At Greek village Kondomarion Kreta island a group of German paratroopers was ambushed and several of them got killed by forks and axes.
Two days later, 2-june-1941, they came back and executed all adult males.
The same day in the neighbouring village 300 more locals were executed.
Photographs of the event in Kondomari: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Kondomari_Massacre
So how many victims are we talking?
300 in a different village + how many in the original village?
Also, in the linked article, the author claims that the partisans killed a group of German soldiers in such brutal ways that it enraged the Germans to commit these war crimes.
Any further info on that?
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (supreme command of the Wehrmacht), May 30 1941:
During the Battle of Crete wounded german soldiers were mutilated in such a brute way which had only occured in this war during the polish campaign so far…with the strictest tribunal the german Wehrmacht will strike upon the responsible troops or the guilty inhabitants.
“Die Bildchronik der Fallschirmtruppe 1935-1945” (Arnold von Roon)
Cretian liberation fighters did not fight with stones only but murdered with hunting weapons in ambushes. They even used international banned dum-dum bullets. Wounded soldiers and those injured after the jump were their usual victims and then often robbed them.
“Sonderauftrag Südost 1940-1945” (Hermann Neubacher)
…terrifyingly mutilated, crucified, impaled, roasted alive…then, in the first moments of horror and wrath there’s no stopping the longing for revenge. Who dares to judge the case in calm temper after finding his comrades as bloody stumps because they were sentenced to a slow death?"
However this painting shows the way the partisans of Crete considered their struggle:
Nice painting…
Why is that the German paratrooper doesn’t fire his submachine gun???
I guess it is not because he did not want to shoot nobody…
Were not German paratroopers tought how to use ordinary objects as weapons? Whould they hessitate to use a stone to crush the enemy skull?
Any way, the death of the ambushed Germans probably (likely) was very terrible.
The punishement was a war crime. A preplanned war crime commited in cold blood.
Just again showing how perplexing the question of who’s right and who’s wrong in war. barbarity begets barbarity.
Oh my god.
The peoples obviously didn’t suspect what will going on.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-166-0525-28%2C_Kreta%2C_Kondomari%2C_Erschießung_von_Zivilisten.jpg
This scene reminds me the ethnic execution in Yugoslavia.
During the Battle of Crete wounded german soldiers were mutilated in such a brute way which had only occured in this war during the polish campaign so far…with the strictest tribunal the german Wehrmacht will strike upon the responsible troops or the guilty inhabitants
But how many GErmans were killed and by which exactly barbaric way?
It also shows how interpretations depend upon one’s standpoint.
On the Allied side, the Cretans were regarded as enormously courageous by going up against well armed soldiers with only civilian firearms and anything else they could get their hands on.
It’s understandable for the German troops to be outraged about extreme actions by Cretans, but this rather denies the Cretans their much more justified outrage about Germans invading their island and their right to resist by whatever means they could. Maybe the Germans should have been grateful that the Cretans weren’t an organised and properly equipped military force defending with the same vigour.
I don’t have a problem identifying who’s wrong in this sort of case. It’s always the aggressive invader, in the same way that an armed man who invades my home and starts attacking me or my family is liable to be belted to death with whatever I can get my hands on, if that’s what it takes to stop him.
Does your point advocate that the Allies in 1945 were agressors who invide the GErmany, and it was legitime for GErmans to use whatever they can gat into the hands?
The poisoning the water and food includes.
Who is exactly arguing against this, may I ask?
No, the aggressor in Europe was Germany and the invasion of Germany was necessary to put an end to that aggression and all that followed until Germany surrendered.
This raises an interesting question contrasted with the previous one.
Perhaps somewhat inconsistently with my previous answer, I’d say that the answer for German civilians acting independently of the military is probably: Yes.
The fact that Germany started the war would be irrelevant to me as a German citizen in a German town being shelled by the advancing Allies who are trying to kill me. I’d feel like striking back at them and I think I would be justified at a personal level in doing so. And if the bastards had just wiped out my family by shelling my house, I would if I could.
What is right or wrong in international law and in events between nations is utterly irrelevant to the people facing each other on the ground in war, and personal considerations often override the laws of war and so on. As in the Cretan example in this thread.
Yeah, why not?
Pursuing the last example, Allied artillery has just killed my wife and two children when they shelled my house, along with most other houses in the town even though none of the civilians were offering resistance. The Allies have just destroyed everything that matters to me. I am, as I really am, an unfit man nudging 60 with no chance of doing much damage by taking up arms against the advancing infantry before they kill me, but I am determined to kill and harm as many of the bastards as I can.
Even though the advancing infantry had nothing to do with shelling my home and might even treat me well once they occupy my town, as far as I’m concerned they’re all part of the same side who killed my family.
So as they come into the town I wave an American or British flag and I give them food and wine, laced with rat poison. By the time they start feeling sick, I’ve sent a company or two to their graves.
Sure, their mates are going to work out what happened and hunt me down and kill me if they can find me, but that was going to happen if I took up a rifle and killed only two or three of them before they killed me. At least this way I die having done more damage to them than they deserve, the same as they’ve done to me and my family, and the same way that Allied bombers have been doing to the major towns, industries, railways, and public utilities in my region for the past few years.
What’s wrong with me responding with a bit of indiscriminate death when the Allies come within my range?
(When I consider these situations, I am forced to conclude that, as a pacifist, I am not a very good one. :rolleyes: )
You sure aren’t. 
The mass execution of the civilians was a war crime - this is a fact, no matter what the motivation of the German soldiers was.
Still, considering the circumstances, it is a lot more understandable than the ethnic cleansing the Germans liked to do to Russian civilians.
Crete isn’t very big, and as I read it, the majority of the murders was committed in a certain town, which must have been near the site of the ambushing and killing of the Paratroopers. So the soldiers obviously assumed that those fellas were responsible for it. Knowing the Southern-European temper, I’m sure the Cretans also had absolutely no scruple showing their "discontentment" with the German occupation.
And it’s not like the German Military High Command really cared to much about the lawful conduct of war, and they probably thought that the execution of anybody suspected to be a partisan would not only crush/deter resistance, but also boost the morale of the soldiers.
I’m sure as heck that I would want revenge, too, if I saw my comrades slaughtered and tortured to death by an otherwise invisible enemy…
On the quick I don’t have any numbers but will look for it.
I’d like to refer to my original post here:
…terrifyingly mutilated, crucified, impaled, roasted alive…
Where I come from this would usually considered “barbaric”.
I don’t think he fully read your post. No need to jump at him 
I’m pretty sure taking people into custody and then massacring them is more than “wrong,” it’s a war crime…and especially well-photographed one here…
Well, I’d like to know the specific Fallschirmjäger gripes about their treatment meted out by Cretan civilians using stone age weapons and ancient firearms…
Was it that they were attacked in the very vulnerable few minutes from which they parachuted down, landed, and were able to collect their weapons? Because the US 82d Airborne would have had cause to massacre a lot of Germans in Normandy if that were the case.
I doubt the Cretan civilian population had very much time to torture anyone. I think it might be more a case of the paratroops setting the tone for their occupation, and being embarrassed about suffering such high casualties in what was ultimately a Pyrrhic victory…
You didn’t read flamethrowerguy’s post, did you? They were not only killed in quite some horrific ways, but tortured to death, and their bodies mutilated.
I also don’t think this happened immediately during the invasion, but rather during the time of occupation, IIRC?
Actually I did, though admittedly scanned over it quickly. I have to say that I’m pretty skeptical of such claims. Especially since they sound little more “horrific” than any battlefield situation where the Germans, or paratroops in general, suffered heavy casualties…
There were cases in Western Europe where US paratroops claim to have found their dead castrated --with their balls in their mouths-- and they typically blamed the SS. I’m also aware of a situation where a US paratrooper came up to a glider that had been severed by a German booby-trap pole wire to find everyone inside had been decapitated…
But just for the sake of argument, if a German soldier that was “wounded” and hacked to death by farm implements would appear “mutilated.” But then, so would a “wounded” man hit by an artillery shell and they really would have had a hard time discerning who was killed after they were wounded or who was just killed by a garden hoe and looked really messy…
And for your last point, how long would Fallschirmjäger units been used as occupation troops on Crete? And how did Crete townspeople, barely organized enough to be called partisans, come into custody of wounded German paratroops if the island was under their control and occupation? 
I think they were trying to send a message, and the photos show that this was anything but spontaneous outrage. It seems far too calculated and planned…
Ok, here’s a scenario that could work:
It’s the first few days of the occupation, the Allied military forces have been defeated, and the Germans start to occupy the cities.
A squad/group of paratroopers is sent on a patrol to look for any more surrendering soldiers/enemy placements. On their patrol, they get ambushed by townspeople (partisans), and killed/wounded. Out of rage and avenging their friends/family/comrades who died during the actual invasion, they mutilate the bodies of the dead and torture the wounded, eventually killing them, too. If it was just reprisal or whether they were trying to send a message is relatively unimportant.
A few hours later, a bigger squad/group of Germans is sent to look for the missing paratroopers, finding them in the mutilated and tortured way the partisans left them. They report it to their superiors, who are outraged at not only the murder of the soldiers, but also the mutilation. They decide that it is unacceptable for them to let partisans walk around and kill their soldiers, and because they have no way of finding out who actually did it, they decide to make an example.
They round up all of the men in the village nearest to the killing, and have them executed. At the same time, paratroopers all over the (small) island have already heard of the killings, and are equally enraged at the treatment of their comrades. They round up anybody who looks suspicious to them, and kill them, some get drunk and randomly kill Cretans.
As to differing between getting killed by an artillery shell/explosive and stones/cutting/stabbing weapons, here are some assumptions:
-I doubt that the partisans would take the bloody stones with them, so you could see them lying around all over the place.
-Cutting and stabbing wounds look - to my limited knowledge - quite different from explosive wounds.
-Under mutilations, I understand things like cutting off penises, ears, noses, eyes, fingers, tongues and other gruesome things. I don’t know if/what exactly they did to qualify their treatment of the dead as mutilations, but I’m sure they wouldn’t be things you see in a common combat scenario.
-Cretan partisans didn’t have artillery;)
Not with you - please explain for a dunderhead
Um, the photos were taken on the 2nd of June. The Battle of Crete only ended to day prior according to Wiki.
A squad/group of paratroopers is sent on a patrol to look for any more surrendering soldiers/enemy placements. On their patrol, they get ambushed by townspeople (partisans), and killed/wounded. Out of rage and avenging their friends/family/comrades who died during the actual invasion, they mutilate the bodies of the dead and torture the wounded, eventually killing them, too. If it was just reprisal or whether they were trying to send a message is relatively unimportant.
So a squad of well armed German paratroops carrying Schmeisser submachine guns, Mauser rifles, and probably an MG-34 --and possibly other weapons typically giving them higher organic firepower than the typical Heer unit-- were cut off and ambushed by townspeople? The day after the final organized Allied resistance is considered to have ended?
Maybe the soldiers should have massacred their own idiot officer(s) who gave the orders for a small unit to enter an unsecured town?
A few hours later, a bigger squad/group of Germans is sent to look for the missing paratroopers, finding them in the mutilated and tortured way the partisans left them. They report it to their superiors, who are outraged at not only the murder of the soldiers, but also the mutilation. They decide that it is unacceptable for them to let partisans walk around and kill their soldiers, and because they have no way of finding out who actually did it, they decide to make an example.
They round up all of the men in the village nearest to the killing, and have them executed. At the same time, paratroopers all over the (small) island have already heard of the killings, and are equally enraged at the treatment of their comrades. They round up anybody who looks suspicious to them, and kill them, some get drunk and randomly kill Cretans.
Or more likely, they found the festering bodies of fallen Fallschirmjäger that were killed during the battle and made quite a few assumptions…
As to differing between getting killed by an artillery shell/explosive and stones/cutting/stabbing weapons, here are some assumptions:
-I doubt that the partisans would take the bloody stones with them, so you could see them lying around all over the place.
-Cutting and stabbing wounds look - to my limited knowledge - quite different from explosive wounds.
So soldiers that use means other than bullets and explosives to kill deserve to be massacred? What about the cliche of the soldier swinging his entrenching tool in brutal hand-to-hand combat? Or the relatively rare use of the bayonet? Stones, crude firearms, and farm implements are certainly not banned by the Geneva Convention…
The soldiers they found could just have conceivably been laying on the battlefield for a week, decomposing in the Spring sun…
-Under mutilations, I understand things like cutting off penises, ears, noses, eyes, fingers, tongues and other gruesome things. I don’t know if/what exactly they did to qualify their treatment of the dead as mutilations, but I’m sure they wouldn’t be things you see in a common combat scenario.
-Cretan partisans didn’t have artillery;)
IIRC, but there were some heavier arms carried by the local Crete populace that were composed of militia. But then, it’s all hearsay. We have photos of German paratroops (who suffered heavy casualties and almost certainly would have been defeated had the Commonwealth defenders had had better communications and transport) and no said pics of Cretan atrocities - which almost certainly would have taken place during battle as it ended officially the day before.
I think you’re reaching here. These were revenge killings for the locals uprising, not for what they used or did to German wounded…