Kidnapping of Heinrich Kreipe
Kidnap of Major General Kreipe | |
---|---|
Part of SOE operations and the Mediterranean and Middle East theatre | |
![]() The abduction team | |
Type | Kidnapping |
Location | Crete, Greece 35°15′51″N 25°10′55″E / 35.26429°N 25.18202°E |
Planned by | Special Operations Executive |
Commanded by | Patrick Leigh Fermor |
Target | Heinrich Kreipe |
Date | 4 February – 14 May 1944 |
Casualties | Kreipe's driver |
The kidnapping of Heinrich Kreipe was an operation executed jointly by the British
On the night of 26 April, Kreipe's car was ambushed while en route from his residence to his divisional headquarters. Kreipe was tied and forced into the back seat while Leigh Fermor and Moss impersonated him and his driver respectively. Kreipe's notorious impatience at roadblocks enabled the car to pass numerous checkpoints before being abandoned at the hamlet of Heliana. The abductors continued on foot, continuing to evade thousands of Axis soldiers sent to stop them, with the help of guides from the local resistance. On 14 May, the team was picked up by a British motorboat from the Rodakino beach and transported to British-held Egypt.
The success of the operation was put into question several months afterwards. The outcome came to be seen as a symbolic propaganda victory rather than a strategic one. The relatively harmless Kreipe was replaced by Müller who ordered mass reprisals against the civilian population of the island, known as the Holocaust of Kedros. The abduction operation entered popular imagination through the biographical works of several of its participants, most notably Moss's book Ill Met by Moonlight.
Background
Greece entered the
With the conclusion of Operation Marita, Greece was subjected to a
British officers had considered the idea of capturing a senior German officer as early as November 1942, when a SOE agent on Crete,
Operation
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/W._Stanley_Moss%27s_drawing_of_Kreipe_Abduction_Point.jpg/220px-W._Stanley_Moss%27s_drawing_of_Kreipe_Abduction_Point.jpg)
In late 1943, Leigh Fermor and Moss formed a squad with two Cretan resistance members, Georgios Tyrakis and Emmanouil Paterakis, who were to accompany them in their mission. After undergoing training at an SOE camp in
The team moved to a cave system in the mountains above Kastamonitsa village, the hideout of a local resistance group.
Akoumianakis supplied the team with two
On the night of 26/27 April 1944, Leigh Fermor and Moss received a signal that the general had got into his car. Changing into the German uniforms, they followed Saviolakis to Point A. Leigh Fermor and Moss hid in a ditch on the east side of the road. Further to the west Zoidakis, the Papaleonidas brothers, Tyrakis and Komis lay in wait. At 9:30 pm, Tzatzadakis flashed his torch three times signalling that Kreipe's car was approaching unescorted. Leigh Fermor and Moss blocked the road and as the car came closer Moss waved his policeman's stick and shouted "Halt!". When the car stopped, Leigh Fermor requested that identity papers be shown. As Kreipe reached for his pocket, Leigh Fermor jacked the door open, while simultaneously pressing his automatic weapon against Kreipe's chest. The rest of the team sprung up and surrounded the car. A brief struggle ensued, which ended when Paterakis tied Kreipe and Moss struck the driver on the head with his cosh, knocking him unconscious. Moss took up the driver's seat and Leigh Fermor impersonated the general, with Kreipe, Saviolakis, Tyrakis and Paterakis in the backseat, driving off to Heraklion. The rest cleared the spot of signs of struggle and also headed to Heraklion with the driver.[25]
The car passed through 22 checkpoints in Heraklion, coming into the road to Rethymno and stopping outside a steep mountain track leading to Anogeia.[21] Kreipe's penchant for being impatient at roadblocks and acting rudely to the people manning them had made him unpopular among his subordinates, contributing to the success of his kidnapping as the car sped through the check points without stopping.[26] Leigh Fermor drove to the hamlet of Heliana where he abandoned the car. To prevent reprisals against the area's population, he left a note claiming that British special forces had conducted the operation without any local support and scattered incriminating evidence. The team then ascended to Anogeia, where they rested for a few hours. Late in the afternoon of 27 April, a German reconnaissance aircraft dropped leaflets unto the village threatening reprisals if the general was not returned within three days. They soon departed for Mount Ida, where they were met by a band of resistance men led by Michael Xylouris and the SOE officers attached to them. The breakdown of their wireless station meant that all communication had to be conducted by runners, hindering the evacuation. The next day, the team was informed that the Cretans had murdered Kreipe's driver as he was too stunned to walk at the necessary pace for the rebels to avoid capture. The team continued its ascent on Ida, where they stayed with another Cretan resistance group.[27]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/63/Kreipe_Propaganda_Leaflet.jpg/220px-Kreipe_Propaganda_Leaflet.jpg)
As the team continued their journey from Ida to the Amari Valley, Crete's garrison of over 30,000 men had been placed on alert and Axis troops began to assemble around the mountain range in an attempt to block their escape.[28] After crossing the valley they reached the village of Agia Paraskevi. A report transmitted by the BBC had alerted the Germans that Kreipe had yet to leave the island. Rumours of a general uprising and an Allied invasion had prompted Bräuer to strengthen Chania's garrison and continue the security sweeps. Kreipe's aide-de-camp and guards were arrested on suspicion of complicity. The arrival of a runner enabled the abduction team to request that a boat be sent to Saktouria on 2 May.[29] The runner unexpectedly did not return the following day and the party was informed that Saktouria and other hotbeds of resistance had been destroyed by German troops. Moss and Leigh Fermor set off to the Amari valley in search of a wireless station. On 5 May, they reached the village of Pantanassa where they were able to send and receive written messages once again.[30]
A day later dispatch runner George Psychoundakis brought SOE officer Dick Barnes and a wireless set to the village. In the meantime, the rest of the party evaded a German patrol by moving to Patsos, just two hours away from Pantanassa. It then became known that a unit of the Special Boat Service (SBS) led by George Jellicoe was to land at Limni beach on 9 May, to assist with the evacuation.[31] Moss and Leigh Fermor rendezvoused with the rest of the abduction team at the hamlet of Karines and advanced to Fotinou and then Vilandredo. Once a 200-man German column came to Argygoupoli just an hour's distance from Vilandredo, Dennis Ciclitira and a band of ELAS fighters assisted the team in avoiding their pursuers.[28] When the team reached Asi Gonia, a runner told them that a boat was going to pick them up at Rodakino beach on the night of 14 May. The Rodakiniot guerillas accompanied the team on their final trek. The team, Kreipe, two German prisoners of war and a sick Soviet prisoner of war boarded the SBS boats at 10:00 pm, concluding their mission by landing at Mersa Matruh in Egypt.[32]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Peristere_beach_memorial.jpg/220px-Peristere_beach_memorial.jpg)
Aftermath
Major Leigh Fermor was awarded the
On 8 August 1944, a German punitive expedition sent against the village of Anogeia was ambushed by Moss and Michael Xylouris' band. The Damasta sabotage, as this came to be known, resulted in the death of thirty Germans, twelve of whom were murdered after surrendering.[37] Müller, who had returned to his role of commander of Fortress Crete, was determined to penalise the inhabitants of Anogeia for providing shelter to the Kreipe abduction team and their role in the Damasta sabotage. The British historian Alan Ogden saw the order of the day to destroy Anogeia as specific and retrospective, confirming British fears of mass reprisals.[38] The British military historian Antony Beevor and the German historian Gottfried Schramm saw the wave of German reprisals that followed the operation as unconnected to Kreipe's abduction. Beevor and Schramm saw the terror campaign as a means to facilitate the planned German evacuation from much of the island to the stronghold of Chania.[39]
The Holocaust of Kedros was an operation involving 2,000 Axis soldiers who targeted Anogeia and Damasta. A total of 900 houses were burned, 50 civilians were shot and 3,500 became internally displaced. In the following days the operation expanded to other villages, men were executed, houses were looted and then burned or dynamited regardless of their involvement in resistance activities.[40] Local resistance bands could do nothing but watch, being vastly outnumbered.[41]
Biographical works
These events were portrayed in Moss's 1950 semi-autobiographical book Ill Met by Moonlight: The Abduction of General Kreipe.[42] In 1957, the book was turned into the film starring Dirk Bogarde, David Oxley and Marius Goring.[43] Leigh Fermor and Psychoundakis also recounted their experiences in the respective biographical works Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete and The Cretan Runner: His Story of the German Occupation.[31]
Footnotes
- ^ Dear & Foot 1995, pp. 102–106.
- ^ Koliopoulos 1977, p. 74.
- ^ Plowman 2013, p. 63.
- ^ Plowman 2013, pp. 73–75.
- ^ Stefanidis 1993, pp. 64–95.
- ^ Stroud 2015, pp. 52–54.
- ^ Stroud 2015, pp. 54–57.
- ^ a b Koukounas 2013, p. 115.
- ^ Stroud 2015, pp. 100–101.
- ^ Beevor 2005, p. 156.
- ^ Stroud 2015, pp. 69–70.
- ^ Kiriakopoulos 1995, pp. 158–159.
- ^ a b Stroud 2015, pp. 102–103.
- ^ Leigh Fermor 2014, pp. 6–9.
- ^ Moss 2014, p. 30.
- ^ Leigh Fermor 2014, pp. 6–7.
- ^ Stroud 2015, pp. 104, 112.
- ^ Koukounas 2013, pp. 115–116.
- ^ Moss 2014, p. 28.
- ^ Kiriakopoulos 1995, p. 159.
- ^ a b Koukounas 2013, p. 118.
- ^ Stroud 2015, pp. 131–132.
- ^ Kiriakopoulos 1995, p. 160.
- ^ Leigh Fermor 2014, pp. 22–26.
- ^ Beevor 2005, pp. 158–159.
- ^ Leigh Fermor 2014, p. xxviii.
- ^ Leigh Fermor 2014, pp. 38–45.
- ^ a b Koukounas 2013, p. 119.
- ^ Stroud 2015, pp. 185–190, 181.
- ^ Leigh Fermor 2014, pp. 58–65.
- ^ a b Leigh Fermor 2014, pp. 68–74.
- ^ Leigh Fermor 2014, pp. 85–94; Beevor 2005, pp. 160–161.
- ^ "No. 36605". The London Gazette (Supplement). 14 July 1944. p. 3274.
- ^ a b Stroud 2015, p. 225.
- ^ Leigh Fermor 2014, pp. xxv–xxix.
- ^ Beevor 2005, pp. 161–162.
- ^ Koukounas 2013, pp. 152–153.
- ^ Ogden 2012, p. 309.
- ^ Beevor 2005, p. 161.
- ^ Koukounas 2013, p. 154.
- ^ Psychoundakis 1955, pp. 177–178.
- ^ Moss 2014, p. 160.
- ^ "Ill Met by Moonlight (1957)". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 11 September 2017. Retrieved 16 October 2020.
References
- ISBN 978-0-7195-6831-2.
- ISBN 978-0-19-866225-9– via Archive Foundation.
- Kiriakopoulos, G. C. (1995). The Nazi Occupation of Crete, 1941–1945. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-275-95277-0.
- . Retrieved 15 November 2020.
- Koukounas, Demosthenes (2013). Η Ιστορία της Κατοχής [History of the Occupation] (in Greek). Vol. II. Athens: Livani. ISBN 978-9-60-142687-7.
- ISBN 978-1-4447-9658-2.
- ISBN 978-1-78022-623-1.
- Ogden, Alan (2012). Sons of Odysseus, SOE Heroes in Greece. London: Bene Factum Publishing. ISBN 978-1-903071-44-1.
- Plowman, Jeffrey (2013). War in the Balkans: The Battle for Greece and Crete 1940–1941. Barnsley: Pen and Sword Military. ISBN 978-1-78159-248-9.
- OCLC 753260092.
- Stefanidis, Yiannis (1993). "Macedonia in the 1940s". Modern and Contemporary Macedonia. 2 (1). Thessaloniki: Papazissis: 64–103. ISBN 978-9-60-260725-1– via Archive Foundation.
- Stroud, Rick (2015). Kidnap in Crete: The True Story of the Abduction of a Nazi General. London: Bloomsbury Paperbacks. ISBN 978-1-4088-5179-1.
Further reading
- Prescher, Hans (2007). General Kreipe wird entführt: ein Husarenstück auf Kreta 1944 [General Kreipe is kidnapped: a daring exploit in Crete in 1944] (in German). Verlag Dr. Thomas Balistier. ISBN 978-3-937108-11-7.
- Ogden, Alan (2021). "The abduction of General Kreipe in Crete: bloodless or bloody?". Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies. 45 (2): 255–274. S2CID 237424870.