Otto Skorzeny a true hero of Germany

Paddy Keating · Post by **Paddy Keating** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 1:17 pm

edited by pk

Paddy Keating · Post by **Paddy Keating** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 1:33 pm

I can't seem to edit the above post.

Revised post:

Otto Skorzeny was the best commando of World War II, If not the best commando of all time. He was born in Austria but as many Austrians (like Hitler) found themselves in Germany.

Otto Skorzeny was a good commando leader and an even better self-publicist! You simply cannot state that he was the best commando leader of all time. The list of superlative commando leaders on both the Axis and Allied sides in WW2 is too long for the purposes of this critique of your post. Skorzeny did not just ‘find himself’ in Germany. A member of the Austrian Nazi Party since 1930, he was a strident advocate of union with Germany, as was his countryman Hitler, who made it happen in 1936.

And a legend was born! When Italy fell Mussolini was captured by Italian partisans and held at a hotel in the mountians with a massive number of guards (I don't know the number please inform me). After two months of a cat and mouse game-- Skorzeny struck! he landed a small team of Waffen SS glider commandos and saved Mussolini with very few shoots being fired.

OK, Skorzeny was told by Hitler to find and rescue Il Duce and he did work out where Mussolini was being held captive but the Gran Sasso rescue mission was actually planned by the Luftwaffe and carried out by regular Luftwaffe Fallschirmjäger of Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 7 who landed by glider on the plateau while another team took control of the cable car. Mussolini was present with twenty-seven members of his SS-Jagdverbänd, having ejected regular Luftwaffe paras from their gliders, to their fury. There were only a couple of dozen Italian guards who surrendered immediately. There is still bitterness amongst the surviving veterans from the FS-Lehr-Rgt over the way Skorzeny claimed all of the credit. He also nearly killed Mussolini and Gerlach by insisting on accompanying them in the Fiesler Storch, which almost fell into the ravine because of the overloading. It was a great public relations coup for the SS and Hitler awarded Mussolini the Knight's Cross. All the World loves a hero...

Otto Skorzeny led yet another dareing mission on May 25 1944 It was to capture Yugoslav partisan leader Tito. The Mission cost 213 Germans killed 881 and 51 were missing. However this was small compared to partisan losses numbering about 6000 died! But Tito sleped away just a few minutes before Otto Skorzeny reached the cave were he set up his HQ.

Skorzeny was not even present at Drvar on May 25th and 26th 1944. The operation was carried out by SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 500 with attached sub-units of Brandenburger and Luftwaffe specialists. It was the CO of SS-FJ-Btl 500, SS-Hauptsturmführer Kurt Rybka, who managed to reach the mouth of the cave, where he was badly wounded. Skorzeny was in Bosnia beforehand, disguised as a partisan according to his own story, gathering intelligence on Tito’s location. But Tito’s location was no secret! Everyone in the Balkans knew that his HQ was in Drvar! Again, more Skorzeny self-promotion. There were about 6000 partisans in the area but perhaps 2000 died in the battle. Less than 200 of the 830 or so members of the c. 1100-strong SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 500 were standing when they were relieved on the morning of May 26th. After further anti-partisan operations lasting a couple of weeks, the shattered battalion was withdrawn to Laibach - now known as Ljubjana - and reformed around the survivors and the Feld-Ausbildungs und Ersatz Kompanie based in Kraljevo.

After the assassianation attempt on Hitler Skorzeny played a major role in restoring order among the OKW and OKH and spent 36 in TOTAL command of the mightly Wehrmacht!

I think you are confusing Otto Skorzeny with Otto Remer. If Skorzeny were still alive, he would give you a job as his publicist! However, he did earn his Oakleaves on the Oder Front in the Schwedt and Zehden bridgeheads. He was a brave man even if he was an awful old bullsh1tter. He was also an unrepentant Nazi but at least he wasn't a hypocrite.

PK

greenhorn · Post by **greenhorn** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 2:43 am

How about David stirling and his legacy...

Paddy Keating · Post by **Paddy Keating** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 9:34 am

Special Air Service founder Colonel David Stirling was a great ideas man and a damn fine soldier but I would say that if one were thinking of extraordinary commando leaders in the context of the wartime SAS, figures like Paddy Mayne and Anders Lassen VC - strictly-speaking an SBS officer - would sring to mind before David Stirling, who was captured and spent most of the period during which the SAS came to prominence in German hands.

But we're getting a bit off-topic here. How aboutOperation Landfried and , in particular, SS-Untersturmführer Walter Girg who in September 1944 led two platoons of 1./SS-Jagdverband Ost in a parachute jump aimed at securing and holding several passes in the Carpathian Mountains? Now there was an outstanding German commando officer! They were dressed in Hungarian, Romanian and civilian clothes.

Girg's own contingent even participated in a victory parade through a captured town by Soviet-backed Romanian troops. It's reminiscent of the famous incident when an SAS recce group on a mission in Axis-occupied Tobruk were challenged by an Italian sentry. One of the British, who spoke fluent Italian, bawled the enemy soldier out for being scruffy on duty and he snapped to attention. The British walked away as nonchalently as they could and once out of sight ran for their lives!

Sadly for Girg, he and his detachment were arrested by sharp-eyed Soviets, stripped of their Romanian uniforms and lined up for execution. Girg told his men to run and they did but he was apparently the sole survivor. Wounded, he then marched a long way through enemy territory to German lines where he was promoted Obersturmführer and awarded the Knight's Cross. Girg would later pull off a 1,500 kilometer reconnaissance through enemy territory from Danzig to Kolberg in January, February and March 1945, for which he was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer and awarded the Oakleaves personally by Adolf Hitler. When he and his men, a mixture of Germans and anti-Soviet Russians, reached Kolberg, they were taken for German turncoats of the Soviet Division "Seydlitz", given a quick drumhead trial and condemned to death. Luckily for them a radio message arrived from their CO, Otto Skorzeny, confirming that they were indeed his men.

Girg was one of many outstanding junior officers involved in German special operations in WW2. It's not a widely familiar subject because there are so few reference books and very few veterans are alive and/or lucid today. The Brandenburger Coastal Raider units in the Eastern Mediterranean were every bit as good as their SBS counterparts. What of the parachute-trained commando units of Kampfgeschwader 200, who fought the Maquis on the Vercors plateau in July 1944? What of the SS-Jagdverband commandos who jumped behind Soviet lines in Belorussia in the attempt to save KG Scherhorn? What of the Karstjäger? One could categorise them as commandos.

PK

Achilles · Post by **Achilles** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 11:41 am

Sadly for Girg, he and his detachment were arrested by sharp-eyed Soviets, stripped of their Romanian uniforms and lined up for execution. Girg told his men to run and they did but he was apparently the sole survivor. Wounded, he then marched a long way through enemy territory to German lines where he was promoted Obersturmführer and awarded the Knight's Cross.

How was the RK awarded for this? If he was the only survivor who corroborated his story?

Paddy Keating · Post by **Paddy Keating** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 1:44 pm

You pose a valid question, based on my post. However, I was simply referencing Girg, not writing his biography. Landfried was, as I said, aimed at keeping the Carpathian passes open to allow the escape of retreating elements of Army Group South-East in Yugoslavia and Greece after the fall of Bucharest on August 31st 1944 and the betrayal of Germany by Romania.

Girg was overall commander of the two platoons of 1./SS-Jagdverband "Ost" - sometimes called SS-Jäger-Btl Ost - which dropped on the passes in four small battle groups. Girg stayed with one group. The other groups were commanded by SS-Junker Linder, SS-Uscha Winkelhake and SS-Uscha Fritsch. Kampfgruppe Girg encountered a Luftwaffe flak regiment sitting waiting to surrender to the Reds and enlisted most of them for an attempted breakout westwards. KG Girg, remember, were dressed as Romanian soldiers serving with the Red Army and caused mayhem as they took over crossroads and junctions, directing real Red Army convoys and troops and sending them in the wrong direction.

So even though Girg's immediate companions were killed during the escape from the firing squad and his march westwards, wounded, was not witnessed, there were plenty of witnesses to his courage and leadership before his capture. The officer cadet and NCOs commanding the other battle groups received, respectively, the Knight's Cross and the DKiG.

Paddy Keating

Tom Houlihan · Post by **Tom Houlihan** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 2:33 pm

Paddy, it sounds like Girg needs his own book, and it sounds like yer just the man to do it!

Can you have it ready by Christmas?

Marc Rikmenspoel · Post by **Marc Rikmenspoel** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 10:04 pm

So Paddy, was Linder a real person? I've seen suggestions that Linder was dropped into Belorussia to liasion with a German unit cut off during Bagration, to get them into radio contact for supply drops so that they could regain German lines, and was awarded the RK for that, but then other sources suggest that this character, named "Will Linder" never really existed. I have no idea what to believe, so do you think that the case you presented is the true reason for the RK going to a genuine person named Will Linder? (sorry if this sounds accusatory, I meant to show my bewilderment on the matter, I'm not trying to suggest that I doubt you, I only hope you can clarify matters for me!).

Skorzeny was certainly a legend in his own mind. He needed very dedicated underlings to give his Jagdverbaende its reputation, and another of these officers, similar to Girg, was of course Adrian von Foelkersam. As many of you know, he was a Baltic Deutsche who spoke fluent Russian, and thus became a Brandenburger. He won the RK for aiding the German advance across the Kuban River to the Maykop oil fields in the late summer of 1942. Von Foelkersam posed as an NKVD Major in charge of a special detachment, and with his men seized several key locations, and at other places convinced Soviet garrisons to retreat. He eventually joined the SS when the Brandenburger Streifkorps were converted into the SS-Jagdverbaende, and was killed in January 1945 leading SS-Jagdverbaend Ost in defending East Prussia.

Paddy Keating · Post by **Paddy Keating** » Sun Oct 17, 2004 7:25 am

Mark,

I made a mistake! As I typed I confused the operation in Belorussia with the Carpathian passes drop. "Linder" did not participate in Landfried. Sorry for the confusion. The RK he is supposed to have been awarded was for the mission to find and rescue Kampfgruppe Scherhorn, also in August 1944.

Several detachments of Skorzeny's men were parachuted into Belorussia to find Kampfgruppe Scherhorn in the Minsk area in August 1944. That is the mission to which you refer, isn't it? Various sources give an "SS-Oberjunker Linder" as the commander of the detachment that found Lt Col Scherhorn and his men.

I have never researched "Will Linder" so I am afraid that I cannot help you. It is very hard to research the SS-Jagdverbände, as I am sure you know. "Linder" is mentioned in some texts as having received the RK but I have not found him on any of the lists of Ritterkreuzträger I have read. Strange.

I know a couple of former SS-Jagdverband men but they didn't serve with "Ost". I have never been able to find any of the men who jumped in Belorussia or on the Carpathian passes in August 1944. Many of them were White Russians or, at least, anti-Communist Russians, Romanians and Hungarians. Very few were German, so it seems. And Skorzeny is not the most reliable of sources, which is a pity.

Tom,

I'm working on something else!

PK

sid guttridge · Post by **sid guttridge** » Sun Oct 17, 2004 9:55 am

Hi 2SS Pz.....

That's the legend.

However, the facts are more prosaic.

The rescue of Mussolini took place hundreds of miles BEHIND German lines and was really a paratroop operation hijacked by Skorzeny.

Skorzeny was almost totally ineffectual during the coup attempt against Hitler. Although his fully motorised unit was based only about 30 kilometres north of Berlin, it took him eight hours to get them to the scene! He and they arrived outside the plotters HQ just AFTER the ringleaders had been shot and the coup supressed. Skorzemy's only contribution was to then stride into the building and get the Ersatzheer staff back to their desks. Most dangerous man in Europe? Not on this day. He was, however, perhaps the most dangerous bureaucrat in Europe on the night of 20-21 July 1944.

And the Budapest operation in mid October? Again it was hundreds of miles BEHIND German lines.

The truth is that Skorzeny was basically a political enforcer WITHIN Axis-dominated Europe. In all three events mentioned above, the wider strategic odds were heavily against Skorzeny's foes, not against him. He ran serious risk only if they felt suicidal. They didn't, any more than Skorzeny himself did at the end of the war.

He was undoubtedly remarkably effective in getting credit for these operations, and they were undoubtedly of considerable value to Germany. But Skorzeny's geatest talents may actually have been opportunism and self promotion, both during and after the war.

I hope the promised new book on Skorzeny can put him back in perspective. He certainly had his merits, but he also had his limitations.

Cheers,

Sid.

Adrian Weale · Post by **Adrian Weale** » Sun Oct 17, 2004 11:06 am

I think that the sad reality is that Special Forces and Commandos rarely achieve the impact that is hoped for and often claimed on their behalf, even when their operations are, on the face of it, successful. There are exceptions to this, of course - the assault on Eben Emael and the SAS/LRDG airfield attacks in the Western desert spring to mind - where tactical level forces achieve an operational or even strategic level of impact, but there have been relatively few examples where the results were unequivocal.

I've observed over the years that Governments/militaries tend to highlight and invest most in Special Forces when they are on the defensive operationally stagnant or in a phase of war when conventional military power cannot easily be brought to bear. It seems to me there are two reasons for this: firstly, it demonstrates a willingness to take aggressive action which is good for both domestic and foreign propaganda; and it is also symptomatic of a search for a 'magic button' which can alter the course of a war at little cost (like the Trojan horse).

In any event, I wouldn't particularly disparage Skorzeny - he was an inventive and imaginative SF commander - but there were better operators to be found in both the German armed forces and amongst the Allies.

Marko · Post by **Marko** » Sun Oct 17, 2004 11:12 am

Thanks for a very interesting discussion.

So why was Skorzeny - an officer with obviously little front line (or commando) experiences - chosen for this job (Kdr. Sonderverband Friedenthal) on the first place?

sid guttridge · Post by **sid guttridge** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 1:57 am

Hi Marko,

I would suggest that it was primarily because Skorzeny was a political animal from the very start.

If memory serves me correctly, he first came to prominence in pre-Anschluss Austria during some internal political kerfuffle in the early 1930s.

I don't think Skorzeny was particularly innovative, unlike Hitler, who described his ideas for special forces coups behind enemy lines in the mid 1930s, or Canaris, who developed the Brandenbergers to carry them out. Skorzeny drew heavily on Brandenberger expertise. For example, almost all the fluent English speaking men he used in the Battle of the Bulge were ex-Brandenbergers.

Skorzeny managed to supplant the Brandenbergers because their leader, Admiral Canaris, became identified with the political opposition and was dismissed (in early 1944, I think) and the wider Brandenberger organisation became regarded as possibly tainted as a result. As with the wider Waffen-SS, Skorzeny's SS special forces rose to prominence because of their political reliability, not because they possessed any expertise lacking in existing German special forces.

The seems to be quite a lot of doubt about some of the operations claimed for Skorzeny's men in the last months of the war. For example, according to "Kommando" by James Lucas, the men of one of the last operations Skorzeny launched behind Russian lines from East Prussia were dressed in Romanian uniforms. Is this likely when the nearest Romanians were many hundreds of miles to the south?

Much of what has already been written written on Skorzeny needs a thorough checking. I hope the new book does so. Skorzeny was a man of considerable presence and some undoubted military talents, but they should not be exaggerated or false lessons may be drawn.

Cheers,

Sid.

Marko · Post by **Marko** » Tue Oct 19, 2004 8:39 am

Thanks, Sid. I guess this explains it, though I would think there was quite a big number of those old fighters, achieving a hole lot more then Skorzeny - he certainly had to have had really good conections.

sid guttridge · Post by **sid guttridge** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 4:31 am

Hi Marko,

I should add that by the time Skorzeny came to prominence Germany's war was already lost and the opportunities to pull of operations like the successful early war coups by the paratroops or Brandenbergers behind the enemy's lines had largely disappeared. He was essentially engaged in damage limitation.

Cheers,

Sid.