the conquest of Malta until the autumn of 1941 “after the conclusion of the war in the east.” Thus Hitler was expecting to dispose of the Russians in a swift summer campaign, then turn back at his leisure and deal with the small problem of Malta!

Several OKW staff officers—awake to the danger of Malta after the ship bound for Rommel went down—also pleaded with Jodl and Keitel to urge Hitler to tackle the island at once.

It was no wonder that they, Raeder, and his officers were wrought up. The decision ignored Rommel's urgent needs and subordinated everything to a war against the Soviet Union—whose dimensions, duration, and outcome could not possibly be foreseen. Furthermore, the defending garrison at Malta was small, because convoys to the island had to run a gauntlet of attacks from Italian air and sea forces. Yet the British controlled the eastern Mediterranean and could put as large a force as they desired onto Crete.

Hitler's final decision came on April 21, 1941, as the campaign in the Balkans was winding down. He decided to attack Crete, which was given the code name Operation Mercury. Malta would have to wait. Crete, Hitler declared, was more important. He wanted to eliminate all danger of British sea and air forces from southeastern Europe. British forces on Malta would be dealt with by the Luftwaffe. Furthermore, Barbarossa, the attack on Russia, was set for June 1941, and Mercury had to be completed before then.

With this decision Adolf Hitler lost the war. The assault on Crete guaranteed two catastrophes for Germany: it limited the Mediterranean campaign to peripheral or public relations goals, and it turned German strength against the Soviet Union while Britain remained defiant, with the United States in the wings.

Hitler was not the only leader fooled into thinking Crete was important. General Halder, chief of the army staff, showed how little he knew about supplying troops on an island in a sea dominated by an enemy fleet. Halder concluded that capture of the island was “the best means to support the advance of Rommel toward the Suez Canal.”

Winston Churchill also fell into the trap. He wanted to strengthen British forces on Crete, in the face of strong opposition from General Wavell, the Middle East commander, and the war ministry in London. The ministry feared heavy losses on Crete, since airstrips on mainland Greece were close and the Luftwaffe could bomb British bases with ease.

Churchill insisted, however, and beginning in February 1941 more British army troops moved to the island as construction crews built three RAF landing strips there.

Meanwhile, British intelligence picked up word that parts of 11th Air Corps—Kurt Student's elite parachute and glider force that had overcome Holland in days—were arriving at Bulgarian airfields. But the British intelligence network was not clear whether the target was Crete, Syria, or Cyprus, a British island in the eastern Mediterranean.

Churchill on April 17 ordered some of the troops being evacuated from Greece to be disembarked on the island. General Wavell informed London that he only had sufficient troops to hold Libya and that he thought Crete should be abandoned, as did the Admiralty in London.

However, Churchill decided to defend Crete. He saw a chance of inflicting damage on German airborne troops, and believed a strong defense would have good effects on Turkey and other Middle Eastern states.

On April 30, Lieutenant General Bernard Cyril Freyberg took command of 28,600 British, New Zealand, and Australian troops, and 7,000 Greek army forces on Crete. Most of the men had been evacuated from Greece and had only light weapons. Freyberg sent frantic calls to Egypt for heavy weapons, but only a few arrived.

It was clear that the German attack had to hit the north shore. Here were all the main landing places and principal towns. Most roads ran east-west. Only a few rough tracks led south over the steep mountains that fell directly into the Libyan Sea.

Intelligence had figured the attack would come in the western part of Crete, and Freyberg posted the 2nd New Zealand Division around the village of Maleme and the airfield located near the seashore. He put about 14,000 British and Australians at Khania and Suda Bay, a few miles east to defend against a sea assault. At Rethimnon, thirty miles east of Khania, Freyberg posted the 19th Australian Brigade, and at Iraklion, forty miles farther east, he placed the 14th British Brigade. At all these points, Freyberg also positioned Greek forces as backup.

Mercury commander General Alexander Löhr divided his airborne forces into three groups: West, Middle, and East. In the first wave in the early morning of May 20, 1941, Group West was to land at two locations: Maleme, and around Khania and Suda Bay. In the second wave in the afternoon, Group Middle would drop just east of Rithymnon, and Group East on both sides of Iraklion. Once Maleme airfield had been secured, the 5th Mountain Division would come in by transport planes. General Wolfram von Richthofen's 8th Air Corps had 280 bombers, 150 Stukas, 180 fighters, and 40 reconnaissance aircraft to cover the attack.

Richthofen's aircraft began hitting the 40 British aircraft on Crete so hard early in May that the RAF removed all planes to Egypt. This gave the Germans complete air supremacy. They used it to pound every British position they could find, but British camouflage was so good the soldiers suffered few losses.

German air reconnaissance discovered a few days before the attack that strong elements of the Royal Navy had moved south and west of Crete. This showed that the British were determined to defend the island.

Thus on May 20 the Germans held command of the air and the British command of the sea. But the Royal Navy, with no air shield, was operating at high risk.

Preceded by early morning air attacks that knocked out some British communications and antiaircraft guns, the first wave of Germans came in on gliders at Maleme and south of Khania. Immediately afterward, paratroops dropped around the airport, the town of Khania, and docks at Suda Bay. All told, 6,000 Germans landed or fell out of the sky in this first wave. The British, New Zealanders, and Australians were waiting.

It was nearly a total disaster for the Germans.

Some gliders crashed before reaching their targets. Others landed but the troops were slaughtered as they emerged from the planes. Many of the paratroops jumped directly on defensive positions and were shot as they came down. One of the reasons this happened was the prevailing wind, which blew from the interior toward the sea. For fear of dropping the troops in the sea, the pilots tended to drop them too far inland—some of them actually in British lines.

The Germans came down with only light weapons. Because of intense fire, many could not reach the containers holding heavier weapons that had been dropped, but fell wide of the troops.

Germans who dropped south of Khania could not take the town or Suda Bay and had to go over to the defensive that night. Only in the narrow Tavronitis River valley just west of Maleme were units able to assemble and attack the dominating heights south of the Maleme airport. The New Zealanders emplaced on these heights held off the Germans and kept them from grabbing the airport.

During the night, however, the local New Zealand commander got the false impression that his men were so weakened they couldn't hold off the enemy. With approval of his brigade commander, he pulled them east a mile or so. This permitted the Germans to move forward and seize a piece of the airfield, plus the heights south of Maleme. This opened part of the field to German aircraft, though it remained within range of British artillery and infantry weapons.

The troops of Group West lost radio contact with headquarters in Greece for a time. Air crews returning to pick up troops for the second wave had not seen what had happened, and thought things had gone well. Consequently, when the bad news began to come in sometime later, it was too late to change plans. Also, delays in refueling aircraft and the poor condition of Greek runways slowed departure of the second wave, while Richthofen's bombers and fighters had gone ahead to bomb and strafe Rethimnon and Iraklion. By the time the second-wave transports arrived, they were often without protection.

Consequently, the losses at Rethimnon and Iraklion were even higher than in the morning attack. About half the paratroopers were killed as they descended or in the first fights on the ground. The Germans could capture neither town nor local airfields, and survivors, in small isolated detachments, had to go over to the defensive.

Generals Löhr and Student decided the only thing to do was to reinforce the little success they had achieved, at Maleme airfield. On the morning of May 21, some transports landed at a strip of the airport in German hands and delivered urgently needed weapons and munitions. That afternoon several companies of paratroops jumped into this area as well.