The Germans Don't Take Crete

Crete would do better than Malta under heavy bombing because it is closer to Egypt and easier to resupply, the Axis occupation of Crete being a serious problem for Malta, and a fair bit bigger and therefore more able to absorb damage.
 
In which we didn't serve?

The Royal Navy would have lost a lot less ships and had fewer ships out of action for a long period. The cruiser York would probably have been lost but the Gloucester and Fiji would probably have survived and the aircraft carrier Formidable and battleship Warspite would have been in commission for the rest of 1941. It would have been possible to send an aircraft carrier to the far east in Novmember 1941 after the Indomitable ran aground and maybe a few more cruisers although I suspect it would have prolongued the agony rather than stopped the Japanese advance. The naval losses at Crete were largely due to covering the evacuation.

The German army would have had its first major setback and it may have delayed the attack on Soviet Russia or possibly halted the North Africa campaign to give priority to Russia. Alexandria would have been more secure and on a lesser scale Mountbatten may not have become famous as if the Kelly hadn't have been sunk the film In which we serve may not have been made
 
I suspect that one of the secondary impacts of such a victory for the British and Commonwealth forces will be that it would also be the first time that the germans had suffered a major defeat - previously they had been successful in every major operation and smashing all opponents, but now...

Good confidence builder even though it would not be 'real' ground forces that had been defeated.

Crete does not make a good naval base as thier are no significant ports on the southern coast and the northern lones are neither large nor overly safe from air attack from Greece.
 
A legitimate government based in Greek territory may lessen the influence of the Communists in the resistance movements. Commando raids were often hamstrung by lack of cooperation from the Andartes, with more Greek Commando units, it's possible that they could do greater damage to the axis occupiers.

It may even make attempts to capture the Dodecanese feasible.

Having an extra pool of manpower to draw from is always a big plus.

I can see Africa winding up a lot quicker what with the supply situation, maybe sending convoys through the Suez to Singapore as well as the Formidable. This could turn Singapore into a much tougher nut to crack, it probably will fall but this buys time for better preparations in Burma.
 
As Allied air power in Crete builds up, it looks to me as though the Axis position in Rhodes would become untenable.

This is true.
Rhodes was garissoned by the Germans only after Crete was secured, before that only Italian troops were present. The heavy German equipment (inlcuding tanks) would have to come in by ship, which bearing in mind the RN&RAF presence in the area with an Allied secured Crete becomes highly unlikely. Therefore we may see some kind of Allied operation in early/mid 1942 targetted at taking the Dodecanese from the Germans. Resources for such an operation were there in OTL, the Allies tried the Dieppe raid (which was a disaster) expending them.

I would also expect an Allied raid targetted at the Cyclades island group north of Crete. These islands would have been a perfect spot for the Germans to base air search radars in order to detect incoming Allied bomber raids, thus it is probable that the Allies would like to capture them or at least eliminate German presence there.
 
At the same time, the Luftwafee may be ordered to smash Crete like Malta, another drain to Luftwaffe resources although it's questionable whather the island would survive.
Crete is more than 20 times bigger than Malta in size. What makes you think it the Allies would have been easier to smash in Crete than in Malta?
 
Crete is more than 20 times bigger than Malta in size. What makes you think it the Allies would have been easier to smash in Crete than in Malta?

I didn't say it would, I'm just saying that Hitler might go into one of his famous tantrums and order the island levelled, at the outset the RAF only had 6 planes there. You're probably right though.
 
There would be some downsides to the Allies initially:
1) Supplying Crete would require some additional shipping
2) The forces evacuated from there would, obviously, not be available elsewhere.

Upsides would probably outweigh those, and I think that whoever mentioned morale nailed a big one. A big, very public win over actual Germans (as opposed to the Italians) would be a major boost to British morale. It might also have some impact on the Germans. An unbroken string of German victories seemed to confirm the Nazi racial theories. A very public defeat might slow that train down. I'm not sure what, if any, impact that would have.

Some very speculative possible impacts (not likely but worth considering). Would a very public German defeat cause the Japanese to think a little harder about attacking Britain in the Far East? Would the Soviets be a little less abject in their unsuccessful attempts to appease Hitler? Again, I don't think either of those are the most likely outcomes, but maybe worth considering.

Another issue: the attitude of Turkey. This would be a German defeat right at their front door. If it leads eventually to the fall of Rhodes and other Italian islands near Turkey, which I think it would once the Allies built up air power on Crete, then how does that affect the Turkish attitudes toward the war? I doubt if they would join the war before late 1944 in any case, but it might be possible for the Allies to exert more pressure on them to cut off German supplies of certain natural resources.
 
Turkey - the allies had a trade agreement with Turkey to buy all of its tungsten exports which ran out in mid '41 IIRC, they then supplied it to the Germans, continuing to do so until it was impossible not to. It might help keep that supply out of their hands, but one victory does not a war make :/
 
BTW: From my reading on the Crete invasion, the Germans were very impressed with the fighting ability of Maori contingents of the New Zealanders. Not too many non-Germans impressed the Germans, but the Maori did.

Off-topic I know, but the Finns were apparently rather contemptuous of German fighting ability and had an attitude toward the Germans rather like the one the Germans had toward the Italians--being pleasantly surprised when they didn't piddle on themselves.
 
Wouldn't one of the consequences be that the Allies decide to invest less into airborne units?

If they did so, then the Americans and British would still probably have one or two airborne divisions each, to make sure Overlord becomes a success.
However, if they don't build up the airborne forces any further they can partly prevent the huge drain on resources the First Allied Airborne Army was OTL.
Such resources could instead be used for more usefull purposes such as a few additional mountain divisions or some common infantry divisions.

This has the added advantage that Arnhem happening becomes less likely.
All in all WWII will end a few months earlier.
 
That's actually a good point. I'm not sure if it would work out that way or not, (Airborne divisions semi-discredited), but it certainly seems possible.
 
Longtime Crete will become an important base for raids against Plösti and other targets of interest, but for the first 6-12 months the british may secretly wish they had lost the island.

Quite frankly it's gonna be a bitch it supply Crete until the allies gain control of the mediterrenean.

In OTL the RN was literally bombed out of the water north and west of Crete and was reduced to night runs to reduce casualties.
As mentioned all ports are on the north side...

RAF had effectually abandoned the island. Planes can (with some limitations in type and equipment) be flown in, but fuel, spareparts, ammo, groundpersonel & equpment etc will add to the shipping requirements...

In the short term britain will have to allocate sparse resources to Crete, after all we can't affort to lose the only win in the war so far :)

Things will of course improve as german resources get stretched...
 
Agreed on the "secretly wishing they had lost" bit. Holding Crete would be another burden on overstretched British resources.

I think it also pulls German resources away from the eastern front early on though, which is a good thing. If the Brits discover through Ultra that Hitler is paranoid about Crete being used against Ploesti they can play on that fear to tie down a lot of German air resources.
 
It will for a while, but in a few months things will settle down. Remember Malta was a massive hassle to keep supplied, as was besieged Tobruk, but the British managed it. Initially Crete doesn't have to do anything other than hold out, later it can become a staging base. Keep in mind that 3 months after the Crete battle the German will remove air untis for Barbarossa which will ease the British burden.
 
Not losing Crete would be a bit of a bolster to NZ as well - I think we lost something like 3000 troops captured, which is pretty huge for a country of our population (about 1.5 million at the time iirc). This would do a lot for moral back home while also not stretching manpower resources to replace the captured troops (while acknowledging that more may have been killed or wounded)
 
There would be some downsides to the Allies initially:
1) Supplying Crete would require some additional shipping
2) The forces evacuated from there would, obviously, not be available elsewhere.

Upsides would probably outweigh those, and I think that whoever mentioned morale nailed a big one. A big, very public win over actual Germans (as opposed to the Italians) would be a major boost to British morale. It might also have some impact on the Germans. An unbroken string of German victories seemed to confirm the Nazi racial theories. A very public defeat might slow that train down.

Wouldn't have thought so - the British (or at least the English) were Aryans too as far as the Nazis were concerned, after all.
 
Longtime Crete will become an important base for raids against Plösti and other targets of interest, but for the first 6-12 months the british may secretly wish they had lost the island.

Quite frankly it's gonna be a bitch it supply Crete until the allies gain control of the mediterrenean.

In OTL the RN was literally bombed out of the water north and west of Crete and was reduced to night runs to reduce casualties.
As mentioned all ports are on the north side...

RAF had effectually abandoned the island. Planes can (with some limitations in type and equipment) be flown in, but fuel, spareparts, ammo, groundpersonel & equpment etc will add to the shipping requirements...

In the short term britain will have to allocate sparse resources to Crete, after all we can't affort to lose the only win in the war so far :)

Things will of course improve as german resources get stretched...

This kindof makes me think of Guadalcanal; a really rough fight that in the long run was very good for the Allies but seemed really dicey in the short run.

I think that a failure to take Crete would be the death knell for division-sized paratroop units in the US; they only barely got off the ground (pun intended) IOTL. Without a large-scale airborne 'success', the US might have a division-sized force of paras, but they'd be independent raider battalions (the same as the WWII Ranger battalions IOTL). Those units would probably do just fine on D-Day, and the US would be able to field around four more standard infantry divisions. Another minor benefit to the ground forces: without the Paras sucking up the best manpower, the regular infantry would be a little better across the board. If you divided the paras evenly across the rest of the infantry, you'd get about one of them in each rifle squad.
 
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