Kurt Arthur Benno Student was a German general in the Luftwaffe during World War II. An early pioneer of airborne forces, he was in overall command of Germany's paratroopers, the Fallschirmjäger, throughout the war. Student is most famous for planning and commanding Operation Mercury, the airborne invasion of Crete in 1941. Although the operation was a success, the high casualties suffered by his paratroopers led him to later state that Crete was the 'graveyard of the German paratroopers' and influenced the discontinuation of large-scale German airborne operations.