The Greatest Airshow In The World

Historians have wondered about the Nazi invasion of Crete in 1941. The attack was done by paratroopers and gliders, which had never been attempted on such a scale before. The small Greek and Commonwealth force on the island inflicted heavy casualties on the invaders, and the Nazis never attempted such an assault again.

This costly attack would not seem to have even really been necessary to the Nazis' plan of conquest. A wise general might simply have ignored Crete, and waited for the Allied garrison there to run out of supplies. At the time of the invasion, the Allies on Crete do not seem to have had any aircraft left, and there was nothing on the island to threaten the Nazis in Europe or the Mediterranean. The recent development of aircraft carriers had diminished the potential importance of Crete as a vase from which to launch air attacks. The strategy of the Allies on Crete was purely defensive in nature, awaiting a Nazi landing.

The invasion was ultimately successful when the Nazis managed to capture the airfield on the island so that reinforcements could be brought in by plane. But this might have been accomplished by the Nazis landing commandos to capture the airfield, without the mishaps and casualties of the paratrooper and glider attack.

But there was a reason that the attack on Crete was done by air. Historians have questioned the tactical wisdom of it, but we have to remember Hitler's sense of history. The aerial invasion of Crete was an important part of Hitler's grand design. It was to be the Greatest Airshow In The World.

Notice the timing of the attack on Crete. It came one month before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. We saw in "The Beginning Of Flight And Space Travel" what a strong sense of history Hitler had. Historians and military strategists have been mystified by some of Hitler's actions. But these actions can be explained by the objective to have the Nazis seen as the fulfillment of the Holy Roman Empire, with Hitler as the new Charlemagne.

The Holy Roman Empire was originally put together by the pope to confront the eastern part of Christendom, which was growing increasing independent and critical of bring ruled by the pope, and would ultimately break away in the Great Schism of 1054, which we saw in "The House Of Holy Wisdom, Where The Modern World Began". So the Holy Roman Empire ultimately failed to prevent the splitting away of the east, which is today the Eastern Orthodox Church, but it lasted for a thousand years until finally brought to an end by the conquests of Napoleon.

We saw the Holy Roman Empire in the posting on this blog, "The Far-Reaching Legacy Of The Holy Roman Empire".

The Nazis referred to themselves as the "Third Reich". The First Reich having been the time of Charlemagne, the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Second Reich having been the time of the German kaisers. The Nazis wanted to demonstrate themselves as the fulfillment of the Holy Roman Empire by gathering Europe together and then finally succeeding in reconquering the east, which was now the Soviet Union. The original Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy had by this time been secularized into a great ideological clash between National Socialism (Nazism) and Communism.

As we saw in "The Beginning Of Flight And Space Travel", a way that the Nazis demonstrated themselves to be the fulfillment of the Holy Roman Empire, which would finally succeed in it's mission, was to evoke a prominent military problem of the Holy Roman Empire. This was the fortress of Gibraltar, which was very difficult to attack by land or sea, and which was held by Britain which had never been in the Holy Roman Empire.

That was what led to the French development of balloons, the first time that humans had ever flown, although the intended aerial conquest of Gibraltar never happened. I am sure that the Nazis focused on this planned, but never fulfilled, aerial attack to demonstrate that they were the fulfillment of the Holy Roman Empire. This explains, as we saw in "The Beginning Of Flight And Space Travel", why the Nazis mystified historians by putting so much effort into development of the V-weapons, to fire at London, and why they continuously bombed the British Mediterranean island of Malta, but never tried to capture it.

This was done primarily to get all of Europe to rally with Hitler because, if they shared his sense of history, they would recognize the Nazis as the fulfillment of the Holy Roman Empire, and Hitler as the new Charlemagne, who would finally accomplish all that the original Holy Roman Empire had set out to do.

The reason that the Nazis never attacked Gibraltar itself, which was still a British fortress, is that they still hoped to have Spain as an ally. We saw in the posting on this blog, "The War That We Really Should Understand", how the Nazis were instrumental in bringing General Francisco Franco to power in Spain.

In the spring of 1941, just before the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Nazis saw the chance to impress upon Europe, most of which they now occupied, that they were the fulfillment of the Holy Roman Empire and were about to accomplish what it was set up for in the first place, to bring the eastern regions back into line, and that all of Europe should join the Nazis and give them their full support.

The way that they would do this is to seize upon an unfulfilled military objective of the Holy Roman Empire, attacking Gibraltar from the air and freeing it from the control of Britain, which was not a part of the Holy Roman Empire. The only part of western Europe left to conquer, before beginning the war with the Soviet Union, was the island of Crete, on which there were British and Commonwealth forces supporting the Greeks.

The Nazis would fulfill history by an aerial attack on Crete, by paratroopers and gliders, that Europe would recognize as the modern fulfillment of the intended aerial attack on Gibraltar, which brought about the development of balloons in which the first human flights took place. It would be the Greatest Airshow In The World. Europe would then rally together, with Hitler as the new Charlemagne, and subdue the east, which was the original reason for being of the Holy Roman Empire.

I often write about how it is important to understand history because we tend to repeat it, often without realizing it. What I think is necessary to understand about Hitler, and a few of his strategies that didn't seem to make tactical sense, is that they were reenacting history purposely, done primarily to evoke this fulfillment of the Holy Roman Empire, particularly the unfulfilled plan to launch the first aerial attack in history against the British fortress at Gibraltar, by aerially attacking other British strongholds.

After the D-Day landings the Nazis began firing more V-2 rockets at Antwerp, which the Allies were using as a port, than at London so that it would be more visible to Europe so that they would join with the Nazis, recognizing them as the fulfillment of the Holy Roman Empire. It was all "The Greatest Airshow In The World".

The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union was called "Operation Barbarossa". Barbarossa was Frederick I, one of the greatest of Holy Roman emperors, who was killed leading an army in the Crusades. The name of Barbarossa actually means "Red Beard" in Italian, a name he was given by the Italian-speaking part of the Holy Roman Empire.

The fact that the Nazis named the invasion after this emperor shows how the Nazis saw themselves as the fulfillment of the Holy Roman Empire, and were trying to impress that upon Europe so that they would join them. The original purpose of the Holy Roman Empire was to confront the east. It ended up in the Crusades to free the Holy Land from Moslem control, during which Frederick I had been killed, but had not yet brought back control over Russia, and that is what the Nazis were for.

This is the Kyffhauser Monument, in southern Germany. It includes an image of Frederick Barbarossa. The monument is made of red sandstone because the name of Barbarossa means "Red Beard". There was a legend that he was merely sleeping and would awaken when Germany needed his leadership again. The invasion of the Soviet Union, in 1941, was named for him.

This would bring about the fulfillment of the original purpose of the Holy Roman Empire, which included most of Europe, not just what is now Germany. To get Europe to rally with them, they seized upon another unfulfilled objective of the Holy Roman Empire, an aerial attack against the British fortress at Gibraltar, which was the impetus which first got humans flying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyffh%C3%A4user_Monument#/media/File:Kyffhaeuserdenkmal.jpg

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