Otto Skorzeny

Otto Johann Anton Skorzeny (12 June 1908 – 5 July 1975) was an Austrian-born German SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) in the Waffen-SS during World War II.

During the war, he was involved in a number of operations, including the removal from power of Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy and the Gran Sasso raid which rescued Benito Mussolini from captivity.

Skorzeny led Operation Greif in which German soldiers infiltrated Allied lines wearing their enemies' uniforms.

In May 1932, Skorzeny joined the Austrian Nazi organization and soon became a member of the Austrian branch of the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA) in February 1934.

A charismatic figure, Skorzeny played a minor role in the Anschluss on 12 March 1938 when, according to his own account, he saved the Austrian President Wilhelm Miklas from being shot by Austrian Nazis.

After the 1939 Invasion of Poland, Skorzeny, then working as a civil engineer, volunteered for service in the German Air Force (the Luftwaffe), but was turned down because he was considered too tall at 1.94 m and too old (31 years in 1939) for aircrew training.

He then joined the Waffen-SS, training with Hitler's bodyguard regiment, the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH).

Skorzeny took part in the invasion of the Soviet Union with the SS Division Das Reich and subsequently fought in several battles on the Eastern Front.

In October 1941, he was in charge of a "technical section" of German forces during the Battle of Moscow.

His mission was to seize important buildings of the Communist Party, including the NKVD headquarters at Lubyanka, and the central telegraph office and other high priority facilities, before they could be destroyed.

He was also ordered to capture the sluices of the Moscow-Volga Canal because Hitler wanted to turn Moscow into a huge artificial lake by opening them.

The missions were canceled inasmuch as German forces had failed to capture the Soviet capital.

In January 1942, Skorzeny was hit in the back of the head by shrapnel; he was evacuated to the rear for treatment.

He had previously been awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class while fighting in the Yelnya bridgehead.

Recuperating from his injuries he was given a staff role in Berlin, where he developed his ideas on unconventional commando warfare.

Skorzeny's proposals were to develop units specialized in such warfare, including partisan-like fighting deep behind enemy lines, fighting in enemy uniform, sabotage attacks, etc. In April 1943 Skorzeny's name was put forward by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the new head of the RSHA, and Skorzeny met with Walter Schellenberg, head of Amt VI, Ausland-SD (the SS foreign intelligence service department of the RSHA).

Schellenberg charged Skorzeny with command of the schools organized to train operatives in sabotage, espionage, and paramilitary techniques.

The unit's first mission was Operation François in mid-1943.

Skorzeny sent a group by parachute into Iran to make contact with the dissident mountain tribes to encourage them to sabotage Allied shipments to the Soviet Union via the Trans-Iranian Railway.

However, commitment among the rebel tribes was suspect, and Operation François was deemed a failure.

On the night between 24 and 25 July 1943, a few weeks after the Allied invasion of Sicily and bombing of Rome, the Italian Grand Council of Fascism voted a motion of no confidence (Ordine del Giorno Grandi) against Mussolini.

On the same day, the king replaced him with Marshal Pietro Badoglio and had him arrested.

Hitler ordered military operations to liberate Mussolini, and, as was his common procedure, he issued similar orders to competing organisations within the German military.

So he ordered Skorzeny to track Mussolini, and simultaneously ordered the paratroop General Kurt Student to execute the liberation.

Mussolini was being transported around Italy by his captors (first to Ponza, then to La Maddalena, both small islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea).

Intercepting a coded Italian radio message, Skorzeny used the reconnaissance provided by SS-Obersturmbannführer Herbert Kappler's network of agents and informants (helped with counterfeit British bank notes with a face value of £100,000, forged under Operation Bernhard).

Skorzeny was appointed commander of the recently created Waffen SS Sonderverband z.b.V. Friedenthal stationed near Berlin (the unit was later renamed SS Jagdverband 502, and in November 1944 again to SS Combat Unit "Center", expanding ultimately to five battalions).

As a result, he was charged in 1947 at the Dachau Military Tribunal with breaching the 1907 Hague Convention, but was acquitted.

Skorzeny escaped from an internment camp in 1948, hiding out on a Bavarian farm as well as in Salzburg and Paris before eventually settling in Francoist Spain.

In 1953, he served as a military advisor to Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.

He was allegedly an advisor to Argentinian president Juan Perón.

In 1963, Skorzeny was allegedly recruited by the Mossad and conducted operations for the agency.

Skorzeny died of lung cancer on 5 July 1975 in Madrid at the age of 67.

Otto Skorzeny was born in Vienna into a middle-class Austrian family which had a long history of military service.

His surname is of Polish origin, and Skorzeny's distant ancestors came from Skorzęcin in the Greater Poland region, eventually immigrating to East Prussia.

In addition to his native German, he spoke excellent French and was proficient in English.

In his teens, Skorzeny once complained to his father about the austere lifestyle the family was enduring; his father replied, "There is no harm in doing without things. It might even be good for you not to get used to a soft life."

He was a noted fencer as member of a German-national Burschenschaft while studying at the Technical University of Vienna.

He engaged in fifteen personal combats.

The tenth resulted in a wound that left a dramatic dueling scar—known in academic fencing as a Schmiss (German for "smite" or "hit")—on his cheek.