Blücher, Hans Joachim Graf von

Blücher, Hans Joachim Graf von, born on 23-10-1923 in Fincken, Mecklenburg, was a Jäger des Fallschirmjäger Regiment 1, under General der Flieger, Kurt Student

   . He admired his brother Wolfgang and was the reason for him to join the Fallschirm Jäger as well, at the age of 17, against his mother’s wish. He was one of three brothers who were killed during the Battle of Crete, Operation Mercury, all three of them on 21-05-1941. It was the first battle jump of Hans and he was killed shortly after in a field battle, near Heraklion. The von Blücher brothers were direct descendants of the Prussian General Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher  , who commanded the Prussian army in its campaign in the Napoleonic war, in 1815. The Battle of Crete was a battle during World War II on the Greek Island of Crete.

It began on the morning of 20 May 1941, when Nazi Germany launched an airborne division invasion of Crete under the code-name “Unternehmen Merkur”, “Operation Mercury”. Greek and Allied Forces, along with Cretan civilians, defended the island. In light of the heavy casualties suffered by the paratroopers, Adolf  Hitler forbade further large scale airborne operations. However, the Allies were impressed by the potential of paratroopers and started to build their own airborne divisions. This was the first battle where the Fallschirmjäger (“parachute rangers”) were used on a massive scale. The third brother Lebrecht was missed in action and never found, so only two brothers, Hans and Wolfgang

  have a grave, next to each other on the war cemetery in Maleme, Crete. The commander of the 9^th Fallschirmjäger Division   Generalmajor, Bruno Bräuer   executed on 20-05-1947, is buried on Maleme cemetery too. By the 19 April, the remnants of the 9^th Division along with what remained of the rest of the LVI Panzer Corps, under General der Artillerie Hellmut Weidling   were within the Berlin U-Bahn outer defensive ring. During the attempted breakout on the night of 1/2 May a small group of the 9^th Division stormed the tower of Spandau Rathaus, Town Hall, from which Soviet machine-gunners were decimating Germans attempting to break out of Berlin over the Havel using the Charlottenbrücke , Charlotten Bridge. During the Battle of Berlin, the Charlottenbrücke was one of the last remaining bridges in German controle and was defended by elements of the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth). On 1 May 1945, the German army and many cititzens succeeded to retreat from the centre by crossing this bridge under heavy shelling from the Soviet 47th Army. Heinrich Himmler’s brother (Erwin Himmler) was killed in action during this breakthrough. By the end of 2 May the 9^th Parachute Division had ceased to exist. Hellmut Weidling died in Soviet captivity age 64, on 17-11-1955, in Vladimir prison.