Otto Skorzeny (Vienna, June 12 1908 - Madrid, July 5 1975) was an Obersturmbannführer in the German Waffen-SS during World War II. He is best-known as the commando leader who rescued Benito Mussolini from imprisonment after his overthrow.
Otto Skorzeny was born on June 12 1908 into a middle-class Austrian family which had a long history of military service. "Skorzeny" is an unmistakable Polish family name, presumably hinting at the family's origin from one of Polish-speaking provinces of the Habsburg Empire. He was a noted fencer as a student in Vienna in the 1920s. He engaged in fifteen personal duels, and in the tenth of these he received a wound that left a dramatic scar (known in fencing as a smite) on his cheek.
He joined the Austrian Nazi Party in 1931 and soon he joined the SA. He showed aptitude as a leader of men from the very beginning, and even played a minor role in the German takeover of Austria on March 12 1938, when he saved the Austrian President Wilhelm Miklas from being shot by Nazi roughnecks.
When the war broke out a year later, Skorzeny, then working as a civil engineer, volunteered for service in the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) but was turned down because he was over the age of 30. Failing that, he turned to the Waffen-SS. On February 21 1940, Skorzeny went off to war with one of its most famous units, the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler and fought with distinction in the campaigns against the Soviet Union in 1941 and 1942 before being wounded and returning to Germany in December of 1942, a winner of the Iron Cross for bravery under fire.
After Skorzeny had recovered from his wounds, a friend in the SS recommended him to the German military leadership as a possible leader of commando forces which Hitler wanted to create. In this role, in July 1943, he was personally selected by Hitler, from among 6 Luftwaffe and Army special agents, to lead the operation to rescue Benito Mussolini, the dictator of Italy and a friend of Hitler's, who had been removed from power and imprisoned by the Italian government.
Almost two months of cat-and-mouse followed, as the Italians moved Mussolini from place to place in order to frustrate any would-be rescuers. Finally, with information on Mussolini's location and its topographical features found by Herbert Kappler and air reconnaissance by Skorzeny himself, on September 12 Skorzeny took part as a guest in Unternehmen Eiche, a daring glider-based assault on the Campo Imperatore Hotel at Gran Sasso, and rescued Mussolini without firing a single bullet. Skorzeny escorted Mussolini to Rome and later to Berlin. The exploit earned Skorzeny worldwide fame, promotion to major and the Knight's Cross, a higher order of the Iron Cross.
On May 25 1944, he was assigned to Operation Rösselsprung, the paratroop commando operation aimed at capturing Yugoslav Partisan leader Tito at his headquarters near Drvar and crushing the communist resistance in the Balkans. Skorzeny and his troops fought the numerically superior force of partisan defenders but failed their mission. Tito escaped to safety just a few minutes before Skorzeny's men reached the cave in which Tito's headquarters were located.
On July 20 1944, Skorzeny was in Berlin when an attempt on Hitler's life was made, with German officials trying to seize control of Germany's vital organs before Hitler recovered from his injuries. Skorzeny helped put down the rebellion in Berlin, spending 36 hours in charge of the German army's central command center before being relieved.
In October 1944, Hitler sent Skorzeny to Hungary when he received word that Hungary's Regent, Miklós Horthy was secretly negotiating his country's surrender with the Red Army. This surrender would have cut off a million German troops fighting in the Balkan peninsula. Skorzeny, in another daring "snatch" codenamed Operation Panzerfaust, kidnapped Horthy's son Nicolas and forced his father to abdicate as Regent. A pro-German government was installed in Hungary which fought alongside Germany until German troops were driven out of Hungary by the Red Army in April 1945.
On October 21, Hitler, inspired by an American subterfuge which had put three captured German tanks flying German colours to devastating use at Aachen, summoned Skorzeny to Berlin and assigned him to lead a panzer brigade. As planned by Skorzeny in Operation Greif, about two dozen German soldiers, most of them in captured American army Jeeps and disguised as American soldiers, penetrated American lines in the early hours of the Battle of the Bulge and sowed disorder and confusion behind the Allied lines. A handful of his men were captured by the Americans and spread a rumour that Skorzeny was leading a raid on Paris to kill or capture General Eisenhower. Although this was untrue, Eisenhower was confined to his headquarters for weeks and Skorzeny was labelled "the most dangerous man in Europe".
Skorzeny spent January and February 1945 commanding regular troops in the defence of the German provinces of Prussia and Pomerania as an acting major general. For his actions there, primarily in the defence of Frankfurt (Oder), Hitler awarded him one of Germany's highest military honours, the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross.
Skorzeny surrendered to the Allies in May 1945 and was held as a prisoner of war for more than two years before being tried as a war criminal at the Dachau Military Tribunal for his actions in the Battle of the Bulge. However, he was acquitted when Wing Commander Yeo-Thomas G.C. of the SOE testified in his defence that Allied forces had also fought in enemy uniform. But he was held until he escaped from a prison camp on July 27 1948.
He settled in Spain with a passport granted by its leader, Francisco Franco, and resumed his prewar occupation as an engineer. In 1952, he was declared "entnazifiziert" (= denazified) in absentia by a German government arbitration board, which let him travel abroad. (Before the declaration, he could have been interned in Germany or Austria until he had convinced the authorities that he had seen the error of his beliefs.) Later, he worked as a consultant to the Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser and the Argentine President Juan Peron, in 1963 while he stayed in Egypt he was recruited by the Mossad to deliver information about the German scientists that worked in the Egyptian missile program, and is rumoured to have assisted several of his friends in the secret SS escape network "Odessa" in the years after the war. According to the Spanish newspaper "El Mundo", he was a key figure in organizing one of Odessa's largest bases, which was located in Spain.[1] Some of his henchmen may have helped Aribert Heim (aka "Doctor Death", found to be living in Spain in October 2005) escape from justice.
In 1970, a tumor was discovered on Skorzeny's spine. Two cancerous tumors were removed in Hamburg, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Vowing to walk again, Skorzeny spent long hours with a physical therapist, and within six months was back on his feet. The years following therapy were hard for Skorzeny, as the cancer reminded him that his final days were fast approaching. Otto Skorzeny finally succumbed to the cancer[citation needed] on 7 July, 1975 in Madrid - he was a multi-millionaire. Over 500 Nazi diehards from all over the world attended his memorial service.
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