A Pyrrhic Parachute Victory in Crete

By Richard Rule In May 1941, General Kurt Student’s elite paratrooper forces descended like an anvil on the British garrison defending Crete. Instead of winning a quick and decisive victory, the airborne troops found themselves locked in brutal battle against some of the toughest veterans in the British Army. Here, on the sun-parched Mediterranean island of Crete, the Germans appeared to be on the brink of their first military defeat of the war. As part of Germany’s peripheral strategy aga

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