*The German Fallschrimjaeger (Paratroop) forces were the first organized parachute troops to be actually employed in warfare. In brilliant lightning-fast strikes, these elite troops captured the 'impregnable' Belgian Eben Emal fort as well as the massive concrete blockhouses on the vaunted French Maginot line. And in Hitler's invasion of Holland, they seized the bridges over the Scheldt and Zider Zee rivers. When the British came to the rescue of the Greeks, the Germans launched their Blitz into the Balkans. The Commonwealth forces fell back to the Aegean island of Crete. Luftwaffe commander Goering convinced Hitler that his Fallschirmjaegers could mop up the British. But the beleaguered Brits, even though they eventually lost Crete, so mauled the cream of The Fuhrer's Fallschrimjaeger forces that Hitler never employed them as paratroopers again. *Source: necpress.com