Otto Skorzeny was born into a middle-class family in Vienna, Austria, on June 12, 1908. Otto Skorzeny’s family has a long history of military service. As a student, he distinguished himself in scientific topics, and after graduating he enlisted at the University of Vienna as an engineering student. His great passion was fencing. He joined the University fencing team and during a match, he received the prominent scar on his cheek, known in German as a “Schmiss” which was then a coveted mark of bravery among German and Austrian youth.
In 1931, as Nazism was gaining popularity in Europe, Skorzeny joined the Austrian Nazi Party, filling the ranks of the local version of the paramilitary SA Brownshirts. Clever, ambitious and physically imposing at 6 ft 4 [1.93 Metres] he must have been a valued member. In the meanwhile, he had earned his degree and had started working as a civil engineer.
How Otto Skorzeny Became SS commander
Austria had become part of Germany with the 1938 Anschluss. So, when World War II broke out in 1939, Skorzeny applied to join the Wehrmacht. But his military career got off to a bumpy start when his application to join the Luftwaffe was denied. He was told he was too tall and too old at the age of 31.
Instead, he joined the SS and became an officer cadet in the Liebstandarte, Hitler’s bodyguard regiment. In 1940, Skorzeny was a second lieutenant in the Waffen-SS. His engineering skills proved useful when he designed special ramps to load tanks onto ships.
But he also proved his courage under fire during combat in Holland, France, and the Balkans. Here he was decorated after capturing a large Yugoslav force and was promoted to the first lieutenant. Skorzeny was then transferred to the Eastern Front after the launch of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, with the 2nd SS Panzer Division “Das Reich”.
He was part of the unsuccessful siege of Moscow and in December 1942, now a captain received a head wound from a piece of shrapnel. Skorzeny was awarded the Iron Cross for bravery and then sent home to Vienna to recuperate. While there, he became fascinated by the idea of commando operations and read all the books he could find about them.
He then transformed those ideas into plans for unconventional warfare, which he submitted to higher headquarters. And they started to take notice. His concepts soon reached the desk of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the new head of the Reich security services and successor to Reinhard Heydrich.
Skorzeny’s ideas were passed on to General Schellenberg, head of the SS foreign intelligence service. Skorzeny and Schellenberg met and the General was so impressed that he appointed him as commander of the newly created Waffen Sonderverband z.b.V. Friedenthal, an SS unit dedicated to special operations. His career as a commando leader had just begun.
Operations by Otto Skorzeny
1. Operation François
Otta Skorzeny and his unit launched into their first mission in the summer of 1943, Operation François. The plan was to organize the nomadic Qashqai people, in Iran, into an armed guerrilla force which could serve the German war effort. Skorzeny’s paratroopers were also assigned to disrupt the supply lines between the Allies and the Soviets and to turn the local population against the Allied presence.
Skorzeny parachuted into Northern Iran packed with gold and explosives. He intended to bribe the tribesmen elders and win their support for the mobilization of the entire people. The operation proved to be a failure: a fellow agent, Paul Ernst Fackenheim, made a remark that as soon as they were out of gold, the Persians sold them to the British.
2. Operation Oak
Skorzeny’s next mission would prove his most famous and spectacular success: Operation Oak, the rescue of Benito Mussolini, imprisoned after the Monarchist coup in July 1943. First Skorzeny had to find Mussolini. The ex-dictator was continually moved from one hiding place to another, but the Germans discovered him at a villa on the isle of La Maddalena, near Sardinia. Skorzeny then flew over in a Heinkel He-111 bomber to take aerial photos of the location, but the plane was shot down by Allied fighters and crashed into the sea. Skorzeny and his men were rescued by an Italian warship.
Mussolini has moved again and the chase continued. Finally, Skorzeny tracked him down to the Campo Imperatore Hotel, a remote and fortified resort on the Gran Sasso mountain in central Italy. The hotel was accessible only by funicular. He, Luftwaffe General Kurt Student and Major Otto-Harald Mors, a paratrooper battalion commander, came up with a workable plan.
Skorzeny assembled a team of 107 commandos who would be landed in gliders. On the 12th of September 1943, the gliders approached the hotel. Skorzeny realized too late that what he thought to be a patch of grass was a rocky incline. His glider almost crashed, but he made it out in one piece.
Twelve minutes later, Skorzeny had found Mussolini, and not one person had been killed. The Fuhrer, delighted with Skorzeny, awarded him the Knights Cross. As a result, he became Hitler’s favorite commando and was dubbed “the most dangerous man in Europe” by the Allies although propaganda chief Dr. Goebbels may have been the first to give him that title.
Propaganda coverage of the event, however, hid the fact that most of the planning and execution had to be credited to Skorzeny’s associates, General Student and Major Mors. Skorzeny stole their thunder by making sure he would be the one escorting Mussolini to the get-away plane in full view of the cameras.
Skorzeny though should be recognized with the stroke of genius that ensured the raid was bloodless. He had secured the cooperation of General Soleti of the Carabinieri, the military police. Solti was actually the first one to approach the Hotel and ordered the heavily armed military policemen to stand down.
It should be noted that footage and photos of the event show many of the Italian guards posing with big smiles by Mussolini and Skorzeny, hinting at their true loyalties. Based on testimonies from one of the guards, Mussolini seemed to be the least happy to have been rescued.
3. Operation Long Jump
The next mission for Otto Skorzeny was Operation Long Jump, November 1943. Its ambitious goal was to kill or kidnap the Allies’ “Big Three” leaders – Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt—at their strategic conference in Tehran, Iran. The first group of six German operatives landed in Qom, before proceeding to Teheran on camelback.
Skorzeny was supposed to join the group with the second team of assassins. Unfortunately for them, a few months earlier, the Operation’s planner SS officer von Ortel had just made friends with a Wehrmacht Lieutenant in a bar in Copenhagen. Blind drunk, Ortel had spilled the beans on Long Jump. That lieutenant, well he was a Soviet intelligence officer in disguise.
Roosevelt and Churchill were alerted to the plot and were kept safe at the Soviet Embassy. The NKVD then seized the six German commandos and forced them to radio to Skorzeny’s team that the operation had failed. To give the full picture, some sources claim that this plot never existed. It was just a clever ruse of Stalin and/or the NKVD to force the Western leaders to stay inside the Soviet Embassy, where their conversations could be easily bugged.
4. Operation Knight’s Leap
The next high level hit commissioned to Otto Skorzeny was the capture of Tito, Operation Knight’s Leap. Also, in this case, Skorzeny and his commandos attacked by gliders, while conventional forces engaged Tito’s partisans around his mountain helicopters. Did I say helicopters? Sorry, I meant headquarters. In any case, the partisans’ resistance was fierce, stalling the pincer movement and allowing Tito to escape.
Skorzeny would finally have time to shine after the 20th of July 1944, following the attempted bombing on Hitler. In his memoir, he claimed he played an integral part in restoring order to Berlin, where the conspirators had initiated the plan ‘Valkyrie’ to topple the regime.
Otto Skorzeny infiltrated the conspirators’ base of operations and had the “Valkyrie” order rescinded. This was an order intended to quell a possible coup but had been cleverly exploited by the conspirators to trick German troops into arresting loyal Nazi officials. Skorzeny’s actions contributed to dissipate confusion, restore communications to Fuhrer Headquarters and preventing a possible civil war between German troops. Skorzeny took charge of Wehrmacht administration until normalcy returned. Again, Hitler was delighted.
5. Operation Panzerfaust
In October 1944 he dispatched him to Budapest to lead Operation Panzerfaust, aka Operation Mickey Mouse. The Fuehrer was not pleased with Hungarian leader Admiral Horthy, an uneasy ally against the Soviet Union, who was actually pro-American and had always refused to deport the Jewish population.
The Germans got wind that he was negotiating with the allies and Skorzeny was sent to exact punishment. Skorzeny and his commandos stormed the presidential palace, seized the Admiral’s son, rolled him into a carpet, and kidnapped him. Horthy was forced to negotiate, and eventually to stand down. His leadership was replaced by a puppet government under the Arrow Cross party, staunchly anti-Semitic. During the following 56 days, an estimated 320,000 Hungarian Jews were sent to their deaths in the gas chambers. Another 100,000 starved or died of the disease.
6. Operation Greif
In December of 1944, Otto Skorzeny launched his most infamous mission: Operation Greif, or “Griffin“. The goal was to capture key bridges over the Meuse River during the Battle of the Bulge, the last German offensive in the West. Skorzeny’s plan was ingenious: he selected commandos who were fluent in English, dressed them in American uniforms and sent them behind enemy lines in Belgium to spread panic and confusion.
Skorzeny’s men cut communication wires, issued fake orders, and turned around road signs. The Americans grew paranoid: some GIs fired on each other, while others grilled their mates about American popular culture to identify if they were German agents.
If you were American but did not care about baseball nor movie stars, you could get arrested! At one point, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery refused to show his ID and had his car tires shot out. He was then dragged into a barn and restrained until his identity could be confirmed.
Otto Skorzeny spread the false rumor among his men that the real aim was the assassination of General Eisenhower, headquartered in Paris. German agents captured by the Americans confessed to this plot. As a result, Eisenhower was put under virtual arrest for his own protection. Griffin eventually failed and many Germans were easily identified and shot as spies.
7. Operation Werewolf SS
As the Reich crumbled, Skorzeny’s final involvement was with Operation Werewolf. This was a resistance movement, mostly composed of Hitler Youth members, trained in guerrilla tactics to oppose an Allied occupation. It actually was a desperate propaganda ruse by Goebbels to raise morale.
But Skorzeny hijacked the plan and used this small force to aid the escaping Nazi high officials. The Soviet NKVD, probably overestimating the size and importance of Werewolf, killed roughly 5,000 boys, aged 15 to 17, for suspected guerrilla activity. A few days after Hitler’s suicide, Skorzeny handed himself over to the Americans.
He was a highly decorated, well-respected military professional but his directive for his men to wear American uniforms got him in trouble. This was considered a war crime and was put on trial in 1947. Luckily for him, he escaped execution when British SOE operatives confirmed they wore German uniforms during the war. But he had to answer from other charges.
