"After twelve days of what has undoubtedly been the fiercest fighting in this war, it was decided to withdraw our forces from Crete. . . . Some 15,000 [of our] troops have been withdrawn to Egypt but it must be admitted that our losses have been severe." With this bleak announcement the British War Office signalized the end of not only the fiercest but also some of the most crucial fighting in World War II—the airborne invasion of Crete. After the fall of this British outpost, the Mediterranean no longer was a British lake. The concept of the Mediterranean as the Empire's commercial life line has been dead since Italy's entrance into the war forced merchant ships to sail around the Cape of Good Hope. Now, even as a military seaway, choked by two such bottlenecks as the 100-mile strait between Sicily and Tunisia and the 250-mile stretch between Crete and Libya, it was of little use.
Italy could now get oil and cereals from Russia through the Aegean. The Axis would now be able to supply and support ventures in Africa and the Middle East much more easily.
It was still important for the British to keep trying in the Middle East. Only thus could the British hope to achieve the end of all British strategy: delay and more delay, until such day as parity and then superiority might possibly be won over the Axis. Therefore, as soon as Crete had fallen, the British began to murmur about taking Syria.
Destruction. Crete was worse than Greece. It was worse strategically, for the Germans were now within striking distance of British main bases, and British naval power was no longer freely master of the eastern Mediterranean. It was worse psychologically, for Crete was the first island stronghold which the Germans had successfully invaded. It was, above all, worse physically.
The three main towns of Crete were flattened, just as the center of Rotterdam was last May. Greek Premier Emmanuel Tsouderos said: "The principal towns—Canea, Candia and Rethymno—were literally plowed up by bombing, which was carried out with mathematical precision laterally and diagonally, so that eventually there was not one stone left standing."
Here, as in Greece, but worse than in Greece, the factor of defeat was the Luftwaffe. All day long dive-bombers and strafers kept the British immobilized under cover. Anything which moved—man, woman, child, tank, gun, sheep, cow—was strafed until it stopped moving. The only time the British could attack was by night, and even then the Luftwaffe dropped flares and death. "I was in Greece," said one dust-caked, ragged soldier, "but what their aircraft did to us there was absolutely nothing compared to the concentrated attack by hundreds of planes at once which was made in Crete." The British came out of Crete still convinced, as they had been after Greece, that they were individually as good fighters as the Germans; but they were more amazed than ever at German military efficiency. They were particularly amazed at how precisely the German aerial and ground combat teams cooperated.