Abducting a General: The Kreipe Operation in Crete

by Patrick Leigh Fermor, Roderick Bailey (Foreword by)

Overview

One of the most daring feats in Patrick Leigh Fermor’s daring life was the kidnapping of General Kreipe, the German commander in Crete, on April 26, 1944.

Abducting a General, now published for the first time in the United States, is Leigh Fermor’s own account of the kidnapping. Written in his inimitable prose, and introduced by the acclaimed Special Operations Executive historian Roderick Bailey, it is a glorious firsthand 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, which bring the immediacy of SOE operations vividly alive, as well as the peril under which the SOE and Resistance were operating, and a guide to the journey that Kreipe took, from the abandonment of his car to the embarkation site, so that the modern visitor to Crete can relive this extraordinary trip.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590179390
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	11/03/2015
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	15 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915–2011) was an intrepid traveler and a heroic soldier who is widely considered to be one of the finest travel writers of the twentieth century. After his stormy school days, followed by the walk across Europe to Constantinople that begins in A Time of Gifts (1977) and continues through Between the Woods and the Water (1986) and The Broken Road (published posthumously in 2013), he lived and traveled in the Balkans and the Greek archipelago. His books A Time to Keep Silence (1957), Mani (1958), and Roumeli (1966) attest to his deep interest in languages and remote places. In the Second World War he joined the Irish Guards, became a liaison officer in Albania, and fought in Greece and Crete. He was awarded the DSO and OBE. Leigh Fermor lived partly in Greece—in the house he designed with his wife, Joan, in an olive grove in the Mani—and partly in Worcestershire. In 2004 he was knighted for his services to literature and to British–Greek relations. Artemis Cooper’s biography, Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure, was published by New York Review Books in 2013.

Roderick Bailey is a historian of irregular warfare and a specialist in the study of Britain’s Special Operations Executive. His books include Target: Italy—The Secret War Against Mussolini. A graduate of Cambridge and Edinburgh universities, he has also served in Afghanistan with the British army. He is currently a Wellcome Trust research fellow at Oxford University.

Editorial Reviews

[Fermor’s] talents certainly are evident in this colorfully rendered tale…Fermor loved adventure, and he recounts this one with heady enthusiasm.” —Kirkus Reviews

"Paddy (as he is known to nearly one and all) left us three years ago, but since then he has been commemorated by majestic obituaries everywhere, a magnificent biography, a reconstructed final volume of his own masterpiece of travel writing, an eager book of travel that follows in his footsteps and a website largely dedicated to his memory. Now we have a book that specifically commemorates him not as an adolescent adventurer, or as a scholar-linguist, or as a gypsy- wanderer, or as a legendary hero, or even as the wonderful writer that he ultimately became, but as a soldier. Not so much as a regimental soldier but as a born guerrilla." —Jan Morris, Literary 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 is the work of a mature man, anxious to pay proper tribute to the Cretans who were the backbone of the resistance and ran by far the greatest risks. His SOE reports, which run to 90 pages here, provide gripping cinematic portraits of
Leigh Fermor the soldier." —The Spectator

From the Publisher

2015-09-03
The great travel writer recalls a daring mission during World War II. In 1944, working as a British intelligence officer in Crete, Fermor (1915-2011) conceived a plan to kidnap a German general and spirit him away to Egypt for trial as a war criminal. The escapade, he was convinced, would demoralize the Nazi occupiers and raise the spirits of Crete's resistance fighters. Fermor set his sights on Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller, "The Butcher of Crete," but when Müller was transferred, he chose Heinrich Kreipe, a career soldier who, the author later discovered, was so disliked that the kidnapping was celebrated with champagne in the officers' mess. The adventure was first chronicled by Fermor's comrade Billy Moss, whose account, published in 1950, later was made into a movie. More than 15 years later, Fermor decided to write his own version, drawing on war reports he sent to the Special Operations Executive headquarters. Excerpts (comprising about a third of the reports) append the text, as does a guide to the abduction route for military history fans who want to put on sturdy walking boots and follow the rough terrain. By 1966, Fermor was a much-published and praised writer, and his talents certainly are evident in this colorfully rendered tale. The actual kidnapping took little more than a minute, during which the perpetrators stopped the general's vehicle, pulled the officer out roughly, bound and manacled him, knocked out his driver, and erupted in a "delirious excess of cheers, hugs, slaps on the back." Transporting their quarry across the island to the sea was more arduous and perilous, involving trekking across snow-covered mountains, hiding in caves, and eluding the enemy. Military historian Roderick Bailey (Target: Italy: The Secret War against Mussolini, 2014, etc.), who provides the foreword, reports coolly that the kidnapping was unnecessary: German morale was already low, and the war had turned in the Allies' favor. Though the kidnapping may have been unnecessary, Fermor loved adventure, and he recounts this one with heady enthusiasm.

Kirkus Reviews