Otto Johann Anton Skorzeny (12 June 1908 – 5 July 1975) was an Austrian-born German intelligence officer and commando who served as an SS-Obersturmbannführer within the Waffen-SS during the Second World War. Over the course of the conflict, he was implicated in several notable operations, among them the removal from power of the Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy and the raid on Gran Sasso, which secured the liberation of Benito Mussolini from captivity. Skorzeny additionally commanded Operation Greif, an initiative in which German personnel infiltrated Allied positions while disguised in enemy uniforms. This latter action subsequently led to his prosecution in 1947 before the Dachau Military Tribunal on charges of violating the 1907 Hague Convention; he was, however, acquitted of these charges.
Following his escape from an internment facility in 1948, Skorzeny sought refuge on a farm in Bavaria and subsequently resided in Salzburg and Paris before ultimately establishing himself in Francoist Spain. In 1953, he assumed the role of military advisor to the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, and he is also reported to have served in an advisory capacity to the Argentine president Juan Perón, although this latter claim remains a matter of some historiographical uncertainty. Skorzeny died of lung cancer on 5 July 1975 in Madrid, at the age of sixty-seven.
Early life Skorzeny was born on 12 June 1908, in Vienna, into a middle-class Austrian family which had a long history of military service. His surname is of Polish origin, and Skorzeny's distant ancestors came from Skorzęcin in the Greater Poland region, eventually immigrating to East Prussia.
In addition to his native German, he spoke excellent French and was proficient in English. In his teens, Skorzeny once complained to his father about the austere lifestyle the family was enduring; his father replied, "There is no harm in doing without things. It might even be good for you not to get used to a soft life."
He was a noted fencer as a member of a German-national Burschenschaft while studying at the Technical University of Vienna. He engaged in fifteen personal combats. The tenth resulted in a wound that left a dramatic duelling scar, known in academic fencing as a Schmiss (German for "smite" or "hit"), on his cheek.
In May 1932, Skorzeny joined the Austrian Nazi organization and soon became a member of the Austrian branch of the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) in February 1934. A charismatic figure, Skorzeny played a minor role in the Anschluss on 12 March 1938 when, according to his own account, he saved the Austrian President Wilhelm Miklas from being shot by Austrian Nazis.
Eastern Front After the 1939 Invasion of Poland, Skorzeny, then working as a civil engineer, volunteered for service in the German Air Force (the Luftwaffe), but was turned down because he was considered too tall at and too old (31 years in 1939) for aircrew training.. He then joined the Waffen-SS, training with Hitler's bodyguard regiment, the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH).
Skorzeny took part in the invasion of the Soviet Union with the SS Division Das Reich and subsequently fought in several battles on the Eastern Front. In October 1941, he was in charge of a "technical section" of German forces during the Battle of Moscow. His mission was to seize important buildings of the Communist Party, including the NKVD headquarters at Lubyanka, and the central telegraph office and other high priority facilities, before they could be destroyed. He was also ordered to capture the sluices of the Moscow-Volga Canal because Hitler wanted to turn Moscow into a huge artificial lake by opening them.Ganzenmüller, Jörg (18 July 2011). Blockade Leningrads: Hunger als Waffe . Zeit Online; retrieved 6 November 2011 (in German). The missions were cancelled since German forces had failed to capture the Soviet capital.
In January 1942, Skorzeny was hit in the back of the head by shrapnel; he was evacuated to the rear for treatment. He had previously been awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class while fighting in the Yelnya bridgehead. Recuperating from his injuries he was given a staff role in Berlin, where he developed his ideas on unconventional commando warfare.
Strategically and tactically, Skorzeny's proposals were to develop units specialized in such warfare, including partisan-like fighting deep behind enemy lines, fighting in enemy uniform, sabotage attacks, etc. In April 1943 Skorzeny's name was put forward by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the new head of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), and Skorzeny met with Walter Schellenberg, head of Amt VI, Ausland-SD (the SS foreign intelligence service department of the RSHA); Schellenberg charged Skorzeny with command of the schools organized to train operatives in sabotage, espionage, and paramilitary techniques. Skorzeny was appointed commander of the recently created Waffen SS Sonderverband z.b.V. Friedenthal stationed near Berlin (the unit was later renamed SS Jagdverband 502, and in November 1944 again to SS Combat Unit "Centre", expanding ultimately to five battalions)..
The unit's first mission was Operation François in mid-1943. Skorzeny sent a group by parachute into Iran to make contact with the dissident mountain tribes to encourage them to sabotage Allied shipments to the Soviet Union via the Trans-Iranian Railway. However, commitment among the rebel tribes was suspect, and Operation François was deemed a failure.
Operations by Skorzeny Operation François – Co-ordination of guerrilla operations in Iran. Operation Oak (Unternehmen Eiche, September 1943) – rescue of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Operation Long Jump – A planned operation to assassinate the "Big Three" (Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt) during the 1943 Tehran Conference. The plot was uncovered before its inception. Skorzeny denied that this operation had ever existed. Operation Knight's Leap (Unternehmen Rösselsprung, May 1944) – An attempt to capture Josip Broz Tito alive. Operation Armoured Fist (Unternehmen Panzerfaust a.k.a. Unternehmen Eisenfaust, October 1944) – kidnapping of Miklós Horthy Jr. to force his father, Admiral Miklós Horthy, to resign as Regent of Hungary in favor of Ferenc Szálasi, the pro-Nazi leader of the Arrow Cross Party. Operation Griffin (Unternehmen Greif, December 1944) – A false flag operation to spread disinformation during the Battle of the Bulge. Werwolf SS – A planned Nazi underground resistance movement in Allied-occupied Europe.
Liberation of Benito Mussolini
On the night between 24 and 25 July 1943, a few weeks after the Allied invasion of Sicily and bombing of Rome, the Italian Grand Council of Fascism voted a motion of no confidence (Ordine del Giorno Grandi) against Benito Mussolini. On the same day, the king replaced him with Marshal Pietro Badoglio and had him arrested.
Hitler ordered military operations to liberate Mussolini, and, as was his common procedure, he issued similar orders to competing organisations within the German military. So he ordered Skorzeny to track Mussolini, and simultaneously ordered the paratroop General Kurt Student to execute the liberation.
Mussolini was being transported around Italy by his captors (first to Ponza, then to La Maddalena, both small islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea). Intercepting a coded Italian radio message, Skorzeny used the reconnaissance provided by SS-Obersturmbannführer Herbert Kappler's network of agents and informants (helped with counterfeit British bank notes with a face value of £100,000, forged under Operation Bernhard). It was determined that Mussolini was being imprisoned at Campo Imperatore Hotel, a ski resort at Campo Imperatore in Italy's Gran Sasso massif, high in the Apennine Mountains.
On 12 September 1943, Skorzeny and 16 SS troopers joined the Fallschirmjäger to rescue Mussolini in a high-risk glider mission. Ten DFS 230 gliders, each carrying nine soldiers and a pilot, towed by Henschel Hs 126 planes started between 13:05 and 13:10 from the Pratica di Mare Air Base near Rome. The leader of the airborne operation, paratrooper-Oberleutnant Georg Freiherr von Berlepsch, entered the first glider, Skorzeny and his SS troopers sat in the fourth and fifth glider. To gain height before crossing the close by Alban Hills the leading three glider-towing plane units flew an additional loop. All following units considered this manoeuvre unnecessary and preferred not to endanger the given time of arrival at the target. This led to the situation that Skorzeny's two units arrived first over the target. Meanwhile, the valley station of the funicular railway leading to the Campo Imperatore was captured at 14:00 in a ground attack by two paratrooper companies led by Major Otto-Harald Mors, who was commander-in-chief of the whole raid. They also cut all telephone lines. At 14:05 the airborne commandos landed their ten DFS 230 gliders on the mountain near the hotel; only one crashed, causing injuries. The Fallschirmjäger and Skorzeny's special troopers overwhelmed Mussolini's captors (200 well-equipped Carabinieri guards) without a single shot being fired; this was also due to the fact that General Fernando Soleti of the Polizia dell' Africa Italiana, who flew in with Skorzeny, told them to stand down. Skorzeny attacked the radio operator and his equipment and stormed into the hotel, being followed by his SS troopers and the paratroopers. Ten minutes after the beginning of the raid, Mussolini left the hotel, accompanied by the German soldiers. At 14:45, Major Mors accessed the Hotel via the funicular railway and introduced himself to Mussolini.
Subsequently, Mussolini was to be flown out by a Fieseler Fi 156 STOL plane. Although under the given circumstances the small plane was overloaded, Skorzeny insisted on accompanying Mussolini, thus endangering the success of the mission. After an extremely dangerous but successful lift-off, they flew to Pratica di Mare. There they continued immediately, flying in a Heinkel He 111 to Vienna, where Mussolini stayed overnight at the Hotel Imperial. The next day he was flown to Munich and on 14 September he met Hitler at the Wolf's Lair Führer Headquarters near Rastenburg..
The landing at Campo Imperatore was in fact led by First Lieutenant Georg Freiherr von Berlepsch, commanded by Major Otto-Harald Mors and under orders from General Kurt Student, all Fallschirmjäger (German air force paratroop) officers; but Skorzeny stewarded the Italian leader right in front of the cameras. After a pro-SS propaganda coup at the behest of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Skorzeny and his special forces (SS-Sonderverband z. b. V. "Friedenthal") of the Waffen-SS were granted the majority of the credit for the operation.
Operation Long Jump
"Operation Long Jump" was the alleged code name given to a plot to assassinate the "Big Three" (Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt) at the 1943 Tehran Conference. Hitler supposedly gave the command of the operation to Ernst Kaltenbrunner, chief of the RSHA, who, in turn, ceded the mission to Skorzeny. Knowledge of the whole scheme was presented to the Western Allies by Stalin's NKVD at the Tehran Conference. The Soviets said they had learned about its existence from counter-espionage activities against German intelligence. Their agents had found out the Nazis knew the time and place of this meeting because they had cracked a US naval code. According to the NKVD, the assassination plot was foiled after they identified the German spies in Iran forcing Skorzeny to call off the mission due to inadequate intelligence..