On May 20, 1941, thousands of elite German paratroopers, the
Fallschirmjäger, assaulted the island of Crete. It was the beginning of one of the largest paratrooper assaults in modern history, ultimately involving 22,040 German soldiers. It was also the first time
German troops faced a unified resistance from a civilian populace. The Battle of Crete would become the largest German airborne operation of World War II, known as "Operation Mercury," (, also
Unternehmen Merkur, ). The Germans had expected to control the island within a few days; after all, in less than seven weeks they had defeated
France and occupied Paris for eight days before an armistice was signed. What the Germans had not anticipated was the unrelenting opposition from the men, women, and children of
Crete, who would fight alongside British and
Dominion forces, ultimately embroiling
Nazi Germany in one of its most costly campaigns of the war. Collaborating with a handful of British
Special Operations Executive commandos like
Patrick Leigh Fermor,
William Stanley Moss (both featured in the film) and
John Pendlebury, the Cretan resistance would prove to become the most dauntingly potent civilian resistance movement Nazi Germany would encounter throughout the war. Although the Battle of Crete ended after ten days with the withdrawal of British forces from the island, history would record it as a
Pyrrhic victory for the Germans, as the years-long resistance that began on the "11th Day" would belong to the Cretans. ==Historically significant operations documented in the film==