Crete - More than an island to defend

This weekend the battle for Crete is commemorated. GREG ANSLEY examines why it looms large in our consciousness.

Early on the morning of May 20, 1941, Lieutenant-General (later Lord) Freyberg watched in awe as the sky above Crete filled with German transport aircraft.

"First we watched them circle counter-clockwise over Maleme aerodrome and then, when they were only a few hundred feet above the ground, as if by magic, white specks mixed with other colours suddenly appeared beneath them, as clouds of parachutists floated slowly to earth," he wrote of the day.

Eight days later, after ferocious fighting, the remnants of Freyberg's force of New Zealanders, Australians and Britons began the evacuation of Crete, leaving behind more than 1700 dead and 11,379 captured, and with 2225 wounded.

Criticism of Freyberg's tactical decisions - including his failure to counter-attack in time to save Maleme airfield - has tended to obscure broader reasons for the loss of Crete.

And recent British attacks on Freyberg before tomorrow's 60th anniversary of the battle, also overlook the assessment of a number of prominent military historians that, even had the Nazi paratroopers been repelled, Crete would have fallen by attrition.

The Royal Navy could not have continued to supply Freyberg's forces on the island, let alone the tens of thousands of Cretans.

Tomorrow, Prime Minister Helen Clark, veterans of Crete and a military honour party will gather at Maleme to remember the battle, fought at a time when the British Empire stood alone against Hitler's Germany.

Its only ally, Greece, had been defeated, British forces were battling a coup by Nazi sympathisers in Iraq, the war in North Africa hung in the balance, and the Battle of the Atlantic threatened to starve Britain.

Crete was an extension of Sir Winston Churchill's vain hopes for a Balkan coalition of Greece, Yugoslavia and Turkey against Hitler.

But only Greece was determined to resist. Yugoslavia vacillated and made a hopeless last stand only after a coup; Turkey's military weakness and fears of Soviet aggression made neutrality its only option.

Even Greece argued that the very limited forces the Empire could provide would do little to block the huge army Germany could muster - but could provoke Hitler into an attack he may otherwise avoid.

When invasion became inevitable, Greece agreed to British help.

Churchill had initially promoted Greece as the fulcrum of his never-realised Balkan front - but as the German invasion neared, political and moral imperatives became paramount.

He said that the real foundation for the expedition was the "overwhelming moral and political repercussions of abandoning Greece," especially in the United States, which Britain was urgently trying to entice into the war.

At one stage Churchill expressed concern that he could offer no justification for the commitment of Anzac troops other than noblesse oblige.

Wellington and Canberra agreed to their armies moving to Greece on the condition they would be equipped and supported, and that there was acceptable chance of success.

The two Governments were told that Freyberg and the Australian commander, General Sir Thomas Blamey, had agreed to the expedition.

But both later reported they felt they were ordered rather than consulted, and British General Archibald Wavell had been dubious about the chances of success.

Freyberg, who told Wellington he had "never considered the operation a feasible one," was reprimanded for not having made his views known sooner.

But the Government agreed that to leave Greece to the Nazis would "destroy the moral basis of our cause and invite results greater in their potential damage to us than any failure of the [expedition]."

When Greece fell, Crete's doom was sealed.

Despite months of supposed planning and preparation, and the infallible intelligence gained by intercepts of the German's Enigma code machine, virtually nothing had been done to prepare the island's defences or supplies, other than assembling thousands of non-combatant, mostly unarmed and disorganised evacuees from Greece.

The balance between the strategic importance of the island and the cost of holding it remains disputed. The British could have used its airfields to bomb Romanian oilfields that Hitler wanted for his invasion of Russia. For Germany, the island gave potential to attack ships supplying besieged Tobruk in North Africa, and to extend its Mediterranean operations.

Critics of Churchill's strategy say the island could - even should - have been abandoned.

Churchill himself cabled the Royal Navy's Mediterranean commander, Admiral Andrew Cunningham, that the "constantly improving attitude of [the] United States and their naval co-operation justifies risks involved."

Freyberg arrived in Crete as the sixth commander of the island, with no knowledge of the land, a mass of non-combatants, a tough but ill-equipped force evacuated from Greece and determined Cretan soldiers "totally inadequate to meet attack envisaged."

He lacked air cover and was critically short of artillery and armour.

Freyberg did have Enigma, the British code-cracker which accurately warned him well in advance of German plans and strengths.

This told him that General Kurt Student's 11th Air Corps would, after heavy bombing, attack in three waves - at Maleme and nearby Canea, defended by New Zealanders, at Rethimnon and at Heraklion. Reinforcements would follow by sea.

But Enigma was a double-edged sword. Freyberg knew that his forces were spread too thinly to hold Maleme airfield, the key to the battle.

But because Enigma was vital to the war effort, especially in the North Atlantic, he was ordered not to make any changes that could alert the Germans to the fact that London had cracked their communications.

The defence had faults, especially the much-criticised failure to counter-attack at Maleme at a critical point.

A Nazi colonel told one Australian prisoner that "our generals did everything to assist him [and] cannot understand why we ever gave ground and did not attack."

For all that, entire companies of Germany's elite Fallschimjager paratroop force were mown down.

Although the Royal Navy also suffered huge losses, more than 3900 Germans were killed and 2594 wounded - a casualty rate of one in four It was a cruel campaign for both sides.