1945, May 17 - a gigantic brown-haired man with an expressive, memorable face, which crossed a scar from the left ear to the chin, entered one of the American headquarters near Salzburg in Austria. Raising his hand in salute to the visor of his cap, on which there was a skull with bones, he declared:
- SS Standartenfuehrer Otto Skorzeny surrenders. For the "ji" on duty, surrendering Germans had long become as commonplace as regularly issued rations.
“Okay, Otto, go to the isolation ward,” he said, gesturing languidly at the door with his thumb. Glancing fiercely at the American, the officer turned, and in the light that fell on him, numerous awards and cold, like ice-gray, blue-gray eyes flashed. A nearby intelligence officer, inconspicuous in his shabby uniform, gazed at the German's wrist.
“Mussolini's watch,” he said quietly. “This is Skorzeny, the # 1 Nazi super-agent on our list. The army's counterintelligence officers in that war, perhaps, had no enemy more formidable than this huge, six feet and four inches tall, daring adventurer. Skorzeny commanded the largest sabotage operation ever conducted against American forces.
Disguised as Americans, the Germans sowed panic behind enemy lines during their winter offensive in the Ardennes. Because of them, American counterintelligence officers were forced to keep their commander-in-chief, General Eisenhower, in his own headquarters for 10 days.
A year earlier, Skorzeny and a team (a little over a hundred people) flew in gliders and light aircraft and kidnapped Mussolini from 400 of his Italian guards from one of the mountain peaks. The liberated Duce formed a new government in northern Italy, which helped the Nazis continue to resist. Mussolini then presented Skorzeny with an engraved wristwatch, and Adolf Hitler awarded the Knight's Cross. And he gave a new order …
1944, October - German spies reported that Hungary's regent Miklos Horthy was going to break off friendly relations with the Fuhrer and join Stalin. Skorzeny was sent to Hungary at the head of a small detachment, he stormed the castle of Horthy, but it was discovered that the admiral fled after his overthrow. Somehow they figured out where Horthy was hiding, and by the time the Russians had broken through the border, Skorzeny had brought him to Munich.
Shortly after the Horthy affair, Hitler summoned his mighty pet Specialist to direct and play out his final adventure. Hitler planned to launch a powerful counterstrike against the Allied armies. He wanted to throw his last strategic reserve, led by elite armored divisions, against the Americans advancing in the Ardennes.
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Parts of the Nazis, breaking through in a northern direction, were to surround half of the American, British and Canadian troops in Europe, seize their huge warehouses, as well as the strategically important port of Antwerp. As a result, the Fuehrer hoped that the Allied actions on the Western Front would be paralyzed, and the Germans would have enough time to produce enough V-rockets, jet planes and new submarines to ultimately win the war. However, it was necessary to capture the bridges over the Meuse so that German tanks could cross it …
On October 22, Hitler introduced Skorzeny to his ingenious plan. Skorzeny had to select 3,000 of the most desperate warriors who could speak English from all branches of the armed forces, and, dressing them in military uniforms taken from the captive Americans, lead them behind the front line, where they had to spy, commit sabotage, sow panic and demoralize the enemy … They had to capture and hold the bridges across the Meuse to transport the main forces. Skorzeny received less than two months to prepare for the operation.
He gathered people in Friedenthal, near Oranienburg, and introduced them to the weapons and equipment of the Americans, with the peculiarities of training, titles and habits of the Americans.
“Don't be overly military,” Skorzeny instructed. - No clicking heels. This operation was named Greif. (Greif - in German. "Capture"). But it was not possible to keep her training in complete secrecy. Intelligence of the First American Army was able to intercept a dispatch ordering Skorzeny to provide information on all English-speaking soldiers. Skorzeny's reputation was well known.
Colonel Benjamin Dixon reported on December 10 that this order may herald special sabotage operations, attacks on headquarters and other vital army centers by infiltrating or parachuting specially selected soldiers, and added:
"One very clever prisoner of war, whose previous conclusions exactly coincided with the established facts, reports on the preparation of all available means for a large-scale offensive." But senior Allied intelligence officers were hesitant. As a result, no additional troops were sent to the Ardennes, and on December 16, the Nazis struck.
17 Nazi divisions, followed by 12 more, were paved with thousands of artillery pieces. Meanwhile, Skorzeny was fully operating in the rear of the Americans. The Graifers adjusted their artillery fire, blocked the roads, knocking down trees, and cut telephone wires. They caused disorder in the movement of American equipment by rearranging road signs, and destroyed trucks, removing warnings from the minefields. One of the "graifers", who had been disguised as a soldier of the military police, stood at an intersection and sent an American regiment hurrying to the front line in the other direction.
In the end, the Americans realized that this confusion was caused by the enemy who had penetrated their location. On December 18, in Ayvail, Belgium, a military police sergeant stopped three J-Aevs in a jeep who did not know the password. They provided documents confirming their affiliation with the Fifth Armored Division, and gave quite convincing explanations, but were "damn polite." The sergeant assigned the detainees to Lieutenant Frederick Wallash, who had fled from Dachau and was a former judge. Now he enthusiastically interrogated the captured Nazis. He began to shame them: how, they say, they, the soldiers of the Reich, could put on other people's uniforms - and this tactic worked, they confessed.
Soon, American counterintelligence officers found a German radio station and a code book in one of the jeeps, and American radio operators noticed how the Germans from other jeeps were transmitting messages about their sabotage. After that, a large-scale hunt for spies began. The passwords were useless - the Germans could recognize them, so the soldiers of the military police and counterintelligence, stopping jeeps and other vehicles, asked all suspicious:
- What does "Brown Bomber" mean? ("Brown Bomber" is the nickname for American heavyweight boxer Joe Louis, champion from 1937-1949.) Where is Windcity? ("Wind City" - Chicago.) What is "Voice"? (Voice - in army slang - "walkie-talkie".) Say "wreath" (almost all Germans said t instead of th). Such checks were carried out at numerous road posts while moving both to the front and to the rear, with special attention being paid to those sitting in the back, who, as it was soon found out, spoke English worse. Some disguised German drivers were thrown into panic by such questions, and they betrayed themselves, trying to break through the post forward or turn back.
On December 19, counterintelligence officers drew attention to two lieutenants sitting quietly in a jeep and watching the units hurrying past them to the front. When checked, their personal badges, certificates of military qualifications and combat training were not in doubt. They said they trained at Camp Hood. And then one of the inspectors asked:
- Have you been to Texas? "No," one of the "lieutenants" replied. - Never. - Take them! - the counterintelligence officer immediately ordered. - Camp Hood is in Texas! Then, in Liege, the crossing point of the Meuse and one of Skorzeny's main targets, a group of "Americans" who arrived in a jeep tried to find out the location of the commander's headquarters and were immediately surrounded by soldiers of the military police.
The summoned Wallash quickly "split" one blond "lieutenant", and he gave the names and descriptions of all Skorzeny's officers and said that the crews of the special 150th Tank Brigade, also under his command, sitting in captured American tanks, "retreating" would capture bridges over the Meuse. After that, the "lieutenant" was taken to the headquarters of the First Army. There he stated that he had told everything that he knew.
“Okay,” they told him, “then we'll give you to the commissioner. Like most of the Nazis, the Russians instilled horror in the "lieutenant", therefore, facing a brute in a Red Army uniform, who began to yell at him and ask questions in German with a strong accent (being an American from Milwaukee), he turned pale and wheezed:
“We also need Eisenhower. Skorzeny, accompanied by a group of his men disguised as American officers, will take the supposedly captured Nazi generals to your High Command headquarters in Versailles for interrogation. They will drive American cars and, once inside, will use weapons and Eisenhower will be kidnapped or killed by Skorzeny himself. The story may have been fictional, but the headquarters of the Allied High Command decided to take security measures. The Trianon Hotel and other buildings that occupied the headquarters were surrounded by barbed wire, tanks and nearly a thousand heavily armed military police and GI soldiers.
Five counterintelligence officers made sure that everyone who came to Eisenhower was first met and identified by his adjutant, and he himself was placed in a house fenced off on all sides, the doors, windows and roof of which were guarded by soldiers. For several days, the general was locked up, as the counterintelligence officers were afraid of snipers.
Meanwhile, in Bulle, 50 "American" tanks from the 150th Tank Brigade had shot down an unsuspecting American armored battalion. The Americans sounded the alarm: “Our own tanks are shooting at us!” And the military police were ordered to report all unplanned tank movements. The movement of ships on the Meuse was stopped, both banks were patrolled, and anyone who tried to cross the river was detained and subjected to checks. Thanks to these measures, 54 German soldiers in Allied uniform or civilian clothes were captured.
In Malmedy, Skorzeny met American artillery ready for battle and, before starting the attack, sent people to find out how many guns and what caliber they had. The warned artillerymen detained the scouts and gave their answer from the guns. The assigned American tanks were defeated and the dead and wounded Germans, all in American uniform, were soon recovered from them.
On December 22, a military tribunal began in the First Army over the captured participants in Operation Greif. All of them were found guilty of violating the laws of warfare by wearing the enemy's military uniform on the territory he occupied for the purpose of espionage and sabotage. The verdict was the death penalty. The firing squad carried out the death sentences.
It is not known how many hundreds of "graifers" were killed in the battle, but it is known that after the tribunal, about 130 were executed. Counterintelligence officers of the First Army broadcast their names on Radio Luxembourg, details of Operation Greif and signs of officers not yet captured, in the first place Skorzeny. Waiting for the results of reconnaissance along with his tankers, Skorzeny was wounded by a shell fragment. He decided to take a risk - to break forward with the remnants of his brigade and move on, but then from the received radio message it became clear that the chances of completing the operation were zero, and he reluctantly ordered his subordinates to remove the American uniform.
One of the last tasks performed after this by Skorzeny was the preparation and distribution of capsules of poison, which were subsequently poisoned by many Nazi leaders, including Goering and Himmler.
Surrendering to the Americans, Skorzeny stated that he really had no intention of killing Eisenhower, that it was just a legend that he invented to inspire his people. In addition, he knew that one of his people might be captured and tell about her, which would increase our confusion. At the end, Skorzeny stated:
- If I had planned it, I would have tried to implement it, and by trying to implement it, I would have achieved success. Skorzeny's prosecutors dropped some of the charges against him, including complicity in the notorious murder of American prisoners of war in Malmedy, before a Dachau trial of nine officers. Skorzeny said that not only his "graipers", but also British and Soviet intelligence officers donned the enemy's military uniform, and that he ordered his men to use it only to cross the front line, and remove it before the outbreak of hostilities. September 8, 1947 - Skorzeny and seven of his associates were released by the tribunal after only two and a half hours of deliberation.
“I was tried in a fair trial,” Skorzeny admitted, “and they didn’t use any physical pressure, even though I spent 22 months in solitary confinement. My only complaint is that someone “freed” me from the watch presented by Mussolini. After that, Skorzeny, as an SS officer, was to appear before a German court for denazification. While in a German prison, he received letters from his admirers in America, who offered to help him. On the morning of July 27, 1948, the jailers discovered that Skorzeny had escaped.
“This man has many supporters at large,” said his accuser, Colonel Alfred Rosenfeld. - They intend to organize an underground and invite him to lead it. Now the most dangerous man in Europe is at large. Skorzeny's whereabouts remained a secret for many years. Then the message came that he was living in Madrid and had appeared at a memorial service in honor of Mussolini on the 18th anniversary of the death of the Italian dictator.
N. Nepomniachtchi