On April 6, 1941, Nazi Germany invaded Greece under the codename Operation Marita. Adolf Hitler viewed the country as a potential threat to the southern flank of his planned invasion of the Soviet Union and wanted to secure vital supply routes for German forces in the Balkans.
Within weeks, Axis forces occupied Greece and divided the country into German, Italian, and Bulgarian occupation zones. As resistance against the occupiers grew, the Germans responded with increasingly harsh measures. Entire communities suffered under Nazi rule, and countless innocent men, women, and children became victims of the occupation.
One of the men responsible for carrying out this campaign was a German army officer who led one of the most feared collaborationist units in occupied Greece. His name was Friedrich Schubert.
Friedrich Fritz Schubert was born on February 21, 1897, in Dortmund, then part of the German Empire. During World War I, which lasted from July 1914 to November 1918, Schubert served in the German Imperial Army.
He is said to have fought in the Ottoman Empire, where he claimed to have received the "Star of the Crescent," an Ottoman military medal he reportedly wore with pride for the rest of his life. After the war, he is believed to have returned to Dortmund, where he worked as a machine technician before moving to Turkey during the 1920s.
In 1925, Schubert married an Italian woman, and the couple later settled in Alexandria, Egypt, where they lived for about 15 years. On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, and in January of the following year, Schubert became a member of the Nazi Party.
World War II began on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. The early stages of the war saw rapid German advances across Europe, with the fall of Poland, the invasion of France, and the evacuation of British forces from Dunkirk in 1940.
After the successful campaign in France, Hitler turned his attention toward the Soviet Union. Before he could launch Operation Barbarossa, Hitler first had to secure Germany's southern flank. On April 6, 1941, the Nazis invaded Greece.
The German Twelfth Army, led by armored divisions, quickly crushed Greek and British Commonwealth forces. Key positions such as Thessaloniki fell rapidly, while German airborne troops played a crucial role in securing strategic locations.
By April 27, 1941, Athens had fallen and mainland Greece was under Axis control. After the fall of Athens, Greek soldiers and Allied forces withdrew to the island of Crete and other nearby territories.
The invasion of Crete began in May 1941 with Operation Mercury, the first major airborne invasion in military history. Despite fierce resistance from Allied forces and Cretan residents, the superior firepower and tactics of 22,000 German paratroopers eventually secured control of the island.
Friedrich Schubert, who had returned to Germany after the outbreak of World War II, first appeared on Crete in the summer of 1941 as a military interpreter for a local German military command in the city of Chania. He served under the command of Alexander Andrae, the aviation general and commander of occupied Crete.
Schubert spoke Greek, Turkish, Italian, and Arabic, making him particularly useful to the German occupation authorities. Around August 1941, he was transferred to the regional command in the city of Rethymno.
Later that autumn, he was transferred again, this time to the city of Heraklion, where he served in German military counterintelligence under the command of Major Hartmann. Because Schubert spoke Greek with a strong Turkish accent, local residents nicknamed him "the Turk."
Major Hartmann established an armed collaborationist group made up mainly of Nazi-loyal Cretans from the village of Krousonas. After taking command in June 1942, Schubert expanded the unit by recruiting additional collaborators and convicted Greek criminals, turning it into a force loyal to him personally.
In April 1943, Schubert was transferred to the German Field Military Police, the military police of the German Army, in Chania. As tensions between Schubert and Hartmann escalated, Hartmann ordered Schubert imprisoned.
But Lieutenant General Bruno Bräuer, commander of occupied Crete, intervened quickly and ordered his release. Afterward, Bräuer granted Schubert, who then held the rank of Oberfeldwebel, a senior non-commissioned officer rank in the German Army, almost unlimited authority to suppress resistance without being held accountable for his methods.
In September 1943, his unit was officially established under the name Jagdkommando Schubert, an anti-communist militia tasked with hunting down resistance fighters and those accused of supporting them. Their reign of terror soon intensified.
Ordinary members of the unit wore captured Italian uniforms, while officers continued to wear Wehrmacht uniforms. They became known among Cretan residents as "Schuberei," and their members as "Schuberites."
They gained a notorious reputation for sadistic attacks against civilians, including beatings, torture, field executions, and the destruction of entire villages. To this day, the word "Schuberite" remains a severe insult on the island of Crete and a synonym for betrayal and cruelty.
The brutality of the Schuberei soon provoked a massive backlash. Local resistance fighters and British special operations agents, responsible for supporting resistance movements in occupied Europe, were determined to eliminate Schubert and his men at any cost.
As attacks against the unit increased, the Schuberei gradually lost its effectiveness, as it could no longer operate away from its base without protection from large Wehrmacht escort forces. German officers stationed on Crete were also believed to be angered, because Schubert's methods were considered excessively harsh even by Nazi standards.
One of the most infamous examples of this brutality occurred in the mountain village of Kaly Sykia in October 1943. Just two days earlier, a rebel group led by Manolis Bandouvas had ambushed and destroyed a German detachment near their hideout, after receiving food and supplies from the villagers.
In response, Lieutenant General Bruno Bräuer ordered a brutal retaliatory operation. On October 6, Schubert and his forces surrounded the village of Kaly Sykia and gathered everyone they found for interrogation.
By that time, most of the village's men had already fled to the surrounding mountains out of fear of German reprisals. Only women, children, and a few elderly people remained.
Schubert's men immediately began setting fire to several houses while beating the women and threatening to kill them, demanding to know where their husbands and sons were hiding. Despite the violence, none of the women revealed any information.
In a fit of rage, the Schuberites dragged many of them into nearby houses, locked the doors, and deliberately set the buildings on fire. Trapped inside, the women were burned alive.
In total, 12 women were killed that day, eight from Kaly Sykia and four from the neighboring village of Rodakino. One of the victims was eight months pregnant. An elderly man who was unable to leave his home was also burned inside the building.
Although much larger massacres occurred elsewhere in occupied Greece, the killings at Kaly Sykia were unique because the victims were almost exclusively women. But the Schuberei did not stop there.
On October 8, 1943, Schubert and his men moved west to the neighboring village of Koxare. Strong Wehrmacht forces surrounded the village from several directions, while the Schuberei entered with them.
Residents were pulled from their homes and led toward the village church under threat of arms. Some men who refused German orders were executed outside their homes in front of their families. Others were taken to an abandoned house in the northern part of the village, where they were executed en masse.
By the end of the operation, about 30 civilians had been killed. Like Kaly Sykia, Koxare was destroyed as a deliberate collective punishment, not for military necessity.
During the following months, Schubert's unit carried out similar operations in many other villages across Crete, spreading terror throughout the island. Entire communities fled whenever rumors spread that the Schuberei were approaching.
One survivor later summarized Schubert's reign of terror with these words: "If there were 10 Schuberts, no Greek would be left today."
In January 1944, Bruno Bräuer ordered Schubert to leave Crete. The men under his command were given the choice of staying on the island or following him to Macedonia in northern Greece. About half chose to continue serving under Schubert, joining the "Boulos Verband," a collaborationist battalion led by Lieutenant Colonel Georgios Boulos.
Their methods did not change much. Villagers suspected of supporting the resistance continued to face collective punishment. On September 2, 1944, Schubert's unit took part in the Hortiatis massacre, during which 149 civilians were killed, most of them women and children.
Dozens were burned alive after being locked inside buildings, while others were shot or stabbed as they tried to flee. Less than two weeks later, Schubert's men participated in another retaliatory operation in the town of Giannitsa, where more than 100 civilians were executed.
These massacres became among the bloodiest crimes committed by Schubert and his followers during the occupation of northern Greece. When German forces withdrew from Greece in October 1944, Schubert retreated through Yugoslavia with about 70 of his followers before eventually reaching Austria.
There, he tried to avoid arrest by assuming a false identity as Konstantinos Konstantinidis and pretending to be a displaced Greek civilian accompanied by his mistress. Nearly four months after the end of World War II in Europe, on September 5, 1945, he boarded a plane in Munich carrying former concentration camp prisoners returning to Greece, hoping to blend in among the survivors.
The ruse did not last long. After the plane landed at the Elefsina military airport near Athens, Greek police questioned Schubert. His vague and contradictory answers immediately raised suspicion, and he was detained.
During the investigation, several witnesses identified him as the notorious commander of the Schuberei. He was arrested and brought before the special war criminals court in the Greek capital.
On August 5, 1947, the court convicted Friedrich Schubert of murdering 271 civilians, along with numerous other crimes including rape, arson, looting of wartime property, theft, and the cold-blooded killing of women and children. He was sentenced to death 27 times, in addition to prison terms totaling several thousand years.
Friedrich Fritz Schubert was 50 years old when he was executed by firing squad at the Eptapyrgio prison in Thessaloniki on October 22, 1947. As he stood before the firing squad, he remained loyal to Nazi ideology to the end. His last words were: "Long live Germany, may she never die. I hope she becomes great again so she can compensate for all she suffers today."
Bruno Bräuer, who had been promoted in June 1944 to the rank of general in the paratrooper forces, also faced accountability after the war. As commander of occupied Crete, he had intervened to secure Schubert's release and later granted him almost unlimited authority to suppress resistance. Bräuer was handed over to Greece, convicted of war crimes, and executed in Athens on May 20, 1947.
Georgios Boulos, Schubert's comrade in the Boulos Verband, also tried to evade accountability but met no better fate. As German forces withdrew from Greece, he fled with his men through Yugoslavia to Austria, where the U.S. Seventh Army eventually arrested him, and he was later handed over to Greece. He was convicted of treason and collaboration with the German occupation authorities before being executed in Athens on June 11, 1949.
In the end, Schubert, Bräuer, and Boulos all faced accountability for their roles during the occupation.