hellas

** translation of describtion ** Second World War. A group of (German) soldiers has found a temporary restingplace at an olive-orchard. In the front a machinegun. Greece, Crete, 1941.

The soldiers are German paratroopers, since the white canisters are airborne containers. These containers carried weapons, ammo and other supplies. The weapons in the front are (obsolete) anti-tank rifles.

The use of these containers often led into unnecessary losses, as the paras only carried small weapons - usually pistols - and little amounts of ammo on their body, when they jumped from the plane. If they didn´t find the containers or were unable to reach them because of enemy fire, they weren´t able to fight for long.

i believe that that olive orchard is near where the nz troops on crete had their main concerntration, as have seen a very similar background to pictures of the kiwi troops.

there are millions of olive groves in Crete and they all look like this!

Italianen

** translation of describtion ** Second World War. Allied forces in the snow at the front in Greece. * Note: According to the previous post these are Italian soldiers.

Those absolutely are Italians.

How can you tell they are italians? By the helmet shape?

Exactly. Plus the rifle, and the cannon. I'm curious as to what these pictures are doing in the Dutch archives. Were they German pictures left behind, or sent for local publication?

This building is still around; it is the present Parliament Building for Greece's national legislature. It's located on Syntagma square in the center of Athens.

Mosely.Brian: Thanks for the information. We will add it to the source data and reload the description.

In addition to Mosely.Brian's information, these are the exact coordinates: latitude: 37.97533704428303 longitude: 23.736659288406372

This is how the building currently (2006) looks like: