Blücher, Wolfgang Henner Peter Lebrech Graf von.

Blücher, Wolfgang, born on 31-01-1917 in Altengotten, Thüringen, to Gertrud (Freiin Marschall) von Nordheim (widowed Gräfin von Blücher), and direct family of the famous Prussian General, was a Oberleutnant of the 1st Fallschirm Regiment . Commander of the Crete operation was General der Flieger, Kommandeur der 1^st Fallschirmjäger Regiment, Kurt Student.

    Wolfgang was fighting near the airfield of Heraklion and in the afternoon killed in an attack by British tanks. He was one of three brothers Blücher who were killed during the Battle of Crete, all three of them on 21-05-1941. 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 20-05-1941, when Nazi Germany launched an airborne 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 paratroopres, Adolf Hitler (see Hitler parents),

  forbade further large scale airborne operations. The Battle for Crete was one of the most dramatic battles of the Second World War. Over 12 days in May 1941 a mixed force of New Zealanders, British, Australian and Greek troops desperately tried to fight off a huge German airborne assault. Despite suffering appalling casualties, the parachutists and glider-borne troops who led the invasion managed to secure a foothold on the island and eventually gained the upper hand. The battle ended with the evacuation to Egypt of the bulk of the Allied force. Casualties for the British and Commonwealth numbered 4,000 dead, 2,000 wounded, and 11,300 captured out of 47,500 troops involved in the battle; the Allied forces also suffered 9 ships sunk and 18 damaged. German casualties numbered 7,000 out of 22,000 troops. 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,  Wolfgang and Hans had a field grave, but reburied,

  next to each other, on the war cemetery in Maleme, Crete. The commander of the 9^th Fallschirmjäger Division on Crete, Generalmajor der Fallschirmjäger, Bruno Bräuer

  Kommandeur der 9^th Infantry Division on Crete, executed on 20-05-1947, is buried on Maleme cemetery too.

Four weeks after the battle the brothers’ mother, Gertrud (Freiin Marschall) von Nordheim (widowed Gräfin von Blücher), who had lost her husband in 1924, was informed that three of her four sons had been killed on the same day in the Battle of Crete. Her fourth son, Adolf Graf von Blücher, was released from duty and left the German navy (Kriegsmarine) to take care of the agricultural firm at home. Adolf was accidentally shot and killed in 1944 while hunting.

In 1974, Wolfgang and Hans-Joachim were re-interred in a single grave at the German War Cemetery on a hill behind the airfield at Maleme, Crete, which was newly inaugurated on 6 October in the presence of their sister Gertrud Freifrau von Ketelhodt and hundreds of guests from Germany. Because Leberecht’s body was never retrieved or identified, his name is on a plaque of honor (German: Ehrentafel) for the unknown fallen close to the grave of his brothers. The sister named her sons after her brothers.

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