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Part of the larger Greek resistance, it lasted from 20 May 1941, when the German Wehrmacht invaded the island in the Battle of Crete, until the spring of 1945 when they surrendered to the British. For the first time during World War II, attacking German forces faced in Crete a substantial resistance from the local population.
The occupation of Greece by the Axis Powers (Greek: Η Κατοχή, romanized: I Katochi, lit. 'the occupation') began in April 1941 after Nazi Germany invaded the Kingdom of Greece in order to assist its ally, Italy, in their ongoing war that was initiated in October 1940, having encountered major strategical difficulties.
Crete, now called Fortress Crete, was shared between Germany and Italy. The Germans occupied the western three prefectures of the island with their headquarters in Chania, whilst the Italians occupied the easternmost prefecture of Lasithi. [6] It did not take long for the Cretan resistance to spring up. They assisted Allied soldiers stranded on ...
On 10 May 1945, he was arrested in Vienna by Allied forces and sent to Greece, where he was imprisoned. [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ] The government did not fulfil its promise to make major efforts to punish collaborators; this contributed to the escalation of political enmities in Greece, which in turn played a part in the outbreak of the Greek civil war .
The Battle of Crete was the first occasion where Fallschirmjäger (German paratroops) were used en masse, the first mainly airborne invasion in military history, the first time the Allies made significant use of intelligence from decrypted German messages from the Enigma machine, [13] [14] and the first time German troops encountered mass ...
General Kurt Student dubbed Crete "the graveyard of the German paratroopers" and its fall "a disastrous victory". [5] Immediately after the fall of Crete, Gen. Student ordered a wave of reprisals against the local population (Kondomari, Alikianos, Kandanos, etc.). The reprisals were carried out rapidly, omitting formalities and by the same ...
The first German garrison unit was the 5th Mountain Division, which had seen combat during the capture of Crete.In late autumn 1941, the 5th Mountain Division was replaced by the 713th and 164th Infantry Divisions, which in early 1942 were reorganised as Fortress Division Crete (German: Festungs-Division Kreta - FDK).
During the period of the Axis Occupation of Greece in the Second World War, a multitude of Resistance organizations sprang up. A May 1943 report of the Intelligence Bureau of the Greek government in exile mentioned 33 active groups, [1] a number that increased to 79 in a joint British report of 17 October 1943. [2]