Soldier, born in Vienna, Austria. He joined the Nazi Party in 1930, was mobilized into the SS, and fought in France, Serbia, and Russia (193943). He was noted for his commando-style operations in World War 2. He freed Mussolini from internment in a mountain hotel on the Gran Sasso Range (1943), and abducted Horthy, the Regent of Hungary (1944), but failed to capture Tito. During the German counter-offensive in the Ardennes (1944), he carried out widespread sabotage behind Allied lines. He was tried at Nuremberg as a war criminal, but was acquitted (1947).
Otto Skorzeny (Vienna, June 12, 1908 - Madrid, July 5, 1975) was an Obersturmbannführer in the German Waffen-SS during World War II.
Biography
Otto Skorzeny was born on June 12, 1908 into a middle-class Austrian family which had a long history of military service.
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. 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. 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. 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. Skorzeny, in another daring "snatch" codenamed Operation Panzerfaust, kidnapped Horthy's son Nicolas and forced his father to abdicate as Regent.
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.
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.
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. (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.
Death
In 1970, a tumor was discovered on Skorzeny's spine. 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 on 7 July 1975 in Madrid - he was a multi-millionaire . Skorzeny appears in considerable parts of Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen's alternate history novel 1945 where he raids Oak Ridge and tangles with Alvin York (see ).
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