DonHollway.com: The Most Dangerous Man In Europe

	The Most Dangerous Man In Europe
	by Don Hollway
	Originally published in World War II, January 1995

With Germany’s back to the wall, Hitler sent his favorite commando to pave the way for the Nazis’ last great offensive.

In October 1944 the German High Command was forced to abandon its mountain headquarters, the “Wolf’s Lair,” before it fell under the advancing Russians’ guns. Amid this atmosphere of defeat Adolf Hitler still managed to greet a visiting SS major with an on-the-spot promotion and a hearty “Well done, Skorzeny!”

Now-Lt. Col. Otto Skorzeny—a giant Viennese whose face bore Schmisse, dueling scars of honor—was one of der Führer’s few recent success stories. In September 1943 he and his commandos had made a glider-borne rescue of imprisoned former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, spiriting Il Duce away in a light plane. And when the regent of Germany’s last European ally, Hungary, had wavered on the brink of surrender, Skorzeny had kidnapped his son and ultimately led a German-backed coup, keeping Hungary in the war.

Now Hitler revealed that Germany was still in the war, too. Her December Ardennes offensive would cut off the enemy armies in Belgium and Holland and destroy the western Allies’ will to fight. After that she could focus her energies on defeating Russia.

“You and your units will play a very important part in this offensive,” Hitler told Skorzeny. “You will capture one or more bridges on the River Meuse between Liège and Namur. You will carry out this operation in British or American uniform.”

For this “Operation Greif (Grab),” Skorzeny had barely five weeks to assemble 3,300 men, equipped and retrained in the American manner. He hoped for perhaps 150 captured Sherman tanks, 32 armored cars, nearly 200 trucks and 150 jeeps, but ended up with just two Shermans (both of which soon broke down), two American armored cars, and less than 100 jeeps and trucks. The rest of his equipment was German—five Panther tanks, six armored cars, six armored personnel carriers and five assault guns—disguised as American. They would fool, as Skorzeny himself admitted, only “very young Americans—and then only very far away and at night.”

There was not enough personal equipment to go around, either; by mid-November the brigade was still short 1,500 American helmets, and many of their uniforms were summer issue, with POW markings. Skorzeny, who’d previously supplied his commandos with British gear parachuted to Dutch “resistance fighters”—actually German agents—could hardly console himself with the knowledge that he didn’t need to supply as many men as he’d thought. Of 2,500 volunteers for the operation only about 400 could speak schoolboy English, and only about 10 were fluent in American slang. “The rest could just about say ‘Yes,’” wrote Skorzeny; they “could certainly never dupe an American—not even a deaf one!”

He drilled his men in American mannerisms—the proper way to swear, to chew gum, to loiter, to march instead of goose step. (Some of the most promising impersonators were actually infiltrated into POW camps to polish their skills.) He set aside his best linguists and equipment into a 44-man commando unit to scatter ahead of the main force, Panzerbrigade 150—now divided into three battle groups, Kampfgruppen X, Y and Z—and create maximum confusion behind enemy lines. Once a breakthrough had been made he hoped the main force could slip through, join the American retreat and reach the Meuse, perhaps as early as six hours into the offensive.

Of course, not even his Kampfgruppen commanders were aware of their actual mission. In view of Skorzeny’s past exploits, perhaps it should’ve come as no surprise when one young lieutenant offered his intimate knowledge of Paris, “because we are going to dash across France through the American Army and capture (Gen. Dwight “Ike”) Eisenhower’s headquarters.”

“Don’t mention it to anyone,” Skorzeny deadpanned. “When the time comes I’ll call on you.” The proliferation of such rumors was to his advantage. What did bother him was the likelihood that by fighting in enemy uniform his men would risk being shot as spies. German lawyers maintained it was all legal as long as they doffed their uniforms before opening fire, but Skorzeny knew from combat experience just how difficult that might prove.

Panzerbrigade 150 moved up to the front on the night of December 14th, joining up with SS General Josef “Sepp” Dietrich’s Sixth Panzer Army. 24 hours later the commando teams crossed the lines to begin their deadly work. At 0600 the next morning Dietrich’s army hurled itself on American positions still quaking from a half-hour artillery bombardment. 140,000 Germans with all their tanks, trucks and equipment tried to squeeze through the Losheim Gap at once, creating not a breakthrough but a bottleneck. Dietrich’s spearhead, Lt. Col. Joachim Peiper, shouldered his Kampfgruppe through the traffic jam (and later that day, through a minefield) in a savage effort to maintain the initiative. But a mine killed the commander of Kampfgruppe X, and Skorzeny found the way so impassable that he had to abandon his jeep and walk nine kilometers. Specifically forbidden by Hitler to cross the lines himself, he could do little but hope Peiper succeeded in creating the breakthrough he needed.

But the confusion on the German side of the line was nothing compared to that on the American, where Skorzeny’s commandos were busily at work. Since December 1944 stories of their exploits have taken on mythological proportions: German infiltrators preventing the demolition of the bridge over the Amblève River at Stavelot, allowing Kampfgruppe Peiper to cross; armored columns and dug-in defenders sent running by “panic-stricken,” ersatz Americans “fleeing” the German juggernaut; an entire U.S. Army regiment, 3,000 strong, dispatched in the wrong direction by a German team leader; road signs changed, roads incorrectly marked as mined, communications cut. There was at least one instance of a German commando surrendering to an MP, only to discover his captor was also German. (To avoid such blunders Skorzeny’s men had worked a system of recognition signals, marking their vehicles with small yellow triangles and keeping their tanks’ guns pointed at nine o’clock. By day the men wore pink or blue scarves; at night they flashed red or blue lights.) Several teams reached the Meuse and one actually crossed it near Amay—the high water mark of the German offensive—before returning to the German lines.

Inevitably flaws in their disguises showed through. The hard-pressed Germans, to whom transportation was a scarce resource, completely underestimated the abundance of the ubiquitous American jeep, any one of which rarely carried more than two riders (regulations in fact forbade more than three); once the alert was raised alert observers could easily spot Skorzeny’s three- and four-man teams. One group gave themselves away by requesting “petrol” for their jeep instead of “gasoline.” These were captured, but another team which commandeered some American self-propelled guns abandoned by the American 14th Cavalry ran into the 7th Armored Division near Poteau and claimed to be members of “E Company.” American cavalry was organized into troops, not companies; the real Americans opened fire, killing all the Germans.

The greatest damage, however, was done by a team which couldn’t give the correct password and was arrested at Aywaille, just 12 miles from the Meuse. The soldiers—“Charles Lawrence, George Sensenbach and Clarence van der Wert”—turned out to be Officer-Cadet Günter Billing, Corporal Wilhelm Schmidt and Lance Corporal Manfred Pernass of Panzerbrigade 150. Before they were shot as spies (as were 15 more of Skorzeny’s men) Schmidt dusted off the old Eisenhower story and immediately the word went out, gathering steam as it went: Otto Skorzeny, the Most Dangerous Man in Europe, was out to get Ike, and maybe other top Allied brass too! He and 200 Germans, no, 300 disguised German paratroopers were to rendezvous at the Café de la Paix before launching a suicide attack on Ike’s headquarters!

The American rear was very nearly paralyzed with suspicion. At least two American soldiers were shot by mistake. British troops moving in from the north to bolster the line were arrested if they lacked expertise on Americana. No one was above suspicion. An MP arrested Gen. Bruce Clarke, telling him, “I was told to look out for a kraut posing as a one-star general.” He asked Clarke in which league the Chicago Cubs played baseball, and when Clarke answered the American the MP threw away the key: “Only a kraut would make a mistake like that.”

Lt. Gen. Omar Bradley noted “half a million G.I.s...playing cat and mouse with each other every time they met.” He found a simple trip to see one of his subordinates entailed a life-or-death quiz game at every roadblock: What’s the capital of Massachusetts? (Bradley’s interrogator insisted on Chicago.) Where’s the guard on an offensive line of scrimmage? Who’s married to Betty Grable?

Eisenhower had to give up his villa outside Paris; it had formerly been German Field Marshall Gerd von Rundstedt’s and Ike’s security men feared the Germans were too familiar with it. For the next few days he was practically imprisoned in his Versailles headquarters while a look-alike colonel was driven about Paris in plain view as an invitation to attack. By the time it was reported the Germans were gathering at the Café de la Paix Ike’d had enough. “Hell’s fire,” he told his secretary, “I’m going for a walk. If anyone wants to shoot me he can go right ahead. I’ve got to get out!”

On his side of the line Skorzeny knew little of this. After the first 48 hours it had become plain to him there would be no breakthrough; “Operation Greif” was moot, and on the night of the 17th he persuaded Dietrich to use Panzerbrigade 150 as a conventional unit. He was assigned the capture of Malmédy, which would allow the Germans to outflank the stubbornly defended Elsenborn Ridge and at the same time support Peiper’s stalled advance. One of Skorzeny’s commando teams had reconnoitered the town on the 17th and found it lightly defended, but while Panzerbrigade 150 reorganized for the attack the Americans moved in. Furthermore, a captured German alerted them to the impending attack.

Early on the 21st Skorzeny launched a two-pronged assault. Kampfgruppe Y advanced from one side and Kampfgruppe X, with five Panthers disguised as American M-10 tank destroyers, from the other. The former was soon driven back by artillery, but the latter, covered by fog, succeeded in reaching the bridge over the Warche River, where the fighting swirled for several hours. One by one the phony Panthers were put out of action. Only one gained the other side of the river, and it was immediately stopped by a bazooka round in the engine; most of the crew was cut down as they fled back across the bridge. The Americans intensified their artillery barrage, putting down 3,000 rounds (including new proximity-fused shells), under which the Germans retreated. That evening Skorzeny himself was struck in the head by a piece of shrapnel and nearly lost an eye.

The next morning Kampfgruppe Y were again repulsed, and that afternoon American engineers dropped the crucial bridges into the river. (Horribly, through miscommunications the Americans believed Malmédy lost, and went on to bomb it three times by mistake, killing 300 civilians and an unknown number of American infantrymen.) On Dec. 28th Panzerbrigade 150, having taken 15% losses all told, went to the rear. Within a month the survivors were back with their original units.

Skorzeny ultimately surrendered to the Americans. Though cleared of war crimes, he was held indefinitely for “denazification.” Finally he escaped, went into temporary hiding and, with the Allies’ interest in him waning, back into legitimate business. But his infamous reputation never really left him, and for years it seemed every international plot and intrigue required an official Skorzeny disclaimer: “I’m a retired kidnapper.”

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