Operation Mercury (7 page)

While Student was incapacitated his temporary replacement, General Putzier, was involved in the planning of Operation Seelöwe (Sealion) the projected invasion of Britain but the paratroop regiments were not destined for further action until Marita and an attempt to prevent the retreating Allies from gaining the ports on the Peloponnese.

Colonel Albert Sturm's 2 Parachute Regiment was tasked, on 26 April, to seize the bridge over the Corinth Canal. In the event this came too late to hamstring Wilson's army as hoped but the bridge was wired for demolition. A dawn descent by three DFS 230 gliders landed assault engineers who succeeded in seizing the bridge and set about defusing the explosives. The 1st and 2nd Battalions dropped north and south to hold off the defenders.

To the north the relatively few British were quickly overrun, though resistance to the south proved more formidable. In the heat of the fight a Bofors, firing on the engineers swarming over the bridge, set off an explosion which caused the main span to collapse dramatically into the Canal below. In one sense the operation was successful but German casualties at around 240, sixty-three of whom had been killed, had been high. Nonetheless Operation Hannibal as this was named, captured twenty-one officers and 900 other ranks of the British and Dominion forces and 1,450 Greeks.

Student, substantively recovered from his wounds, was furious – the operation had revealed the existence of paratroopers in Greece, something he had been at great pains to conceal. Surprise, the vital element, was therefore sacrificed and the General had now set his sights on Crete.

Here was the perfect opportunity for a definitive campaign of vertical envelopment, one which would guarantee Student's place in the Pantheon of strategic genius, silence his critics with a single blow and cement his relationships with both Goering and Hitler. It was a dazzling prospect.

For Student the casual ease with which von List's panzers had brushed aside the Greeks and their British allies was a source of considerable frustration. Early in the planning stage for Marita, Crete had been identified as a potential target for airborne assault. As such, it was the perfect opportunity for the
Fallschirmjäger
to consolidate their reputation and silence any critics for good. For Student it was the gift he had been seeking, the chance to overcome a conventional defence in a campaign of vertical envelopment.

Unlike some of his more flamboyant colleagues Student was not hungry for the adulation of the masses through the popular press; he lacked the genius for self publicity that characterised generals such as Guderian or Rommel. His was a professional conceit, his own particular genius rebuked by the petty mutterings and scepticism of lesser intellects. He now sought to create his masterpiece and Crete was to be his canvas.

The call, however, did not come and Student, increasingly frustrated, remained on the sidelines while the battle for Greece unfolded. It is uncertain if he was, at this point, privy to the plans for Barbarossa. If so, then this would only serve to exacerbate his concern, for the airborne forces had not been allotted any specific role. If what promised to be the climactic campaign of the war offered nothing, then time was indeed short.

On 20 April Student took the bull by the horns and, trading heavily on his stock with Goering, flew to Semmering in Austria, the operational HQ for Marita. His request for an audience was granted and his proposal listened to. General Jeschonnek, Luftwaffe Chief of Staff, was present and it was he who had raised the possibility of an airborne assault on Crete and possibly Malta in February. Goering had also been cautioned by General Lohr of
Luftflotte 4
that to leave the British in possession of Crete would be to expose Axis operations in the Eastern Mediterranean to continuing interference at a time when this flank need to be nailed secure.

The
Reichsmarschall
listened attentively and managed to secure an interview with Hitler at short notice, normally an impossibility. Student and Jeschonnek therefore attended the Führer aboard his headquarters train,
Amerika
. Before they saw the supreme commander they had to convince Jodl and Keitel of OKW; conventional generals who dismissed the scheme as fanciful. They preferred Malta as a target for Student's paratroopers.

Hitler, however, was prepared to listen. Bombers from Crete could strike at the Romanian oilfields, more vital than ever once Russian supplies were terminated. The deciding factor was undoubtedly the notion that the operation against Crete could form part of an overall deception, masking the real reason for German build up in the Balkans. The attack could not only secure the southern flank but also assist in maintaining the element of surprise upon which the success of Barbarossa was dependent. Student's wider vision for a continuing series of airborne attacks on Cyprus and ultimately Suez, was of little interest to Hitler but the potential to facilitate Barbarossa won the day for the Luftwaffe.

A few days later, on 25 April, Hitler confirmed his intentions to proceed against Crete; Directive Number 28 – Operation Merkur (Mercury) was born. This was to be primarily a Luftwaffe operation with additional army units thrown in; some armour would be transported by sea, the convoys guarded by Italian warships. It must not, however, in any way, interfere with the concentration of resources being undertaken for the invasion of Russia. For Student, the campaign was to be a race against time as men and matériel were progressively sucked into the web of Barbarossa. He would be in no doubt that the Wehrmacht would be resentful and uncooperative.

A lesser commander might well have been daunted but Student, the triumph of Hitler's directive in his pocket, was determined to prove equal to the task. The logistical difficulties were formidable in the extreme. Men and their equipment had to be moved across the difficult terrain of the Balkans without interfering with the contrary flow intended for Barbarossa. The air and flak units he would need had to be ready for re-deployment in the east by the end of the following month. Halder, in conference at OKW on 12 May complained openly of the inconvenience caused by Mercury.

For Student, the meticulous planner, this meant a foray into the uncertain world of make do and mend. From the outset the campaign was a race against time. It was not the strength of the British opposition which concerned him but the demands of the looming campaign in Russia. He had staked everything on the success of Mercury – his own reputation, his special relationship with Goering, even the future of German airborne forces. In the modern vernacular – failure was not an option.

Suddenly the men of the
Flieger
division, left kicking their heels in barracks since the heady days of 1940, were on the move. They did not yet know their destination but the heady lure of action was at last in the air, dispelling the tedium and impotence of garrison life. Student's competent quartermaster, General Seibt, had worked out an elaborate schedule to ferry the men to assembly points in Romania from where they'd pile into trucks that would carry them to their forward bases in Greece. The gliders required for the operation were crated and sent by train to Skopje where they were assembled, rigged and then towed behind transports to the airfields.

Security was paramount and Student went to considerable lengths to disguise the focus of the movements. His men were not permitted to advertise their presence in any way and had to disguise their appearance. The gliders and other potential giveaways were artfully concealed. All these precautions were, of course, rendered void by the operation against Corinth which blazoned the presence of airborne troops in the Greek theatre in the most dramatic manner. Student raged but there was little he could do to remedy the breach.

Worse was to follow. He had naturally counted on being allotted 22nd Air Landing Division, the obvious choice given their role in the earlier operations. OKW proved obstinate, however, citing transport difficulties as the reason why this formation should remain in Romania where it was engaged in the undemanding role of guarding the oilfields. As an alternative he was offered the 5th
Gebirge
(Mountain) Division, part of List's 12th Army and commanded by General Julius Ringel.

An Austrian by birth Ringel, as well as being a confirmed Nazi, was a soldier of the old school who had little respect for Student's more revolutionary ideas. His own were more pragmatic, his celebrated dictum ‘sweat saves blood' summed up his methodical and cautious approach.
¹¹
Liked and respected by his elite alpine troops, he was not the partner Student would have wished for. Lohr, commanding
Luftflotte 4
, appeared to favour his fellow Austrian and it was Lohr whom Goering had appointed as overall commander of Mercury.

As elements of his forces were already being moved to conform with the demands of Barbarossa, Goering may have felt that Lohr would ensure the attack on Crete was undertaken within the tight time limits the greater offensive permitted. General Korten, Lohr's chief of staff, was an intimate of the
Reichsmarschall
but no ally of Student, tending to the prevailing view that Crete was, at best, a distraction.

Even more trying,
Fliegerkorps VII
was commanded by an officer of equal rank to Student, Wolfram von Richthofen, a relative of the legendary Red Baron. A highly respected officer, who had pioneered and practised the aerial tactics of blitzkrieg, he was not easy to work with and Student had no direct authority over him.
¹²

There were immediate differences in the manner of planning the assault. Student favoured a classic vertical envelopment, landing troops on top of each key objective which had been identified as the three air strips on the western section of the north coast – at Heraklion, Rethymnon and Maleme, together with Chania and the naval anchorage at Souda Bay. By attacking all at once Student would force the defenders to disperse their forces to a degree which would frustrate any determined counter-attack.

Lohr was sceptical; he favoured a more conventional approach, concentrating the drop around Maleme, the most westerly of the air strips which could be strongly held as a base for ferrying in reinforcements. Not only was Maleme the closest to German air bases in Greece, by concentrating the assault here, the air cover provided by von Richthofen's planes could be maximised.

This was the last thing Student wanted, a single blow that would enable the enemy to mass his reserves unimpeded by ground forces and deliver a strong counter punch, which would ensure the battle degenerated into an infantry slogging match. Adopting such an approach was to throw away the inestimable advantages of vertical envelopment. Richthofen, however, was adamant that his transport planes were insufficient to manage four drops in a single armada and that his fighters and bombers could not provide adequate air cover.

In the event the dispute was referred back to Goering and Jeschonnek returned to Athens with a compromise which, though it appeared sound on paper, really satisfied neither side of the argument. It was proposed that Student's vision be accomplished in two separate lifts; the western end, Maleme and Chania, would be attacked in the morning while the targets to the east, Rethymnon and Heraklion, would be left till the afternoon.

The disadvantages of the compromise were that the turnaround of aircraft would require perfect timing and the afternoon assaults would be delivered against adversaries already alerted. Surprise in the east was therefore lost and the scheme neither achieved Student's single irresistible blow nor Lohr's concentration. Student, remembering Holland, was aware how horribly vulnerable parachutists were when, immediately on dropping, they were confronted by an alert and determined foe.

The initial airborne assaults were to be delivered by the paratroops with Ringel's mountain division airlifted to whichever location appeared the most favourable. Student left the necessary training of the infantry to his subordinate Colonel Ramcke.
¹³
Despite being a highly competent officer, Ramcke's presence did nothing to allay Ringel's mounting concerns. He later wrote that when he first saw the orders he decided the mission verged on the suicidal.

It had originally been decided that, once the airborne bridgehead was established, some armour and heavy guns could be transported by sea. Student did not favour this, certainly not in the early stages, he preferred to wait until the harbours were secure and the British minefields dealt with. Hitler, however, was adamant. He remained convinced of the need for early reinforcement by sea, an insurance against initial failure or delays from the air.

Putting a suitable flotilla together, however, was no mean accomplishment. The German Navy had no effective presence and warships would have to be provided by the Italians, themselves badly mauled in the sea fight off Cape Matapan on 28 March.
¹⁴
Transports would have to be cobbled together from requisitioned caiques, small steamers, whatever could be found, enough for two flotillas, each of which would be responsible for shipping a battalion of alpine soldiers, together with some heavy guns and equipment. Parachutists would man light flak guns which, when later unloaded, could be incorporated into perimeter defences.