May 20, 1941. The Germans Invade Crete From The Air

Maj. Gen. Freyberg during the invasion of Crete.  Freyberg was an eclectic New Zealander who was a dentist by training and reputedly had been serving as a Captain in Pancho Villa's forces in 1914 when the Great War broke out, after which he resigned as that position and traveled to England to join the British forces, earning traveling money on the way by winning a swimming match in Los Angeles and a boxing match in New York.  He won the Victoria Cross during World War One and even lead a late war cavalry charge.  A celebrated figure in New Zealand, he became its first New Zealand born Governor General after the war, but frankly his World War Two generalship was spotty and he is one of the collection of British Empire generals that have lead historians of other nations to conclude that the British, in World War Two, had to get by with lessers in senior command as that's all they had left.

And they did it by air.

Today in World War II History—May 20, 1941

Parachute assault on Crete

It was a bold move, and a costly one, but perhaps an example of necessity being the mother of invention, as Germany lacked a significant marine troop landing capacity and Hitler had forbade the use of troops that might delay the invasion of the Soviet Union.  So, the use of the Luftwaffe's paratroopers was made.

The operation was, statistically, an oversized German success with the Allies taking far more causalities in every sense than the Germans and the Germans taking Crete.  The battle was, moreover, a British failure as much as it was a German success as the British had left airfields undefended.  They had additionally withdrawn the RAF in advance in anticipation of the German assault.  The Germans made use of the airfield for troop insertion and landed not only airborne troops, but mountain troops as well.  The Italians ultimately landed some troops from the sea.  It's been widely pondered, and concluded, that the British could have won the battle if they'd fought it more wisely, a conclusion that the British military recognized itself at the time.  All  in all, in terms of a realistic assessment, it was a stunning German airborne success and a stunning British military failure.

Be that as it may, British resistance was so marked that the Germans concluded that future largescale airborne operations were impossible. They were not prepared for the paratrooper casualties they did take and, moreover, they were not prepared for the rate of loss of air crews.  Their post battle conclusions are baffling in retrospect, and they must have simply been expecting the operation to be a cakewalk, perhaps over impressed with all of their prior military success.

Ironically, the Allies concluded, correctly, the very opposite from the same battle.  The invasion marked the end of the really largescale use of German airborne.  It also marked the real emphasis in the Allies on airborne troops for the same purpose.  In a very real sense, the massive Allied airborne operations of 1944 owe their origin to this battle.

Also of note, Cretan civilian participation in the battle was marked, with many civilians participating in combat on their own initiative with whatever they had at hand.  This shocked the Germans and resulted in reprisals.

Civil Defense Logo.

With German paratroopers descending on Crete, perhaps it was a good day for the Executive Order being issued that created the Office of Civilian Defense.  That office was created on this day in 1941.

On this day, the interior of Ebbets Field was photographed.

October 6, 1920. East Coast Scenes

Clayton, New Jersey Fire Department.  October 6, 1920.

Game two of the World Series went to Brooklyn, 3 to 0.

Ebbets Field, October 6, 1920.

Outside Ebbets Field, October 6, 1920.

Movies In History: Brooklyn

This is a film I'd hoped to catch in the movie theater but didn't.  I wish I had.

Poignant might be the best description for the film.

This movie surrounds the story of Eilis (Saoirse Ronan, herself born in Brooklyn to Irish parents but raised in Ireland), a young Irish woman who immigrates to the Brooklyn, New York in the 1950s.  The movie follows her experience including living in an Irish boarding house, meeting an Italian American suitor, and a return trip to Ireland.

In some ways this is an usual modern example of a "small story" movie, very well done, of a type we rarely see anymore.  The 1950s Marty comes very much to mind.

It might seem odd to see a film like this on this blog, but this movie has a close attention to detail that makes it not only charming but well worth watching.  Eilis finds herself in an alien world that's only barely alien to us.  It's an urban tale about immigrants and children of immigrants that a huge number of Americans will personally recognize.  It also shows a world only barely removed from our own but in some ways quite a bit more real.  Eilis immigrates out of a type of poverty but not of the street kind we think of.  Ireland remains a strong call to her, so much so that she wonders in one scene why a group of older Irish poor men have not returned to Ireland.  The very close supportive connection with the Catholic Church for Irish and Italian communities is quite accurate.  The torment over a personal decision while back in Ireland might seem, for that reason, an accuracy departure but for those who know the legalities of what's depicted accurately it isn't.  The need to live in a boarding house for her, and in an apartment with his family for the Italian American man she meets is completely accurate for the era. 

This film is well worth viewing and portrays an era, or rather the end of an era, in the United States that we still sense but don't really dwell on too closely quite well.