Battle for Crete: New Zealand's Near-Run Affair

by Matthew Wright

New Zealand soldiers arrived in Crete during early May 1941, short of equipment after a hasty evacuation from Greece. Three weeks later, the Germans attacked, and for a while the fate of New Zealand’s active armed force lay in the balance on an island half a world away from home. Exactly why the island fell to the Germans has prompted intense debate - then and since. British historians writing during the 1990s argued that both the New Zealand soldiers and the island commander, Major-General Bernard Freyberg, fell short of the mark during the battle, resulting in the German victory.
Matthew Wright draws on a wide range of archival sources to refute this criticism, arguing that in the face of total German air superiority, the battle was unwinnable. The fact that the British came so close to successfully holding the island can be largely credited to Major-General Bernard Freyberg’s outstanding abilities as a commander, and to the quality of the men he led. The battle for Crete was very much a near-run affair, and remains one of the crucial events in the annals of New Zealand military history.

118 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 2000

About the author

Matthew Wright has qualifications in music, history and anthropology, among other fields, holds postgraduate degrees in history, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society at University College, London. He published his first short story in 1976 and since the early 1980s has worked extensively as a writer, professional historian, reviewer and journalist. His work includes more than 500 articles, academic papers and reviews, and over 50 books on topics from travel guides to biography, engineering, earthquakes, transport, military and social history. He has a particular interest in the sciences.