FREE ABDUCTING A GENERAL: THE KREIPE OPERATION AND SOE IN PDF

Patrick Leigh Fermor | 240 pages | 11 Jun 2015 | Hodder & Stoughton General Division | 9781444796605 | English | London, United Kingdom Abducting A General

Although a story often told, this is the first time 's own account of the kidnapping Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete General Kriepe, has been published. One of the greatest feats in Patrick Leigh Fermor's remarkable life was the kidnapping of General Kreipe, the German commander in Crete, on 26 April He and Captain Billy Moss hatched a daring plan to abduct the general, while ensuring that no reprisals were taken against the Cretan population. Dressed as German military police, they stopped and took control of Kreipe's car, drove through twenty-two German checkpoints, then succeeded in hiding from the German army before finally being picked up on a beach in the south of the island and transported to safety in Egypt on 14 May. Abducting a General is Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete Fermor's own account of the kidnap, published for the first time. Written in his inimitable prose, and introduced by acclaimed Special Operations Executive historian Roderick Bailey, it is a glorious first-hand account of one of the great adventures of the Second World War. Also included in this book are Leigh Fermor's intelligence reports, sent from caves deep within Crete yet still retaining his remarkable prose skills, which bring the immediacy of SOE operations vividly alive, as well as the peril which the SOE and Resistance were operating under; and a guide to the journey that Kreipe was taken on, as seen in the film starring , from the abandonment of his car to the embarkation site so that the modern visitor can relive this extraordinary event. Geben Sie Ihre Mobiltelefonnummer ein, um die kostenfreie App zu beziehen. Mehr lesen Weniger lesen. Beliebte Taschenbuch-Empfehlungen des Monats. Kunden, die diesen Artikel gekauft haben, kauften auch. Seite 1 von 1 Zum Anfang Seite 1 von 1. Patrick Leigh Fermor. Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece. Nur noch 18 auf Lager mehr ist unterwegs. Mani: Travels in the Southern . Nur noch 9 auf Lager Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete ist unterwegs. Kunden, die diesen Artikel angesehen haben, haben auch angesehen. Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure. . Nur noch 19 auf Lager. Flugs in die Post! Gebundene Ausgabe. Nur noch 16 auf Lager mehr ist unterwegs. Die Zeit der Gaben. Der Reise erster Teil. Nur noch 5 auf Lager mehr ist unterwegs. Alle kostenlosen Kindle-Leseanwendungen anzeigen. Sie haben keinen Kindle? Hier kaufen oder eine gratis Kindle Lese-App herunterladen. Oktober Sprache: : Englisch. Pressestimmen It takes some chutzpah to kidnap a German general - and serious presence of mind to get away with it. Paddy, the Special Operations Executive commander of a group of 11 Cretan andartes, or guerrilla fighters, together with his second-in-command Captain William Stanley Moss, had excessive stores of both. Abducting a General. Fermor's love of Crete and scholarly knowledge of the Classics exude from the pages The Times As a pure adventure story. Leigh Fermor's many fans will find plenty of the old master's fizz in this resurrected work. Afficionados of the tale were spoilt this year Daily Express Gripping buccaneering of the old school Sun Paddy was the Byron of our time Standpoint A riveting first-hand account Good Book Guide Abducting Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete General is filled with the same rich exuberant prose [as his trilogy] and fulfils its objective as portraying the Cretan people as the true heroes of the resistance TLS. Following his walk across Europe, he lived and travelled in the Balkans and Greek Archipelago. He joined the and during the occupation of Crete led the party that captured the German commander. Towards the end of his life he wrote Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete first two books about his early trans-European odyssey, and Between the Woods and the Water. He planned a third, unfinished at the time of his death inwhich has since been edited by and Artemis Cooper and published as The Broken Road. Mehr lesen. Welche anderen Artikel kaufen Kunden, nachdem sie diesen Artikel angesehen haben? Wes Davis. Nur noch 4 auf Lager mehr ist unterwegs. Wie werden Bewertungen berechnet? Spitzenrezensionen Neueste zuerst Spitzenrezensionen. Spitzenbewertungen aus Deutschland. Verifizierter Kauf. This is a bit like the Dirk Bogarde film, interesting but with little tension that would have been far more interesting. If this was a novel it would not be worth more than a couple of stars. As a description of a real life situation, it earns an extra star but the publishers had to fill in. That's not to denigrate the author who was a soldier and adventurer and not a writer. PLF was a famous author in his own right, and I think he was pressurised into writing his side of the abduction, but in facts there is no difference to the Moss account, except PLF places more appreciation on the role of the Cretan Partisan support. Eine Person fand diese Informationen hilfreich. Patrick Leigh Fermor and his SOE colleagues were, without doubt, brave and resourceful men who lived under the continual threat of betrayal and capture. The book reads like a report to his headquarters and in fact the second half is just that, being descriptions of his activities with the . Only the first half of the book is about the kidnapping of the General. Warmly commended. Perhaps I should re-read Ill Met by Moonlight to see how the two accounts differ. Fermor was one of our greatest travel writers. Anducting a German general and moving him over the rugged mountains to the south coast for evacuation to was a master-stroke. The story also reveals the hardiness and heroism of the Cretan freedom fighters. Alle Rezensionen anzeigen. Entdecken Sie jetzt alle Amazon Prime-Vorteile. Geld verdienen mit Amazon. Amazon Advertising Kunden finden, gewinnen und binden. Shopbop Designer Modemarken. Amazon Warehouse Reduzierte B-Ware. Amazon Business Kauf auf Rechnung. - Wikipedia Crete Cretan Resistance. On the night of 26 April, Kreipe's car was ambushed while en route from his residence to the Divisional H. Kreipe was tied and forced into the back seat while Leigh Fermor and Moss impersonated him and his driver respectively. Kreipe's notorious impatience at roadblocks enabled the car to successfully pass numerous checkpoints before being abandoned at the hamlet of Heliana. The abductors continued on foot, continuing to Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete thousands of Axis soldiers sent to stop them, with the help of guides from the local resistance. On 14 May, the team was picked up by a British motorboat from the Rodakino beach and safely transported to British-held Egypt. The success of the operation was put into question several months after its conclusion. The outcome came to be seen as a symbolic propaganda victory rather than a strategic one. The operation entered popular imagination through the biographical works of several of its participants, most notably Moss's book Ill Met by Moonlight. On 6 April, launched an invasion of its own from Bulgaria known as Operation Maritareaching Greece's southern shore on 30 April and ending the with a decisive victory. The island was in turn attacked by a massive Nazi airborne invasion on 20 May The Germans occupied the western three prefectures of the island with their headquarters in Chaniawhilst the Italians occupied the easternmost prefecture of Lasithi. They assisted Allied soldiers stranded on the island evade capture and helped them escape to the British controlled Middle East. Supplied with wireless sets and augmented by SOE stay behind operatives, they began co-ordinating their actions with the Allied command. None of these plans were carried out. The SOE planned to kidnap him while keeping the use of violence at a minimum and transport him to Egypt, thus giving a morale boost to the Cretans. In late ,Leigh Fermor and Moss formed a squad with two Cretan resistance members, Georgios Tyrakis and Emmanouil Paterakis, who were to accompany them in their mission. After undergoing training in Palestine and facing numerous delays the team flew to the headquarters of the British 8th Army [11] in Bari on 4 January Leigh Fermor was the only one be airdropped at the Katharo plateau, due to a sudden weather change that caused the area to be obscured by clouds. The team moved to a cave system in the mountains above Kastamonitsa village, the hideout of a local rebel band. Mikis' house was conveniently located across the road from Kreipe's residence, the Villa Ariadnein the village of Knossos. After traveling by bus with Mikis, he reconnoitered the area surrounding the villa. Surrounded by a triple wire barrier one of which was rumoured to be electrified and guarded by a sizeable garrison, it was deemed too dangerous to attempt a kidnapping directly. The decision was taken to seize Kreipe during one of his frequent trips from Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete residence to the divisional H. Upon surveying the route, they discovered a T-junction where the road from Archanes joined the main road to Heraklionforcing cars to slow down to almost a standstill, the location was subsequently named Point A. Pavlos Zografistos, the owner of a small vineyard cottage outside Skalani elsome twenty minutes from the abduction point, agreed to collaborate, turning the building into an observation point. Mikis supplied the team with two Feldgendarmerie Corporal summer uniforms, complete with campaign badges, side arms and a traffic policeman's stick. Shortly before the abduction was to take place, the team received a letter from a local commander of the pro-communist Greek People's Liberation Army ELASwho threatened to betray them to the authorities if they did not vacate the area. Leigh Fermor replied with an ambiguously written note and the ELAS commander did not carry out his threat. The operation was postponed for several days as the general did not leave his residence. On the night of 26 AprilLeigh Fermor and Moss received a signal that Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete general had got into his car. Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete into the German uniforms, they followed Saviolakis to Point A. Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete Fermor and Moss hid in a ditch 1 yard 0. Further to the west Zoidakis, the Papaleonidas brothers, Tyrakis and Komis lay in wait. Leigh Fermor and Moss blocked the road, and as the car came closer Moss waved his policeman's stick and shouted "Halt! When the car came to a halt, Leigh Fermor Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete and requested that identity papers be shown. As Kreipe reached for his pocket, Leigh Fermor jacked the door open, shouting "Hands up! The rest of the team sprung up and surrounded the car. A brief struggle ensued, which ended when Paterakis tied Kreipe and Moss struck the driver on the head with his coshknocking him unconscious. Moss took up the driver's seat and Leigh Fermor wore the general's hat impersonating him, with the general, Saviolakis, Tyrakis and Paterakis in the backseat, driving off to . The rest cleared the spot of signs of struggle and also headed to Heraklion with the driver. The car passed through 22 checkpoints in Heraklion, coming into the road to Rethymno and stopping outside a steep mountain track leading to . To prevent reprisals, he left a note claiming that British special forces had conducted the operation without any local support, and scattered incriminating evidence such as British cigarette ends, an Agatha Christie book and a military beret. The team then ascended to Anogeia, where they rested for a few hours. Late in the afternoon of 27 April, a German reconnaissance plane dropped leaflets unto the village threatening reprisals if the general was not returned within three days. The breakdown of their wireless station meant that all communication had to be conducted by runners, hindering the evacuation. The next day, the team was informed that the Cretans had resorted to killing Kreipe's driver as he was too stunned to walk at the necessary pace for the rebels to avoid capture. The team continued its ascent on Ida, where they stayed with the band of Georgios Petrakis. As the team continued their journey through Ida's snow-covered slopes to the Amari ValleyCrete's garrison of over 30, men had been placed on alert and Axis troops began to assemble around the mountain range in an attempt to block their escape. Moreover, Kreipe's aide-de-camp and guards were arrested on suspicion of complicity. The arrival of a runner enabled the team to request that a boat be sent to Saktouria on 2 May. Moss and Leigh Fermor set off to the Amari valley in search of a wireless station. On 5 May, they reached the village of Pantanassa where they were able to send and receive letters once again. In the meantime, the rest of the party evaded a German patrol by relocating to Patsos, Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete two hours away Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete Pantanassa. The two groups reunited at the hamlet of Karines and advanced to Fotinou and then Vilandredo. A torn girth on the mule Kreipe rode resulted in an accident that damaged his hand. Once a man German column came to Argygoupoli just an hour's distance from Vilandredo, Dennis Ciclitira and a band of ELAS fighters assisted the team in their cat and mouse game with their pursuers. The awards were gazetted on 13 July However the wisdom behind the abduction came into question as Kreipe was hardly a Nazi zealot, and with the Normandy landings being already anticipated he had no reason not to be cooperative with his captors. Despite his position he possessed very little information and by the time of his capture Crete had lost what little strategic importance it had in the course of the war. On 7 AugustFeldwebel Josef Olenhauer known to the locals as Sifis and five men from the German garrison based in Yeni Gave went up to the village of Anogeia in search of forced labour workers. The villagers had expected the round-up and most of the men had hid in the mountains to avoid being drafted. The infuriated Olenhauer ordered his men to round up whoever they encountered, be it women, children or old men and marched them towards Rethymno. Shortly after exiting the village the column was ambushed by ELAS guerrillas, who freed the hostages and detained Olehauer and two of his soldiers, while two others managed to escape. The prisoners were taken to Idi and later killed, when the Germans refused to exchange them for a large number of detainees from the Agia prison. Moss, who had by that time returned to Crete and was present in the area, decided to team up with Michael Xylouris' band to ambush an incoming punitive expedition consisting of an armoured vehicle and a truckload of soldiers. The Damasta sabotage resulted in the death of 30 Germans, 12 of whom were murdered after surrendering. The inhabitants of Anogeia had been actively involved in, and given refuge to, the Cretan resistance for many years, had killed Olenhauer and the garrison from Yeni Gave, and had also provided shelter to the Kreipe abduction team. His order of the day to destroy Anogeia was specific and retrospective, confirming British fears of large-scale reprisals. At Zarko 35 out of the 42 men inhabiting the village were shot for their alleged participation in the assassination of the publisher of the collaborationist newspaper Kritikos Kiryx Cretan Herald. In the following days the operation expanded to other villages, men were executed, houses were looted and then burned or dynamited regardless of their involvement in resistance activities. Harvest and livestock were confiscated for use by the German troops. Local resistance bands could do nothing but watch, being vastly outnumbered. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Redirected from Kidnap of General Kreipe. . The London Gazette Supplement. British Film Institute. Retrieved Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete October Cooper, Artemis Cairo in the War, — London: Hamish Hamilton. New York: Oxford University Press. Kiriakopoulos, G. The Nazi Occupation of Crete, — Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood. : Livani. London: John Murray. Ill Met by Moonlight. London: Orion. Ogden, Alan London: Bene Factum. Modern and Contemporary . Thessaloniki: Papazissis. Retrieved 8 May London: Bloomsbury Paperbacks. Greece during World War II. Occupation and collaboration. Georgios Tsolakoglou K. Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Although a story often told, this Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete the first time Patrick Leigh Fermor's own account of the kidnapping of General Kriepe, has been published. One of the greatest feats in Patrick Leigh Fermor's remarkable life was the kidnapping of General Kreipe, the German commander in Crete, on 26 April He and Captain Billy Moss hatched a daring plan to abduct the general, while ensuring that no reprisals were taken against the Cretan population. Dressed as German military police, they stopped and took control of Kreipe's car, drove through twenty-two German checkpoints, then succeeded in hiding from the German army before finally being picked up on a beach in the south of the island Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete transported to safety in Egypt on 14 May. Abducting a General is Leigh Fermor's own account of the kidnap, published for the first time. Written in his inimitable prose, and introduced by acclaimed Special Operations Executive historian Roderick Bailey, it is a glorious first-hand account of one of the great adventures of the Second World War. Also included in this book are Leigh Fermor's intelligence reports, sent from caves deep within Crete yet still retaining his remarkable prose skills, which bring the immediacy of SOE operations vividly alive, as well as the peril which the SOE and Resistance were operating under; and a guide to the journey that Kreipe was taken on, as seen in the film Ill Met by Moonlight starring Dirk Bogarde, from the abandonment of his car to the embarkation site so that the modern visitor can relive this extraordinary event. Read more Read less. Customers who bought this item also bought. Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1. Previous page. Patrick Leigh Fermor. Kindle Edition. Ill Met By Moonlight. Stanley Moss. Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese. Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure. Artemis Cooper. Next page. Review It takes some chutzpah to kidnap a German general - and serious presence of mind to get away with it. Paddy, the Special Operations Executive commander of a group of 11 Cretan andartes, or guerrilla fighters, together with his second-in-command Captain William Stanley Moss, had excessive stores of both. Abducting a General. Fermor's love of Crete and scholarly knowledge of the Classics exude from the pages - The Times As a pure adventure story. Leigh Fermor's many fans will find plenty of the old master's fizz in this resurrected work. It takes some chutzpah to kidnap a German general - and serious presence of mind to get away with it. Patrick Leigh Fermor was the greatest travel writer of our generation. Following his walk across Europe, he Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete and travelled Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete the Balkans and Greek Archipelago. He joined the Irish Guards and during the occupation of Crete led the party that captured the German commander. Towards the end of his life he wrote the first two books about his early trans-European odyssey, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water. He planned a third, unfinished at the time of his death inwhich has since been edited by Colin Thubron and Artemis Cooper and Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete as The Broken Road. Read more. What other items do customers buy after viewing this item? Customer reviews. How are ratings calculated? Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyses reviews to verify trustworthiness. Review this product Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. Top reviews Most recent Top reviews. Top review from Australia. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Verified Purchase. See all reviews. Top reviews from other countries. This is a bit like the Dirk Bogarde film, interesting but with little tension that would have been far more interesting. If this was a novel it would not be worth more than a couple of stars. As a description of a real life situation, it earns an extra star but the publishers had to fill in. That's not to denigrate the author who was a soldier and adventurer and not a writer. Report abuse. PLF was a famous author in his own right, and I think he was pressurised into writing his side of the abduction, but in facts there is no difference to the Moss account, except PLF places more appreciation on the role of the Cretan Partisan support. One person found this helpful. Patrick Leigh Fermor and his SOE colleagues were, without doubt, brave and resourceful men who lived under the continual threat of betrayal and capture. The book reads like a report to his headquarters and in fact the second half is just that, being descriptions of his activities with the Cretan resistance. Only the first half of the book is about the kidnapping of the General. Warmly commended. Perhaps I should re-read Ill Met by Moonlight to see how the two accounts differ. Fermor was one of our greatest travel writers. Anducting a German general and moving him over the rugged mountains to the south coast for evacuation to Cairo was a master-stroke. The story also reveals the hardiness and heroism of the Cretan freedom fighters. Back to top. Get to Know Us. Length: pages. Word Wise: Enabled. Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled. Page Flip: Enabled. Language: English.