Photograph of some of the 22,000 German paratroopers that landed on Crete in 1941. The Battle of Crete was the first time the Germans encountered mass civilian resistance. Then-21-year-old shepherd and Cretan hero George Psychoundakis recalled: “Everyone—men and women, great and small—ran to the nearest scene of action to attack the enemy, armed as they were.” One tale recounts a priest running to battle armed with a hatchet in each hand. Though the Germans took the island, the wholesale Cretan civilian resistance stunned them, and the level of casualties to their airborne paratrooper force meant this was the first and last time such an invasion method would be attempted.