Ramcke in Crete and North Africa
After qualifying as a paratrooper, Ramcke was placed in command of the 1st Fallschirmjager Division’s replacement battalion. In 1941, he took part in the planning for Operation Mercury – Germany’s airborne invasion of Crete. Things got off to a bad start for the Germans when the operation began on May 20th, and the island’s defenders – Greek and Allied military, plus Cretan civilians – inflicted heavy casualties upon the paratroopers. By the end of the first day, the defenders were confident that they would prevail, but things changed the following day, thanks to Allied missteps, and the German paratroopers’ intrepidity and aggressiveness.
A vital German objective was the airfield of Maleme, whose capture would allow reinforcements to be flown in. Throughout May 20th, the airfield’s defenders, occupying a strong position on a nearby hill, beat back numerous assaults from a paratroop battalion. The attackers sustained grievous losses, including the death of the battalion’s commander, and the success of the entire invasion hung in the balance. That night, because of a communications failure, the defenders inexplicably withdrew, and left the airfield undefended. It was promptly occupied by the Germans.
Ramcke had not taken part in Operation Mercury’s landings, but he was selected on the 21st to take charge of the Germans in and around Maleme. He cobbled together an ad hoc task force of about 500 men, comprised of disparate personnel who had not made it to Crete on the first day, and parachuted with them into Maleme. Under Ramcke’s command, the German paratroopers put up a ferocious fight, and beat back repeated Allied attempts to retake the vital airfield.
Ramcke and his men stabilized the situation around Maleme, and expanded the perimeter around the airfield so transport airplanes could land with desperately needed reinforcements, munitions, and supplies. He then turned command of the airfield and its surroundings to an infantry general, and led his paratroopers to continue the fight elsewhere. During the fighting in the Cretan interior, some of Ranke’s men were mutilated. In retaliation, he ordered the razing of nearby villages and the slaughter of their inhabitants – war crimes for which he was never prosecuted.
In 1942, Ramcke’s unit was renamed Ramcke Parachute Brigade, and sent to join Erwin Rommel and the Afrika Korps in North Africa. His unit was attached to an Italian division during the Axis assault towards the Suez Canal, until halted near El Alamein. During heavy fighting, Ramcke’s brigade, lacking motorized transport, was cut off, surrounded, and written off as lost by higher commanders, who had no means of rescuing or transporting. So Ramcke and his men rescued and transported themselves. Despite heavy losses of 450 men out of 1050, Ramcke led his men in a breakout which stumbled upon a British supply convoy. The paratroopers seized the convoy’s trucks, and 600 survivors made their escape. Ramcke was sent back to Germany, where Hitler personally awarded him the Oak Leaves to the Knights Cross.