Were those people partisans?
They don't look like partisans to me, but one man from the village said he had killed a German paratrooper. He knew he would be shot for that, but either he had done it and admitted it to try and avert a massacre, or he didn't but was hoping that if he said he had they would shoot him and leave the others alone. Either way, he was a hero. This is all detailed in the account of the photographer Karl Peter Weixler which I posted a link to. I suspect this is the man who said he had killed a paratrooper:
Otherwise, why would there be three photos of him? You can see the whole series of photos Weixler took here: ht tp://www.kreta-wiki.de/wiki/Kondomari
Notice that jacket that was said to have been found in one of the houses, for which the house was burned down? The hole seems to be in the side not the back of the jacket.
Weixler was indeed a hero: he tried to reason with the Oblt. Horst Trebes and with Haupt. Walter Gericke, commander of IV Fallschirmjager Sturm Regiment and Maj. Eduard Stenzler, commander of II Fallschirmjager Sturm Regiment. Weixler reportedly went so far as to help some of the villagers escape when Trebes "back was turned".
As for Trebes, it seems providence punished him creatively: ht tp://www.fallschirmjager.net/men/Trebes/trebes.html
Stenzler died of his wounds in October 1941. Gericke retired a General of the Bundeswehr.
After the war Brauer along with Generalleutnant der Infanterie, "The Butcher of Crete", Friedrich Müller was charged with war crimes by a Greek military court. He stood trial in Athens for alleged atrocties on Crete. He was accused of the deaths of 3,000 Cretans, massacres, systematic terrorism, deportation, pillage, wanton destruction, torture and ill treatment Brauer was convicted and sentenced to death on 09-12-1946. He was executed by gunfire at 5 o'clock on 20-05-1947, the anniversary of the German invasion of Crete.
ht tp://ww2gravestone.com/general/br%C3%A4uer-bruno-oswald
Anyone who knows the battle of Waterloo should know the name Blucher. Both cruisers named "Blucher" were sunk with great loss of life, one at Jutland in 1916 and one near Oslo in 1940. I see that three of the four von Blucher brothers were killed the same day on Crete in 1941. The one remaining brother was released from the military, but died in a hunting accident in 1944.
Fighting the wrong wars perhaps.
That was not my point. My point was that there were some good people (Koch, Schmeling and others) and not everyone was a nazi. You can keep painting them all with the same brush if you like, its just shortsighted.
Regardless of whether they were naughty or nice, they were one of the hardest and most elite units of WW2. The Canadians sadly never get any recognition for winning the battle of Ortona angainst the FJ's since everyone always forgets that there was an Italian campaign (its always about Normandy). By Comparison it took The Americans, the British, the Indians and finally the Polish fighting three separate battles to finally get them out of the town of Cassino and the monastery.
I’m not out to “paint” anyone, but it seems to be necessary to add some moral and historical context now and then, before we all get too hepped-up on how cool, keen and generally bad-ass it all seems from this distance.
“...hardest and most elite units...”, and so what? Does that make them admirable somehow? I’m sure Ghengis Khan’s mongols were a lot tougher than any fallschirmjager; are we supposed to admire them for it?
Sorry, but now that I’ve got a few decades under my belt, I’ve come to understand what makes people worthy of respect and admiration. A brave man once said that physical courage is the commonest of all currencies, and moral courage is the rarest. Find someone with both and you really do have a hero. Karl Peter Weixler had moral courage: he was able to judge independently and objectively what was right and what was not and then he had the courage to act on that knowledge, knowing that almost no one in his peer group would applaud his actions, and that he would endanger his own career and perhaps life by doing so. That is heroism of the best kind. A far harder thing to do for most people than some battlefield heroics.
Yes, there must have been lots of fine fellows in the fallschirmjagers and like millions of others, their lives were wasted for less than nothing. Let’s try to remember that. That said, their willingness to go along, play soldier and attack their neighbors caused many millions more to die, who were completely blameless. Who should we feel sorry for?
And while we’re in the Mediterranean, here’s an “anti-Nazi” “devout Catholic” General of Mountain Troops Lanz, presiding over the murder of 5000 Italian PoWs in Greece and then lying about it all through his trial:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Lanz
Got 12 years for war crimes, but was let out after three in 1951, like dozens of others.
Arnhem: we covered that last time: betrayed by Christian Lindemann, aka “King Kong”, so-called Dutch resistance leader. Grelmar, you can get your Dad a copy of Oreste Pinto’s book:
Vriend of Vijand: De ontmaskering van King Kong en vele andere spionnen in WO II and he can give Montgomery a rest for a while. Monty was an excellent trainer and "energizer" who got rid of most of the dead wood in the 8th Army officer corps. His problem was mostly the la-de-da, “business as usual old chap” officers he had to work with. He sent a lot of them home from North Africa who probably should have been reduced to the ranks. Churchill said more than once that they needed to shoot a few generals to encourage the others. He was probably right.
As for Patton, just have a look at the map showing who was facing the most German armour in 1944. It's easy to blast along through the French countryside when there's not much enemy around. That said, he definitely was an inspiring commander and understood how to make things MOVE.
