Hitler's Raid to Save Mussolini

by Greg Annussek

  The latest tip was apparently provided courtesy of Captain Gerhard von Kamptz, the officer who was assigned the command of the naval forces for the Santo Stefano Blitz. By pure chance, according to General Student, Kamptz had run across an old navy buddy in Rome who was then serving as the German liaison officer to the Italian naval base at Maddalena Island.2 To Kamptz’s surprise, his friend, Commander Helmut Hunaeus, passed on a juicy bit of gossip. There was a rumor going around the island, he reported, that La Maddalena was currently playing host to a very famous guest— none other than Benito Mussolini.3

  Captain von Kamptz promptly went to La Maddalena to do some detective work of his own. When he returned to Rome and informed Student of what he had discovered, the general put Kamptz on a plane and the two men flew to the Wolf ’s Lair, where they arrived on August 16.4 Admiral Doenitz later summarized the story that Kamptz presented to Hitler.

  “During one of his visits to Maddalena,” Doenitz noted, “Captain von Kamptz heard persistent rumors that cruisers which arrived at Maddalena some time ago brought the Duce with them. He is now quartered in a villa in Maddalena in the immediate vicinity of the naval air base and is under guard there. Von Kamptz requested an automobile under some pretext and intended to check the veracity of the rumor.”5

  What Kamptz heard next must have shocked him: “The Italian in charge replied that, in view of the presence of the Duce, the only naval car available in Maddalena is being reserved for the exclusive use of the Chief of the Carabinieri.” The presence of the Duce? The loose-lipped Italian had inadvertently revealed the secret of Mussolini’s hideout. “Von Kamptz reported these observations immediately to General Student who in turn boarded a plane with him and flew to the Fuehrer Headquarters.”6

  Hitler was intrigued. “The Fuehrer ordered that a raid on the villa in Maddalena is to be included in operation ‘Eiche’ [Oak]. Execution of such a raid is considered an easy matter. German ships are constantly steaming in and out of the harbor; that would make possible an inconspicuous transfer of German troops from [the nearby island of] Corsica and a surprise raid.”7 The words “included in” are interesting because they seem to imply that Operation Oak was taking on the shape of a blanket operation that might hit several targets simultaneously just to ensure that the Duce was found in one of them.

  But the notion of mounting a rescue mission at this stage was premature. In fact, when Student and Kamptz arrived at the Wolf ’s Lair on August 16, Student discovered that Hitler had another theory regarding the dictator’s whereabouts, namely, that he was being held captive aboard an Italian warship in the port of La Spezia on the northwestern coast of Italy.8 The information had supposedly come from, of all people, Erwin Rommel, who had recently visited northern Italy; there, a “reliable source” revealed to him Mussolini’s secret location.*9 (Skorzeny maintained that the ultimate source of the La Spezia tip was an Italian naval officer, but neither he nor his deputy Radl mentioned Rommel’s role in the affair.)10

  “He [Hitler] was convinced that Mussolini was in La Spezia,” Student remembered. “He was sure that the Italian government intended to hand him over to the enemy as a war criminal.”11 According to Student, there were two main reasons why Hitler was inclined to view Rommel’s information as credible. For one thing, the notion that the Duce had been stowed away on a warship seemed consistent with Hitler’s belief that the Italians were preparing to turn him over to the enemy (by sea) in the near future. The second factor was Rommel himself. In those days, Hitler held the Desert Fox in high esteem and was planning to give him the command of the entire Italian theater when the time was ripe. Rommel had already been given command of Army Group B, which was pouring into Italy through the Alpine passes, but Kesselring retained control of German forces in the south.

  At this point, Student did not know what to believe.12 La Spezia, after all, was not totally inconsistent with other intelligence the Nazis had gathered. According to Radl, one of the agents working for the Mussolini task force in Rome had determined that the Duce had left the Pontine Islands aboard an Italian warship (destination unknown) prior to mid-August.13 The Italians had also reportedly thrown a cordon around the harbor at La Spezia, making it look as if the port had something to hide.14 Student, for one, began to wonder whether the Italian Military Intelligence Service (SIM) was getting the better of the Nazis.

  “It could not be excluded,” he later wrote, “that the rumors that Mussolini was in La Spezia or on Maddalena were spread by Italian intelligence to confuse [us].”15 Even so, Student and his new SS partner (and subordinate) Otto Skorzeny had no choice but to examine the unattractive possibility of snatching the Duce from his prisonon-the-sea at La Spezia. “For twenty-four hours we battled feverishly with the problem,” Skorzeny recalled. “No doubt at G.H.Q. they imagined nothing was easier than to make a man vanish from under the eyes of the crew of a cruiser on war footing.”16

  They did not lose much sleep over it. After a bit of long-distance snooping, Student was able to determine that Rommel’s piece of intelligence was yet another red herring. According to the general, the Luftwaffe had some Jaegerleitoffiziere (fighter-control officers) based in La Spezia.17 Some of these men were contacted on the sly, but they were unable to find evidence that Mussolini was being hidden in their midst. “It was quite apparent that Mussolini was not there,” Student finally concluded.*18 (The presence of Germans throughout Italy, even though they were scattered in relatively small numbers in some places, proved immensely helpful throughout the investigation.)

  The island of La Maddalena, on the other hand, seemed to warrant further investigation. General Student was becoming increasingly bogged down in the detailed planning of Hitler’s military occupation of Italy at this time, so he asked Skorzeny to see what he could find out. “He threw himself in this new assignment with fanaticism and astounding energy,” Student recalled. “Soon he had results.”19

  Skorzeny did not require much coaxing. Indeed, the burly Austrian seemed to possess a measure of self-confidence proportional to his size. His trademark feature was a long and menacing-looking dueling scar (dating from his University of Vienna days) that ran down the left side of his face. For Skorzeny, this old wound was a badge of honor. “My knowledge of pain, learned with the sabre,” he once commented with a characteristic touch of melodrama, “taught me not to be afraid of fear. And just as in duelling you must fix your mind on striking at the enemy’s head, so, too, in war. You cannot waste time on feinting and sidestepping. You must decide on your target and go in.”20

  But Skorzeny was also something of an amateur when it came to matters of intelligence gathering and special operations. He had spent much of the war as a Waffen SS engineering officer, fixing tanks and trucks on the battlefront.* After being wounded in Russia during the winter of 1941–1942, he was sidelined to a repair depot in Berlin, where he seemed destined to sit out the rest of the war. “They undoubtedly needed engineering officers in the reserve units,” he later wrote. “But I found that I could be more useful. The thought of being no more than a conscientious working engineer did not please me.”21

  As luck would have it, while Skorzeny was growing restless in the Reich capital, the Nazis were casting about for a man to head up a new commando unit known as the Friedenthal Battalion, which took its name from the small town near Berlin in which it was based (Friedenthal means “valley of peace”). Created under the auspices of Himmler’s SS, Friedenthal was set up as a rival to the famed British commandos, whose exploits during World War II were already the stuff of legend by 1943. The SS was looking for an officer with combat experience as well as technical expertise to lead the new unit. Skorzeny’s name was reportedly suggested by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who at the time was the head of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA)—the Third Reich’s labyrinthine police and spy apparatus— and who had known Skorzeny since their prewar Vienna days.

  In April 1943, just a few months before Mussolini’s overthrow, Skorzeny assumed command of Fried
enthal and met with his immediate supervisor, Major Walter Schellenberg, who was chief of foreign intelligence for the SS (Amt VI of the RSHA).* “Frankly,” Skorzeny later admitted, “I did not understand much of what he explained to me; after all I was only entering a realm which until now had been a total mystery to me.”22 The purpose of the new organization, as he understood it, was to carry out commando missions and acts of sabotage. Friedenthal already existed in embryonic form. Skorzeny’s task was to expand, reorganize, and inject new life into it. His assignment was accompanied by a promotion, and Skorzeny was bumped up to the rank of captain.

  Naturally, he assumed that Friedenthal would be used to strike at targets behind enemy lines in the Soviet Union or in territory occupied by British and American forces. He never suspected that his first real mission would pit him against the Italians, Germany’s Axis ally. But the unusual nature of Operation Oak did nothing to dampen his zeal. As a fanatically loyal and ambitious SS man, Skorzeny was determined to carry out Hitler’s order by finding the Duce and bringing him back to Germany at any cost.

  In mid-August or so, Skorzeny tried his hand at solving the mystery of Isola Maddalena. As one of his first steps, he commandeered a German minesweeper and took a lap or two around the island, located a few miles from the northeastern tip of Sardinia. As German ships were common in the area, Skorzeny probably assumed that his little cruise would not arouse undue suspicion on the part of the Italians.

  Situated in the Strait of Bonifacio, the narrow sea-lane between Corsica and Sardinia, La Maddalena was roughly triangular in shape and about eight square miles in size. As Skorzeny sailed round the jagged coastline, he found himself gazing up at the island’s reddishcolored, rocky heights. He surreptitiously snapped a few photos of the harbor works and other items of interest, including the so-called Villa Webber, a small mansion on a hill overlooking the sea. Nestled among a tiny forest of pine trees, the villa was located about five hundred yards west of the small town of Maddalena on the southern coast of the island.23

  The Villa Webber had figured in some of the rumors reaching German ears at this time—Commander Hunaeus, for one, had mentioned it—but Skorzeny did not know whether the information was credible or just another false clue being circulated by the Italians.24 To complicate matters, La Maddalena was surrounded by numerous other islands and islets of all shapes and sizes. Though multiple leads pointed to the general area of Sardinia, some of them indicated that Mussolini was not on La Maddalena at all but was being hidden nearby.25 For instance, when Skorzeny had paid a visit to Palau on the northeastern coast of Sardinia (opposite La Maddalena), the German commander of a flak unit stationed there said that he had heard that the Duce was convalescing in a monastery in the nearby Sardinian village of Santa Maria, which was apparently Santa Maria Navarrese on the eastern coast.26

  All the leads would need to be checked out, but La Maddalena seemed to be the most promising. To figure out whether Mussolini was really on the island, Skorzeny proposed an undercover operation involving Lieutenant Robert Warger, the only man among his Friedenthal commandos who spoke perfect Italian.

  “My scheme,” Skorzeny later explained in the politically incorrect language of the time, “was based entirely on the fact that all Italians have a passion for betting.”27 To exploit this stereotypical proclivity, Warger was dispatched to La Maddalena in the guise of a German sailor and passed off as an interpreter working for Commander Hunaeus, the German naval liaison.28 Warger’s real job was to spend as much time as possible drinking and carousing in the small bars of Maddalena town. Whenever he overheard the Italian patrons discussing the Duce and his fate, Warger, pretending to be intoxicated, would join the conversation and put forward the view that Mussolini was dead or seriously ill. If any of the Italians disagreed, Warger would challenge him to put his money where his mouth was.

  Skorzeny figured that at least some of the locals, civilians or sailors, were probably aware that the Duce was on the island, if indeed he was. Perhaps Warger could tempt one of them into accepting a wager.

  There was one potentially fatal complication in Skorzeny’s scheme: Warger was a teetotaler who never touched alcohol. In fact, he was the only Friedenthaler who did not drink. “It was only by insisting at great length on his duty as a soldier,” Skorzeny recalled, “that I managed to persuade him to violate his principles.”29 Before leaving for La Maddalena, Warger was given an impromptu lesson on the art of imbibing that apparently left him feeling ill.

  “Skorzeny had imagination and good ideas,” Student later wrote. “He was able to smuggle one of his SS officers, who spoke fluent Italian, onto the island disguised as a sailor. . . . At the same time he investigated the conditions for the [rescue] operation on [my] instructions.”30

  Having set Operation Warger in motion, Skorzeny decided to take some aerial photos of the island. On August 18, his Heinkel 111 departed Practica di Mare airport near Rome, refueled at Pausania on Sardinia, then climbed to an altitude of 15,000 feet and completed a reconnaissance run. The He 111 was a twin-engined medium bomber with a large, transparent cockpit, which allowed for excellent visibility.

  Skorzeny squeezed into the forward gun position and using a handheld camera began taking several pictures of La Maddalena. To do this, he had to lie face down in the space adjacent to the pilot’s seat. (When the He 111 was fully manned, this position was normally occupied by the bombardier, who was also responsible for operating the manual 7.9-mm MG 15 machine gun that protruded from the tip of the cockpit.) Skorzeny had just taken a moment to admire the panoramic view of the sea below him when a sudden announcement from the rear gunner jolted him to attention.

  “Look out behind us!” the gunner cried. “Two planes. British pursuit planes!”31

  Skorzeny instinctively gripped the handle of the forward gun as the pilot began an evasive maneuver. The aircraft straightened out momentarily, but then went into a sickening dive. One look at the pilot and Skorzeny knew that he and the crew were in deep trouble. “Turning around,” he remembered, “I saw the pilot’s contorted face as he sought vainly to straighten out his ship. A glance through the window [of the cockpit] showed me that our left motor had failed. The plane was diving at a dizzying speed.”32

  Skorzeny grabbed hold of the gun once again—this time to brace himself for impact. He felt a violent jolt when the 20,000- pound airplane hit the water and began to plow across its surface, then everything went black.33 The next thing he remembered was being dragged upwards by a member of the crew. Skorzeny and the others managed to scamper to safety through an emergency exit in the crumpled cockpit, which was quickly filling up with water. It dawned on him that he had left his camera and briefcase behind, so he climbed back into the plane through the cockpit, retrieved the items, and returned to the surface. He then hopped into an inflatable life raft with the plane’s crew (all of whom had survived the crash) and watched the He 111 disappear into the waves.*

  Skorzeny and his stranded comrades found refuge on a nearby reef until an Italian cruiser happened by and picked them up. “What luck,” Skorzeny mused to himself, “that the skipper cannot guess the reason for our presence hereabouts.”34 He had escaped the crash without obvious injuries—or so it seemed at the time. A few days later, a doctor told Skorzeny that the nagging pain he felt in his chest was the result of three broken ribs.

  Instead of returning to the mainland, Skorzeny made a detour to the island of Corsica to make contact with the Waffen SS unit that was stationed there. He thought that he might need its help if the Nazis decided to mount a rescue operation. When he arrived in Rome on August 20 and met with Radl, he learned that Herbert Kappler, the German police attaché, had made another discovery.35

  According to Radl, Kappler had focused his attention on members of Mussolini’s immediate family, most of whom were still in Italy at this time, though the Duce’s son Vittorio had fled to the relative safety of Germany.36 He hit pay dirt with Edda Ciano, the dictator’s favorite daughter. Edda, it se
ems, had written a letter to her father, and Kappler had somehow managed to trace it to Maddalena Island.*37 (It should be mentioned at this point that Badoglio had agreed to facilitate the exchange of mail between Mussolini and the outside world.)

  A more dramatic breakthrough soon followed. When Skorzeny reestablished radio contact with Warger, he discovered that his Italian-speaking undercover agent had actually seen the Duce!38 Skorzeny wanted to speak to Warger face-to-face, so on August 23, having evidently shaken off the effects of his plane crash in the Tyrrhenian Sea, he flew back to La Maddalena with Radl.39

  Warger explained to them that he had carried out his mission as instructed and eventually found an Italian merchant who took the bet. The man delivered fruit to the Villa Webber and claimed to have seen Mussolini there. He even offered to show Warger a good spot from which to view the estate. Warger decided to stake out the villa for a few days. At some point during his reconnaissance, he spied a bald, stocky man on the terrace of the building.40 He could not see the man’s face clearly because he was too far away, but Warger was almost certain that it was the Duce.41

  Skorzeny and Radl returned to Rome on August 24 and conferred with General Student.42 The three men agreed that they had finally tracked down the dictator, or so it appeared from their perspective. But not everyone in Nazi intelligence circles was inclined to agree. “Then suddenly,” remembered Skorzeny, “like lightning blazing down from a clear blue sky, we received an order from the Führer’s G.H.Q.: G.H.Q. has just received a report from Ausland Abwehr (Admiral Canaris) that Mussolini is on a small island near Elba.”43

  Skorzeny was dumbfounded. He knew that Elba was a mountainous island located off the northwestern coast of Italy about one hundred miles from La Maddalena. But the whole business was more than a little suspect because there was no credible evidence that placed the Duce anywhere near Elba.