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| Otto Skorzeny as SS-Hauptsturmführer |
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| SS-Division Reich: Waffen-SS Armoured Elite |
Otto Skorzeny joined the Austrian National Socialism Party in 1931. He played a minor role in the Anschluss on March 12 1938, when he saved the Austrian President Wilhelm Miklas from being shot by Austrian National Socialists. Skorzeny then joined the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler as an officer-cadet in 1939. In 1940 he was promoted to Obersturmführer in the Waffen-SS and went to war in the Soviet Union with SS-Division Reich and subsequently fought in several battles on the Eastern Front. Otto Skorzeny, Adolf Hitler's Austrian commando leader in WWII, became known to the world in Sept. 1943, for his key role in the daring airborne raid to rescue the ousted Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. It was Skorzeny's first success as a commando leader. The exploit earned Skorzeny fame, promotion to SS-Sturmbannführer and the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. With the successes that followed, allied media began calling Skorzeny "The most dangerous man in Europe". Skorzeny was involved with the Werwolf guerrilla movement and the ODESSA network but surrendered on May 16 1945, feeling that he could be useful to the Americans in the forthcoming Cold War. In 1948 he escaped from the camp with the help of three former SS officers dressed in U.S. Military Police uniforms. Skorzeny afterwards maintained that the U.S. authorities had aided his escape, and had supplied the uniforms. Using the cover names of Robert Steinbacher and Otto Steinbauer, and supported by either National Socialists funds (or according to some sources Austrian Intelligence), he set up a secret organization named Die Spinne which helped as many as 600 former Waffen-SS officers escape Europe. In 1953 Skorzeny was sent to Egypt by former Wehrmacht General Reinhard Gehlen, who was now working for the CIA, to act as General Mohammed Naguib's military advisor. Skorzeny recruited a staff made up of former Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht officers to train the Egyptian army. Several Palestinian refugees also received commando training. One of these Palestinians was Yasser Arafat. As the years went by, Skorzeny and his network gained enormous influence in Europe and Latin America, Skorzeny travelled between Franquist Spain and Argentina, where he acted as an advisor to President Juan Perón. In the 1960s Skorzeny set up the Paladin Group, based near Alicante in Spain, the Paladin Group specialized in arming and training guerrillas, and their clients included the South African Bureau of State Security and Muammar al-Gaddafi. They also carried out work for the Greek military junta of 1967-1974 and some of their operatives were recruited by the Spanish Interior Ministry to wage clandestine war against Basque separatists. The Soviet news agency TASS alleged that Paladin was involved in training U.S. Green Berets for Vietnam missions during the 1960s. Not surprisingly, this claim has been denied by the U.S. Army. The Oakleaves holder SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny finally succumbed to cancer at age 67 on July 5 1975 in Madrid. He was cremated and his ashes were later brought to Wien to be interred in the Skorzeny family plot at Döblinger Friedhof. Operations, among others: Operation Francois - Co-ordination of Partisan operations in Iran, Operation Oak (Unternehmen Eiche) - The rescue of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Operation Armoured Fist (Unternehmen Panzerfaust) - The kidnapping of Miklós Horthy, Jr., son of Hungarian Regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy, Operation Griffin (Unternehmen Greif) - A false flag operation to spread disinformation during the Battle of the Bulge. External link: Interrogation of Otto Skorzeny on Aug. 2 1945. Credit: For Germany: The Otto Skorzeny Memoirs and My Commando Operations. Top mage: portrait of the then SS-Hauptsturmführer Otto Skorzeny by photographer Walter Frentz, probably made in connection with the award of the Knight's Cross on Sept. 13 1943. FU. Bottom image: troops of the Reich stopped to consult a map during Operation Barbarossa in 1941. Skorzeny fought with this division until he got wounded in Jan. 1942. c. Bundesarchiv.
I stumbled across your blog - thought you might be interested to know that my mother worked as an air hostess for Iberia in the 70's, and she was serving on the flight which took Skorzeny to Spain for the last time.
ReplyDeleteShe remembers being struck by the huge scar across his face, and that during the flight he was very quiet and undemanding, unlike the other passengers in his class. Within a few days or weeks, the news of his death broke and his face was all over the press in Spain, at which point she realised just who the man was.
Don't know If it still hangs there, but back in the '60's there was a pic of Skorzeny and some info about his commando exploits in the 82nd. Airborne Museum in Fayetteville, NC! A friend saw that when he was in boot camp and adopted Skorzeny as a personal hero. He returned from Viet Nam very well decorated.
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