Oak company

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Mussolini and Skorzeny on the Way from the Hotel to the Plane (September 12, 1943)

Company Oak was the code name of the German liberation campaign for the overthrown Italian dictator Benito Mussolini on September 12, 1943, during the Second World War . It was planned and organized by Kurt Student . It was carried out by the paratrooper training battalion with the participation of SS members under the leadership of Otto Skorzeny on the Gran Sasso d'Italia in Abruzzo .

preparation

Hotel Campo Imperatore
Mussolini with German paratroopers on September 12, 1943
Fieseler stork
The area with ski lifts today

After the Allied landing in Sicily , the Great Fascist Council blamed Mussolini for all the failures during the Second World War , whereupon this on the orders of King Victor Emanuel III. was arrested on July 25, 1943. Hitler then ordered a liberation mission; under all circumstances Mussolini should be freed unharmed. General of the parachute force Kurt Student thereupon ordered the preparations for the liberation of Mussolini. During the course of his detention, his guards took him to other places several times. After a few unsuccessful attempts, the Germans succeeded in locating the former dictator in the Hotel Campo Imperatore on the Campo Imperatore plateau in the Gran Sasso mountain range.

To guard the former Duces , the new Italian government (which concluded the armistice of Cassibile with the Allies on September 3, 1943 ) had recently deployed around 120 security guards, including 30 plainclothes police in its immediate vicinity under the leadership of the Pubblica Sicurezza inspector Giuseppe Gueli and 43 Carabinieri , commanded by Carabinieri Lieutenant Alberto Faiola.

procedure

The company Eiche was started on September 12, 1943 at 3:00 a.m. The valley station of a mountain cable car leading to the hotel near the town of Assergi was opened at around 2 p.m. by the headquarters company, the 2nd company and part of the 1st company of the paratrooper training battalion under Major Harald Mors and General Kurt Student had been entrusted with carrying out the entire enterprise, captured by land. The Italian defenders offered little resistance. Two Italians were killed while trying to warn Mussolini's guards at Hotel Campo Imperatore . The German troops had already cut all telephone connections beforehand.

At the same time, 90 paratroopers from the 1st company of the Paratrooper Training Battalion under the command of Lieutenant Georg Freiherr von Berlepsch were to land on the Gran Sasso with a total of ten DFS 230 gliders . However, Skorzeny was able to ensure that a 17-man SS command under his leadership, as well as the general of the Polizia dell'Africa Italiana (PAI) Fernando Soleti , could take part in the liberation as a police element. This reduced the number of paratroopers taking part from 90 to 72. Von Berlepsch, the commandant of the airborne company, was in the first glider in the first chain, while Skorzeny and his SS soldiers were in the fourth and fifth gliders.

From 13:05 to 13:10 the start of all ten tow formations took place - divided into three chains with three tow formations each and an additional tenth tow formation - from the Pratica di Mare airport, 30 km south of Rome . In order to gain additional altitude for all towing units in front of the nearby Albanian mountains , the unit leader in the chain guide machine, Captain Langguth (with von Berlepsch in tow), flew an additional loop in front of the mountains. However, the pilots of the second chain did not carry out this additional loop of the first chain because they did not consider this maneuver necessary and did not want to endanger the fixed arrival time at the destination. For this reason, the towing units of the second chain with Skorzeny and his SS command were now at the top of the overall formation and landed first at the destination, the mountainside near the Hotel Campo Imperatore, at around 2:05 p.m. While all the other gliders landed in the vicinity, a group with Skorzeny broke into the lower entrance of the hotel, followed by the paratroopers. The Italian general Soleti had the task of prohibiting the guards from Mussolini's resistance. They did not offer any resistance during the liberation operation and were disarmed. Mussolini himself came out of the hotel ten minutes after the start of the liberation operation. Only one of the gliders crash-landed, seriously injuring people on board.

At 2:45 pm, the company's commander, Major Harald Mors, took the cable car to the hotel, whereupon the uninjured "Duce" was to be flown out with a Fieseler stork . Skorzeny insisted on going on the plane. At a height of 2100 meters above sea level and on the short, very uneven take-off stretch, the three-seater machine was actually overloaded with three people. After the successful start, the pilot, Captain Gerlach - General Student's personal pilot - was able to safely bring the aircraft with the two passengers to the Pratica di Mare military airfield, where they landed at around 3:38 p.m. From there, Mussolini was immediately flown on to Vienna in a German Heinkel He 111 , where he spent the night and was brought to Munich the next day. On September 14th at 2:30 p.m. he met Hitler at the Fuehrer's headquarters in Wolfsschanze near Rastenburg (East Prussia).

In the course of this liberation operation, Mussolini's diary-like notes that he had written during his imprisonment on the islands of Ponza and La Maddalena were stolen, then copied by hand and only returned to him at Gargnano at his request . These notes were later given the title Pontine and Sardinian Thoughts ; above all, they reflected Mussolini's depressed mood and otherwise proved to be insignificant for the Germans.

Effects

In order not to lose the war-important industrial areas of northern Italy, Hitler installed the liberated Mussolini on September 23, 1943 as head of state of the newly founded Italian Social Republic . The pilot of the Fieseler Storch , Captain Heinrich Gerlach, and the pilot of the glider who landed first, Lieutenant Elimar Meyer-Wehner, both received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross . First Lieutenant Georg Freiherr von Berlepsch, Major Otto Harald Mors, Captain Langguth and three other cargo glider pilots received the German Cross in Gold. Skorzeny was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer for the liberation campaign and was also awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. Although Skorzeny was neither involved in the direct planning of this operation nor had authority over it, he was highly praised for the rescue operation. In the Nazi propaganda it was deliberately concealed that the mission was primarily an operation planned and carried out by members of the parachute troops, while the role of Skorzeny and his SS men was greatly exaggerated.

Others

Photos of this action went around the world. Most of them were photographed by the photo reporter Toni Schneider . Schneiders had volunteered for the paratroopers, was trained at the picture school in Braunschweig and worked in the aerial photography department. From 1942 to 1944 he was a front-line reporter for the paratroopers in Italy and France. He was part of the paratrooper training battalion. Many of his photos are stored in the Federal Archives in Koblenz.

Memorial plaque in the hotel

literature

  • John Weal: Operation Oak - The rescue of Mussolini . In: International Air Power Review . No. 8 , 2003, ISBN 1-880588-54-4 .
  • Óscar González López: Paratroopers at the Gran Sasso . AF Editores, Valladolid 2007, ISBN 978-84-96935-00-6 .
  • Hermann Götzel: Kurt Student and his paratroopers . Podszun Pallas-Verlag, Friedberg 1980, ISBN 3-7909-0131-8 .
  • Marco Patricelli: Liberate il Duce! La vera storia dell'Operazione Quercia Mondadori. Milano 2001, ISBN 88-04-48860-3 .
  • Georg Schlaug: The German cargo sailing associations . Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-613-01065-8 , p. 188 .

Web links

Commons : Company Oak  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stuart Smith: Otto Skorzeny: The Devil's Disciple. Osprey Publishing, Oxford 2018, ISBN 978-1-4728-2945-0 , p. 76.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Óscar González López: Paratroopers at the Gran Sasso . AF Editores, Valladolid 2007, ISBN 978-84-96935-00-6 .
  3. ↑ a b c Georg Schlaug: The German cargo sailing associations . Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-613-01065-8 , p. 188 .
  4. ↑ Marco Patricelli: Liberate il Duce . Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milano 2001, ISBN 88-04-48860-3 , p. 82 and 107 .
  5. ↑ Benito Mussolini Memoirs. 1942-1943: With Documents Relating to the Period. G. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1949, p. 306. ( limited preview on Google Book Search ).
  6. ↑ a b c Hermann Götzel: Kurt Student and his paratroopers . Podszun Pallas-Verlag, Friedberg 1980, ISBN 3-7909-0131-8 .
  7. ↑ a b Erich Kuby : Treason in German. How the Third Reich ruined Italy. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1982, ISBN 3-455-08754-X .
  8. ↑ Herbert Greuél (ed.): Otto Skorzeny. My commando companies . War without fronts. Limes-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1977, ISBN 3-8090-2100-8 , p. 304 f .
  9. ^ Johanna Lutteroth: Mussolini rescue "Operation Oak". "Duce, the guide sent me. You are free!" In: Spiegel online. September 12th, 2013.
  10. ↑ Toni Schneiders - A photographer as a »photo reporter« for the Wehrmacht's "paratrooper training battalion". (bundesarchiv.de)