The Daring Dozen

by Gavin Mortimer

  Lieutenant Ernst Prohaska’s unit began their mission on the afternoon of 9 August; driving towards the bridge over the river Bjelaja in four captured Russian half-tracks, all were wearing Russian military uniforms over their German battledress. Passing through several Russian checkpoints with ease, the Brandenburgers arrived at the bridge to find a Soviet tanker stationed at one end with several soldiers nearby. In a carefully coordinated attack, the Germans opened fire on the soldiers, while others seized the tanker and another section searched the bridge for explosive charges. Within minutes the bridge was secured and soon the first German armour moved down it into Maikop.

  By the time Prohaska’s section had accomplished their task, von Fölkersam’s unit was deep inside Maikop, having advanced from the direction of Alexandrovskaja on 2 August. Initially all had gone well, but then in the suburbs of the city their convoy had been stopped at a roadblock manned by some genuine members of the NKVD. In faultless Russian, von Fölkersam explained their mission – that they had been sent to destroy the oil storage tanks in the event of a German occupation of the city. He passed himself off as ‘Major Turchin from Stalingrad’ and was directed to the NKVD headquarters in the centre of Maikop. The general to whom von Fölkersam reported was utterly convinced by the German imposter as well as flattered that the NKVD should send a special team to assist in their hour of need.

  Von Fölkersam asked for a tour of the city’s defences so he could best observe where his men were needed in the case of a German attack. The general obliged and for three days the Brandenburgers reconnoitred Maikop at their leisure; then on 8 August, with the sound of the German artillery growing louder from the south, von Fölkersam briefed his men that they would execute their orders at dawn on the 9th.

  Splitting into three groups, one party, under the command of Lieutenant Franz Koudele, occupied the central telegraph office, informing the workers that the city was being abandoned and they must leave at once. Koudele and his Russian-speaking men manned the telephones and informed all callers that they had received orders from Moscow that Maikop was to be evacuated.

  Von Fölkersam, meanwhile, toured the city’s defences, urgently telling the Russian soldiers that orders had been received for the immediate withdrawal of all troops. As the exodus gathered pace, a third party of Brandenburgers drove to the oil storage tanks and arrived just as a detachment of Russian engineers were in the process of destroying the facilities. One tank was already in flames but von Fölkersam’s men ordered the engineers to leave for their own safety – they would finish the job.

  The audacious mission had been achieved without a single fatality, and for his courage and leadership von Fölkersam was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.*

  By the summer of 1943 the Brandenburgers had become a victim of their own success. No longer a small unit engaged in guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines, they had been expanded into a division and attached to the Grossdeutschland Panzer Corps. Disenchanted with what he saw as the misuse of the commando concept, von Fölkersam secured an interview with Major Otto Skorzeny, days after his brilliant operation to free Benito Mussolini from captivity at the Campo Imperatore Hotel in the mountains of Abruzzo. ‘He told me that there was great dissatisfaction in the ranks of the old Brandenburgers,’ recalled Skorzeny, who was the commander of a newly formed Special Forces unit, the SS Sonderlehrgang zbV Friedenthal.3

  Von Fölkersam told Skorzeny why he was dissatisfied and asked if he and ten other Brandenburg veterans could join his unit. ‘I immediately took a great fancy to von Fölkersam, both as a man and a soldier,’ said Skorzeny, ‘and felt sure that in a tight corner I would certainly find him an experienced and valuable helper. I was only too pleased to assure him that I would do what I could.’4

  It took all of Skorzeny’s charm and powers of persuasion to convince Admiral Canaris to agree to the transfer of von Fölkersam and the others to the SS Sonderlehrgang zbV Friedenthal. But in November 1943 the request was granted and von Fölkersam joined the unit as Skorzeny’s chief staff officer.

  One of von Fölkersam’s first tasks was to plan for the Allied invasion of France, expected some time in 1944. Skorzeny had been given a list of ten likely landing places for an invasion fleet along the northern French coast, and von Fölkersam was instructed to think how best they could resist the Allies should they try to establish a bridgehead in the Cherbourg (Cotentin) Peninsula. ‘We suggested that we should establish small units at the points of greatest danger with a commission to attack prospective enemy headquarters and communication centres,’ said Skorzeny, who submitted the plan to the German High Command but heard nothing further.

  By the spring of 1944 Skorzeny’s attention was drawn away from France to Yugoslavia and the problem posed by Marshal Josip Tito, the leader of the Yugoslav Partisans (estimated to be as many as 250,000) who were inflicting a growing number of losses on German forces in the mountainous regions of the country. A major assault against the Partisans was impossible; because of the war with Russia and the expected invasion of France, Germany no longer had the resources. Instead it was decided to attempt to capture Tito himself, in an audacious raid against his headquarters at Drvar in western Bosnia.

  Having been given the task of organizing the mission, Skorzeny sent von Fölkersam to Banja Luka, in the north-west of Bosnia, to learn what he could of Tito’s HQ from the German commander in the area. On his return, von Fölkersam told Skorzeny that his welcome in Banja Luka had been less than hospitable and there appeared to be no desire to share intelligence. Days later Skorzeny discovered the reason for the hostility: the German corps in Banja Luka wanted to carry out the mission themselves and resented the presence of a Special Forces officer. However, Skorzeny had already decided the mission was too risky and too widely known among the general population, and his unit took no further part in what became known as Operation Rösselsprung, which ended in bloody failure in May 1944.

  On 10 September 1944 Skorzeny was summoned from his unit’s headquarters at Friedenthal, 40 miles south of the city of Erfurt, to Hitler’s Eastern Front HQ at Rastenburg, otherwise known as the ‘Wolf’s Lair’. He arrived to find the Führer in a foul mood. With the Allies having liberated Paris the previous month, and the Red Army dominant in the east – having invaded Bulgaria and pressurized Romania into defecting from the Axis cause – the war was not going well for the Third Reich.

  For three days those present at the Wolf’s Lair discussed the war and listened to Hitler’s furious tirades; then, at the end of the third day, Hitler asked Skorzeny to remain behind along with a cadre of senior commanders: Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Heinrich Himmler. The Führer then addressed the small group, telling them that:

  We have received secret reports that the head of the Hungarian state, Admiral [Miklós] Horthy is attempting to get in touch with our enemies with a view to a separate peace.5

  With Soviet forces massed on the east Hungarian border, Horthy was apparently eager to reach a peace accord with Stalin in order to prevent the destruction of his country. Hitler could not let this happen: not only would a Soviet occupation of Hungary endanger 70 German divisions fighting in the Balkans but it would also deprive the Nazis of Hungarian oil reserves and grain supplies. Turning to Skorzeny, Hitler said: ‘You must be prepared to seize the citadel of Budapest by force, if he betrays his alliance with us. The General Staff is thinking of a coup de main with parachute or glider troops. The command of the whole operation in that city has been entrusted to the new corps commander, General [Ulrich] Kleeman. You are under his orders for this affair but must push ahead at once with your preparations.’6

  Immediately Skorzeny swung into action, telephoning von Fölkersam from the Wolf’s Lair at 0200hrs to stand-to a company of SS commandos; von Fölkersam himself was to meet Skorzeny at an airfield in north-east Germany in eight hours’ time, from where they would then fly to Vienna and on to Budapest – travelling incognito. The pair arrived in the Hungarian c
apital on 12 September and toured the city so that they could ‘devise a plan to alert all the [German] troops in and around the city so that they would be ready for action at any moment. It was essential that all railway stations, post offices and other transport and communication centres should always be in German hands.’7

  Skorzeny and von Fölkersam switched their attention to the citadel, the strongly defended residence of Admiral Miklos Horthy, situated on a hill. The citadel also contained a number of government buildings and Skorzeny feared the Hungarians would hole up there if they felt threatened. ‘Von Fölkersam was therefore instructed to make a most careful study of all available plans of the city and supplement his knowledge with minute inspection of the streets and buildings,’ wrote Skorzeny. ‘The result of his labours was full of surprises. There was a labyrinth of passages under the citadel, a nasty snag for us.’8

  At the start of October Skorzeny ordered his company of commandos to Budapest, quartering them in barracks just outside the city. Then, having learned that Admiral Horthy’s son, Niklas, was conducting secret negotiations with a representative from Marshal Tito’s Partisans in Budapest, Skorzeny and von Fölkersam arranged to have the pair kidnapped at their next meeting, the morning of Sunday 15 October. ‘The streets were empty at the time appointed for the rendezvous,’ recalled Skorzeny. ‘My company was in a side street in covered trucks. Captain von Fölkersam kept me in touch with them as obviously I could not show myself in uniform that day.’9

  Two Gestapo officers were due to snatch Niklas Horthy and the Yugoslav negotiator but the Hungarian guards sensed something was wrong and opened fire, shooting one of the Germans in the stomach. Skorzeny watched from a car parked outside the building that Horthy and the Yugoslav were in. ‘Then I heard my men running out of the side street in our direction,’ he remembered. ‘Von Fölkersam had taken the situation in at a glance and posted the first section at the corner of the square, while the others swept through the gardens and began firing at the house fronts.’10

  It took von Fölkersam and his men 15 minutes to kill the Hungarian guards and carry the two targets out of the house in rolled-up carpets. Then they were on their way to an airfield bound for Germany – not as prisoners, according to Hitler, merely ‘guests’ of the Third Reich for the duration of the war.

  Unfortunately for the Germans, the removal of Niklas Horthy failed to dissuade his father from continuing to seek terms with the Soviet Union, and that same afternoon Admiral Horthy announced on the radio that he had ‘concluded a separate peace with Russia’. Skorzeny began to put into effect Operation Panzerfaust, the plan he and von Fölkersam had drawn up in the weeks spent reconnoitring the citadel. A cordon of troops from the 22nd SS Division encircled the citadel as other German soldiers occupied the stations, post offices and other communication centres that von Fölkersam had identified as key.

  The commander of the 22nd SS Division, SS General Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski was in favour of storming the citadel and killing all inside, but Skorzeny asked to be given a chance to employ less extreme measures first. ‘Von Fölkersam and I pored for hours over the plan of the Citadel which we had made,’ recalled Skorzeny, ‘and our ideas of the coming action began to assume definite shape.’11

  They didn’t have long, however, with von dem Bach-Zelewski allowing them only one day to try their methods before he ordered his troops to raze the citadel to the ground. At dawn on 16 October, therefore, Skorzeny launched his assault; a battalion of naval cadets approached the citadel through the gardens on the southern side while he and a platoon of his commandos, supported by two tanks, advanced towards the west of the target. Meanwhile a platoon of the 600th SS Parachute Battalion would enter the citadel through an underground passage that von Fölkersam had discovered in the plans. Held in reserve in case of fierce resistance were the rest of Skorzeny’s battalion of commandos and the SS parachute battalion.

  Prior to the attack von Fölkersam made some coffee for those present in Skorzeny’s command post. Skorzeny recalled later the tension as the minutes ticked down to zero hour. ‘In my truck I had von Fölkersam and Ostafel [another officer] as well as five NCOs who had been in the Gran Sasso show [the liberation of Mussolini]. I considered them my personal assault group. Each was armed with a machine pistol, a few hand grenades and the new bazooka. We were wondering what the Hungarian tanks in the Citadel would do.’12

  At 0600hrs the attack began, and von Fölkersam and Skorzeny’s truck roared towards the Citadel, followed by the two tanks, ‘doing a good 35 to 40 kilometres to the hour’. They heard two heavy explosions from the south and then ahead saw three Hungarian tanks blocking their path. ‘As we drew level the leading one tilted its gun skywards as a signal they would not fire,’ recalled Skorzeny.13

  Next they encountered a barricade of stones in front of the citadel’s gate. Skorzeny’s truck moved aside as one of the tanks crushed the barricade under its tracks and burst through the gate. The commandos leapt from the truck and followed on foot. ‘A colonel of the guard got out his revolver to stop us but von Fölkersam knocked it out of his hand,’ recalled Skorzeny. Another officer was forced to show them the way to the commandant’s office and they raced up a staircase to a first floor echoing to the sound of small-arms fire. Skorzeny barged into the commandant’s office and demanded his surrender. The Hungarian major-general readily agreed and the pair shook heads and each sent an officer to inform their respective troops that the citadel had been surrendered.

  The storming of the citadel had been a complete success. For relatively little bloodshed (four German soldiers killed and a similar number of Hungarians), the buildings were in control of Skorzeny’s men. Admiral Horthy was unharmed and in German custody.*

  On 20 October von Fölkersam and Skorzeny returned to Berlin and the next day they were summoned to Adolf Hitler’s bunker. While von Fölkersam was told to wait in the ante-room, Skorzeny had a private audience with the Führer, during which he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and awarded the German Cross in Gold (a decoration higher than the Iron Cross First Class but below the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross). Then Hitler and Skorzeny sat in two armchairs in the corner of the room and the Nazi leader listened to a full account of the Hungarian operation, laughing at the story of how Niklas Horthy had been removed inside a carpet.

  When Skorzeny had finished his story, Hitler grew solemn and told him that he had ‘perhaps the most important job in your life for you’. He explained that Germany was soon to launch a great offensive against the Allies in the West, one which he hoped would bring Britain and America to the negotiating table so that together they could fight the Soviet Union. Hitler invited Skorzeny to join him in the operations room of the bunker, where Colonel-General Heinz Guderian, the chief of the general staff, was waiting to explain the details of the offensive. In the ante-room Skorzeny introduced von Fölkersam to the Führer and Skorzeny was ‘amazed when the latter reminded him of the commando operation in Russia in which [von Fölkersam] had won his Knight’s Cross’.14

  The offensive would be launched in the Ardennes, along a front that ran from Monschau in the north to Echternach in the south, the aim being to punch through the Allied front line, split the British and American forces, and then seize the port of Antwerp. To achieve its objectives, Hitler explained to Skorzeny, the offensive relied on the rapid seizure of three bridges along the river Meuse – at Huy, Amay and Engis. This was to be the role of Skorzeny and a new unit formed especially for the operation – codenamed Greif – called the 150th Panzer Brigade, attached to General Sepp Dietrich’s 6th SS Panzer Army. Hitler then told Skorzeny that to help him achieve his mission ‘you will have to wear British and American uniforms … small detachments in enemy uniforms can cause the greatest confusion among the Allies by giving false orders and upsetting their communications’.15

  Hitler finished his briefing by telling Skorzeny he must be ready to deploy his force by 2 December. With only five weeks to raise his commando unit, Skorzeny
relied heavily on von Fölkersam; first they had to acquire Allied uniform and equipment, everything from weapons to trucks to boots. Then they had to recruit men who spoke fluent English, preferably with an American accent. ‘Von Fölkersam spent a lot of time making notes of the most pressing requirements,’ recalled Skorzeny in his memoirs, as he himself concentrated on the composition of his panzer brigade. It would comprise 3,300 men in total, split into three battle groups – X,Y and Z – with two tank companies of ten tanks in each group, along with three motorized infantry battalions and a mortar section.

  Throughout November Skorzeny encountered one obstacle after another in the preparation for Operation Greif: there was an absence of English-speaking recruits, a shortage of American uniforms and a lack of Allied vehicles. Then Skorzeny discovered that instead of the 2,000 German jet fighters promised to provide air support during the offensive, there would only be 250.

  When Skorzeny and von Fölkersam reported to Hitler on 2 December, the former made clear his disappointment that the Luftwaffe had failed to provide him with aerial reconnaissance photographs of the three bridges they were to attack. Hitler was furious to learn of the omission and ‘carpeted’ Hermann Göring. Then the Führer turned to Skorzeny and instructed him that he was not to go on the mission himself; rather, he must remain at the command post of Dietrich’s 6th SS Panzer Army and not allow himself to be captured.