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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.
British troops landed on Crete with the consent of the Greek Government from 3 November 1940, in order to make the 5th Greek Division of Crete available for the Albanian front. The invasion of mainland Greece by the Axis powers began on 6 April 1941 and was complete within a few weeks despite the intervention of the armies of the Commonwealth ...
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).
The museum's aim is to collect, preserve and exhibit relics from the period 1941–1945 in an appropriate manner, as well as to document and disseminate information on the people's struggle during the Battle of Crete and the subsequent German-Italian occupation.
The Greek capital Athens fell on 27 April, and by 1 June, after the capture of Crete, all of Greece was under Axis occupation. After the invasion, King George II fled, first to Crete and then to Cairo. A Greek right-wing government ruled from Athens as a puppet of the occupying forces. [14]
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 ...
The German War Graves Commission maintains two German cemeteries on Greek territory, one at Maleme on Crete containing 4,468 dead (mainly from the Battle of Crete), and another at Dionyssos-Rapendoza, containing about 10,000 dead transferred there from all over Greece except Crete. The aforementioned Greek government report (p. 126) claims that ...
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 .