From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Otto Skorzeny
June 12, 1908–July 6, 1975
Place of birth	Vienna, Austria
Place of death	Madrid, Spain
Allegiance	Nazi Germany
Years of service	1931–1945
Rank	Obersturmbannführer
Battles/wars	World War II *Eastern Front *Unternehmen Eiche *Operation Panzerfaust *Battle of the Bulge (Operation Greif)
Awards	Iron Cross Knight's Cross Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross
Other work	Werwolves ODESSA Paladin Group

Otto Skorzeny (June 12, 1908 – July 6, 1975^[1]) was a Standartenführer^[2] in the German Waffen-SS during World War II. After fighting on the Eastern Front, he is known as the commando leader who rescued Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from imprisonment after his overthrow. He also was the initiator of Operation Greif, for which he was judged after the war: this special operation involved false flag tactics, that is, wearing the uniform of the enemy to confuse him and advance into his lines. He also helped train the Werwolves, a Nazi stay-behind organisation which tried to engage in guerrilla warfare against the Allies, and organized the Nazi "ratlines", which formed the basis of the ODESSA network after the war, which helped exfiltrate Nazi war criminals to Francoist Spain and other friendly countries (particularly in South America). After creating the Paladin Group in 1970, he died a few months before Franco himself, in July 1975.

Contents 1 Before the war 2 The Eastern Front 3 Operations 4 The liberation of Mussolini 5 Operation Rösselsprung 6 The July 20 1944 plot against Hitler 7 Hungary and Operation Panzerfaust 8 Operation Greif and Eisenhower 9 Werewolves and Surrender 10 After World War II 11 Death 12 Cultural references 13 References 14 Bibliography 15 External links

Otto Skorzeny was born in Vienna into a middle-class Austrian family which had a long history of military service. Additionally to his native German, he spoke excellent French and English.^[3] He was a noted fencer as a student in Vienna in the 1920s. He engaged in fifteen personal duels. The tenth resulted in a wound that left a dramatic scar (known in academic fencing as a schmiss) on his cheek.

He joined the Austrian Nazi Party in 1931 and soon he joined the Nazi SA. A charismatic figure, Skorzeny played a minor role in the Anschluss on March 12, 1938, when he saved the Austrian President Wilhelm Miklas from being shot by Nazi roughnecks.

After the 1939 invasion of Poland, Skorzeny, then working as a civil engineer, volunteered for service in the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) 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 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.

• Operation Oak (Unternehmen Eiche, September 1943) - The rescue of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
• Operation Knight's Leap (Unternehmen Rösselsprung, May 1944) - The attempt to capture Josip Broz Tito alive.
• Operation Armored Fist (Unternehmen Panzerfaust a.k.a. Unternehmen Eisenfaust, October 1944) - The kidnapping of Miklós Horthy, Jr., son of Hungarian Regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy, to force Admiral Horthy to abdicate as Prime Minister in favor of pro-Nazi leader of the Arrow Cross Party, Ferenc Szálasi.
• Operation Griffin (Unternehmen Greif, December 1944) - A false flag operation to spread disinformation during the Battle of the Bulge.
• Werewolf (Werwolf) - Planned Nazi underground resistance movement in Allied occupied Europe.

After Skorzeny had recovered from his wounds, Ernst Kaltenbrunner recommended him as a possible leader of "commando" forces which German dictator Adolf Hitler wanted to create. In July 1943, he was personally selected by Hitler from among six German Air Force (Luftwaffe) and German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) special agents to lead the operation to rescue Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who had been overthrown and imprisoned by the Italian government. ^[4]

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. Information on Mussolini's location and its topographical features were finally found by Herbert Kappler and air reconnaissance by Skorzeny himself. On September 12, Skorzeny took part in "Operation Oak" (Unternehmen Eiche), a daring glider-based assault on the Campo Imperatore Hotel at Gran Sasso. Mussolini was rescued without firing a single bullet. Skorzeny escorted Mussolini to Rome and later to Berlin. The exploit earned Skorzeny fame, promotion to Major and the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.

Mussolini created a new Fascist regime in northern Italy, the Italian Social Republic (Repubblica Sociale Italiana).

On May 25, 1944, he was assigned to Operation Rösselsprung, a commando operation aimed at capturing Yugoslav Partisan leader Tito at his headquarters near Drvar. Hitler knew that Tito was getting allied support and was aware that either British or American troops might land in Dalmatia with support of the communist NOVJ, the Partisan People's Liberation Army Of Yugoslavia. Hence, killing or capturing Tito would not only have hindered this scenario, but also given a badly needed morale boost to the Axis forces in the Balkans. Skorzeny was involved in the planning of Rösselsprung and was supposed to command it but argued against it after visiting Zagreb and becoming aware that the operation was compromised due to the incompetence of German partners in NDH or the Independent State of Croatia. The Operation was attempted, and was a complete disaster. The first wave of paratroopers, following heavy bombardment by the Luftwaffe, jumped between Tito's hideout in a cave and the town of Drvar. They landed on open ground and many were gunned down by members of the partisan HQ Escort Battalion, a company numbering less than 100 soldiers. The second wave of paratroopers missed their target and landed several miles out of town. Tito was long gone when the paratroopers reached the cave. At the cave's exit was a path leading to a railroad where Tito boarded a train that took him to safety in the town of Jajce. In the meantime, the Partisan 1st Brigade, from the 6th Partisan Division Lika, arrived after a 12 mile forced march and attacked the Waffen-SS paras, inflicting heavy casualties.

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 main decision centers 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, Admiral Miklós Horthy, was secretly negotiating with the Red Army. The surrender of Hungary would have cut off a million German troops fighting in the Balkan peninsula. Skorzeny, in another daring "snatch" codenamed Operation Panzerfaust (also known as Operation Eisenfaust in Germany), kidnapped Horthy's son Miklós Horthy, Jr. and forced his father to abdicate as Prime Minister. A pro-German, pro-Nazi government under Prime Minister Ferenc Szálasi was then installed in Hungary. In April 1945, even after the German and Hungarian forces were driven out of Budapest and Hungary, Szálasi and his Arrow Cross Party-based forces continued to fight in Austria and Slovakia.

On October 21, Hitler, inspired by an American subterfuge which had put three captured German tanks flying German colours^{[citation needed]} 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. The effect of this disinformation had Eisenhower 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. Fighting at Schwedt on the Oder River, he also received orders to sabotage a bridge on the Rhine at Remagen, but his frogmen failed. For his actions there, primarily in the defence of Frankfurt, Hitler awarded him one of Germany's highest military honours, the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross.

With German defeat inevitable, Skorzeny trained recruits for a stay-behind Nazi organisation, the Werewolves, to engage in guerrilla warfare against the Allies. However, Skorzeny quickly realized that the Werewolves were too few in number to become an effective fighting force. Instead, they were used for the Nazi "ratlines", a secret "Underground railroad" which helped Nazis escape after Germany's surrender.

Besides this organisation of the "ratlines," which would form the basis of the supposed ODESSA network after the war, Skorzeny had been employed since August 1944 by high-ranking Nazis and German industrialists to hide money and to loot property, documents, etc., some of which were buried in the mountains of Bavaria, and others shipped overseas.

Skorzeny surrendered to the Allies in May 1945, feeling that he could be of use to the Americans in the forthcoming Cold War. On May 16, 1945, he emerged from the Austrian woods near Salzburg and surrendered to a lieutenant of the US 30th Infantry Regiment. He was held as a prisoner of war for more than two years before being tried as a war criminal at the Dachau Trials for his false flag actions in the Battle of the Bulge. However, Skorzeny was acquitted because although he had ordered his men to use American uniforms as a ruse, it could not be proven that he had given orders to fight in them.^[5] Nevertheless he was detained until he escaped from a prison camp on July 27, 1948.

He settled in Spain under a passport issued by 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. He spent part of his time in Ireland between 1959-1969 where he bought Martinstown House, a 200 acre farm in County Kildare.

Protected by Franco, Otto Skorzeny was a key figure in the organisation of the secret ex-Nazi escape network ODESSA. 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.^[6] According to El Mundo, some of his men helped Aribert Heim (aka "Doctor Death", found to be living in Spain in October 2005) escape from justice.

He also founded the Paladin Group in 1970, a neo-fascist organisation which gathered former French members of the OAS, of the SAC, etc., to be the spearhead of the anti-Communist struggle. Later, he worked as a consultant to Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser and Argentine President Juan Peron. In 1963, he was allegedly recruited by the Mossad to gather information about German scientists in the Egyptian missile program[1].

In 1970, a tumor was discovered on Skorzeny's spine. Two cancerous tumors were removed in Hamburg, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Vowing to walk again, Skorzeny spent long hours with a physical therapist, and within six months was back on his feet. The years following therapy were hard for Skorzeny, as the cancer reminded him that his final days were fast approaching ^[7]. Otto Skorzeny finally succumbed to the cancer on 7 July 1975 in Madrid, a few months before Franco himself. He was cremated, his ashes were later brought to Vienna and interred in the Skorzeny family grave at Döblinger Friedhof.

• Skorzeny is a key figure in Harry Turtledove's alternate history series Worldwar, and in John Birmingham's Axis of Time series
• Skorzeny appears in considerable parts of Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen's alternate history novel 1945 in which he raids Oak Ridge and tangles with Alvin York (see [2])
• Skorzeny is depicted as a monster constructed from human corpses in the comic Stalin Vs. Hitler
• Skorzeny also makes an appearance in The Berkut, a novel by Joseph Heywood
• Skorzeny is also referenced in the Brotherhood of War (book series) novels by W.E.B. Griffin
• Skorzeny is also a key figure in the World War II fictional thriller by Mark Frost entitled The Second Objective, set against the Battle of the Bulge.
• In the Jack Higgins novel The Eagle Has Landed, Skorzeny's liberation of Mussolini inspires Hitler to order a similar raid to kidnap Winston Churchill.

• Otto Skorzeny, David Johnson transl. My Commando Operations: The Memoirs of Hitler's Most Daring Commando (reprint Schiffer Publishing, 1995) ISBN 0-88740-718-8
• Otto Skorzeny, Skorzeny's Special Missions (Greenhill Books, 1997) ISBN 1-85367-291-2
• Charles Foley, Commando Extraordinary (Arms & Armour, 1987) ISBN 0-85368-824-9
• Charles Whiting, Skorzeny: "The Most Dangerous Man in Europe" (DaCapo Press, 1998) ISBN 0-938289-94-2
• Annussek, G. Hitler's Raid To Save Mussolini, De Capo Press, 2005. ISBN 0-306-81396-3

• Operation Paperclip Involvement
• 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
• [3] Description of Operation Eiche

• essay about Skorzeny and Operation Eiche