The Fall Of Crete

Average customer rating:

Inaccurate listed Synopsis and inaccurate historical detail

The Fall Of Crete
The War File
Manufacturer: Pegasus Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0001XLWQW
Release Date: 2004-04-05

Customer Reviews:

Inaccurate listed Synopsis and inaccurate historical detail.......2005-12-31

The invasion of Crete in May 1941 is an interesting 11 day battle which saw a pyrrhic victory for the Nazis. However, this DVD presentation seems to be little more than a translation of the original German propaganda film from which all the footage appears to be taken. The official review synopsis is also inaccurate in that it states that there are interviews with the commanders and troops involved when there are none! Nor are there any extra historical features on the DVD (which one might have expected to see) except adverts for other titles in the series.

The film footage itself is all good watchable & original stuff - which is why I've still given this 2 stars - but the quality is a little rough because it doesn't seem to have been digitally remastered or improved in any way. Nor are the graphics any good, relying on the slightly poor quality original Nazi film propaganda material.

The narrative also seems to be a bit biased, concentrating on the German side - which would be refreshing but seems to retain too much of the original footage's accompanying Nazi propaganda, suggesting, for example, that the Nazis faced a British-Anzac defending force of five times its size, when in truth the figure is more like two to one (41,000 Allies, 22,000 Germans). Furthermore, the DVD ignores that the Allies were having to guard 15,000 Italian POWs and had hardly any decent heavy guns, tanks, air cover or even radios, and had limited ammunition etc (much was left behind in Greece from where many of these troops had had to make a hasty retreat after German attacks there). By contrast the Germans were fully loaded with all the light field guns, ammunition and radios etc it could use. The DVD does properly mention the Nazi air superiority, and its heavy losses in transport planes, but the footage suggests that the allied aircraft were wiped out on the ground when in fact they had been ordered to evacuate on the 19th May, the day before the battle commenced. That raises another point - the DVD mentions that the British-Allied forces had plans of the German attack but fails to mention why (I've read elsewhere that this had come via Bletchley, where the British had cracked the German enigma-coded messages about the planned operation - the very first time such decoded intelligence was used in the war).

Further evidence of what at times comes across as little more than Nazi propaganda comes in the mention of an alledged attrocity (mutilations) apparently inflicted on over a hundred dead and wounded German paratroopers by local partisan defenders, which (even if true), considering the later hundreds of punishment killings (and torturings) of civillians by the occupying German forces over the next couple of years (not mentioned in the DVD narration), this comes across as rather rich. And of course, the later strong resistance movement and British and Cretan commando efforts after the fall of the island are not mentioned at all - which would have made for a good, rounded context - but then this DVD is only claiming to be about the initial battle, not the subsequent occupation.

The DVD does at least admit that the German victory was a pyrrhic (empty or too-costly) one and half-explains why. Because of allied control of Malta, the effective range of allied planes, strength of the British Navy and their retention of North Africa etc, Crete turned out to be not as strategically useful as German high command had hoped. And it also relates Hitler's dismay at the heavy losses of elite German paratroopers (fully one third of those men), and the heavy losses of German aircraft (also about a third). However, the full weight of his dismay is not brought across when the viewer is also being innacurately told that those paratroopers won against hugely overwhelming odds of well equipped defenders. Nor is the viewer informed that the German high command were subsequently aware that after a disasterous first day for their paratroopers, it was sheer luck and incompetence on behalf of the defending General Freyberg that enabled the Germans to gain Maleme airfield and bring in heavier, winning forces. Without all such above information, the viewer is probably only to be confused by the DVD's closing narrative of the stated German decision never to use paratroopers as a main force again. Ironically, in another issue not explored by the DVD, Churchill was so impressed by the German paratroopers that this lead to the creation of the British Paras.

Customer Reviews:

Warbird walk around.......2003-12-30

Although disappointed not get get more combat footage the detailed walk around the aircraft and some modern high quality flying sequences (which seem to be typical of the Roaring Glory format)made this a usful overview of the Corsair and I consider it a fair buy - enough to buy more from the series....

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