Otto Skorzeny
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Otto Skorzeny |
Otto Skorzeny (
June 12 1908 -
July 5 1975) was an
Obersturmbannführer in the
German Waffen-SS during
World War II. He is best-known as the
commando leader who rescued
Benito Mussolini from imprisonment after his overthrow.
Otto Skorzeny was born on
June 12 1908 into a middle-class
Austrian family which had a long history of military service. He was a noted
fencer as a student in
Vienna in the
1920s. He engaged in fifteen personal duels, and in the tenth of these he received a wound that left a dramatic scar (known in fencing as a
smite) on his cheek.
He joined the Austrian
Nazi Party in
1931 and soon he joined the
SA. He showed aptitude as a leader of men from the very beginning, and even played a minor role in the
German takeover of Austria on
March 12 1938, when he saved the Austrian President
Wilhelm Miklas from being shot by Nazi
roughnecks.
When the war broke out a year later, Skorzeny, then working as a
civil engineer, volunteered for service in the
Luftwaffe (German Air Force) but was turned down because he was over the age of 30. Failing that, he turned to the
Waffen-SS. On
February 21 1940, Skorzeny went off to war with one of its most famous units, the
Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler and fought with distinction in the campaigns against the
Soviet Union in
1941 and
1942 before being wounded and returning to Germany in December of 1942, a winner of the
Iron Cross for
bravery under fire.
After Skorzeny had recovered from his wounds, a friend in the SS recommended him to the German military leadership as a possible leader of
commando forces which
Hitler wanted to create. In this role, in July
1943, he was personally selected by Hitler, from among 6
Luftwaffe and
Army special agents, to lead the operation to rescue
Benito Mussolini, the dictator of Italy and a friend of Hitler's, who had been removed from power and imprisoned by the Italian government.
Almost two months of cat-and-mouse followed, as the Italians moved Mussolini from place to place in order to frustrate any would-be rescuers. Finally, with information on Mussolini's location and its topographical features found by
Herbert Kappler and air reconnaissance by Skorzeny himself, on
September 12 Skorzeny took part as a guest in
Unternehmen Eiche, a daring
glider-based assault on the Campo Imperatore Hotel at
Gran Sasso, and rescued Mussolini without firing a single bullet. Skorzeny escorted Mussolini to Rome and later to Berlin. The exploit earned Skorzeny worldwide fame, promotion to
major and the
Knight's Cross, a higher order of the Iron Cross.
On
May 25 1944, he was assigned to
Operation Rösselsprung, the paratroop commando operation aimed at capturing
Yugoslav Partisan leader
Tito at his headquarters near
Drvar and crushing the
communist resistance in the Balkans. Skorzeny and his troops fought the numerically superior force of partisan defenders but failed their mission. Tito escaped to safety just a few minutes before Skorzeny's men reached the cave in which Tito's headquarters were located.
On
July 20 1944, Skorzeny was in
Berlin when an
attempt on Hitler's life was made, with German officials trying to seize control of Germany's vital organs before Hitler recovered from his injuries. Skorzeny helped put down the rebellion in Berlin, spending 36 hours in charge of the German army's central command center before being relieved.
In October
1944, Hitler sent Skorzeny to
Hungary when he received word that Hungary's Regent,
Miklós Horthy was secretly negotiating his country's surrender with the
Red Army. This surrender would have cut off a million German troops fighting in the
Balkan peninsula. Skorzeny, in another daring "snatch" codenamed
Operation Panzerfaust, kidnapped Horthy's son
Nicolas and forced his father to abdicate as Regent. A pro-German government was installed in Hungary which fought alongside Germany until German troops were driven out of Hungary by the Red Army in April
1945.
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After Operation Greif, Otto Skorzeny was labelled "the most dangerous man in Europe". |
On
October 21, Hitler, inspired by an American subterfuge which had put three captured German tanks flying German colours to devastating use at
Aachen, summoned Skorzeny to Berlin and assigned him to lead a
panzer brigade. As planned by Skorzeny in
Operation Greif, about two dozen German soldiers, most of them in captured American army Jeeps and disguised as American soldiers, penetrated American lines in the early hours of the
Battle of the Bulge and sowed disorder and confusion behind the Allied lines. A handful of his men were captured by the Americans and spread a rumour that Skorzeny was leading a raid on
Paris to kill or capture General
Eisenhower. Although this was untrue, Eisenhower was confined to his headquarters for weeks and Skorzeny was labelled "the most dangerous man in Europe".
Skorzeny spent January and February
1945 commanding regular troops in the defence of the German provinces of
Prussia and
Pomerania as an acting major general. For his actions there, primarily in the defence of
Frankfurt (Oder), Hitler awarded him one of Germany's highest military honours, the
Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross.
Skorzeny surrendered to the
Allies in May 1945 and was held as a prisoner of war for more than two years before being tried as a war criminal at the
Dachau Military Tribunal for his actions in the Battle of the Bulge. However, he was acquitted when
Wing Commander Yeo-Thomas G.C. of the
SOE testified in his defence that Allied forces had also fought in enemy uniform. But he was held until he escaped from a prison camp on
July 27 1948.
He settled in
Spain with a passport granted by its leader,
Francisco Franco, and resumed his prewar occupation as an engineer. In
1952, he was declared "entnazifiziert" (=
denazified) in absentia by a German government arbitration board, which let him travel abroad. (Before the declaration, he could have been interned in Germany or Austria until he had convinced the authorities that he had seen the error of his beliefs.) Later, he worked as a consultant to the
Egyptian dictator
Gamel Abdel Nasser and the
Argentine President
Juan Peron, in 1963 while he stayed in Egypt he was recruited by the
Mossad to deliver information about the German scientists that worked in the Egyptian missile program, and is rumoured to have assisted several of his friends in the secret SS escape network "
Odessa" in the years after the war. According to the Spanish newspaper "
El Mundo", he was a key figure in organizing one of Odessa's largest bases, which was located in
Spain.
[ ] Some of his henchmen may have helped
Aribert Heim (aka "
Doctor Death", found to be living in
Spain in
October 2005) escape from justice. However, many such reports have surfaced over time and none have ever been proven to be based in fact, generally relying on rumor and gossip as their best and often only source of information.
When Skorzeny died from cancer in
Madrid in 1975, he was a multi-millionaire.
* Skorzeny is a key figure in
Harry Turtledove's
alternate history series
Worldwar, and in
John Birmingham's
Axis of Time series.
* Skorzeny is mentioned in
Newt Gingrich and
William Forstchen's alternate history novel
1945.
* Skorzeny is depicted as a monster constructed from human corpses in the comic
Stalin Vs. Hitler.
* Otto Skorzeny, David Johnson transl.
My Commando Operations: The Memoirs of Hitler's Most Daring Commando (reprint
Schiffer Publishing, 1995) ISBN 0887407188
* Otto Skorzeny,
Skorzeny's Special Missions (
Greenhill Books, 1997) ISBN 1853672912
*
Charles Foley,
Commando Extraordinary (
Arms & Armour, 1987) ISBN 0853688249
*
Charles Whiting,
Skorzeny: "The Most Dangerous Man in Europe" (
DaCapo Press, 1998) ISBN 0938289942
* Annussek, G.
Hitler's Raid To Save Mussolini, De Capo Press, 2005. ISBN 0306813963
*
Otto Skorzeny*
Trial of Otto Skorzeny and Others, General Military Government Court of the U.S. Zone of Germany,
18 August to
9 September,
1947.
*
Summary of KV 2/403 a British intelligence file Declassified in July 2001 it details the post war debriefing of Otto Skorzeny on Operation Werewolf and other matters.
