Otto Skorzeny: The Devil’s Disciple

437 Pages·2018·13.761 MB·English

by  Stuart Smith

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Contents
Prologue
Maps
1. The Knowledge of Pain
2. Accidental Soldier
3. Thugs in Field Grey
4. The Liberator of Mussolini
5. Special Ops and High-Value Targets
6. Miracle Weapons
7. The Stauffenberg Plot – July 1944
8. The Scherhorn Affair
9. The SS Changes Tack
10. Operation Panzerfaust: Budapest, October 1944
11. Everything on One Card: Operation Greif
12. Operation Greif: Mission and Aftermath
13. Implosion: The Schwedt Bridgehead
14. Skorzeny’s Last Stand
15. Trial and Errors
16. Escape from Darmstadt
17. Apocalypse Soon: Preparing for World War III
18. Neo-Nazis and Colonel Nasser: Skorzeny’s Wilderness Years
19. The Years of Plenty
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20. Ghosts of the Past: Skorzeny’s Last Years
Epilogue: Man and Myth
Glossary
Note on the Waffen-SS
Bibliography
Notes
Acknowledgments
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Prologue
12 September 1943: Gran Sasso, central Italy
The Propaganda Kompanie cameraman panned across the white peaks and
jagged ridges looming above, and the grassy, rock-strewn slopes. He filmed
the exterior of the Hotel Campo Imperatore, and Luftwaffe paratroopers and
SS commandos posing and grinning. They were rightly pleased with
themselves, and the Propaganda Kompanie men encouraged them to play up
for the camera. One blond, boyish paratrooper was singled out for a close-up:
‘Take off your helmet! Look to the sky!’
They had reason to smile. In a daringly planned and well-executed
operation, this small team of a hundred men had landed in gliders, seized the
mountain-top and the hotel from a large detachment of Italian guards –
without firing a shot – and rescued former dictator Benito Mussolini from
captivity. If the Führer’s strategy went to plan, this would scupper the rebel
Italian government’s peace deal with the Allies. It would also play brilliantly
in the next edition of Die Deutsche Wochenschau, the official state newsreel –
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hence the heavy Propaganda Kompanie presence.
Even in flickering monochrome on cinema screens, the mountain setting
looked spectacular. The troops resembled supermen. Mussolini, done up tight
in a long winter overcoat and dark fedora, walked out of the hotel towards
the camera among a crowd of soldiers. They grinned. Il Duce grinned. At his
right elbow, guiding him, was a tall, imposing German officer in a pale
uniform, moustached, with a long scar disfiguring the left side of his face; he
was evidently conscious of the camera’s eye. The clipped voice of the narrator
identified him as SS-Hauptsturmführer Skorzeny, commander of the
lightning strike which had just liberated ‘Der Duce’. To Skorzeny’s
satisfaction, his name was correctly pronounced, a matter to which he
attached great importance.
Mussolini’s rescue was a gift for the producers of Die Deutsche
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Wochenschau. As each week passed, their job – which was to depict the Third
Reich’s magnificent performance in the war – was getting harder. Allied
aircraft were firebombing cities in the heart of the Reich, and German forces
were being pushed back on all fronts. Just a few weeks earlier, they had lost
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the Battle of Kursk, and would never again be able to take the offensive on
the Eastern Front. In this same edition of the newsreel, the propagandists
continued the increasingly difficult task of conjuring from the relentless,
grinding retreat a heroic defence of civilisation against the Communist
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barbarian horde. Luckily they had other things to counterbalance it – such as
Operation Achse (Axis), Germany’s lightning seizure of control in Italy. It had
been triggered by the Fascist government deposing Mussolini and plotting to
sell him to the Allies in exchange for favourable peace terms. On cinema
screens, the taking of Rome by German forces looked like a victory. Against
that background, the heroic rescue of Mussolini – throwing a spanner in the
traitors’ works – was a propaganda triumph for the Führer. It helped to
distract from the fact that the Allies, having taken North Africa and Sicily,
had just landed on the Italian mainland at Salerno.
The newsreel rolled on. With Skorzeny sticking to Mussolini’s side (and
the camera’s lens), the group of officers and men walked to the waiting
getaway plane. The aircraft brought in for the task was an ultra-lightweight
Fieseler Fi 156 Storch, chosen for its ability to take off from extremely short
improvised runways; indeed, it was such an eager flyer that in a good
headwind it could hover. At the controls was Luftwaffe Hauptmann Heinrich
Gerlach, personal pilot to Generaloberst Kurt Student, commander of the
Luftwaffe’s airborne arm, XI. Fliegerkorps, and the man in overall command
of this operation. Gerlach had been specially selected for the mission, and
after circling overhead for a while had executed a superb landing on a strip of
ground only 35 metres long.
The little Storch could only take one passenger. This should pose no
problem; after all, there was only one important man on that mountain-top.
Gerlach would fly Mussolini to Rome while the rest of the German team
departed by cable car and truck.
SS-Hauptsturmführer Otto Skorzeny didn’t see it that way; in his mind
there were two important men who needed to get to Rome, and he was one
of them. Was he not the mastermind and leader of the operation? In fact, he
was neither, but he had a special role and was determined to make the most
of it. In this moment he had the eye of the world on him, and he’d be
damned if he would step aside. Skorzeny was more conscious of the cameras
on him than any other man on that mountain except for Mussolini. He
wanted to be seen personally bringing Mussolini to freedom. German military
men had a name for this kind of thirst for glory: Halsschmerzen – ‘sore throat’
– an allusion to the Ritterkreuz (Knight’s Cross), which was worn around the
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neck. Glory and romance drove Otto Skorzeny – and an acute sense of his
own image. On this day, despite being an SS officer, he was wearing the
romantic golden tan tropical kit of the Luftwaffe, a service he greatly admired
and in which he had once briefly served.
Skorzeny informed Gerlach that he was coming aboard. Away from the
camera, a brief and angry discussion took place between the two. Given the
extremely short take-off strip, having Skorzeny’s weight in the plane was an
invitation to disaster. Skorzeny invoked the name of the Führer, who had
appointed him Mussolini’s guardian; it was more than his life was worth to
let the prize out of his sight. He exhorted and threatened, and soon got his
way.
Back on screen, Skorzeny smilingly helped a distinctly anxious-looking
Duce into his seat and strapped him in. Mussolini, himself an experienced
pilot, knew they were courting disaster. The engine started, and Skorzeny
squeezed himself into the luggage compartment. Gerlach held the Storch on
its brakes and ran the engine up to full power. Surrounded by cheering,
waving commandos, the plane lurched forward, bouncing on the uneven
ground as it lumbered towards the edge of the precipice.
The newsreel cut away an instant before it reached the brink. The men on
the ground gasped as the Storch shot over and dropped instantly out of sight,
plummeting into the void, taking with it Otto Skorzeny’s hopes of glory and
Adolf Hitler’s scheme for a strategic solution in Italy. The engine howled,
strained … and after a horrible pause the fragile plane reappeared in the
distance, struggling, slowly climbing away, shrinking to a dot as it banked
away westward.
There could hardly be a more apt symbol of Otto Skorzeny’s life thus far –
and to come – than the fall and flight of that little plane.
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Maps
1. The Gran Sasso Raid, 12 September 1943
2. Projected advance of 6. Panzerarmee, 16–18 December 1944
3. Fölkersam’s assault on the Warche Brück, Malmédy, 21 December 1944
4. The Schwedt Bridgehead, early February 1945
5. The final campaign in Germany, showing extent of the Alpenfestung,
April–May 1945
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THE GRAN SASSO RAID, 12 SEPTEMBER 1943
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PROJECTED ADVANCE OF 6. PANZERARMEE, 16–18
DECEMBER 1944
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