The story of the kidnapping of German Major General Heinrich Kreipe on Crete during the island’s occupation by the 3rd Reich in the midst of World War II is one of patriotism and bravery.
The operation carried out by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and Cretan resistance fighters was evidence of Crete’s resilient, fearless residents who resisted the enemy with every means possible.
The great irony was that the target of the kidnapping, the ruthless General Friedrich-Wilhelm Mueller, commander of Nazi occupied Crete, was gone only days prior to the operation. Mueller, who was nicknamed the “Butcher of Crete” for the countless atrocities he had committed against civilians, had been transferred to the Eastern Front only days prior to the operation.
The two British soldiers, Major Patrick Leigh Fermor and Captain W. Stanley Moss, decided to ambush and seize the comparatively harmless General Kreipe instead. As Moss later wrote, “We supposed that one general was as good a catch as any other.”
Το carry out the mission, four Cretan men of the resistance, Antonios and Grigorios Papaleonidas, Michail Akoumianakis, and Grigorios Chnarakis, joined the two British officers on their daring task.
The story of General Kreipe, the British soldiers, and the heroic locals was a story of men who were enemies during war but exhibited mutual respect for each other, following the codes of war. When they reunited again thirty years later, they did so as civilians who held no grudges, as the war was a thing of the past.
Hence, when in 1972 the Cretan partisans, Leigh Fermor, and Kreipe met in Athens, Greece as guests on a television show on the famous kidnapping of the German general, the Brit and German were friendly to each other, having long been discharged from their duties as soldiers on Crete.
Organizing the kidnapping of the Nazi general
The story of the kidnapping operation of the German general on Crete is described in Leigh Fermor’s book Abducting a General. The plan was conceived of and organized by Leigh Fermor and Moss with the help of two Cretan resistance fighters, Georgios Tyrakis and Emmanouil Paterakis, who were to assist on the mission.
However, there was one man who was opposed to the plan. This was Bickham Sweet-Escott, a staff officer in Cairo. He thought that “the price would be heavy [on] Cretan lives.”
The group trained at an SOE camp in Ramat David, Palestine. They flew to the headquarters of the British 8th Army on January 4, 1944, and, a month later, were transported by a bomber to Crete’s Katharo plateau.
Due to overcast weather, only Leigh Fermor airdropped. He was taken by Cretan resistance members and SOE Captain Sandy Rendel, while the rest of the team returned to Cairo. Leigh Fermor hid in a cave and later came to learn through old contacts that Mueller had been replaced by Major General Heinrich Kreipe on March 1st.
On March 30th, Leigh Fermor informed the Cretan section of SOE Cairo about Mueller’s replacement and signaled his intent to carry out the operation, insisting that the capture of a high ranking German would raise the morale of both the Cretans and the SOE’s Greek section.
After the rest of the team failed to parachute onto Crete another seven times, they arrived by motor boat on April 4th. The entire team then went into hiding in the mountains.
The stakeout
While Moss was hiding in the mountains with the resistance near the village of Kastamonitsa, Leigh Fermor, who could pass for a native, and Akoumianakis boarded a bus to the capital city of Heraklion. Both were disguised as peasants. They then walked the five miles to Kreipe’s villa to monitor events there whereupon it was deemed that it was too heavily guarded, and an assault would therefore be risky.
From the nearby farmhouse of Akoumianakis’ family, the agents kept the area under watch for a week. One day, as they walked along the main road, Kreipe passed them by in his chauffeur-driven Opel. Leigh-Fermor and Akoumianakis waved to the general, and the startled Kreipe waved back. Seeing that it was merely the driver and general in the car gave Leigh Fermor the idea to ambush the vehicle specifically.
Kreipes’ schedule consisted of arriving at his headquarters in Ano Archanes and returning twice on a daily basis. He last returned at approximately 10:00 pm. It was also determined that he occasionally stayed even later while playing bridge. Hence, the best plan of action would be to stop his car at night and abduct him in the hopes that his villa guard would assume he was playing bridge and not be alarmed.
Leigh Fermor and Akoumianakis returned to the mountain hideout outside Kastamonitsa to inform Moss and the rest about the plan. They recruited a local band of resistance fighters to help. This consisted of four additional resistance members, namely Efstratios Saviolakis, Dimitrios Tzatzadakis, Nikolaos Komis, and Antonios Zoidakis, who were recruited as guides. The team subsequently marched to the nearby village of Skalani, where there was a sharp turn in the road that would force Kreipe’s car to slow down.
The men of the Cretan resistance almost blew the operation when, out of sheer boredom of hiding in place for two days, they wandered off around the area. Leigh Fermor ordered them to return to the hills. There, along with two other reliable local policemen who had been recruited, there was a team of eleven individuals waiting to attack.
Meanwhile, the team received a letter from a local commander of the pro-communist Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS), who threatened to betray them to authorities if they refused to evacuate the area. Leigh Fermor replied with an ambiguously written note, and the ELAS commander never realized his threat.
The abduction
Akoumianakis had managed to procure two summer Feldgendarmerie (Military Gendarmerie) uniforms complete with rank insignia for a corporal, campaign badges, side arms, and a traffic policeman’s baton. Leigh Fermor and Moss would wear these to disguise as sentries and wave down Kreipe’s car. The first three attempts to kidnap the German general failed when he unexpectedly returned to his villa before dark. A fourth attempt was likewise unsuccessful due to rain.
Finally, at 9:30 pm on April 26, 1944, Kreipe’s oncoming car was spotted. A wire, running several hundred meters ahead, was pulled to set off an electric bell and alert Leigh Fermor and Moss to get in position to stop the car. It was the night of April 26, 1944.
Posing as German soldiers, the two British agents stopped the vehicle and requested documentation. According to Kreipe’s words, in an interview 25 years later, he admitted he had made the “foolish move” to exit the car and question the corporal, whom he didn’t even recognize, about the lack of insignia on the car. At that moment, Leigh Fermor pressed a pistol to the general’s chest and said: “General, you are a prisoner of war in British hands.”
Meanwhile, the rest of the team came out of hiding, and Paterakis threw the German general on the ground and tied him up. The driver of the Opel, Sergeant Albert Fenske, had come out of the car, but Moss hit him on the head with his baton, causing the German to fall unconscious to the ground.
Fermor placed the general’s cap on his head, Moss took up the driver’s seat with Akoumianakis beside him, and Tyrakis and Paterakis piled on Kreipe in the backseat with a knife at his throat. They drove off to Heraklion. The others cleared the spot of signs of struggle and then also headed to Heraklion with the driver.
The Opel drove past numerous sentry posts with Fermor saluting all twenty-two of them whilst wearing Kreipe’s cap. When they were far away enough, the party split. Moss and Paterakis took Kreipe and marched him to their hideout in the Ida Mountains. Leigh Fermor and Tyrakis drove to the coast and abandoned the vehicle there so as to make the Germans think the kidnapping party had evacuated by sea.
Εscape from Crete
To save the villagers from German retaliation, Leigh Fermor left a lengthy note in the car:
“To the German authorities on Crete. Gentlemen, your Divisional Commander, General Kreipe, was captured a short time ago by a British raiding force under our command. By the time you read this he will be on his way to Cairo. We would like to point out most emphatically that this operation was carried out without the help of Cretans or Cretan partisans and that the only guides used were serving soldiers of his Hellenic Majesty’s forces in the Middle East, who came with us. Your General is an honorable prisoner of war and will be treated with all the consideration owing to his rank. Any reprisals against the local population will be wholly unwarranted and unjust. Auf baldiges Wiedersehen!”
The British Major added a postscript: “We are very sorry to have to leave this beautiful car behind.” As further proof, he left a British commando beret, cigarettes, and an Agatha Christie paperback.
The team then moved to Anogeia, where they rested for a few hours. Late in the afternoon of April 27th, a German reconnaissance aircraft dropped leaflets onto the village, threatening reprisals if the general were not returned within three days. Leigh Fermor and the rest moved the general to Mount Ida, where a band of resistance men, led by Michael Xylouris and the SOE officers attached to them, met the team.
However, the breakdown of their wireless station meant that all communication had to be conducted by runners, hindering the evacuation. The following day, the team was informed that the Cretans had killed Kreipe’s driver, as he was too stunned to walk and was slowing them down, which would have placed them in danger of being captured. The team continued its ascent on Ida, where they stayed with another Cretan resistance group.
To help the kidnappers, the British dropped propaganda leaflets addressed to the German troops: “You are looking for him [Kreipe] in vain! He is long since in England!”
The long journey to the sea
While the team was attempting to make it to sea so as to sail to Egypt, the whole of Crete’s garrison of more than 30,000 men were searching for the Kreipe kidnappers. The team continued their journey from Mt. Psiloritis to the Amari Valley. After crossing the valley, they reached the village of Agia Paraskevi. A report transmitted by the BBC had alerted the Germans that Kreipe had yet to leave the island.
Rumors of an uprising of the Cretan population and an Allied invasion had prompted the Germans to strengthen the garrison at Chania and continue to sweep the island. Kreipe’s adjutants and guards were arrested on suspicion of complicity.
When a messenger arrived, they requested that a boat be sent to Saktouria in Rethymnon, a village with many partisans, on May 2nd. Yet, the Nazis had already sent troops there. Moss and Leigh Fermor set off to the Amari Valley in search of a wireless station. On May 5th, they reached the village of Pantanassa, where they were able to send and receive written messages once again.
A day later, runner George Psychoundakis brought SOE Officer Dick Barnes and a wireless set to the village. The team then moved to Patsos just two hours away from Pantanassa. There, they learned that a unit of the Special Boat Service (SBS) was to land at Limni Beach on May 9th to assist with the evacuation.
Moss and Leigh Fermor arranged to meet with the rest of the abduction team at the hamlet of Karines and advanced to Fotinou and Vilandredo. When a 200-man German column arrived in Argyroupoli just an hour away from Vilandredo, Dennis Tsiklitiras and a band of ELAS fighters assisted the team in avoiding their pursuers.
Upon reaching Asi Gonia, the abduction team was informed that a boat would pick them up at Rodakino Beach on the night of May 14, 1944. The Rodakiniot guerillas accompanied the team on their final leg of the journey. The team, Kreipe, two German prisoners of war, and a sick Soviet prisoner of war boarded the SBS boats at 10:00 pm. The mission landed safely at Mersa Matruh, a critical British military base in Egypt during World War II.
Aftermath
The prediction of the British officer in Cairo proved to be accurate. The German reprisals were ruthless. Anogeia was not only a center for British espionage and a partisan hub but also the stopover of the kidnappers of General Kreipe. For these reasons, the razing of Anogeia and the execution of all male inhabitants of the village was ordered.
This began on August 13th with German soldiers destroying the village with such unbelievable savagery to the extent that nothing remained standing; they looted, blew up homes, schools, and dairy farms, executed inhabitants who had not taken refuge to partisan shelters on inaccessible parts of Mt. Psiloritis, and stole the herds of Anogeia shepherds.
Nevertheless, the role of the local partisans in the daring operation reinforced Cretan pride, something that Leigh Fermor was keen to celebrate.
Major Patrick Leigh Fermor was awarded the Distinguished Service Order while Captain W. Stanley Moss was presented with the Military Cross “for [their] outstanding display of courage and audacity” during the operation.
The back cover of the book by Patrick Leigh Fermor, Abducting a General reads:
“The traveler, scholar, philhellene and war hero Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor undertook to write a short article about the famous kidnapping of German General Heinrich Kreipe, in which he played a leading role, in occupied Crete in 1944. He eventually delivered 36,000 words, driving his editor crazy. The book at hand contains the full text of that narrative, first published in 2014, after his death, telling us how a small group of British saboteurs in collaboration with a few dedicated Cretan guerrillas carried out a feat of resistance.
A confession, a tribute, a plea for understanding…above all a hymn to Crete and the Cretans.”
(Artemis Cooper, biographer of Patrick Leigh Fermor)
The abduction and events that followed were presented in Moss’s 1950 semi-autobiographical book Ill Met by Moonlight: The Abduction of General Kreipe. In 1957, the book was turned into the film starring Dirk Bogarde, David Oxley, and Marius Goring.
The German general
German General Heinrich Kreipe fought in World War I and World War II and was decorated with the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. Following his abduction, he was transferred from Egypt to Calgary in Canada, where he was interned with other captured German generals until 1947.
The interrogators characterized Kreipe as anti-Nazi. Despite his high rank, he possessed very little information of value to British Intelligence, and, by the time of his capture, Crete was of little importance to the war efforts altogether.
Kreipe was released by the British in 1947. In a rare moment in history, he met his captors on the 1972 Greek television program. He died at Northeim, Germany on June 14, 1976, aged 81.
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