German Military Cemetary at Maleme & Remarkable Memorial Place

 Second World War 1939-1945, war cemetery

World War II memorial place and cemetery at Maleme.

A memorial place where rest all the paratroopers who served in german army and lost their lives during the Battle of Crete (Operation Mercury) of World War II.

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War on Crete & post-war events in Maleme
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For deeper understanding of the WW2 and post-war Maleme events, please do read a Robert Fulghum story "Maleme", where one shall find all associated feelings, that had to take place over the proud people of Crete to find a way to raise such a great memorial place and that have made the pain from WWII events turn out in a memento of peacefull co-existence.

Do read the Bob Fulghum's story, worth your time. Then visit Maleme memorial place to feel yourself the told story and touch the peace of mind there.

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A few historical facts:
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The (Operation Mercury) was headed by Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte on the Nazi side. Allied forces were successfull only on blocking the Nazi ships from reaching Crete and opening the main huge invasion on the north coast-lines.

Von der Heydte had a quite hard time to make re-join and lead paratroopers initially sparsely located alongside the north-west coast.

A WW2 story is told about his final success to take-over the that time capital city of Crete, Chania, and says, that after a week of hard fights from both sides, von der Heydte and his men lost under harsh conditions imposed by brave greek defenders many parts of their weaponry, ammunition, uniforms.

After more than a week the invaders took over of the territory and conquerred the city of Chania. Von der Heydte was finally sitting at a small table in a tavern there and asked to seek and bring in the Lord Mayor of the city to ask for unconditional capitulation.

The Lord Mayor of the Chania, walked up with a translator to the tavern and once facing at the table to baron von der Heytde, he had, in response to Heydte's request to capitulate and hand-over the city to his hands, surprised the invader at the very Crete-style - saying that he does not see any officer to hand-over city to and simply rejected to discuss about any capitulation as he does not believe von der Heydte to be any kind of officer at all because he has no such uniform and cannot prove himself by any available means to be an officer...

Indeed a Kriti-style (Crete-style)