The village of Kondomari is part of the Platanias municipality and is located near the north coast of Crete, 18 kilometres (11 miles) west of the city of Chania and 3 km (1.9 mi) southeast of the Maleme airstrip.
The paratroopers experienced strong resistance and suffered severe losses that totaled nearly 400 men out of 600, including their commander Major Otto Scherber.
The unprecedented resistance from the local population exasperated the Prussian sense of military order according to which only professional warriors were allowed to fight.
Reports from General Julius Ringel, commander of the 5th Mountain Division, stated that Cretan civilians were picking off paratroopers or attacking them with knives, axes and scythes.
Even before the end of the battle, exaggerated stories had started to circulate, attributing the excessively high casualties to torture and mutilation of paratroopers by the Cretans.
Thus, seeking to counter insurgency and before enquiries were complete, Student issued an order to launch a wave of reprisals against the local population immediately after the surrender of Crete on 31 May.
On 2 June 1941, four lorries full of German paratroopers from the III Battalion of Luftlande-Sturm-Regiment 1 under the command of Oberleutnant Horst Trebes surrounded Kondomari.
He was later accused of high treason against Nazi Germany for having leaked uncensored material related to the paratroopers' activities on Crete that included photographs taken in Kondomari, and for having helped some Cretans to flee.
Post-war in November 1945, during Göring's trial in Nuremberg, Weixler gave a written eyewitness report on the Kondomari massacre.
Weixler's negatives from Kondomari were discovered in 1980 in the federal German archives by the Greek journalist Vassos Mathiopoulos,[9] who was unaware of the actual location of the shootings they depicted.