Otto Skorzeny's Operations: Succes and Failutes ( Μικρή συλλογή άρθρων)

Α)5 Successful Missions of a Waffen SS Mastermind, Otto Skorzeny

by Nikola Budanovic - 

Otto Skorzeny was one of Germany’s finest commandos. An engineer by profession, he tried to volunteer for the Luftwaffe (German Air Force), in the year 1939, but was declined entry due to his age (31 at the time) and unusual height (6.4 feet, or 1.92 metres). He had a scar on his cheek, inflicted during a fencing duel. Due to this wound, he would become known as ‘scarface’. He was an Austrian Nazi Party member since 1931 and was a noted figure in the lower and mid-level party structures prior to the war.

After failing to enlist as an airman, his party connections enabled him to become a member of Hitler’s elite bodyguard unit. After proving himself to be a capable soldier, most notably in  the campaigns in Netherlands, France and Yugoslavia, he advanced through the ranks and became a Lieutenant in the Waffen SS. He was wounded on the Eastern front and transferred to a desk job in Berlin, after which he got into the SS Foreign Intelligence Service.

Otto Skorzeny inspecting paratroopers in 1945

Here he was given a chance to propose his ideas on commando warfare, studying partisan methods he saw in the East. He advocated the use of a small force of saboteurs, kidnappers and assassins to minimize the casualties and maximize the effect and create panic in the enemy. During the war, his name was associated with a string of operations, some of them largely successful, some of them not.

Some were only planned, but never conducted and some were not exactly commando operations, but were more daring or reckless efforts that prove Skorzeny’s insatiable ambition and loyalty to Adolf Hitler. This is a list containing his successful missions, in chronological order.

5. Operation Oak, or the Gran Sasso Raid

A picture that was taken with Mussolini, after his rescue

In 1943, Skorzeny conducted his most famous action, the kidnapping (or rather a rescue) of then imprisoned Benito Mussolini, the former dictator of Italy. The mission was codenamed Operation Oak.
After  success in the North African theater of War, the Allies landed in Sicily in 1943, and swiftly crushed the Italian Army in a series of victories. The fronttline was then settled on the so-called Winter Line, the Allied advance was held back by the Germans here, until the end of the war. Mussolini was overthrown and arrested by the Italian King, Emanuel the Third in 1943. Hitler wanted him back so he ordered Skorzeny together with five Luftwaffe agents and three agents selected from the Armed Forces.
Mussolini had first been held on the island of Sardinia, where Skorzeny started to gather intelligence. He was shot down during a reconnaissance mission but managed to bail in time to be saved by a passing Italian destroyer ship, still loyal to the Fascists. After this event, Mussolini was moved to the Campo Imperatore Hotel on the top of the Gran Sasso Mountain.
Together with agents Kurt Student and Harald Mors, Skorzeny devised a daring plan which would be remembered as one of the finest commando operations ever.
The mission was conducted via glider planes which landed on the mountain. The members of the 502nd Paratrooper Division then proceeded to the compound of the Campo Imperatore Hotel. In a rather dashing turn of events, the team, accompanied by the Police General Fernando Soleti, managed to persuade the carabinieri guarding the hotel to surrender their arms.
Skorzeny managed to take hold of a  radio and formally greeted the high-level captive with words:  “Duce, the Führer has sent me to set you free!”, to which Mussolini replied, “I knew that my friend would not forsake me!”

4. July 20 Assassination attempt

Wolf’s Lair after the assassination attempt

On 20 July 1944, Skorzeny was in Berlin when an attempt on Hitler’s life was made. Anti-Nazi German Army officers tried to seize control of Germany’s main decision centers before Hitler recovered from his injuries. Skorzeny helped put down the rebellion, spending 36 hours in charge of the Wehrmacht’s central command center before being relieved.
Even though this wasn’t an operation so to speak, it was a turning point as Skorzeny proved to be one of Hitler’s most loyal officers and one on which he could rely on. Skorzeny had by that point received many decorations for his actions and was one of the few people who enjoyed the Fuhrer’s trust and respect. Skorzeny was also an opportunistic figure who knew his way around the Reich’s headquarters and this event launched his professional career to new highs.

3. Operation Panzerfaust

German tank on the street in Budapest, 1944

It was obvious that the war wasn’t going to last much longer in 1944. The Kingdom of Hungary was ready to sign a secret separate peace treaty with the Soviets, as they advanced through Ukraine and Romania. The Hungarian regent, Miklos Horthy, was ready to sign the treaty.
Germany couldn’t afford the surrender of its southern ally, for they needed Hungary to hold the Red Army as much as they could. Otto Skorzeny was assigned to use blackmail and extortion to persuade the Hungarian regent to step down from power and enable the Pro-Fascist Arrow Cross Party to keep Hungary at war. The plan was to kidnap the regent’s son, Miklos Horthy Jr. who was a politician himself and who was an important supporter of his father.

The action was in full effect on 15th of October in 1944. The regent’s son was to meet the Yugoslav middlemen in the negotiations, but was instead captured by a commando unit and flown to Vienna and transported to the Mauthausen concentration camp.
The action was swift with no casualties and handled in a rather criminal manner. Some of the Hitler’s old-fashioned generals often opposed to Skorzeny’s methods for they have been in direct violations of every rule of war, but his popularity only grew, as he was Adolf Hitler’s favorite and most trusted soldier. Miklos Horthy Sr. was blackmailed after the event and he agreed to resign and let the country be occupied peacefully by German forces who installed a pro-German the puppet regime.

2. Operation Griffen

Knocked-out Panther tank disguised as an M10 Tank Destroyer               

Operation Griffen was a ‘false flag’ mission under the command of Otto Skorzeny. It occurred during the Battle of Bulge in the winter of 1944, and its primary objective was to cause confusion and chaos among the Allied troops and capture the bridges over the river Meuse.
The mission employed the use of captured Allied vehicles and uniforms and was conducted by the English speaking members of the Einheit Stileu brigade, who were assembled through a series of tests that tested their English language skills and knowledge of  American slang and dialect.
Skorzeny lacked authentic American vehicles and equipment to conduct a large-scale operation that Hitler had unrealistically ordered. He had to improvise, so he camouflaged some German Panther tanks to look like American M10 Tank Destroyers. He also used German armored cars, which were adjusted to look more like their Allied counterparts.
The mission was set out in three directives: Demolition teams were to destroy the bridges when captured, alongside with sabotaging the enemies fuel and ammunition depots. Reconnaissance patrols would go ahead of the main squads and pass on false orders to the units they’ve met, reverse road signs and remove minefield warnings.
Lead commando units would work closely with the attacking units to disrupt the US chain of command by destroying field telephone wires and radio stations, and issuing false orders. They never managed to secure and hold the Meuse bridges, but they did cause a temporary havoc among the Allied ranks and Skorzeny succeeded in applying his tactics. Rumors were spread that the commandos were trying to kidnap Eisenhower in Paris and that one of the Germans presented himself as Field Marshall Montgomery.
This led to a series of mishaps, one of them being the maltreatment of Montgomery by the American soldiers who shot the tires of his car suspecting he was an impostor. Eisenhower was forced to spend Christmas under high-security alert. After the dust settled, the American General put out a “Wanted” poster with Skorzeny’s face on it, just like in a Western movie. Once the Allies acknowledged that there were moles in their ranks they subsequently eliminated the German commandos, who withdrew soon after.

1. Battle for Oder River

A militiaman defending a position in the German countryside

In January 1945, the Soviets were advancing through Poland and it’s scouts were already on the natural border with Germany, the Oder river. Otto Skorzeny was sent there to organise a defence force and hold the bridgehead at Schwedt. The commando had to improvise and gather all the troops he could muster, for the high command hadn’t given enough men for a realistic defense.
The core around which he assembled his troops was an elite paratrooper unit. He called out for Hamburg dockyard workers, pilots who had no planes and an SS battalion of Germans from Romania. He also borrowed an anti-tank unit from his fellow SS officer and managed to employ the cadets of the Friedenthal Sniper School.
Skorzeny held the bridge for 30 days, outnumbered 15 to 1. He managed to achieve that with careful positioning of his sniper teams who covered the approach route and completely immobilized the Soviet infantry. Undoubtedly, this operation disrupted the Red Army’s timetable, buying Germany weeks to improve its defenses.
Images: Wikipedia / Bundesarchiv

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Β)5 Failed Missions Of Otto Skorzeny – Hitlers Favorite SS Commando

by Nikola Budanovic - Apr 6, 2016

Otto Skorzeny was a well-known commando and special forces operative who was dubbed “The Most Dangerous Man in Europe” during World War II. Prior to the war, he was a civil engineer and a member of the Austrian Nazi Party. He had a scar on his left cheek from a fencing duel and was therefore called Scarface. Skorzeny enlisted as a member of Hitler’s bodyguard unit after he failed to pass as a pilot of the Luftwaffe. In the first years of the war, he was “chasing the war” since his unit wasn’t in the vanguard of the German army.
Whenever he would arrive at the front, the battle had already been won. In 1941, during operation Barbarossa, or the Russian campaign, he saw real combat and was wounded by a shrapnel. He continued fighting not heeding the injury, and he was later decorated for his actions. After this wound, he was transferred to Berlin where he became a member of the SS Foreign intelligence service.
A while ago War History Online published an article about the successful and daring missions of Hitler’s top commando, Otto Skorzeny (link). After summing up his victories, we have decided to post some of his less successful actions. Some of these missions were canceled and other proved to be impossible even for Scarface.

1. Operation Francois

Iranian women watching an Allied convoy

Francois was the code-name for the first commando operation under the strategic planning of Otto Skorzeny. It was conducted in the summer of 1943, by the members of the elite 502 Jagdverbande, the German paratrooper unit. The plan was to organize the nomadic people of Qashqai, in the territory of today’s Iran into an armed guerrilla force which could serve the Nazi war effort.
Other than employing the tribesmen, the paratroopers were assigned to disrupt the supply lines between the Allies and the Soviets and to turn the local population against the Allied presence. The supply route became known as the Persian Corridor and it was a vital lifeline for holding off the Soviets on the Eastern front. The Qashqai were already leading some unorganized skirmishes against the Anglo-Soviet peaceful occupation.
Skorzeny parachuted into Northern Iran packed with gold and explosives. His intention was to bribe the tribesmen elders and win their support for the mobilization of the entire people. The operation proved to be a failure, after which a fellow agent in the Middle East, Paul Ernst Fackenheim, made a remark that as soon as they were out of gold, the Persians sold them to the British.

2. Operation Long Jump

The Big Three, Tehran,1943

After his short-lived mission in Persia, Skorzeny was once again on a well-known ground, assigned to track the preparations of the Tehran conference which took place on November 28th, 1943. When Hitler learned in mid-October, 1943, about the conference which was the first official meeting of the so-called big three (Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin), he immediately demanded a plan to assassinate or perhaps abduct his main enemies with a single blow.
The Soviet NKVD found out about the plot, and identified the leader of the ring, he was a 19-year-old spy, Gevort Vartanian, who ran a Soviet spy group in Persia.
They located the German base of operations in Tehran and intercepted coded messages that were sent to a headquarters in Berlin. The decrypted messages stated that the Germans were preparing to send in the second group of subversive commandos to support Skorzeny. After learning that their mission had been compromised, the Germans had to pull back and abort the operation that could have changed the course of the Second World War.

3. Operation Knight’s Leap

Glider used in the Operation Knight’s Leap – Wikipedia / Bundesarchiv

In 1944, the Reich’s attention had shifted on the Balkans. The partisan movement was growing in the countries of occupied Yugoslavia, under the leadership of a charismatic Comintern agent, Josip Broz Tito. Tito has managed to create pockets of liberated territory during 1944. His headquarter was located in a cave in the Bosnian mountains. Hitler wanted to decapitate the Yugoslav resistance by capturing or killing its leader. The mission also included destroying the partisan headquarters and locating and killing the Allied military advisors.
The terrain was highly unapproachable and Skorzeny decided for a combined glider-borne and airborne assault. The assault was supported by a mass offensive of the ground forces which was supposed to distract the resistance fighters while a small, highly-trained unit of paratroopers was to infiltrate the headquarters.
The operation eventually failed due to an unexpected resistance of the Yugoslav fighters who managed to hold off the ground offensive as well as the airborne assault long enough for Tito and his staff to make their escape. Also, this operation was a prime example of limited cooperation between the military secret service and the SS, since Skorzeny decided to withhold some vital information on Tito’s whereabouts to the Wehrmacht’s Intelligence service, the Abwehr.

4. Leonidas Squadron

V-1 rocket in flight – Wikipedia / Bundesarchiv

By 1945, with nearly all of the Third Reich’s resource almost depleted and it’s armies shattered all over Europe. Otto Skorzeny together with Hajo Hermann celebrated German bomber pilot, proposed a plan to Hitler which would utilize the use of suicide pilots, similar to the Japanese Kamikaze. It was called the Leonidas Squadron. At first, they wanted to use jet plains, Messerschmitt Me 328 packed with explosives, manned by a pilot who would fly into certain death.
The use of prototype jet planes whose control was yet to be mastered due to their high speed proved to be useless. Skorzeny turned to an another prototype design – V-1 flying bomb, converted to be navigated by a single pilot. The pilots purpose was to precisely ram into an enemy bomber or ground position.
The plan never came to use in this exact form, but some pilots from the Leonidas squadron voluntarily flew suicide missions against the advancing Red Army on the Oder River.  At this point the pilots were using any aircraft available, instead of the modified V-1 prototype.

5. Operation Werewolf

Goebbels awards a 16-year-old Hitler Youth, Wili Hubner, 1945 – Wikipedia / Bundesarchiv

Werewolf is the name of a Nazi project developed during the war, that implied the use of organized guerrilla warfare in case of foreign occupation. Commando No.1 in Nazi Germany was assigned to oversee the development of the operation in the last months of the war. Joseph Goebbels  inflated the story of an already operational partisan movement, that was to be put into action as soon as the Allies and the Soviets reached Berlin.
It was, in fact, a propaganda fairy tale designed to scare the invading forces and to desperately raise the morale of German citizens. The resistance movement was mostly composed of Hitler Youth members who were being trained in guerrilla tactics months before the end of the war.
Skorzeny saw the lack of potential of the operation and soon redirected the small force of fanatics to aid the escaping Nazi high officials. The Werewolf commited a series of terrorist acts months after the war was over, but it is difficult to distinguish their actions from individuals who acted on their own. The group was never officialy disbanded. The Soviet NKVD dealt with the problem harshly, accusing and killing roughly 5,000 boys, aged 15 to 17, for suspected Werewolf activity.

Epilogue

Otto Skorzeny as an Allied POW

After the war Skorzeny was imprisoned as a POW by the Americans an awaited his trial. In 1947, he was prosecuted for war crimes since his methods violated many conventions of war.  Two ex-SS officers dressed in American uniforms helped Skorzeny escape from prison.
In the post-war period, he was a Nazi supporter who carried out numerous efforts of smuggling accused war criminals to countries that would offer them asylum. It is believed that Otto Skorzeny was an agent of secret organizations ODESSA (Organization of Former SS Members) and Der Spinne Group. Both of these clandestine organizations were mostly preoccupied with smuggling  Nazis to South America, so they could avoid trial and possibly death.
Like thousands of other former Nazis, Skorzeny was declared entnazifiziert (denazified) in absentia in 1952 by a West German government arbitration board, which now meant he could travel from Spain into other Western countries, on a special Nansen passport for stateless persons with which he visited Ireland in 1957 and 1958.
Skorzeny lived in Spain most of his post-war life, where he founded a Neo-Nazi group called CEDADE (Spanish Circle of Friends of Europe). He also ran a mercenary security company called The Paladin Group, which was actually a cover for a far-right organization of the same name.
He died in Madrid, in 1975, of lung cancer. His well-established connections enabled him to spend his life without being sentenced or persecuted for his Nazi past, which he never regretted. He helped numerous Nazi officials escape justice and continued to fight for the Nazi cause even after the defeat.