The Battle of Floria, Crete, 23 May 1941, the nazi atrocities and the monuments, then (1941) and now (2016)

On the morning of May 23, 1941 the Battle of Crete is raging.The Germans have put a firm foothold on the island, securing the vital airport at Maleme, after the New Zealanders who defended it withdrew, following the chaotic hours after the start of the invasion. This proved to be the turning point of the Battle, as the Germans managed to fly in reinforcements and material that helped them wipe out the Allied forces.

A small motorized German detachment (riding motorcycles with MG 34 machine guns on their sidecars) attempted to move through Floria village on 23 May 1941, aiming to reach and secure Paleochora is on its way to the southern coast of Crete, from where the Allied troops hoped to be evacuated to Egypt, on their long retreat through the mountains of Crete. 

When the nazis enter the village of Floria, they are met with fierce resistance by the local inhabitants. Some of them are armed with obsolete muskets, others with scythes, most of them with sticks and stones. 

Albeit untrained and insufficiently armed, local civilians spontaneously confronted and fought the German force in Floria. 

On the following day, the locals gathered in larger numbers and set an ambush for the advancing German troops of the 5th Gebirgs Division (elements of the 55 motorcycle Battalion and the 95 anti-tank Battalion), at Kandanos' gorge.

Despite their strong resistance on 24 and 25 May and their limited casualties, the locals were vastly outnumbered and were thus eventually forced to retreat in the mountains, letting the Germans advance towards Paleochora.

The repercussions of his largely forgotten incident are soon to be seen: While the Battle of Crete was still being fought, the Germans murdered unarmed civilians and when the Battle was over, by June 1st, they started murdering civilians and burning down villages on a large scale, with one of this mass murders immortalised through the photos of a German war correspondent who shot all the sequence of the mass execution at Kontomari village.

Soon after the Battle was over, the Germans erected a monument in Floria village, which remains as it nearly was in 1941 to this day and veterans and their families visit regularly to pay their respect to their fallen comrades.

Right opposite this German monument, another one can be seen: A monument in honour of the villagers of Floria who were murdered by the Germans during he nazi occupation of Crete, which proved to be as brutal and inhumane, as in almost every spot the Germans et their foot upon in Greece, an endless list of atrocities, mass killings, burnings of villages and other heinous acts, hat went largely unpunished after the war was over.

During the Battle of Crete, the invading German forces had suffered heavy losses. Furthermore, the unprecedented resistance from the local population exasperated their Prussian sense of military order according to which no one but professional warriors should be allowed to fight. 

Even before the end of the Battle, exaggerated stories had started to circulate, attributing the excessively high casualties to torture and mutilation of paratroopers by the Cretans. 

Such stories proved to be false later on, as more careful investigations could identify only a few cases of mutilation all over Crete, most of which had been inflicted after death.

Nevertheless, as a result of the above allegations and seeking to set an example, right after the surrender of Crete on 31 May, temporary commander General Kurt Student issued an order for launching a wave of brutal reprisals against the local population. 

The reprisals were to be carried out rapidly by the same units who had been confronted by the locals, omitting formalities.

On June 3, 1941, a day after murdering unarmed civilians in Kontomari, German troops from the III Battalion of the 1st Air Landing Assault Regiment (most probably led by Oberleutnant Horst Trebes) reached Kandanos, following Student's order for reprisals. 

A German soldier in front of one of the signs erected after the razing. The text reads: "Kandanos was destroyed in retaliation for the bestial ambush murder of a paratrooper platoon and a half-platoon of military engineers by armed men and women."

The Germans killed about 180 residents and slaughtered all livestock; all houses were torched and razed. 

Nearby villages such as Floria and Kakopetro met a similar fate. After its destruction, Kandanos was declared a 'dead zone' and its remaining population was forbidden to return to the village and rebuild it. 

Finally, inscriptions in German and Greek were erected on each entry of the village. One of them read: "Here stood Kandanos, destroyed in retribution for the murder of 25 German soldiers, never to be rebuilt again".

After the surrender of Germany, General Kurt Student was captured by the British. In May 1947, he came before a military tribunal to answer charges of mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war by his forces in Crete. 

Greece's demand to have Student extradited was declined. Student was found guilty of three out of eight charges and sentenced to five years in prison. However, he was given a medical discharge and was released in 1948. Student was never tried for crimes against civilians.

Today, Kandanos has been rebuilt and is the seat of the eponymous municipality. Reproductions of the sombre Wehrmacht signposts commemorating the destruction of the village are displayed on a local war memorial.

PHOTO SEQUENCE OF THE MASS MURDER IN KONTOMARI, CRETE

Following Student's order, the occupants of KonTomari were blamed for the death of a few German soldiers whose bodies had been found near the village. 

On 2 June 1941, four lorries full of German paratroopers from the III Battalion of Luftlande-Sturm-Regiment 1 under the command of Oberleutnant Horst Trebes surrounded Kondomari. 

Trebes, a former member of the Hitler Youth, was the highest-ranking officer of the Battalion to have survived the Battle unwounded. 

Men, women and children were forced to gather in the village square. Then, a number of hostages was selected among the men while women and children were released. The hostages were led to the surrounding olive groves and later fired upon.

The exact number of the victims is unclear. According to German records, a total of 23 men were killed but other sources raise the toll to about 60. 

The whole operation was captured on film by Franz-Peter Weixler, then serving as a war propaganda correspondent (kriegsberichter) for the Wehrmacht.

SOURCES: HERE AND HERE