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The Battle of Crete (German: Luftlandeschlacht um Kreta, Greek: Μάχη της Κρήτης), codenamed Operation Mercury (German: Unternehmen Merkur), was a major Axis airborne and amphibious operation during World War II to capture the island of Crete. It began on the morning of 20 May 1941, with multiple German airborne landings on Crete.
Monument to the Battle of Crete in Sfakia with the flags of Greece, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. The military history of Greece during World War II began on 28 October 1940, when the Italian Army invaded Greece from Albania, beginning the Greco-Italian War.
Operation Albumen was the name given to British Commando raids in June 1942 on German airfields in the Axis-occupied Greek island of Crete, to prevent them from being used in support of the Axis forces in the Western Desert Campaign in the Second World War.
For the first time during World War II, attacking German forces faced in Crete a substantial resistance from the local population. In the Battle of Crete, Cretan civilians picked off paratroopers or attacked them with knives, axes, scythes, or even bare hands. As a result, many casualties were inflicted upon the invading German paratroopers ...
Greece's recovery from the devastation of World War II and the Axis occupation lagged far behind that of the rest of Europe. [174] About 8% of the Greek population of c. 7 million had died during the conflicts and the occupation. Sanitation conditions were deplorable, and the health of those who had survived was imperilled by a resurgence of ...
This is an argument that historians used to assert that Greek resistance was a turning point in World War II. [184] According to film-maker and friend of Adolf Hitler Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler said that "if the Italians hadn't attacked Greece and needed our help, the war would have taken a different course. We could have anticipated the Russian ...
This conflict began the Balkans campaign of World War II between the Axis powers and the Allies, and eventually turned into the Battle of Greece with British and German involvement. On 10 June 1940, Italy declared war on France and the United Kingdom. By September 1940, the Italians had invaded France, British Somaliland and Egypt. This was ...
The Balkans campaign of World War II began with the Italian invasion of Greece on 28 October 1940. In the early months of 1941, Italy's offensive had stalled and a Greek counter-offensive pushed into Albania. Germany sought to aid Italy by deploying troops to Romania and Bulgaria and attacking Greece from the east.