The nearly indestructible Achilles had his loyal friend Patroclus. Odysseus fought his greatest battle with two loyal herdsmen by his side. Even Superman, who wasn’t human at all, kept Jimmy Olsen hanging around. Hercules had his twin brother and adoring nephew, and when things were darkest, his best bud, Theseus, was always there. And of course, brainy boy detective Encyclopedia Brown had two-fisted Sally Kimball. A sidekick is a hero’s way of looking into his soul, of drawing strength from his weakest side, not his strongest. He has to remember that even though he shares the blood of a god, he’s still human at heart. He’s not a Titan who will swallow a baby to get out of a jam, or a god who will never die. He has one shot at immortality, and it’s in the memories and stories of the grateful and inspired.
He has to care so much for what’s human, it brings out what’s godly.
You can hope an impulse or “noble nature” will spontaneously create those kinds of heroic skills. Or you can follow the lead of the Spartans, who went right to the source: Crete. Sparta’s founding father, Lycurgus, traveled to the island to soak up ideas and was so impressed he smuggled a Cretan back with him in disguise, pretending he was a poet while secretly relying on him as Sparta’s most influential law-maker. Sparta’s social code “is, in a very great measure, a copy of the Cretan,” Aristotle points out in Politics, and its defining spirit would become the foundation of both Greek theology and Western democracy: the notion that ordinary citizens should always be ready for extraordinary action.
The Greek myths are really the same performance parable, over and over; they’re showcases for underdogs using the art of the hero to deal with danger. Need to tame a savage bull? Wait for it to take a drink, then wrestle it down by the horns. Ordered to clean a toxic stable? Flood it. Up against a giant man-bull, a three-headed hellhound, or a lion with an impenetrable pelt? Get behind them and choke ’em out. These techniques weren’t just mythical make-believe; some were so spot-on, they’re still used today in the Greek fighting art of pankration. If you’re ever up against a guy who can tear your head off, take a lesson from Odysseus: “Odysseus knew a trick or two,” Homer notes in the Iliad. “He kicked Ajax hard in the back of his knee and toppled him backwards, falling on his chest.”
Because the way the Greeks looked at it, you have a choice: you can either hope a Norina Bentzel comes to the rescue when your kids are in danger, or you can guarantee it. Daredevils aren’t the answer; spinal rehab wards are full of daredevils. Fearlessness doesn’t really help, either: when your car breaks down, you don’t want the mechanic to say, “I’ve never done this before, but I’m willing to die trying.” What you want to hear is “Don’t worry. This is right up my alley.” Heroism isn’t some mysterious inner virtue, the Greeks believed; it’s a collection of skills that every man and woman can master so that in a pinch, they can become a Protector.
And for a long time, they were great at it. For centuries, the art of the hero thrived. But as the Greek empire faded, so did its influence, closing in on itself and disappearing….
Until the last place the art of the hero remained intact was the wild mountains of Crete, where a band of British Army rejects arrived during World War II for a crash course in wisdom from the past.
CHAPTER 6
Until now, we would say that the Greeks fight like heroes. From now on, we will say that heroes fight like Greeks.
—WINSTON CHURCHILL, 1941
SECRETLY, HITLER was dealing with a problem of his own. He was about to risk everything on Operation Barbarossa, his master plan to conquer the Soviet Union. If he miscalculated, Germany was doomed. But if Hitler played it right and brought the Russian Bear to its knees, no power on earth could defy him.
Once Germany grabbed control of Russia’s oil fields, plus all those Soviet farms, tanks, and Red Army soldiers, the Third Reich would have the biggest, fastest, best-equipped fighting force the world had ever seen. Ponder that, America. Franklin D. Roosevelt would have to gulp hard before coming to Britain’s aid. Hitler didn’t necessarily intend to invade the United States—he’d be content for the present with all of continental Europe—but if pushed, he could make life in the United States very ugly, very fast. South American friends were standing by; Brazil and Argentina were already pro-fascist, and bringing Mexico on board was just a matter of promising the return of California, New Mexico, and Arizona and the easing of America’s economic bootheel. The Imperial Japanese Navy and German U-boats would strangle American shipping, while Germany’s long-range Amerika Bombers, still in demo but coming along nicely, could unload a firestorm on Washington, D.C., and make it all the way back to Munich without refueling.
But Hitler had to move fast. Russia, as Napoleon learned the hard way, is a mousetrap that opens only briefly each summer before snapping shut on your neck. In 1812, Napoleon marched into Russia with nearly a half-million soldiers and most of Europe under his command; he came home with ten thousand skeletal survivors and soon lost his own country. Russia is too vast, too cold, and too populated with fighting men to risk the slightest miscalculation. If you’re lucky, you have a four-month window: you have to get in as soon as the snows thaw in early spring, and be in control before rasputitsa, autumn’s quagmire season. Once the rasputitsa rains start falling, Russian roads dissolve into wheel-sucking mud swamps. Bullets didn’t defeat Napoleon; he was doomed the moment the mousetrap snapped and his foundering soldiers began dying from frostbite, exhaustion, and starvation.
Hitler knew the risks but liked his odds. Germany had the best army in Europe, while Stalin had done a spectacular job of turning the Red Army into possibly the worst. Stalin was always fretting that any general good enough to defend the country was also good enough to seize it, so he kept executing the best Russian officers and replacing them with lackeys. The troops under their command were often poor peasants who’d never touched a rifle in their lives. Field weapons were scarce and outdated, and the units lucky enough to have functioning artillery lacked enough shells for target practice.
So on November 13, late at night and all alone, Hitler made his decision. It was time to become invincible. It stung him that England was still standing after four months of hellacious bombing, but no matter; he could circle back later for the kill. “The German armed forces must be prepared, even before the end of the war against England, to overthrow the Soviet Union in a rapid campaign,” Hitler told his generals. He chose the name Barbarossa—“Red Beard”—after the swashbuckling German emperor of the twelfth century who, legend had it, was still asleep in a Bavarian cave, attended by ravens and awaiting the call to restore Germany to its ancestral glory.
Barbarossa would be unleashed, Hitler decided, on May 15, 1941. By Christmas, swastikas would be flying over London and Moscow. America wouldn’t even have a chance to react. The war would be over. It was foolproof.
STEP #1: CONQUER CRETE
“Mastery of the eastern Mediterranean was dependent upon Crete,” said General Franz Halder, one of Hitler’s top strategists. As Greece’s largest island, Crete was the perfect staging area for Germany’s eastern push. But that left Hitler in a jam, because Mussolini had already gone behind the Führer’s back and tried grabbing Greece on his own. “If there’s any trouble beating the Greeks,” Mussolini had boasted, “I’ll resign from being an Italian.” Greece will be ours by December, Mussolini assured Hitler. Consider it a Christmas present.