Skorzeny's commandos

[sid guttridge]

Hi Grosscurth,

I was referring to the Sapeurs Pompiers of Paris and Marseilles. As I understand it, other French fire departments are not part of the French Army. Anyway, given your particular expertise I bow to your superior knowledge on this subject.

I am afraid I know very little about the Caribinieri on Gran Sasso. I was basically commenting on the wider situation. However, I would suggest that they almost certainly had no armour on the mountain top where Mussolini was held.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Paddy Keating]

Skorzeny was certainly a brilliant tactician but he was an even better self-promoter. Although Skorzeny certainly located Mussolini, the Gran Sasso mission was planned and executed by the Luftwaffe's Fallschirm-Lehr-Regiment. Skorzeny turned up at the aerodrome at the last minute with twenty-seven members of his Jagdverband and only got to go on the mission by turfing the Luftwaffe occupants of several gliders out.

As for the Schwedt bridgehead on the Oder, while it is true that Skorzeny was the overall commander of Kampfgruppe Skorzeny, the commander on the ground in the thick of things was really Siegfried Milius, CO of SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600, backed up by brilliant company commanders like Macki Markus, Walter Scheu, Werner Dröste and Fritz Leifheit. They held the bridgehead from February 1st to March 2nd 1945, stiffening the resolve of Heer and Volksturm soldiers. Skorzeny did indeed visit the front but most of the time, like any commander, he was to the rear.

The SS-FJ cannot really be described as "Otto's paras" even though they were nominally brought under the aegis of Skorzeny's commando organisation when SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600 was formed in November 1944. The SS-FJ veterans I know and have known would be furious to hear themselves described thus.

SS-Jagdverband Mitte and SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600 - or, rather, the survivors - then went into the Zehden bridgehead on March 5th as the cadre of Kampfgruppe Solar, commanded by Milius, as part of the 610th Special Purpose Infantry Division under the overall command of General Lendle. They pulled out on the night of March 27th/28th, swimming the Oder. The remnants of Mitte returned to Skorzeny at their Friedenthal HQ, near Berlin and the SS-Jagdverbände moved to Austria.

Regarding the Budapest operation in March 1944, the operation was planned by Brandenburg Divisional commander Generalmajor von Pfuhlstein. Skorzeny's SS-Jagdverbände were merely one of the participating units. Other units or parts thereof involved included Fallschirmjäger-Bataillon Brandenburg, SS-Fallschirmjäger-Bataillon 500, Brandenburgers from the 1st, 2nd and 4th Regiments and elements of the Panzer Lehrdivision, sub-units from SS divisions Florian Geyer, Reichsführer-SS, Wiking, Maria Theresia and various Army units. Operation Margarthe was successful but despite what many people think, Otto Skorzeny was not the genius behind it, even if he did have his personal photographer taking plenty of shots as part of his well-oiled PR machine.

Regarding the second Budapest operation in September 1944, SS-FJ-Btl 600 CO Siegfried Milius was always highly contemptuous of Skorzeny's planning in general, particularly after the latter's harebrained proposal that the SS-Fallschirmjäger jump on the citadel with its myriad pointed railings and other hazards. As a former para myself, I agree with Milius's view. Fortunately for the relatively few surviving jump-trained SS paratroopers, insufficient parachutes for the planned drop were unavailable.

That said, Skorzeny was a brave and perhaps even reckless soldier with tons of charisma. To dismiss his exploits and those of his organisation as internal security operations takes no account of the real risks involved in most of the SS-Jagdverbände operations.

Operation Gryphon cannot be dismissed as an internal security affair. Skorzeny took Panzerbrigade 150 into action behind the lines alright; the American lines! Two companies of SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600 accompanied PB 150 as elite infantry, led by Fritz Leifheit. Many of them were killed. One of the SS-FJ paybooks I have belonged to an Ardennes casualty.

Other SS-Jagdverbände operations were very much combat missions. Some of them, like Landfried, the jump on several passes through the Carpathian Mountains in September 1944 by elements of 1./SS-Jagdverband Ost, involved parachuting. Landfried resulted in two Knight's Crosses and two DKiG. Whatever anyone thinks, these decorations were not handed out with breakfast.

As for Otto Skorzeny, he ended up in Spain and will remain a mythical figure. He is even believed by some to have been the mastermind behind the 1963 Great Train Robbery in Britain and other criminal enterprises. But he did earn his Knight's Cross: anyone who has seen Gran Sasso and seen a Fiesler Storch aircraft would agree that a man of Skozeny's size climbing into such an aircraft already containing the not inconsiderable bulk of Mussolini, the pilot Gerlach - also awarded the KC - and trusting to Fate to rescue the aircraft as it fell off the cliff at the end of the plateau and plunged towards the valley floor would agree.

PK

My sources:

Siegfried Milius - CO of SS-FJ-Btl 500 and 600
Paul Spitt - SS-Jagdverband Mitte (Gran Sasso) & SS-FJ-Btl 600
Walter Scheu - OC of various companies in SS-FJ-Btl 500 and 600
Leonard Schaap - Nachr-Zug./SS-FJ-Btl 500 and 600 (Diary)
Eric Berger - SS-FJ-Btl 500 and 600
Willi Lipka - SS-Jagdverband Ost and Mitte

and others.

[Groscurth]

[quote="Paddy Keating"]Skorzeny was certainly a brilliant tactician but he was an even better self-promoter. Although Skorzeny certainly located Mussolini, the Gran Sasso mission was planned and executed by the Luftwaffe's Fallschirm-Lehr-Regiment. Skorzeny turned up at the aerodrome at the last minute with twenty-seven members of his Jagdverband and only got to go on the mission by turfing the Luftwaffe occupants of several gliders out.


---> Whatever, noth regarding my sources, like posted at the other topic, Whting describes it cery well as a 100% Friedenthal action. Guess you are mixing things up, in Ottos SS group at Fiedenthal served indeed former Brandenburgers but at Grand Sasso, they were SS.

As for the Schwedt bridgehead on the Oder, while it is true that Skorzeny was the overall commander of Kampfgruppe Skorzeny, the commander on the ground in the thick of things was really Siegfried Milius, CO of SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600, backed up by brilliant company commanders like Macki Markus, Walter Scheu, Werner Dröste and Fritz Leifheit. They held the bridgehead from February 1st to March 2nd 1945, stiffening the resolve of Heer and Volksturm soldiers. Skorzeny did indeed visit the front but most of the time, like any commander, he was to the rear.


---> Noop; watch his actions at Bad Schönflies and Königsberg and the panzerfausrt destroying there of 14 T-34

The SS-FJ cannot really be described as "Otto's paras" even though they were nominally brought under the aegis of Skorzeny's commando organisation when SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600 was formed in November 1944. The SS-FJ veterans I know and have known would be furious to hear themselves described thus.

-->Wrong, the Friedenthal group received lots of Brandenburgers before summer 1943, so the group was allready a Paragroup in summer 1943.

[sid guttridge]

Hi Paddy,

An excellent, well informed post.

One point and some questions:

I don't think anyone did dismiss Operation Gryphon as an internal security affair. It was pointed out in an earlier post that the "internal security phase lasted until late 1944". This consciously excluded Operation Gryphon.

Regarding Operation Gryphon: Was it not basically a variation on a conventional exploitation operation into the enemy's rear of a sort the Germans had done frequently before?

Regarding the Carpathian Passes. My impression was that the special forces were dropped on the passes before the Russians reached them. Is there any evidence that they actually had any influence on the development of operations? Were the Russians, in fact, delayed?

Was Skorzeny in any way involved in the debacle suffered by the Brandenberg Parachute Battalion at Otopeni and other Romanian airfields in late August 1944? (I know he was charged with rescuing Antonescu using Bulgaria as a base).

Do you know anything about a reported Brandenberger raid on the castle of Portalet in the Pyrenees during the German occupation of Vichy France on 11 November 1942? It was intended to seize Georges Mandel and another anti-German politician being held there by Vichy before they could flee to Spain. French sources mention it, but I can find nothing from the German side.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Paddy Keating]

Hmmmm. Where should I begin? Let me start by saying that I have great respect for Whiting as an historian. However, I think that Whiting might have relied a lot on Skorzeny's own accounts of his career rather than independent testimony. It would be interesting to pose such a question to Whiting.

Skorzeny was certainly a brilliant tactician but he was an even better self-promoter. Although Skorzeny certainly located Mussolini, the Gran Sasso mission was planned and executed by the Luftwaffe's Fallschirm-Lehr-Regiment. Skorzeny turned up at the aerodrome at the last minute with twenty-seven members of his Jagdverband and only got to go on the mission by turfing the Luftwaffe occupants of several gliders out.


---> Whatever, noth regarding my sources, like posted at the other topic, Whting describes it cery well as a 100% Friedenthal action. Guess you are mixing things up, in Ottos SS group at Fiedenthal served indeed former Brandenburgers but at Grand Sasso, they were SS.

I do not really understand what you mean. I think, with respect, that you are mixing things up. The Fallschirm-Lehr-Regiment, also known as Fallschirmjäger-Rgt 7, had nothing to do with the Brandenburgers. It was a Luftwaffe FJ unit. Where do the Brandenburgers come into it? The Brandenburg's 15 (Fallschirm) Kompanie, the division's only airborne unit was in Yugoslavia at the time of Gran Sasso.

It is true that Adolf Hitler personally entrusted SS-Hauptsturmführer Skorzeny with the rescue of the Duce and it is true that Skorzeny found out where the Italian leader was imprisoned. As an aside, it is also true that Skorzeny proposed a plan to attack Tito's HQ in Drvar but was overruled in favour of the plan to send in SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 500 by glider and parachute. Skorzeny's plan was probably a much better one.

However, veterans of FJR7 have always asserted that Skorzeny and his twenty-seven SS-Jagdverband comrades played a minor part in the actual planning of the airborne assault on Gran Sasso itself, which was carried out by 1./FJR7 under the command of Major Mors, who received the DKiG. Elements of 1./FJR7 secured the cable car while the rest, led by Oberleutnant von Berlepsch, landed on the plateau by glider.

As for the Schwedt bridgehead on the Oder, while it is true that Skorzeny was the overall commander of Kampfgruppe Skorzeny, the commander on the ground in the thick of things was really Siegfried Milius, CO of SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600, backed up by brilliant company commanders like Macki Markus, Walter Scheu, Werner Dröste and Fritz Leifheit. They held the bridgehead from February 1st to March 2nd 1945, stiffening the resolve of Heer and Volksturm soldiers. Skorzeny did indeed visit the front but most of the time, like any commander, he was to the rear.


---> Noop; watch his actions at Bad Schönflies and Königsberg and the panzerfausrt destroying there of 14 T-34

As I said, Skorzeny visited the front. I am aware of Skorzeny's own accounts of his combat actions in the Schwedt bridgehead but Schwedt is on the western bank of the Oder and the bridgehead is on the eastern bank. Skorzeny was headquartered in Schwedt. Königsberg and Bad Schönflies are to the south-east of Schwedt

At the beginning of February, just after KG Skorzeny arrived, Skorzeny ordered reconnaissance patrols. On February 4th, SS-Ustuf und Kompanieführer Dräger of 1./SS-FJ-Btl 600 was summoned by Skorzeny and ordered to send out patrols to reconnoître the south-east. Dräger reached Königsberg-Neumarkt and met up with SS-Ostuf Markus who was holding the town with 3./SS-FJ-Btl 600.

On February 9th, the Soviets launched their armoured offensive. Now under the command of SS-Ostuf Walter Scheu, 1./SS-FJ-Btl 600 moved into positions in front of Grabow on the road to Schwedt, about 2.5 km west of Königsberg. Helped by Volksturm they dug in. Nobody who was there mentions Skorzeny being present in Königsberg, either when elements of KG Skorzeny arrived in the shape of 1./SS-FJ-Btl 600 or during the fierce battle in which Scheu's men destroyed a lot of Soviet tanks. Perhaps, when he looked back on it after the war, Skorzeny would have liked to have been there; he might have received the Oakleaves to his KC from Hitler. But the credit for the Battle of Königsberg goes to Walter Scheu and the brave men under his command.



Just to break the text up for a bit of light relief, here is Scheu's Iron Cross 1st Class certificate for the Battle of Königsberg. Awards were hard-won in the SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl. Scheu deserved at least two Tank Destruction Badges but never got any. Sharp-eyed readers will note that Scheu was now OC of 4./SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600. This is because the 1st Company had virtually ceased to exist at Königsberg and during the withdrawal.

Anyway, on February 8th, Skorzeny did take part in an assault on Soviet artillery batteries in Johannisgrund, leading a detachment of SS-Jagdverband commandos with members of 2./SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600. The assault was victorious. On February 9th, Skorzeny accompanied a platoon from 3./SS-FJ-Btl 600 under Markus on a reconnaissance patrol to Bad Schönflies. Led by Skorzeny, the patrol attacked Soviet tank crews who, according to reports, were for the most part drunk. The Soviets counterattacked and many were killed by SS small-arms fire before the platoon withdrew. At no point in the accounts of SS paratroopers who were there is there any mention of Soviet tanks being destroyed in this exchange.

Skorzeny was without doubt a brave man but he was well known also for his ability to tell stories and exaggerate, a trait common to many an old soldier so we must not be too hard on him. When 1./SS-FJ-Btl 600 under Scheu held the road in front of Grabow, they destroyed seventeen - not fourteen - Soviet tanks in one morning. These tanks were advancing from the direction of Königsberg. At this time, Skorzeny was in Schwedt directing the defence of the bridgehead. This was where he should have been. His actions in accompanying fighting patrols may have been brave but they were also reckless because he was the commander of the kampfgruppe.

The SS-FJ cannot really be described as "Otto's paras" even though they were nominally brought under the aegis of Skorzeny's commando organisation when SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600 was formed in November 1944. The SS-FJ veterans I know and have known would be furious to hear themselves described thus.

-->Wrong, the Friedenthal group received lots of Brandenburgers before summer 1943, so the group was allready a Paragroup in summer 1943.

I think you might be confused by the fact that the SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl was placed on the Order of Battle of the Friedenthal organisation in November 1944. Below is the relevant page from an SS-FJ paybook showing this. But people often misunderstand the rôle of the SS-Jagdverbände. They were not paratroopers. Some of them went through jump school but Skorzeny's commando units were commandos, not airborne soldiers. This applies to the SS commandos on the Gran Sasso raid. Just because they borrowed Luftwaffe para smocks and jump helmets and went to Gran Sasso in appropriated gliders, it does not mean that they were paratroopers. One or two, like Paul Spitt, held the Luftwaffe Fallschirmschützenabzeichen but he was not a paratrooper as such.

The SS-Jagdverbände received some Brandenburgers before the summer of 1943 because of the efforts of former Brandenburger Adrian von Folkersam. However, the Fallschirm units of the Brandenburg Division were very active until September 1944 and Brandenburg paratroopers had no pressing reason to transfer to the SS-Jagdverbände. They were Army paratroopers and very proud to be so.

The SS-Jagdverbände included some parachute-trained personnel but it cannot be regarded as a "para group". It was never an airborne organisation. It was a commando organisation, some of whose members were qualified paras. Very few Brandenburg paratroopers survived to transfer to the SS-Jagdverbände when the Brandenburg Division was converted into a normal Panzergrenadier Division in September 1944.

The Brandenburg's paratroopers and coastal raiders were not included on the ORBAT of the new division but some Brandenburg paras stayed on, as the famous photograph of Pz. Gren-Div Brandenburg assault gun personnel wearing the Army Parachutists Badge shows. Some probably joined the SS-Jagdverbände, others the newly-forming SS-FJ-Btl 600 in October and November 1944 and others might have transferred to Luftwaffe airborne units.

We are not talking about thousands of men here. We are talking about two or three hundred survivors of 15 (Fallschirm) Kompanie and Fallschirmjäger-Btl "Brandenburg", not all of whom were even jump-trained because of shortages of aircraft, fuel and parachutes by the summer of 1944.

If anything, the Brandenburg paras had more in common with the SS-Fallschirmjäger than the SS-Jagdverbände, having been based briefly in Kraljevo at the same time. Brandenburgers accompanied SS-FJ-Btl 500 to Drvar and on other operations against partisans in Yugoslavia. The two battalions were also scheduled to jump on Aaland in June 1944 - although SS-FJ-Btl 500 was reduced to less than company strength at the time after Drvar, hence the need for the Brandenburgers - but the operation was cancelled.

Anyway, I hope this helps. It is a subject I have researched and continue to research in some depth. Whiting is a good source but it is never a good idea to rely too heavily on single sources for information. Skorzeny was quite a man but some of his statements have to be taken with a pinch of salt. As popular as he was with the German - and Austrian - public, he was quite unpopular with many of the men who served with or under him, not because he was a bad leader or lacked bravery but because he was such a blatant, shameless self-publicist who was not above embellishing the truth to make himself look good.

PK

[Groscurth]

[quote="Paddy Keating"]
Anyway, I hope this helps. It is a subject I have researched and continue to research in some depth. Whiting is a good source but it is never a good idea to rely too heavily on single sources for information.
PK[/quote]

But he desribes it completely different than you. He says that a lot of Brandenburgers joined Friedenthal since spring 1943.
He gives the credit for the taking of the Burgberg in Budapest with operation Panzerfaust completely at Skorzeny that worked in cooperation with the 22th SS.

About the destroying of the tanks on february 9: Whiting says that this happens at Königsberg, so a few hours after they were in Bad Schönflies and that they destroyed togheter with some Volksturm of the city 12 Russian tanks. They left the city and in the evening, he found the Volkssturm commander of the city at his HQ., the guy simply deserted while the others were fighting.
About Schwedt and its defence: thanks to Skorzennys organisation talent, they had a defence. He stopped every retreating soldier, even 25 cavalerists on horses and added the local Volksturm batalion at his troops.
He also requisite the 75mm. anti tank guns at a factory 50km away and mounted every 88mm. he could find at trucks to use them as a mobile antitank reserve.

There is one problem with Whitting, he is very, very undatailed when he descibes units. For example: he says that Otto received a batallion of the H.Göring division (Schwedt is not far from Karinhall were they were) but does not say wich one and so one.

[Groscurth]

[quote="Paddy Keating"]As for Otto Skorzeny, he ended up in Spain and will remain a mythical figure. He is even believed by some to have been the mastermind behind the 1963 Great Train Robbery in Britain and other criminal enterprises. But he did earn his Knight's Cross: anyone who has seen Gran Sasso and seen a Fiesler Storch aircraft would agree that a man of Skozeny's size climbing into such an aircraft already containing the not inconsiderable bulk of Mussolini, the pilot Gerlach - also awarded the KC - and trusting to Fate to rescue the aircraft as it fell off the cliff at the end of the plateau and plunged towards the valley floor would agree.
.[/quote]


All this is written in Whittings book but I did not post it because it was of Topic.
He was not involved in the train robbery but he surtely merits to be spoken of because of its buisnessdeal in 1952 with de delivery of German railroad material and machines to Spain for 5 million $. He lived i Spain with a Nansen-pasport.

[Groscurth]

DP

[Paddy Keating]

They left the city and in the evening, he found the Volkssturm commander of the city at his HQ., the guy simply deserted while the others were fighting.

The Volksturm CO was also the local Gauleiter. I have a photo of him speaking with Macki Markus before the battle. He was nowhere to be seen during the battle and presented himself to Siegfried Milius afterwards. Milius listened to his excuses and then had him shot for cowardice. Milius told me this himself but it is also a matter of written record. Skorzeny had nothing to do with it. In fact, Skorzeny insisted that Markus, one of the bravest field commanders there, be shot for disobeying orders because Markus pulled the survivors of his company out of the battle once they had run out of ammunition and could not fight the Soviet armour. Skorzeny was a keen follower of Hitler's orders about not retreating. Most reports indicate that Markus was indeed shot but a couple of veterans said that he was not shot, that Milius saved him. I never got the chance to ask Milius, who died in 1992, about it. It remains one of the mysteries of SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600.

Regarding Whiting: he is an excellent writer but he gives a general account rather than a detailed history. I will have to look at the book in question again because it is so long since I read it.

Regards,

PK

[Groscurth]

[quote="Paddy Keating"]


As I said, Skorzeny visited the front. I am aware of Skorzeny's own accounts of his combat actions in the Schwedt bridgehead but Schwedt is on the western bank of the Oder and the bridgehead is on the eastern bank.

---> So what does that mean? I am aware of the position (been there) but I am also aware that people can go from point A to point B. Skorzeny could cross the Oder you know since both points were still related.


On February 9th, the Soviets launched their armoured offensive. Now under the command of SS-Ostuf Walter Scheu, 1./SS-FJ-Btl 600 moved into positions in front of Grabow on the road to Schwedt, about 2.5 km west of Königsberg. Helped by Volksturm they dug in. Nobody who was there mentions Skorzeny being present in Königsberg, either when elements of KG Skorzeny arrived in the shape of 1./SS-FJ-Btl 600 or during the fierce battle in which Scheu's men destroyed a lot of Soviet tanks. Perhaps, when he looked back on it after the war, Skorzeny would have liked to have been there; he might have received the Oakleaves to his KC from Hitler. But the credit for the Battle of Königsberg goes to Walter Scheu and the brave men under his command.

-->As said other sources place him at Königsberg on the 9th. And the destruction of the tanks is following Whitting for Skorzeny's patrol and the Volkssturm at Königsberg.

These tanks were advancing from the direction of Königsberg. At this time, Skorzeny was in Schwedt directing the defence of the bridgehead. This was where he should have been.
--> My source places S. in the cities subburbs and speaks about 12 destroyed tanks while they were on the retread (back to Schwedt) with local Volkssturm.

[Groscurth]

[quote="Paddy Keating
Regarding Whiting: he is an excellent writer but he gives a general account rather than a detailed history. I will have to look at the book in question again because it is so long since I read it.

PK[/quote]

That is what I find the problem with Whiting, compared to modern historians like a A. Beevor or compared to your sources, he is a hopeless generalist and lacks details.
I think to that he listened verry well at S. and helped to create a myth.

I am aware that the Gauleiter (like in most places) commanded the Volkssturm but Whiting did not mention the story about the execution and Skorzenny's behaviour against Markus.
Being a fanatical Nazi or follower of Hitlers blind orders on the contrary makes himself on the other hand not a less brave but more stupid men.

Cheers,

[Paddy Keating]

the problem with Whiting, compared to modern historians like a A. Beevor or compared to your sources, he is a hopeless generalist and lacks details.
I think to that he listened verry well at S. and helped to create a myth.

It would seem so.

PK

[Paddy Keating]

Hi Paddy,

An excellent, well informed post.

One point and some questions:

I don't think anyone did dismiss Operation Gryphon as an internal security affair. It was pointed out in an earlier post that the "internal security phase lasted until late 1944". This consciously excluded Operation Gryphon.

Cheers, Sid. Sorry I didn't respond before. I don't know how I missed your post. Anyway, I take your point above. That was careless of me.

Regarding Operation Gryphon: Was it not basically a variation on a conventional exploitation operation into the enemy's rear of a sort the Germans had done frequently before?

Certainly! The Germans were quite fond of infiltration missions. Others include the Brandenburger missions in Holland ahead of Fall Gelb. There is a photo of a Brandenburger in civilian clothes posing with Fallschirmjäger at Moerdijk, if memory serves me, after the battle for the bridges in May 1940. It is sometimes said that Brandenburgers were active in Holland in Dutch uniforms.



Then there was the behind-the-lines mission led by Brandenburger Leutnant Adrian von Folkersam to sieze the Russian oil refineries at Maykop in the Kuban steppes in August 1942, for which he won the Knight's Cross. Folkersam, who was very active in persuading Brandenburgers to transfer to the SS-Jagdverbände, can be seen with Skorzeny in many of the photographs taken during the occupation of Budapest in March 1944, like the one above. He's the one in the middle.



Just for interest's sake, here is another photo from Budapest showing a paratrooper from SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 500 on guard as Honved officers confer.

There was the abortive drop by Freiherr von der Heydte in the Ardennes. But these were generally standard commando and airborne missions and raids. Small groups of German and Italian paras dropped behind Allied lines and into Vichy-controlled territories in North Africa to cause disruption but their missions were not very successful.

The SS-Jagdverband Ost officer in command of the Carpathian mission was SS-Ostuf Walter Girg. He won the Knight's Cross for that mission. He then received the Oakleaves to the KC in 1945 when he and his unit, composed of German and Russian volunteers, carried out a 1500 kilometre reconnaissance mission from Danzig to Kolberg in T34 tanks, dressed in Red Army uniforms. In Kolberg, they were arrested by the SS commander of the besieged town who believed them to be traitors fighting for the Soviets. They were all condemned to death! However, Skorzeny managed to get a radio message to Kolberg, confirming that Girg and his unit were indeed loyal Germans. It was a narrow escape. Sneaky-beaky ops are not without risk...

It is generally believed that German behind-the-lines operations in Soviet kit were not uncommon on the Eastern Front. In that regard, Gryphon was a fairly standard operation of this kind. The only thing that makes it stand out is that it was on the Western Front. There is a general view that it was somehow 'not on' for the Germans to do this when fighting the Western Allies. This view is also mirrored in reactions to the Das Reich's punitive operations in central France in June 1944. For them, burning a village and killing all the inhabitants was a regular occurance on the Eastern Front and some SS veterans really could not understand why Oradour-sur-Glane caused such outrage.

But I digress. Gryphon was not as successful as Skorzeny intended but it did instil a certain amount of fear and paranoia in American troops, recalling the scare stories of in Britain in 1940 of German parachutists disguised as nuns etcetera. We know of the three men of Panzerbrigade 150 executed by the Americans for wearing American uniforms but it seems likely that American forces on the ground killed quite a lot of Skorzeny's force, probably in summary executions after capture. This is of course entirely understandable.



One paybook I have - a page is shown above - from a Waffen-SS NCO posted to SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600 in November 1944 who served with Leifheit's detachment as part of PB 150 in the Ardennes is crossed in red. He was KIA but has no known grave. There could be several explanations for this, of course. He could have been blown to pieces. But he could equally have been caught, shot and then disposed of in a shallow grave somewhere as a matter of expedience. He would not have been carrying his paybook for obvious reasons. This would have been held by his unit while he was on a behind-the-lines mission in enemy uniform and cancelled when he was reported MIA/KIA. It is of course a very murky affair about which few people involved have spoken.

As a footnote, let us not forget the activities of the Luftwaffe units that flew captured Allied aircraft, like B17 Flying Fortresses, infiltrating bomber formations and shooting up bona fide Allied aircraft. The Germans were indeed fond of this kind of deception.



Then again, the Allies also got up to similar tricks. This is a British pilot who flew captured German aircraft on combat missions. Note the touch of humour in the specially-designed 'German' Pilot's Badge, inspired by the real thing. Anyway, I keep veering off-topic here. Sorry.

Regarding the Carpathian Passes. My impression was that the special forces were dropped on the passes before the Russians reached them. Is there any evidence that they actually had any influence on the development of operations? Were the Russians, in fact, delayed?

To be honest, I don't know if the Soviets were delayed. But the award of the Knights' Crosses and German Crosses was not simply for jumping from an aircraft and securing a mountain pass with no enemy present at any stage. There again, parachuting into mountains is as dangerous as parachuting into forests and it was a brave thing to volunteer for such a mission, with the attendant high risk of not coming home. But I cannot see the KC being given to field officers without a combat aspect involved.

Was Skorzeny in any way involved in the debacle suffered by the Brandenberg Parachute Battalion at Otopeni and other Romanian airfields in late August 1944? (I know he was charged with rescuing Antonescu using Bulgaria as a base).

I don't think that Skorzeny was responsible in any way for the catastrophe that befell the Brandenburg Parachute Bn in Romania in August 1944. Here's an extract from an article I wrote some time ago dealing with this episode:

In August, two companies of FJ-Btl Brandenburg, merged with two companies of the Brandenburg’s 3rd Regiment, took part in the ill-fated “Relief of Bucharest”. The aim was to rescue two generals – and their troops - whose HQ was encircled by pro-Soviet Romanian forces. A small force of Brandenburg paras seized Bucharest’s Otopeni Airport at midday on August 24th and held it until 1900 hrs, when their comrades began arriving in Me 323 Gigants.
By 2100 hrs, the airport and encircled German HQ areas were under German control. Negotiations with the Romanians, some of whom still professed loyalty to their German allies, secured promises that German forces in and around Bucharest would have safe passage to the Yugoslav border. But all pretence of any cooperation ended on September 1st. As the German column was leaving Bucharest, protected by Brandenburgers, the Romanians turned them over to the Soviets. Few if any of the Brandenburgers survived Soviet captivity. The ORBAT of FJ-Btl Brandenburg was reduced by half as a result of the Bucharest mission.

It is fairly clear that Romanian treachery was responsible for the fate of the German forces who had been given safe conduct out of Bucharest.

Do you know anything about a reported Brandenberger raid on the castle of Portalet in the Pyrenees during the German occupation of Vichy France on 11 November 1942? It was intended to seize Georges Mandel and another anti-German politician being held there by Vichy before they could flee to Spain. French sources mention it, but I can find nothing from the German side.

I have heard of this but I don't know about it in any detail. I am in Paris and I know quite a few French historians and authors so I will ask around about it for you. There were all sorts of operations of this nature in France during the Occupation, particularly after the Germans ended the charade of 'co-operation' and 'partnership' and rolled into the Vichy-controlled zone in 1942.

Regards,

PK

[Freiritter]

It's been an interesting thread. I hadn't known that the Germans had such an unconventional warfare capability. I'm sorry to have described Skorzeny's ops as primarily political. So, it seems that Skorzeny's unit was an all-around special ops unit that conducted a wide range of ops to support German political and military objectives. Why did Hitler order Mussolini to be rescued? Did Skorzeny have anything to do with the afteraffects of the 20 July bomb plot? Did Germany ever have plans to assassinate any of the Allied leaders?

[Freiritter]

It's been an interesting thread. I hadn't known that the Germans had such an unconventional warfare capability. I'm sorry to have described Skorzeny's ops as primarily political. So, it seems that Skorzeny's unit was an all-around special ops unit that conducted a wide range of ops to support German political and military objectives. Why did Hitler order Mussolini to be rescued? Did Skorzeny have anything to do with the afteraffects of the 20 July bomb plot? Did Germany ever have plans to assassinate any of the Allied leaders?

P.S. Sorry for the double post.