The daring, courage and skill of the highly-trained men who spearheaded German assaults in the blitzkrieg of 1940, dropping from the air to seize and overwhelm key invasion points, showed to an alarmed world that a new dimension had been added to the science of warfare. The German paratroopers� most spectacular success was the invasion and capture of Crete in May 1941. For the rest of the war the parachute troops were used almost exclusively in a ground role, but they remained an elite, justifying again and again their great reputation for courage and hard fighting in Russia, North Africa and Italy. James Lucas, well-known as a military historian, has researched deep into Allied and German archives and interviewed many of the leading members of the Fallschirmjaeger units and formations who survived the war. This resulting book is a fascinating and dramatic account of the elite German airborne forces of the Second World War