Hitler's Raid to Save Mussolini

by Greg Annussek

  But there was one subject about which Skorzeny could not keep silent. “After he had tried impatiently to convince his questioners that he was just an ordinary soldier whom gossip had maligned, Skorzeny settled down to telling a story he was obviously proud and eager to relate. It was the narrative of how he and a handful of picked men had snatched Mussolini from the fate that finally overtook him in northern Italy.”70

  Although Skorzeny’s roguish charm has captivated certain writers and historians in the succeeding years, it has disgusted others, who consider him little more than a resourceful terrorist.

  In 1947, it was the opinion of an American military tribunal that mattered most. Skorzeny was charged with various offenses related to Operation Greif, including the murder of captured American soldiers. During his trial, the judges heard dramatic testimony from Wing Commander Forrest Yeo-Thomas, a legendary British agent who had worked closely with the French Resistance. Yeo-Thomas, known during the war as the White Rabbit, explained to the court that he had ordered his own operatives to carry out special missions disguised in German uniform. As a result of this and other testimony, Skorzeny was eventually acquitted of all charges, but was not immediately released.

  He subsequently spent months languishing in a detention camp at Darmstadt in Germany awaiting the de-nazification process. Several Allied countries, such as Czechoslovakia and Belgium, expressed an interest in having Skorzeny extradited to face additional charges. When he appealed for help to Yeo-Thomas, the British hero gave a concise reply: “Escape.”71 Shortly afterwards, Skorzeny did just that. In July 1948, three former SS officers dressed as American military police drove to Skorzeny’s internment camp at Darmstadt, presented some official-looking papers, and whisked their celebrity prisoner to freedom (or so the story goes).*

  The remainder of Skorzeny’s life, much of which was spent in South America and Spain, was shrouded in mystery. It was also the subject of fantastic rumors and wild speculation, some of which may well be true. During his postwar years, some writers claim, Skorzeny lent his sinister services to the CIA, went to work for Juan and Evita Peron in Argentina (it is even said that Skorzeny and Evita had a romantic affair), and played a key role in founding the so-called Odessa network, a covert organization that aimed to smuggle former SS men and other Nazis out of Germany and help them evade justice.

  Truth often being stranger than fiction, it was revealed in 1989 that Skorzeny had also worked as a temporary agent of the Mossad, Israel’s version of the CIA, during the early 1960s.72 According to press reports, Skorzeny helped the Mossad to foil an Egyptian plan to use former Nazi scientists to develop a missile program.73

  He died of cancer in 1975 in Madrid.

  In the decades after World War II, the name of Otto Skorzeny became synonymous with the rescue of Mussolini, and that was the way he liked it. His fame was apparently an endless source of irritation to Student and the German paratroopers, whose grievances with Skorzeny outlasted the cold war. According to author Charles Whiting, who interviewed General Student in the 1970s, the former paratrooper chief was still griping about Skorzeny thirty years after the Duce was snatched from the Gran Sasso. Student died in 1978.

  Before his death in 2001, Major Mors also continued to champion the Luftwaffe cause. “Yes, it was the paratroops who planned and carried out the operation,” Mors explained in an interview published in the Los Angeles Times in 1987. “But for more than 40 years, Skorzeny has gotten all the credit. His version is something of a fairy tale. . . . The point is, Skorzeny and his SS commandos went along as passengers; Von Berlepsch commanded the assault team.”74

  Mors said that his own critical role in the mission had been obscured because he remained in the valley. “I chose to stay with the two companies in the valley, because if anything went wrong with the glider force, I would still be in position to supervise the operation and decide what to do. Later, some people didn’t understand this, but my job was to command the whole operation, not just one aspect.”75

  Another paratrooper officer, Arnold von Roon, who had been a major on General Student’s staff during the war, later contended that politics had clouded the issue. “Once Hitler decided that it was Skorzeny and the SS commandos who led the operation,” Roon said, “it was difficult to do anything about it. Gen. Student didn’t want to get into a row with Goering over who got the credit. So he never protested. He thought history would provide the truth.”76

  Both Mors and Roon concede that Skorzeny was an imposing figure and quite a character. “He was huge, robust, intelligent, but not intellectual,” Roon recalled. “He was quite a charmer, too, and could be very persuasive. It is simply that he did not plan or lead the Mussolini operation.”77

  While not denying the role played by German airborne troops, some military historians continue to emphasize the Skorzeny factor. “Clearly Mors played a significant role in both the planning and execution of the mission,” McRaven argued in a 1995 book devoted to the subject of special operations. “But it was Skorzeny who conducted the aerial reconnaissance, it was Skorzeny who was the first to land at Gran Sasso, it was Skorzeny who controlled General Soleti, and it was Skorzeny who first reached Mussolini. Whether Skorzeny was a straphanger or the mastermind of the operation is inconsequential. Ultimately, success resulted from Skorzeny’s actions at Gran Sasso and not from Mors’s.”78

  It is fair to say that the competing claims of Skorzeny and the German paratroopers have added yet another chapter to the complicated story of Operation Oak.

  Once the summer of 1943 had faded into history, the curtain opened on a much larger drama: the battle for Italy. “From September 1943 until the end of April 1945,” wrote the historian Richard Lamb, “Italy suffered the disaster of being occupied by two conquering armies at war with each other, and the peninsula became a battleground.” 79 In some ways, the six short weeks following the Italian coup of July 25 had determined the course of this long and brutal struggle. By failing to obstruct the German infiltration of Italy and declining to lend support to the Allied invasion (in the Rome area or elsewhere), the king and Badoglio had helped set the stage for the grim consequences that followed.

  However, these consequences were not readily apparent in the wake of September 8. After their victory at Salerno, the Allies began to cast a covetous eye at the rest of the peninsula. Much like Hitler and Rommel, they believed that the Nazis would be forced to turn tail in the face of the Allied invasion, evacuate the region south of Rome, and make a stand in the north somewhere near Florence, more than one hundred miles from the Eternal City. Most of the country would therefore fall into Allied hands with little, if any, fighting. The capture of Rome would be the icing on the cake; but then again, considering its psychological value as a former Axis capital, perhaps Rome was the whole cake. Needless to say, most Italians preferred this upbeat scenario as well because it would spare much of the nation from the horrors of war.

  “At first Hitler had intended to keep hold only of North Italy after Italy’s retirement from the war,” remembered General Westphal, Kesselring’s chief of staff. “Rommel was to absorb Kesselring’s forces into his army group in the [northern] Apennines and to make his stand in these mountains. Kesselring, who according to rumour was too soft with the Italians, was then to be transferred with his staff to some other war theatre—possibly Norway.”80

  But Kesselring, who viewed the Allies as cautious and predictable from a military standpoint, managed to turn this situation on its head. He was so successful in foiling the enemy’s advance in the weeks after September 8 that Hitler gave Rommel his walking papers in November and named Kesselring the commander of all German forces in Italy. Kesselring, whose gullibility had so often made Hitler wince during the months of crisis, had finally beaten out his rival once and for all.*

  Kesselring’s efforts at redemption created endless difficulties for the Allies. One glance at their timetable told the story. The Anglo- Americans had planned to liberate the nearby port of Naples by
Day Three.81 It ultimately took them three weeks to get there (Naples fell on October 1), General Clark’s Fifth Army suffering 12,000 casualties (killed, wounded, or missing) in the process.82 Many in the Allied camp clung to the hope that Rome could be captured later that fall, perhaps by the end of October 1943.83 Tragically, for the Allies and Italians alike, this prediction was about eight months off target.

  The 140-mile distance from Salerno to Rome may have looked somewhat modest on a map, but the view from the ground was depressingly different.84 The American and British soldiers whose job it was to slug their way up the boot of Italy were faced with mountains, rivers, and accurate German artillery. Kesselring forced them to fight for every inch of territory. Exploiting the lay of the land, he established a series of natural defensive lines on the rivers that run from the Apennines into the sea. The Germans held on to each line for as long as possible before falling back to yet another position— which they had thoroughly prepared beforehand—scorching the earth as they went. Kesselring’s tactics took on a monotonous regularity, but they were enormously effective.*

  “The mountainous terrain of central Italy was Kesselring’s greatest ally,” according to the military historian Carlo D’Este. “Not only were the mountains themselves formidable obstacles, but the many rivers, the freezing winter weather, the wind, mud, and rain, and the limited road net made any advance against a well-prepared defender a potential nightmare.”85

  The Gustav Line, which brushed by the town of Cassino, about eighty miles south of Rome, was one of Kesselring’s toughest barriers. 86 By January 1944, the Allies had ground to a halt before it. When brute force failed to shatter the stalemate, the Allies attempted to outmaneuver the Nazis in late January by landing additional troops at Anzio, which was situated north of the dreaded Gustav Line. If everything went according to plan, the Germans would be trapped between two Allied armies—one in front of them at Cassino and another in their rear at Anzio.

  But things did not go as planned. Having taken the Germans by surprise, the Allied soldiers who landed at Anzio were easily able to establish a bridgehead. However, by the time they were ready to break out into other parts of the country, Kesselring had effectively bottled them up on the beaches. (Otto von Berlepsch, the ostensible commander of the glider assault force at Gran Sasso, took part in the fighting at Anzio and was killed in action there.)87

  The Allies—who were now stalled on two fronts—remained stuck at Cassino and Anzio for several months, unable to penetrate the suffocating German defense. The static nature of the fighting, and the heavy casualties that resulted, conjured up memories of brutal World War I trench warfare.

  This deadlock was finally broken in the spring after a mighty effort on the part of the Allies. American soldiers from Clark’s Fifth Army entered Rome on June 4, 1944—nine months after the Salerno landings.

  The city had not fared well under the German occupation. “Rome was an ‘open city’ whose walls shook under the waves of German military movements and the thunder of Allied bombs,” wrote the historian Robert Katz, referring to the occupation. “Swollen to nearly twice its usual size by refugees from the countryside, Rome was a city of spies, double agents, informers, torturers, escaped war prisoners, hunted Jews, and hungry people.”88

  During this period, approximately 2,000 Jews from the city were shipped to concentration camps in the Third Reich (though most Roman Jews managed to avoid capture).* Understandably perhaps, many other Romans felt let down by their own leaders as well as by the Allies, whose promises of speedy liberation had never materialized. While the Allies were bogged down at Anzio, one bitter Roman scribbled an ironic piece of graffiti on a city wall: “Americans, hold on!” it read, mocking the promises of Allied propaganda. “We’ll be there soon to liberate you!”89

  But the Romans reserved their true anger for the Nazis. Throughout the occupation, the Germans were harried by the activity of various groups belonging to the Roman resistance. After one violent attack in March 1944, in which thirty-three German SS men were killed while marching along the Via Rasella, Hitler reacted with fury and ordered the immediate execution of hundreds of Romans. Herbert Kappler, who had been transformed from a mere attaché into the much-feared head of the Gestapo in Rome, carried out Hitler’s command (aided by his subordinate, Erich Priebke). Ultimately, 335 men were rounded up and shot dead in the Ardeatine Caves just outside Rome.*90

  Though this massacre remained the most infamous example of German brutality in the Italian mind, the Nazis carried out other atrocities in other cities and villages throughout occupied Italy. Kesselring, who had so often been criticized for being too “soft” when it came to the Italians, swung to the opposite pole in the years following the Italian surrender and advised his commanders to apply draconian measures in the fight against the Partisans.

  His new attitude was reflected in orders such as those issued in August 1944: “Every act of violence must be followed immediately by appropriate counter-measures,” part of the order read. “If there are a large number of [Partisan] bands in a district, then in every single case a certain percentage of the male population of the place must be arrested, and, in cases of violence, shot. If German soldiers are fired at in villages, the village must be burnt. The criminals or else the leaders must be publicly hanged.”91

  Shortly after liberating Rome, the Allied drive began to lose momentum. The culprit was Allied grand strategy, which involved the Normandy invasion in June 1944 and an additional landing in southern France in August. To carry out the latter, dubbed Operation Dragoon, several divisions were removed from the Italian theater.

  By August 1944, the Germans had established the Gothic Line (in the mountains north of Florence), which their adversaries found to be another formidable barrier.92 Incredibly, this was the defensive line to which the Nazis had planned to retreat during the summer of 1943, before Kesselring had convinced Hitler to fight tooth and nail for Italy. Come winter, the Allies had run out of steam a few miles short of the Po Valley, which remained in German hands for several more months. The Allies finally made a breakthrough in the spring of 1945, but some parts of northern Italy remained under German control almost until the end of the war.*

  The German army in Italy laid down its arms on May 2, 1945— nearly two years after Victor Emmanuel and Badoglio had toppled Mussolini in the hopes of putting a speedy end to the war.** When all was said and done, according to Carlo D’Este, the war in Italy was “the longest and bloodiest campaign fought by the Anglo-American Alliance in all of World War II.”93

  * * *

  *Mors was awarded the German Cross in Gold. Gerlach and Meyer each received a Knight’s Cross. Kappler was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and given the Iron Cross. Priebke, Kappler’s deputy, was bumped up to captain and also received the Iron Cross.

  *Mussolini flew to the Wolf ’s Lair from Munich, where he had been reunited with his wife and family after the rescue.

  *Edda’s attempts to save her husband’s life and smuggle his diaries out of Italy read like fiction but are outside the scope of this book. At the heart of the story is a female Nazi spy who became a de facto double agent after falling for Ciano’s charms during his brief prison term.

  *There were also thousands of former Allied POWs roaming around Germanoccupied Italy, many of whom were aided by ordinary Italians at great personal risk.

  **Admiral Canaris, head of the Abwehr, was implicated in the plot to kill Hitler and was subsequently thrown into a concentration camp. He was executed on Hitler’s orders in 1945. After the fall of Canaris, the victorious Schellenberg absorbed German Military Intelligence into the SS, ending the Nazi intelligence wars once and for all.

  *An autopsy conducted in 1945 failed to shed much light on Mussolini’s mysterious health problems; it did, however, reveal a small scar indicative of an ulcer.

  **The remains of the Wolf ’s Lair are now a tourist attraction in Poland.

  ***In his Last Days of Hitler, the historian Hugh Trevor
-Roper maintains that Hitler could not have seen the photos of Mussolini’s corpse and may have been unaware of the gruesome details.

  *Some writers have alleged that the CIA aided Skorzeny in his escape with the view that he might prove useful to them in the future.

  *In the fall of 1943, Hitler instructed Rommel to apply his formidable talents to the task of defending the Western frontiers of the Reich. Rommel, who so often had expressed his admiration for Hitler during the Italian crisis, was later implicated in the attempted assassination of the German dictator in July 1944 and forced to commit suicide.

  *Student’s paratroopers made up part of Kesselring’s forces. The rescue of Mussolini proved to be their last notable airborne success. For the remainder of the war, they were employed as high-quality ground troops.

  *Thanks to the efforts of the Italian people, about 80 percent of the Jews living in Italy escaped the clutches of the Nazis during the German occupation, though 8,000 died at their hands. During the Salò years, Mussolini also managed to save a number of Jewish lives.

  *After the war, Kappler was convicted of war crimes and spent several decades in Italian prisons. Priebke fled to South America, where he lived as a free man for fifty years. In the mid–1990s, he was unmasked and extradited to Italy, where the octogenarian was sentenced to fifteen years of house arrest.

  *In March 1945, Hitler gave Kesselring command of the German armies in the Western theater. After the war, he was convicted of war crimes in connection with German anti-Partisan activities in Italy. He served a brief prison term and was released in 1952.

  **In June 1944, the Badoglio regime was replaced with a broad-based coalition government. In 1946, the Italians voted to get rid of the monarchy altogether and establish a republic. In 1948, the Italians banned the king and all his male descendents from ever again setting foot in Italy. This ban was lifted in 2002.