Hitler's Raid to Save Mussolini

by Greg Annussek

  Of course, much else had happened during this brief time. The fortunes of the Third Reich had visibly begun to unravel. For one thing, the Nazis had lost their strongest European ally, the Italians, and witnessed the first successful invasion of mainland Europe (though, on September 12, the success of that invasion was still in doubt). In Russia, Stalin’s armies had pushed the Germans back on their heels all summer long, putting an end to Hitler’s aspirations in the East. In Western Europe, the Anglo-Americans had launched mighty air attacks against Hamburg, Berlin, and other Axis targets.

  “Nobody doubts any longer that this is a war to be or not to be,” Goebbels solemnly confided to his diary on September 11, one day before the Gran Sasso raid. “The Eastern Front is causing the German people considerably greater worry now than in past weeks. The state of depression because of air raids has increased as a result of the most recent heavy attacks.”2 No one was more aware of this disturbing trend than Adolf Hitler. Isolated, and medicated, in the gloomy swamps of the Wolf ’s Lair, he may well have fantasized that the rescue of the Duce would be the first step in a new and revitalized version of the Axis—an Axis rearmed with the “miracle weapons” of German technology, such as ballistic missiles and jet airplanes.

  On September 12, a Sunday, while the battle for Salerno was raging 140 miles south of Rome, the SS chief, Heinrich Himmler, sent another gratuitous telegram to the Eternal City reminding Student and Skorzeny that the Mussolini rescue operation was of the utmost importance.3 Little did he know that the Germans’ hastily conceived plan to snatch the Duce from the Hotel Imperatore seemed to be going awry even before it had begun.

  On the eve of the assault, Skorzeny had been blindsided by a news bulletin that seemed to make the notion of Operation Oak irrelevant. According to the report, which he heard on Allied radio, Mussolini had already been surrendered to the West as part of the Italian armistice agreement. Supposedly, one of the Italian warships that had taken flight from the port of La Spezia had delivered him to Tunis in North Africa, where he was currently being held as a POW. Alarmed, the Germans did some mental calculations and determined that the Duce probably could not have arrived in Tunis so swiftly. They decided to ignore this revelation.

  At the same time, a more troubling problem arose concerning the timing of the glider assault. According to the mission profile, the Nazis were scheduled to swoop down from the sky at 7:00 A.M., which meant that they would lift off from Pratica di Mare airport, located about twenty miles south of Rome, one hour earlier.4 The gliders had a better chance of landing safely during the early morning hours when the air currents swirling around the mountaintop were relatively weak. The element of surprise was also involved: By attacking early in the morning, the Germans would be more likely to catch Mussolini’s captors off guard and bleary-eyed.

  However, on the evening of September 11, Major Mors informed Student that the operation would have to be postponed for several hours.5 Mors wanted to be certain that he and his battalion would have enough time to reach the cable car station near Assergi at the same time the gliders began to descend on the hotel, as the plan called for.6 Mors apparently wanted to have a margin for error just in case his progress was slowed by skirmishes with hostile Italian forces.7 In response to Mors’s request, Student reluctantly pushed Zero Hour back to 2:00 P.M., the glider takeoff set for 1:00 P.M.8 During the early hours of September 12, Mors and his battalion left for Assergi in a motorized column, officially setting the rescue operation in motion.9

  Student’s decision was not taken lightly. It meant that the action on the mountain would now have to be carried out in broad daylight in the middle of the afternoon. “In the heat of midday,” he reckoned, “all the difficulties . . . would only be more severe.”10 Even so, he was not willing to defer the rescue until the following day. “Mussolini could have been taken down from the Gran Sasso at any time and brought to one of the Adriatic ports and handed over to the Americans by sea. Therefore no time could be lost. The risks had to be taken and the flight had to be made under the especially tough conditions of midday.”11

  On the morning of the raid, General Fernando Soleti of the Italian carabinieri was also the cause of a few anxious moments. As mentioned earlier, Soleti was the key to Radl’s last-minute scheme to baffle the Duce’s captors and prevent them from firing on the Germans. The Italian general had earlier agreed to a rendezvous with Radl that morning. But when the SS man arrived at the Ministry of the Interior in Rome at around 7:30 A.M., Soleti was nowhere to be found.12

  He finally appeared at 9:00 A.M. and eventually agreed to accompany Radl to nearby Pratica di Mare.13 There, General Student took Soleti aside and explained that the Germans were planning to rescue Mussolini later that same day.14 Soleti’s presence would be necessary during the operation, Student said, to avert a violent gun battle between former allies. The Italian gave his consent without much fuss, according to Radl, and the matter seemed to be settled.15

  Only the gliders were still unaccounted for at this point. The twelve DFS 230s were scheduled to fly the eighty miles from Grosseto to Pratica di Mare early that morning.16 But by 10:00 A.M. they had not yet shown up and no one seemed to know what had happened to them. Finally, about an hour later, the twelve gliders and their tug aircraft appeared in the skies over the airfield.17 “It was high time,” Student thought to himself.18

  Though the DFS 230s were a welcome sight to the Germans, their arrival led to a rude awakening for General Soleti, who was eating breakfast with Radl in an airport building as the gliders broke free of their tugs and began to touch down.19 Soleti could see the planes landing outside the window, but did not know what to make of them. According to Radl, General Student had not gone into great detail with the Italian about the particulars of the rescue operation.20

  However, Soleti was curious about the machines and, assuming that Radl was a paratrooper (Skorzeny and his Friedenthalers were all disguised as paratroopers), he asked the SS man whether he had done much flying in them.

  “Yes, very often, Herr General,” said Radl disingenuously, trying to soften the blow in advance. “It makes an extremely comfortable impression, not only because there’s no engine noise, which makes it difficult to talk, but also because one in fact feels like a bird-man; uomouccello!”21

  “Really, what are these machines for?”22

  Radl braced himself. “Simple, Herr General,” he said. “Later we will take off in these gliders and land on the massif of Gran Sasso and free the Duce.”23

  Soleti smiled: He thought that Radl was making a joke.24 Once he realized that this was not so, and that he was being asked to participate in some sort of ill-conceived airborne operation, Soleti became physically unwell and a doctor was summoned.25 Later, he made a desperate appeal to General Student and Herbert Kappler, but to no avail.26 He soon realized that the Germans would not take no for an answer. According to Skorzeny, he and General Student were prepared to bring Soleti by force if necessary “in order to avoid a bloodbath.” 27 The Italian general was kept under guard thereafter.28

  Shortly after the gliders landed, General Student gave a briefing for the newly arrived pilots and selected paratrooper officers of Lieutenant Baron Otto von Berlepsch’s company in an office on the grounds of the airfield.29 Also present were Berlepsch, Langguth (Student’s intelligence officer), Skorzeny, and Radl; Major Mors and his battalion were already en route to Assergi.30 Most of the men in the room were naturally surprised to learn the nature of the special mission they would be executing a few hours hence.31 Indeed, security concerns had prevented them from being told anything about it beforehand.

  “The entire liberation operation was based on the element of surprise,” Student remembered telling them.32 The shock value of the raid would be great.33 The main job of the glider pilots was simply to put Berlepsch and his paratroopers safely on the ground—they would take care of the rest.34 It was regrettable that the pilots would be required to make their landings in the middle of the afternoon
, when the wind currents were believed to be stronger, but this could not be helped.35

  He also cautioned them about the lack of up-to-date intelligence. There was no guarantee, he said, that Mussolini was still on the mountain.36 On the other hand, Italian morale was believed to be low, especially in light of the collapse of the country’s armed forces.37 In addition, the Germans were bringing along an Italian general named Soleti, whose presence might serve to defuse the situation.38

  When he had finished his briefing, General Student left Pratica di Mare and returned to his HQ at Frascati.39 Langguth and Skorzeny then offered the men additional details with the aid of maps and drawings.40 The first and perhaps most dangerous phase of their mission, the flyers learned, involved landing the twelve DFS 230 gliders in the relatively small clearing around the Hotel Imperatore.

  As the pilots huddled around the four-inch-square reconnaissance photos, they began to sense the challenge that lay before them. The plateau was surrounded on all sides by deep chasms and higher mountain slopes: Overshooting one’s mark or getting swept off course by a strong gust of wind could easily result in catastrophe. The detailed features of the landing zone were also difficult to see clearly because of the size and poor quality of the snapshots. It was particularly hard to discern the possible slope of the ground.41

  But landing was not the only worry. Captain Langguth pointed out that the pilots might face obstacles even before reaching the target. He was particularly concerned about a mountain ridge east of Tivoli that rose to a height of 4,265 feet.42 This was apparently the first significant ridge they would encounter during the flight, and Langguth was not certain whether the gliders and their tugs would be able to gain enough altitude by that time to clear this hurdle.43

  But it was not a serious problem as far as Langguth was concerned. If the altitude of the glider convoy was in doubt, the lead plane, which he would be flying, could simply perform a horizontal 360-degree turn.44 This involved banking to one side, gaining sufficient height while flying a broad loop, then returning to the original flight path. The rest of the convoy would be required to follow suit, repeating the same maneuver. (It is not clear whether Langguth mentioned this loop maneuver during the briefing.)

  According to the plan, each glider would carry nine combat troops in addition to the pilot and would be towed to the Gran Sasso by an engine-powered Henschel aircraft.45 (The tugs were probably Hs 126s; these single-engine planes were doing a lot of glider towing at this time in the war.)46 Once the gliders had reached the mountain, the 131-foot-long cable towlines would be released and the planes would aim for their designated landing points near the hotel.47 If everything went smoothly, the gliders would land at a rate of one per minute in a specified order, unloading a total of 120 soldiers.48

  Lieutenant Berlepsch was in command of the assault team.*49 The forces under him—a mixed bag of paratroopers and Friedenthalers (SS)—were divided into twelve glider groups.50 Though no one knew it at the time, the ostensible ordering of the first few gliders—coupled with an in-flight surprise—was destined to spark a bitter controversy that lasted for decades.

  Captain Langguth, who had taken part in the September 8 reconnaissance flight and was therefore familiar with the route, was chosen to fly the leading Henschel tug.51 Berlepsch and eight of his paratroopers were to ride in the glider attached to Langguth’s plane.52 This tugand-glider combination comprised the first “chain” of the first Kette (three-plane formation). Skorzeny and the reluctant General Soleti would fly in the first DFS 230 of the second Kette, accompanied by seven SS commandos from Skorzeny’s Friedenthal Battalion.53 Radl and eight more of Skorzeny’s SS men were assigned to the next glider.

  The rest of the gliders would be filled with Berlepsch’s paratroopers. These troops would provide general support for the assault and also carry out specialized assignments. One glider squad, for instance, was responsible for occupying the upper cable car station (as opposed to the lower) and securing an underground tunnel that connected the station with the hotel.

  Though the assault teams were bringing along plenty of firepower— FG–42 paratrooper rifles, machine guns, and light mortars— they had no intention of using it if they could avoid doing so.54 It was hoped that the frightening nature of their lightning attack would be sufficient to shock the Duce’s guards into submission without the need for a bloody clash.55

  Skorzeny, for his part, later claimed to have learned an important lesson from a British commando assault carried out against Rommel’s headquarters in North Africa earlier in the war. During this misadventure, the British inadvertently set off a violent fiasco by firing their guns in the early stages of the operation, which immediately triggered return fire and created a situation that they were unable to control.

  “After studying this action,” Skorzeny explained, “I made up my mind to instruct the soldiers of my special unit to shoot only when it was an absolute necessity. . . . I found an effective, proven means of preventing my soldiers from firing: namely to go in first and not fire myself.”56

  By 12:30 P.M., the Germans were preparing to board the gliders and tow aircraft. But as they began to do so, they were frozen in their tracks by the shrill sound of an air raid siren. Suddenly, a group of enemy aircraft, twin-engine Mitchells, appeared in the skies above their heads and began dropping bombs on the airport.57 This was not a clever preemptive strike on the part of the Allies, who apparently knew nothing of the rescue scheduled for that day, but rather sheer bad luck. The Germans dashed for cover in the bushes and trees on the outskirts of the airfield as the sound of explosions and AA guns filled the air.58

  “While we scattered for shelter,” Skorzeny recalled, “I thought bitterly that this spelled the end of the magnificent operation we had devised. What hellish bad luck it was to suffer such a mishap at the last moment!”59 Once the danger had passed, they slowly emerged again to survey the compound. Miraculously, none of the gliders had been hit and the airfield had sustained only minor damage.60 They decided to proceed as planned.

  No sooner had this crisis passed than there was another eruption of a different sort near Skorzeny’s DFS 230. General Soleti was at the center of it. He was apparently making one last attempt to avoid the inevitable. “I don’t want any part of this!” he was shouting. “This is suicide!”61 According to Radl and General Student, Soleti made an attempt to shoot himself before being subdued and bundled into Skorzeny’s glider by a couple of SS men.62 It should be noted that Soleti was not the only one feeling uneasy. Radl later admitted that he and another Friedenthaler were having trouble controlling their bladders while waiting to board the planes.63

  It is not hard to understand their anxiety. In the eyes of the uninitiated, the rudimentary design of the DFS 230 did not inspire confidence. Being composed primarily of tubular steel rods surrounded by a fabric skin, the plane had a flimsy feel to it.64 Though it had a length of thirty-seven feet and a wingspan of seventy-two feet, the aircraft weighed less than one ton when empty.65 The DFS 230’s lightweight construction made it particularly vulnerable to enemy fire.66 To help offset the danger of being shot out of the sky, these gliders often came equipped with machine guns that could be used to keep hostile ground forces in check during, and after, combat landings.67 But on this day, the Germans were not planning to fire these guns unless they had to.68

  Once it was fully loaded on the afternoon of September 12, each DFS 230 was filled to capacity and therefore must have been close to its maximum weight allowance, which was a little more than 4,600 pounds.69 There was not much wiggle room on the inside. The Germans had to straddle a long bench that ran down the center of the interior and place their equipment wherever they could find the space.70 After takeoff, each glider was supposed to jettison its wheels (two-wheel dolly) in preparation for a landing on the single skid attached to the undercarriage.71 For this mission, the Germans had wrapped barbed wire around the skids to create a source of friction during the landings.72 A parachute pack beneath th
e rear fuselage could also be used to slow the craft.73

  At 1:00 P.M.—right on schedule—the Henschel tugs and their gliders began lifting off from Pratica di Mare.74 At the head of the pack was Captain Langguth, who was flying in the lead chain.75 Skorzeny and Soleti flew in the fourth chain.76 “As for the Italian general,” Skorzeny later wrote, “I took him with me in the . . . glider and placed him exactly between my legs astride the narrow beam we sat on, squeezed together like sardines. We had barely enough space to park our weapons.”77

  Once Langguth was in the air, he began to guide the unwieldy convoy to the northeast in the direction of the Hotel Imperatore, seventy-five miles from Rome.78 The normal towing speed for a DFS 230 was about 112 miles per hour, but that could be increased to 130 miles per hour if necessary.79

  Like the other gliders, Skorzeny’s DFS 230 was enveloped in the brilliant sunshine of the early afternoon. As the temperature increased inside the cabin, he noticed that several of his men were feeling the effects of airsickness. Soleti, a former cavalry officer, was faring no better.80 “A stifling heat filled our transport glider,” Skorzeny recalled. “The Italian general was turning white about the gills; a while later, his complexion was as gray-green as his uniform.”81 One of the SS commandos in Radl’s glider, which was in the chain behind Skorzeny’s, had vomited inside the aircraft, filling the cabin with a sickening smell.82

  Not long after taking off, the head of the convoy began to approach the 4,265-foot mountain ridge east of Tivoli. This was the potential trouble spot that had worried Langguth. Even now, he was not sure whether all the glider chains would be able to overfly this obstacle, so he made a fateful decision: He decided to swing the entire convoy around in a circle to gain sufficient altitude and ensure the safety of the troops.83 He therefore banked his Henschel to one side and began to fly a broad, horizontal loop, dragging Berlepsch and his glider with him.84