Operation Iron Cross

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The operation IRON CROSS was an American, first as sabotage company in the alpine fortress planned, but then for the arrest of Adolf Hitler intended use of volunteers.

Lineup

At the end of 1944, the Americans believed that Hitler would entrench himself as the last defense in the Alps, in the alleged Alpine fortress. As a means of cracking the Alpine fortress, IRON CROSS was created at the end of 1944. Volunteer Germans of company strength were supposed to jump on parachutes in the Alpine fortress in the Inn Valley between Kufstein and Innsbruck and engage in sabotage , wage guerrilla warfare , convince German soldiers to overflow and, if possible, capture high-ranking Nazi figures.

For this purpose, German volunteers were sought in liberated France who wanted to fight against the Nazi regime . These volunteers were found among interned German civilians who had been in Gestapo custody , German soldiers who had fought on the side of the Resistance deserted , and in prisoner-of-war camps . At the end of 1944, 175 men were gathered in Saint Germain near Paris who were trained in setting up ambushes, sabotage of all kinds and parachuting. During the training, physically, psychologically and / or morally unusable men were removed from the unit, so that in the end exactly 100 men remained.

Order to arrest Hitler

In mid-April 1945 the head of the US secret service OSS , William J. Donovan , ordered this unit to be used for the arrest of Adolf Hitler. To this end, storming buildings, switching off guards and taking prisoners away were practiced without the soldiers from IRON CROSS having been told whom to arrest and kidnap.

Towards the end of April 1945, the company's advance division assembled in Dijon . It consisted of four men, a radio operator, two soldiers and the chief of IRON CROSS, the captain of the US Army Aaron Bank. The advance department was supposed to parachute into the Alps and find out the necessary information about Hitler's whereabouts in German uniforms or civilian clothes, starting from his country house on Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden , or from there further into the Alps. Upon radio request from the advance department, the entire company was then to be landed by parachute and carried out its mission.

Hitler's whereabouts

On April 3, 1945, an American agent who had been smuggled in had received news from a drunk German officer who had been at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin two weeks earlier , which he immediately relayed over the radio. The radio report ended with the following sentences:

"Adolf at present in Reichskanzlei where each night 2200 hours generals of staff come to visit. Adolf tired of living. Watched last attack from balcony. Alternative headquarters at Ohrdruf, Thuringia. Not Obersalzberg. Source is Austrian staff officer who left HQ March 21. " ("Adolf at the moment in the Reich Chancellery where generals of the staff come to visit every night at 10 p.m. Adolf tired of life. Observed last attack [air attack] from the balcony. Alternative headquarters in Ohrdruf , Thuringia . Not Obersalzberg. Source is an Austrian staff officer at headquarters 21 . March left. ")

In Ohrdruf the SS had built an underground headquarters for Hitler as "Special Project III", but Hitler stayed in Berlin despite the move of the Führer headquarters from Berlin to Ohrdruf, which had been planned since the beginning of March 1945.

The End

In Dijon, the departure of the advance department was postponed for six days in a row, on the grounds of bad weather. Then the order was canceled. Hitler was obviously in Berlin towards the end of the war and not in the Alpine region. The German volunteers of the company IRON CROSS were paid their wages and the voluntary prisoners of war were treated as prisoners of war again, but they were the first to be released from captivity.

literature

  • Joseph E. Persico: Piercing the Reich. The penetration of Nazi Germany by American secret agents during World War II. Verlag Ballantine Books, New York 1979. ISBN 0-345-28280-9 . Pp. 316-324.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.cedu-diver.com/aaron.htm
  2. ↑ Joseph E. Persico: Piercing the Reich. The penetration of Nazi Germany by American secret agents during World War II. Verlag Ballantine Books, New York 1979. ISBN 0-345-28280-9 . Pp. 271-272.
  3. ^ International tracing service: Directory of places of detention under the Reichsführer SS (1933–1945) , Arolsen 1977. p. 53.
  4. ^ Rodney G. Minott: Top secret. Hitler's alpine fortress. Factual account of a myth. Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1967. p. 35.
  5. ^ Office of Strategic Services 1942–45: The World War II Origins of the CIA , Volume 173, Author Eugene Liptak, Verlag Osprey Publishing, 2009, ISBN 1846034639, p. 36