Hitler's Raid to Save Mussolini

by Greg Annussek

  Though the idea of using gliders in combat may seem somewhat odd on its face, these types of planes possess several important advantages. Gliders, for instance, can land on almost any surface and are virtually silent. They also make it possible to accomplish the swift insertion of a small number of soldiers at a specific target behind enemy lines. An airborne drop, by way of contrast, tends to disperse men over a wider area, and this was especially true before the advent of high-tech parachutes.

  In late 1939, Hitler presented his idea to General Student, who along with his staff officers then developed a more detailed plan.17 Gliders had never been used in combat before—Eben Emael was to be their debut—but the forward-looking Luftwaffe already had a plane at the ready.18 During the 1930s, the air force had commissioned a company called the German Institute for Gliding Research (DFS) to develop a military glider.19 The result was the DFS 230, basically the modified form of a glider developed in the early 1930s to transport meteorological equipment. Aside from the pilot, the plane was designed to carry a maximum of nine men and their equipment.

  Early on the morning of May 10, 1940—the day of Hitler’s great offensive against the West—a small squadron of DFS 230 gliders appeared in the sky over Eben Emael.20 Dodging antiaircraft fire, they landed hard on the grassy surface of the fort.21 Small bands of Luftwaffe combat engineers then scrambled out of the half-wrecked planes and made a mad dash for the steel cupolas and concrete casemates enclosing the main guns, which were quickly put out of commission with shaped charges, another novelty at the time.22

  The Belgian defenders were left stunned. Though Student’s sixty-nine-man assault team had been outnumbered ten to one, it achieved complete tactical surprise and managed to accomplish its main objectives, namely, destroying the guns capable of taking out the canal bridges, within twenty minutes.23 The Germans counted six men dead, the Belgians twenty-five.24 Eben Emael subsequently went down in history as one of the most spectacular commando operations of all time. It also helped pave the way for a stunning German Blitzkrieg that defeated the combined armies of France and Britain in short order.

  Of course, any similarities between Eben Emael and a possible raid on the Hotel Imperatore were superficial at best. For Eben Emael, for example, Student’s paratroopers had rehearsed almost every aspect of the operation for months on end.25 The Germans had also possessed good intelligence on the fort, including a set of blueprints, and knew the location of each of the guns that they were responsible for destroying.26 Meticulous planning and numerous rehearsals conducted under real-life conditions were important factors in the success of the mission.

  The Gran Sasso raid, on the other hand, would have to be an improvised affair out of necessity. There would be no time to rehearse the operation and iron out potential problems. The landing zone was relatively small—only four or five acres—especially when viewed in light of the unpredictable wind conditions on the mountain.* 27 Yet the glider pilots would be required to land successfully on their first, and only, attempt.

  Detailed intelligence was also lacking. The Germans did not possess proper schematics of the hotel.28 And even if they had acquired them, no one could say for sure in which part of the building Mussolini would be at the moment of the landings. What was more, the hotel’s defenses were also a matter of speculation. A few wellplaced machine guns on the perimeter of the resort could put a quick end to the mission, though the element of surprise would help to offset this possibility. The Nazis were also counting on the likelihood that the Italians would not fight to the death over the political corpse of the Duce—especially at a time when the Italian armed forces were in a state of collapse.

  After considering the alternatives, General Student gave his final approval for a glider assault, which he scheduled for the morning of September 12. He later claimed that he had worked out many of the mission details himself and had assigned a paratrooper battalion under the command of Major Harold Mors to carry it out.29 Other reports, however, suggest that Mors was the primary architect of the Gran Sasso raid.*30

  At the tender age of thirty-two, Mors was already a seasoned officer. He had led airborne troops during the German invasion of the Low Countries and the successful, but costly, assault on the island of Crete in the Mediterranean.31 “We didn’t have much time,” recalled Mors, who received the assignment on September 11, just one day before the raid.32 “The Allies had just invaded the Italian peninsula [on September 9]. Gen. Student wanted to mount the operation quickly. So I had my plan ready in a matter of hours.”33

  It was to be a two-phase operation. At the heart of it was an airborne assault involving twelve DFS 230 gliders, the same type of planes used at Eben Emael, which would attempt to make a landing on the small plateau surrounding the Hotel Imperatore. “The air operation was the crucial part of the mission,” Student recalled.34

  Each glider would be filled to capacity. Assuming that everything went smoothly, the aircraft would be able to disembark 108 combat soldiers, not counting the twelve pilots, who were also expected to lend a hand. But the gliders would not reach the target en masse. The commandos would arrive in small groups, each glider coming down one minute behind the next. It was during the landing sequence that the Germans would be most vulnerable to Italian defensive fire.

  Lieutenant Baron Otto von Berlepsch was given command of the glider assault team, most of whose members would be drawn from the First Company of Mors’s battalion.35 In addition to this group of ninety paratroopers, Skorzeny persuaded Student to include himself and about seventeen of his Friedenthal commandos.

  “Skorzeny asked Gen. Student if he could go along,” recalled Mors. “Since Skorzeny’s efforts had helped locate Mussolini, Student felt he couldn’t say no. Then Skorzeny talked Student into letting him take about 15 of his own men along on the gliders. He could be persuasive. But Von Berlepsch was furious, having to leave behind 15 paratroopers.”36

  According to Student, the paratroopers were intended to be the primary strike force. “While von Berlepsch and his paratroopers were responsible for breaking a possible resistance and making sure the entire operation on the mountain goes smoothly,” Student later wrote, “Skorzeny was to function as a police organ for the personal protection of the Duce. Besides, he would personally bring Mussolini to Germany afterwards.”37

  The second part of the operation would be conducted in the valley below the mountain. In a move designed to cover Berlepsch’s rear, Mors and the rest of his battalion, as well as a dozen or so of Skorzeny’s men, would travel overland to Assergi—cutting telephone and telegraph lines as they went—and occupy the lower cable car station.38 It was the job of Mors and his men to prevent reinforcements from coming to the aid of the Italians on the Gran Sasso.39

  The two phases of the mission—the airborne assault and the ground operation—were scheduled to take place at the same time.40 “Major Mors himself was to lead most of his battalion by land to the valley station of the funicular in Assergi in a motorized column, occupy the station . . . and get in contact with the company that would have landed on the peak and support them in case of emergency. The most important assignment of Major Mors was to cover the coup de main of the company that landed on the Gran Sasso from a possible intervention by the Italians from Assergi. To make this possible, the arrival of the battalion at the valley station and the landing of the company on the mountain had to be simultaneous.”41

  The mission may have looked logical enough on paper, but no one knew how it would play out in real life. Even in a best-case scenario, the Germans who managed to land safely on the Gran Sasso would be outnumbered two to one by the two hundred or so Italians that Skorzeny believed were guarding Mussolini.42 These odds would only grow worse if some of the gliders crashed into the mountain or went drastically off course.

  The biggest wildcard, according to Student, a onetime glider pilot himself, was the “unknown and totally unpredictable wind currents of the high Abruzzi. Not even a small sport glider had ever flown o
ver it.”43 To his mind, it was far from clear how a group of heavily loaded DFS 230s would fare under such conditions, though he believed it was a “challenge” worthy of the Luftwaffe pilots.44

  The element of surprise was key. Student and Skorzeny both reckoned that it would take several minutes for the Italians to comprehend what was happening. This brief time interval was a window of opportunity for the aggressors. A new type of automatic rifle built especially for the paratroopers, the FG–42, would also help to even the odds should there be a firefight.45

  Even as the Germans put the finishing touches to their plan, Skorzeny continued to worry about their chances of success. “We knew that they were pretty slim,” he recalled. “First, no one could possibly guarantee that Mussolini was still in the hotel or that he would remain there until daybreak [on the day of the raid]. Second, it was not at all certain that we could overcome the Italian detachment quickly enough to prevent the Duce’s execution.”46 The second concern was particularly troubling.

  Then Radl, Skorzeny’s deputy, had a brainstorm, or “brainwave,” as they used to say at the time. “Suddenly Radl had an idea of genius: we should take a higher Italian officer with us!” Skorzeny remembered. “His mere presence would probably serve to create certain confusion in the minds of the carabinieri, a sort of hesitation which would prevent them from resisting immediately or from assassinating the Duce. This would help us to strike before they found time to collect themselves.”47

  It sounded like a good idea to Student, who approved it “immediately.”48The Nazis eventually settled on an Italian carabinieri general named Fernando Soleti. Despite the collapse of the Axis, Soleti was contacted on September 11 and asked to rendezvous with the Germans early the next morning, the day of the raid.*49 He was not told the real reason for the appointment.50

  Two days after the Italian surrender, while the Nazis and the Allies were still fighting it out on the beaches of Salerno, Goebbels found himself pondering the fate of Mussolini. “The question still remains as to where the Duce is,” Goebbels confided to his diary on September 10. “Nobody knows the answer. . . . We fear that he has already been handed over to the English and is on a British man-of-war.”51

  As it turned out, this was a wildly pessimistic assumption. Mussolini was not even close to being in Allied custody at that moment, though he probably should have been. The West, after all, had demanded that he eventually be turned over, and the Italians had assured Eisenhower that the dictator would be kept in a secure location until then.52

  Eisenhower, for one, held some strong views on the Duce’s future, according to Captain Harry Butcher, his naval aide. “Ike would like to be directed to try Mussolini himself,” Butcher noted in his diary on September 6, 1943, “that onetime famous gentlemen being committed by the agreement to be delivered to the Allies. If Ike had a directive to try the dictator, he said this morning, he certainly would find him guilty and would take great pleasure in seeing him hanged. However, we concluded that any trial of Mussolini would be conducted on a ‘high level’—with jurists from at least several of the United Nations.”53

  But the Italian duumvirate of the king and Badoglio did nothing to bring these grand plans to fruition. In fact, in their haste to flee Rome on September 9, the two men made no effort to take the Duce with them to Brindisi or to have him transferred to some other Allied safe haven, which would have prevented him from falling into German hands.*54 As it happened, the royal convoy en route to Pescara had driven through the Abruzzi region not far from the Hotel Imperatore.55

  The motives behind this failure to act remain murky. Perhaps Victor Emmanuel still felt a twinge of loyalty for his old Capo del Governo, whom he frankly admired (and whom he had given a promise of protection on July 25). It is also possible that the king and Badoglio—who were by no means certain that their escape to Brindisi would be successful—were worried that Hitler might hold them personally responsible if Mussolini ended up in an American brig to await execution.

  Whatever the reasons, after September 8 life continued to go on more or less as usual at the Campo Imperatore, which was well within the German occupation zone. Due to its elevation and isolated location, the hotel remained eerily undisturbed by the chaos and violence that broke out all over Italy in the days following Operation Avalanche. Police Inspector Giuseppe Gueli, who was the Duce’s senior jailer on the mountain, felt it prudent to enhance his security measures and set up a few machine guns outside the resort. 56 But in the absence of new orders, he decided merely to watch and wait. The suspense began to intensify when word of Rome’s collapse reached the mountaintop.

  When the Eternal City fell, Mussolini observed, “a strange atmosphere of uncertainty and expectation reigned on the Gran Sasso. It was now known that the Government had fled, together with the King. . . . The officials in charge of me seemed embarrassed, as if faced with the performance of a particularly unwelcome task.”57

  But for the Duce, the most important revelation of this period was of a profoundly personal nature. On the evening of September 10, while listening to Berlin radio, he heard something that caught his attention.58 It was not Hitler’s speech of that same day, which he apparently missed, but a brief news item about the Italian armistice terms: “Allied General Headquarters have officially announced that among the Armistice terms is included the handing over of Mussolini to the Allies.”59

  One of the Duce’s guards quickly noted that this announcement had been made earlier and that London had denied it. But other media outlets were also reporting on the West’s determination to bring Mussolini to justice. “According to trustworthy sources,” reported the French journalist known as “Pertinax” (Andre Geraud) in a story carried in the New York Times on September 10, “the United States and British Governments are determined to have Benito Mussolini put on trial at the earliest date. He is a prisoner of the Badoglio government, not having been allowed to escape, and can be surrendered at any moment.”60

  There was truth to these reports. Though the Short Terms of the Italian armistice, which were merely a temporary expedient, made no mention of the Duce or his Fascist henchmen, the longer version did. Article 29 of the Long Terms stated: “Benito Mussolini, his Chief Fascist associates and all persons suspected of having committed war crimes or analogous offences whose names appear on lists to be communicated by the United Nations will forthwith be apprehended and surrendered into the hands of the United Nations.” 61 (The contents of the Long Terms were officially kept secret until 1945.)62

  When the Berlin radio report reached the Gran Sasso and Mussolini’s ears on September 10, it led to one of the most dramatic (or melodramatic) incidents to take place during the Duce’s confinement. Later that evening, Mussolini, vowing that he would never allow himself to be surrendered to the Allies, reportedly tried to slit his wrists with a Gillette razor blade.63 It is not clear whether the Duce was really trying to commit suicide or was simply making a show of it.64 But just to be on the safe side, Lieutenant Faiola removed all the razors and other sharp objects from the dictator’s room.65

  However, as he later admitted, Faiola believed that it was more likely that the Nazis would attempt to snatch Mussolini before he could be delivered to the West.66 If this happened, Badoglio’s standing orders remained in place: The Nazis were not to take Mussolini alive.67

  * * *

  *There are reports that Skorzeny and his men also tortured two Italian carabinieri officers to confirm that Mussolini was being held on the Gran Sasso. See Infield, 37; and McRaven, 198.

  *According to military writer and U.S. Navy Seal William H. McRaven, the landing area on the Gran Sasso was much smaller than that on the surface of Eben Emael, which was “massive” by comparison. McRaven, 70 (in an endnote).

  *It should be noted that Skorzeny also claimed to have played a major role in the planning of the operation. In fact, Skorzeny and Radl both accused Student and his paratroopers of being reluctant to carry out a glider assault in the first place. Accord
ing to the SS men, some of Student’s officers predicted that such an attack would result in 80 percent casualties. Marco Patricelli, who wrote a detailed (Italian-language) study of the Gran Sasso raid and interviewed several of the surviving paratroopers, gives the lion’s share of the credit to Mors.

  *According to Radl, Soleti confirmed to Herbert Kappler that Mussolini was on the Gran Sasso, at least as of September 8.

  *According to the historian Denis Mack Smith, the Germans were not the only ones contemplating a rescue mission. During the chaotic days after the Italian surrender, there was a “not very serious plot” brewing among a group of Italian air force officers that involved rescuing Mussolini and flying him out of the country to safety. Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini, 300.

  FREEING MUSSOLINI

  The plane gave a slight nosedive and there we were at the edge of the plateau. Swerving towards the left, the machine seesawed in the void. . . . I held my breath, awaiting the inevitable, horrible crash.1

  —Skorzeny, Skorzeny’s Secret Missions

  FOR STUDENT AND SKORZENY, SEPTEMBER 12 WAS THE CULMINATION of six weeks of frantic searching. Despite the efforts of Italian Military Intelligence (SIM), they had managed to track their elusive quarry from Rome to the Pontine Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea, from there to Isola Maddalena near Sardinia, and finally to the majestic heights of the Gran Sasso in central Italy. Along the way, they had received crucial assistance from Herbert Kappler and a host of others, some of whom were openly scornful of the enterprise. The Nazis had concocted no less than three schemes to “liberate” Mussolini during this period. On at least one occasion (Santo Stefano), Hitler himself had played an active role in devising the rescue operation.