Gran Sasso raid
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The Gran Sasso raid refers to Operation Eiche (German for 'Oak'), the daring rescue of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini by German paratroopers in September 1943, during World War II. It was planned by Major Harald Mors and approved by General Kurt Student.
[edit] Overview
After his arrest, Mussolini was transported around Italy by his captors. Otto Skorzeny, selected personally by Hitler and Ernst Kaltenbrunner to carry out the mission, tracked him.
Intercepting a coded Italian radio message, Skorzeny used his own reconnaissance to determine that Mussolini was being imprisoned at Campo Imperatore Hotel, a ski resort at Campo Imperatore in Italy's Gran Sasso, high in the Apennine Mountains. On 12 September 1943, Skorzeny joined the team, led by Major Harald Mors, to rescue Mussolini in a high-risk glider mission. Skorzeny was a "tag along" participant who made false claims after the event to gain fame, while Major Mors planned and executed the operation using primarily paratroopers.
The operation on the ground at Campo Imperatore was led by Lieutenant Count Otto von Berlepsch, planned by Major Harald Mors and under orders from General Kurt Student, all Fallschirmjäger (German Air Force Paratroop) officers. The commandos crashed their gliders into the nearby mountains, then overwhelmed Mussolini's captors without a single shot being fired. Skorzeny attacked the radio operator and his equipment, and formally greeted Mussolini with "Duce, the Führer has sent me to set you free!" to which Mussolini replied "I knew that my friend would not forsake me!" Mussolini was first flown from Campo Imperatore in a Luftwaffe Fieseler Fi 156 Storch liaison aircraft, along with Skorzeny (even though the weight of an extra passenger almost crashed the tiny plane) then on to Vienna, where he stayed overnight at the Hotel Imperial and was given a hero's welcome.
Because of this, it was Skorzeny who stewarded the Italian leader first into Rome and eventually into Berlin, right in front of the cameras. Skorzeny's involvement in this operation was limited and subject to significant propaganda after the event. He was granted the majority of the credit for the operation after a pro-SS propaganda coup at the behest of SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler and propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
[edit] Aftermath
The operation severely hampered Allied advances into Italy[citation needed], as well as granting a rare late-war public relations opportunity to Hermann Göring. Mussolini was returned to power again in the German-occupied portion of Italy (the Italian Social Republic). Otto Skorzeny gained a large amount of success from this mission; he received a promotion to Major, the award of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and fame that led to his "most dangerous man in Europe" image.
Nazi propaganda hailed the operation for months, the Axis otherwise having little about which to boast in the fall of 1943. As it turned out, it was the last of Hitler's spectacular gambles to bear fruit.
[edit] References
- Oscar Gonzalez Lopez. Fallschirmjager at the Gran Sasso: : The Liberation of Mussolini by the German Parachutist on the 12th September 1943.
- Marco Patricelli (2001). in Mondadori: Liberate il Duce, Le Scie (in italian). ISBN 88-04-48860-3.
