The Last Battle

by Stephen Harding

  Gangl’s first stop was in Höchstädt an der Donau, some sixty miles northwest of Munich. The city was home to Werfer Ersatz Ausbildungs Abteilung (Werfer Replacement Training Battalion) 7, and for almost two months the Russian Front veteran shared his expertise with soldiers who in far too many cases had been civilians just weeks earlier. On weekends Gangl was able to travel to Ludwigsburg to spend time with his wife and children, though Allied bombing attacks on Germany’s rail hubs often made the two-hour train ride a far longer ordeal. In early February he was on the move again, this time headed to Belgium for a month of training at the Army School for Battalion and Detachment Leaders in Antwerp.

  Upon his March 4 completion of the course, Gangl traveled to Celle, in north-central Germany, where he joined the then-forming Werfer-Regiment 83. The unit consisted of three battalions, two of which (1st and 2nd) were each equipped with eighteen 15cm Nebelwerfer 41s divided among three firing batteries; the 3rd Battalion had eighteen of the larger 21cm (210mm) Nebelwerfer 42s. The regiment also included sixteen armored half-tracks, known as Maultiers[159] (“mules”), each of which carried a 15cm launcher. The vehicles were evenly divided between the 1st and 2nd Battalions; those in the former were designated “21. Batterie” and those in the latter as “22. Batterie.” Gangl was given command of one of the 3rd Battalion’s Nebelwerfer 41 batteries, apparently with the understanding that he’d take over the entire battalion in due time. Gangl’s organization and a second identically equipped unit, Werfer-Regiment 84, made up Werfer-Brigade 7.[160]

  By this point in the war it was clear that the Allies would soon attempt the invasion of western Europe, most probably on the Normandy coast of France, and after several weeks of training Gangl’s new brigade began moving west to become part of the force the German High Command hoped would repulse that offensive. It wasn’t an easy journey: because the rail networks of western Germany and northern France were subject to increasingly frequent strikes by Allied heavy bombers, Werfer-Brigade 7’s troop trucks, tow vehicles, launchers, and Maultier half-tracks had to make the trip by road. Not only did this expose them to the very real threat of attack by low-flying Allied fighter-bombers, it imposed severe mechanical strains—especially on the Maultiers’ tracks—and breakdowns were frequent. And there were other hazards as well: as part of the buildup to the invasion, French resistance groups were stepping up their activities. These ranged from the relatively benign, such as switching road signs to lead German convoys astray, to such decidedly more violent activities as sniping attacks and full-blown ambushes.

  Despite the difficulties and potential hazards, Werfer-Brigade 7 managed to reach its initial forward-assembly point in Beauvais—some fifty miles northwest of Paris—on May 18. Over the following weeks the brigade’s troops did what they could to prepare for the coming battle: loading ammunition and fuel, maintaining the vehicles, and trying their best to avoid the attention of Allied aircraft. While no documents survive that might give us insight into Sepp Gangl’s frame of mind during this period—was he frightened? resigned? sick to death of the war?—we can safely assume that he did his best to prepare the men in his battery for the storm that was about to engulf them.

  That storm arrived early on June 6, of course, in the form of some 156,000 airborne and seaborne Allied troops. The next day Werfer-Brigade 7 was ordered to move toward the Normandy coast, where British and Canadian forces were threatening the city of Caen. The 116-mile trip took three days and Allied aircraft inflicted losses on both men and materiel. Upon arrival in Caen the brigade was subordinated to the 12th SS Panzer Division “Hitlerjugend,” and for the next two months the two werfer regiments were constantly in action. Though Gangl and his fellow gunners were able to play a key role in the stubborn German defense of Caen, by the third week of August Werfer-Regiment 7—along with virtually all of Field Marshal Walter Model’s Army Group B—had been squeezed into the Falaise Pocket south of Caen. Some 100,000 German troops were in danger of being completely encircled by American units advancing from the south and British-Canadian-Polish forces from the north, but the surviving members of Gangl’s brigade were among the 25,000 to 45,000 who were able to escape before the jaws of the trap snapped shut on August 20.

  While Werfer-Brigade 7 managed to escape to fight another day, it did so only by leaving all of its launchers and vehicles behind. The unit was reassembled and partially reequipped in Prüm, in the Eifel region of western Germany, and in mid-November it was redesignated Volks-Werfer-Brigade 7. On December 16 both its regiments contributed to the massive barrage that immediately preceded the last-ditch German offensive that quickly became known as the Battle of the Bulge. As the attacking forces surged forward, Volks-Werfer-Brigade 7 followed to provide fire support for 5th Panzer-Armee and eventually settled on the eastern outskirts of St. Vith, Belgium. But as American resistance stiffened on the ground and clearing weather allowed Allied attack aircraft to once again range freely over the snow-covered battlefield, the brigade joined the general German withdrawal eastward.

  In January and February 1945 Volks-Werfer-Brigade 7 took part in the ultimately futile defense of Saarbrücken against Alexander Patch’s U.S. Seventh Army, a fight during which Sepp Gangl was again cited for extreme bravery in combat. Though the details of his heroism are lost to history, we know that he was awarded the German Cross in Gold[161] on March 8. Days later Gangl was promoted to major and given command of his regiment’s 2nd Battalion, though by that point the battalion could muster barely enough men to constitute a single battery. Gangl wouldn’t have had much time to savor the promotion, for by that point the battered brigade—at barely half strength and with few working vehicles and no remaining launchers—was engaged in almost constant retreat. Moving only at night in order to avoid roving Allied aircraft, Volks-Werfer-Brigade 7 headed steadily southeastward, and by the first week of April what was left of the unit was spread across several miles of Bavaria in the area of Peissenberg, the town where Gangl had grown up. The regiment was no longer a coherent fighting force, and its commander, Brigadier General Dr. Kurt Paape,[162] broke it up into independent battalions, ordering the commanders of each to take their remaining men into the Austrian Tyrol and offer their services to whoever was organizing the defense of the Alpine Fortress.

  While we’re not certain of the route Sepp Gangl and the thirty or so men that by now constituted his entire battalion took on their journey into Austria, it seems likely that the rapid advance of American forces across lower Bavaria would have dictated an initial move directly east from Peissenberg toward Bad Tölz, then a turn south down the Isar River valley. Some twelve miles on, where the Isar flows north out of the Sylvensteinsee, Gangl and his men would have turned east and crossed into Austria. Once across what until 1938 had been the frontier, they would have headed south through the Achental Valley, along the east side of the Achensee and into the Inn Valley at Jenbach. Immediately upon their mid-April arrival within von Hengl’s Northwest Alpine Front, Gangl and the few surviving members of his 2nd Battalion were dragooned into service with Battle Group Giehl, whose headquarters’ elements were by then in Wörgl.

  We will likely never know with any certainty whether Sepp Gangl took his remaining soldiers into Austria seriously intending to join the last-ditch fight against the Americans or was simply looking for a quiet backwater where he and his men could safely wait out the last weeks of the war. Nor can we be sure whether the Wehrmacht artillery officer—a career soldier three times decorated for bravery in combat against his nation’s enemies—had ever actually believed in the führer to whom he’d sworn a solemn oath of obedience. But we can infer much about Gangl’s true character from the fact that within days of his arrival in Wörgl, he made contact with Alois Mayr’s resistance cell and offered to provide both weapons and his unreserved assistance. It was a blatant act of treason against both führer and fatherland, one punishable by death not only for Gangl[163] but by that point in the war for his wife and children as well.

  And y
et, despite the risks to himself and his loved ones, Sepp Gangl ultimately made the decision that within weeks would lead him to put his life in even more direct peril in order to help save a querulous group of French VIPs locked away in a fairytale castle.

  –———–

  WHILE WE DON’T KNOW how Gangl made initial contact with the Wörgl resisters, we can make a few educated guesses.

  The first is that upon joining the staff of Battle Group Giehl, Gangl gained access to intelligence reports that identified Mayr, Hagleitner, and other key members of the organization and, acting on his own, sought them out. This is the least likely scenario, given the simple fact that had the resistance members’ identities been known and recorded in any official file, they would almost certainly already have been arrested. Even during the last weeks of the war SS and Gestapo units were active throughout Tyrol, summarily executing real or suspected anti-Nazis and “defeatists” in the military and civilian populations. Von Hengl’s Alpine Front, Northwest, staff included (quite possibly against the aristocratic general’s will) members of both organizations, and they would have demanded and received access to any information that might identify resisters.

  Another possibility is that in the course of his work on Giehl’s staff, Gangl somehow learned the identity of one or more of the Wörgl resistance members and reached out to them. While plausible, this is also doubtful. Given the continuing predations of the SS and Gestapo, no resister in his right mind would have considered the advances of a highly decorated, non-Austrian Wehrmacht officer to be anything but a fairly clumsy attempt at entrapment. In the best-case scenario Gangl would have been politely brushed off with fulsome protestations of innocence; in the worst, he could well have ended up floating down the Inn River with a bullet in the back of his head.

  The most likely way that Gangl made contact with Mayr’s cell, then, was through a trusted intermediary. As noted earlier in this chapter, key Austrian-born officers in several of the second-line Wehrmacht units in the Kufstein-Wörgl area—including Gebirgsjäger-Ersatz-Bataillon 136, Reserve-Gebirgsjäger-Bataillon 137, and Gebirgs-Artillerie-Ersatz-Abteilung 118—are known to have been active in, or at the very least sympathetic to, the resistance. Since those organizations, and for that matter the mountain troops’ NCO school, were expected to provide men or materiel to von Hengl’s battle groups, it’s entirely possible that Gangl came into contact with one or more of their anti-Nazi members during the course of his official duties. Did Gangl make the first move, or did someone approach him? While we can’t know who reached out to whom, we can be certain that the initial contact would have constituted a tremendous leap of faith: an ill-considered overture to the wrong person could very well have ended in front of a firing squad.

  However Gangl gained an introduction to the Mayr-Hagleitner resistance organization, we know that his position as one of Battle Group Giehl’s senior officers made him extremely valuable to the anti-Nazi movement. In the course of his official duties Gangl moved freely throughout the Rosenheim-Kufstein-Wörgl area, ostensibly coordinating with the other battle groups and overseeing the Organization Todt’s[164] construction of roadblocks and placement of demolition charges on key roads and bridges. He made careful notes on the location of the obstacles and the strength and armament of Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS units deployed in the region, which he passed to Hagleitner for transmission up the POEN-O5 chain. In addition to providing the resisters with weapons and ammunition, Gangl supplied details on which of his fellow battle-group officers were die-hard Nazis and which could be trusted to aid the resistance when the time came. In the latter category were a dozen of the former Werfer-Regiment 83 comrades—both officers and enlisted soldiers—who’d accompanied Gangl into Austria and who he’d determined shared his views.

  In the days since his initial contact with the Wörgl resistance cell, Gangl had shown himself to be both a dedicated anti-Nazi and a highly competent soldier, and, at a meeting on Monday, April 30, Alois Mayr put the Wehrmacht officer in charge of the group’s military operations.[165] Gangl’s first decision was that the resisters would have to prevent the execution of two orders issued by Giehl.[166] The first command dictated that Wörgl be vigorously defended against the advancing Americans, and the second that all of the town’s bridges and its major roads be obstructed or destroyed with explosives.

  Gangl’s second decision concerned the French prisoners being held at Schloss Itter, whom he’d been told of shortly after his initial contact with the Wörgl resisters. The VIPs obviously had to be secured, he said, but any attempt to rescue them would have to be carried out covertly to avoid a full-scale battle with Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht troops still loyal to the führer. Gangl ordered that weapons and ammunition for the rescue be cached somewhere outside Wörgl, and the following day Mayr and a local mechanic named Hans Scheffold removed two carloads of the necessary items from the basement of the Neue Post Inn and drove them via back roads to an abandoned farmhouse in Kelchsau, some six miles southeast of Wörgl.

  Though Gangl had intended to secure the French prisoners sooner rather than later, the rapidly changing military situation in the Inn Valley kept him from launching an immediate rescue. On Tuesday morning, May 1, even as Mayr and Scheffold were on their way to cache the weapons, Giehl ordered Gangl to inspect those elements of the battle group deployed on either side of the main road leading south from Rosenheim to Kufstein. The next day Gangl was tied up in meetings all day with Colonel Forster, the commander of the Wörgl-based reserve task force. And any hopes Gangl might have had of securing the French VIPs on Thursday, May 3, disappeared when elements of Battle Group Giehl came under attack by the U.S. 12th Armored Division in and around Niederaudorf, Germany, seven miles north of Kufstein.[167]

  The appearance of American forces just over the German border sparked a flurry of activity in and around Wörgl. In the early afternoon von Hengl dispatched Forster’s reserve task force to Schwaz to help block the Inn River valley, but the unit was decimated by American air strikes and artillery fire before it had gone five miles. By late afternoon those elements of Battle Group Giehl north of Kufstein had been effectively destroyed, and by early evening von Hengl had decided to pull his remaining forces—now totaling fewer than 1,400 men—out of Wörgl to new positions east of Schloss Itter. His order didn’t affect the various independent Waffen-SS units that had retreated into the area, however, and they filtered into Wörgl and the surrounding area as von Hengl’s men moved out.

  It was the appearance of large numbers of these die-hard Waffen-SS troops that prompted Gangl to make his final break with the Wehrmacht. Late on Thursday evening, even as Giehl and his other staff officers were jumping into their vehicles and roaring out of Wörgl, Gangl was meeting with a very concerned Alois Mayr. The resistance leader was understandably concerned that the withdrawal of von Hengl’s troops would allow the newly arrived Waffen-SS units to wreak havoc on the local people, many of whom had already started putting out white flags in anticipation of the Americans’ arrival. It wasn’t an idle worry: barely ten days earlier, Heinrich Himmler had issued an order stating that “all male persons inhabiting a house showing a white flag will be shot. No hesitation in executing these orders can be permitted any longer. ‘Male persons’ who are to be considered responsible in this respect are those aged 14 years or over.”[168] Gangl, fully aware that he and those soldiers who had chosen to join him, as well as Hagleitner’s armed resistance members, were the only force capable of providing any protection for Wörgl’s civilians, decided on the spot to remain in the town as the rest of Giehl’s battle group withdrew.

  But on Friday morning, May 4, the artillery officer and newly minted resistance leader was unexpectedly handed another task, one arguably as important as organizing the defense of Wörgl. Just after eleven AM, as Gangl was handing out automatic weapons and hand grenades to Hagleitner and some of his men, other resisters appeared, accompanying a disheveled man on a battered bicycle. Walking directly up to Gangl, the new
arrival said, in heavily accented German, that his name was Andreas Krobot and he was the bearer of important news from Schloss Itter.

  CHAPTER 5

  AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE

  THAT ANDREAS KROBOT had managed to make it safely from Schloss Itter to Wörgl was nothing short of miraculous. Despite von Hengl’s withdrawal of his battered forces to positions east of the castle, the roads along which the Czech cook had ridden west were not free of danger. Die-hard Waffen-SS troops were increasingly active in the area, setting up roadblocks, searching for deserters, and engaging any Austrian resisters they encountered. Through a combination of good luck and extreme caution Krobot had nonetheless managed to evade the obstacles, arriving in Wörgl with a tale of French honor prisoners in need of immediate rescue.

  –———–

  THE CONDITIONS THAT ULTIMATELY made such a relief mission necessary had been developing for many months. Though the French prisoners had certainly fared far better than the vast majority of the Nazis’ captives, the essentially benign routine at Schloss Itter began to change as Germany’s military fortunes steadily deteriorated throughout the latter half of 1944. Food became increasingly scarce for both the prisoners and their guards, and a growing shortage of fuel for the castle’s generators meant that candles and lanterns ultimately replaced electric lights. More ominously, the members of the castle’s guard force began taking the threat of enemy action more seriously. On October 7, 1944, Édouard Daladier witnessed an example of this higher level of readiness and recorded in his diary that he’d