47 Facts About Otto Skorzeny

Otto Johann Anton Skorzeny was an Austrian-born German SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer in the Waffen-SS during World War II.

Otto Skorzeny escaped from an internment camp in 1948, hiding out on a Bavarian farm as well as in Salzburg and Paris before eventually settling in Francoist Spain.

Otto Skorzeny was allegedly an advisor to Argentinian president Juan Peron.

In 1963, Otto Skorzeny was allegedly recruited by the Mossad and conducted operations for the agency.

Otto Skorzeny died of lung cancer on 5 July 1975 in Madrid at the age of 67.

Otto Skorzeny was born in Vienna into a middle-class Austrian family which had a long history of military service.

Otto Skorzeny's surname is of Polish origin, and Skorzeny's distant ancestors came from a village called Skorzecin in the Greater Poland region.

Otto Skorzeny was a noted fencer as member of a German-national Burschenschaft while studying at the Technical University of Vienna.

In May 1932 Otto Skorzeny joined the Austrian Nazi organization and soon became a member of the Austrian branch of the Nazi Sturmabteilung in February 1934.

Otto Skorzeny then joined the Waffen-SS, training with Hitler's bodyguard regiment, the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler.

Otto Skorzeny took part in the invasion of the Soviet Union with the SS Division Das Reich and subsequently fought in several battles on the Eastern Front.

Otto Skorzeny's mission was to seize important buildings of the Communist Party, including the NKVD headquarters at Lubyanka, and the central telegraph office and other high priority facilities, before they could be destroyed.

Otto Skorzeny was ordered to capture the sluices of the Moscow-Volga Canal because Hitler wanted to turn Moscow into a huge artificial lake by opening them.

In January 1942 Otto Skorzeny was hit in the back of the head by shrapnel; he was evacuated to the rear for treatment.

Otto Skorzeny had previously been awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class while fighting in the Yelnya bridgehead.

Otto Skorzeny's proposals were to develop units specialized in such warfare, including partisan-like fighting deep behind enemy lines, fighting in enemy uniform, sabotage attacks, etc.

Otto Skorzeny sent a group by parachute into Iran to make contact with the dissident mountain tribes to encourage them to sabotage Allied shipments to the Soviet Union via the Trans-Iranian Railway.

Intercepting a coded Italian radio message, Otto Skorzeny used the reconnaissance provided by the agents and informants of SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Herbert Kappler to determine that Mussolini was being imprisoned at Campo Imperatore Hotel, a ski resort at Campo Imperatore in Italy's Gran Sasso massif, high in the Apennine Mountains.

Otto Skorzeny attacked the radio operator and his equipment and stormed into the hotel, being followed by his SS troopers and the paratroopers.

The landing at Campo Imperatore was in fact led by First Lieutenant Georg Freiherr von Berlepsch, commanded by Major Otto-Harald Mors and under orders from General Kurt Student, all Fallschirmjager officers; but Skorzeny stewarded the Italian leader right in front of the cameras.

Otto Skorzeny supported this view by stating in his post-war memoirs that no such operation ever existed.

Otto Skorzeny said the story about the plans being leaked to Soviet spy Nikolai Kuznetsov by an SS-Sturmbannfuhrer named Hans Ulrich von Ortel was a Soviet invention; Hans Ulrich von Ortel never existed.

Otto Skorzeny claimed his name was used only to add credibility to the story because the NKVD knew his renowned record as an SS commando would make the existence of such an operation more plausible.

Friedenthal was re-designated SS-Jager-Bataillon 502 with Otto Skorzeny staying on as commander.

Otto Skorzeny was involved in planning Rosselsprung and was intended to command it.

Otto Skorzeny was well aware that under the Hague Convention of 1907, any of his men captured while wearing US uniforms would be executed as spies and this possibility caused much discussion with Generaloberst Jodl and Field Marshal von Rundstedt.

Eisenhower retaliated by ordering an all-out manhunt for Otto Skorzeny, with "Wanted" posters distributed throughout Allied-controlled territories featuring a detailed description and a photograph.

Otto Skorzeny spent February 1945 as an acting major general commanding about 5,000 troops, only some of which were his SS commandos and paratroopers, during the defense of the Schwedt Bridgehead on the River Oder.

Otto Skorzeny was interned for two years before being tried as a war criminal at the Dachau trials in 1947 for allegedly violating the laws of war during the Battle of the Bulge.

Otto Skorzeny admitted to ordering his men to wear US uniforms, but his defence argued that as long as enemy uniforms were discarded before combat started, such a tactic was a legitimate ruse de guerre.

The Tribunal drew a distinction between using enemy uniforms during combat and for other purposes including deception and were unable to prove that Otto Skorzeny had given any orders to actually fight in US uniforms.

Otto Skorzeny was detained in an internment camp at Darmstadt awaiting the decision of a denazification court.

Otto Skorzeny afterwards maintained that the US authorities had aided his escape, and had supplied the uniforms.

Otto Skorzeny was photographed at a cafe on the Champs Elysees in Paris on 13 February 1950.

Otto Skorzeny was sent to Egypt the following year by former General Reinhard Gehlen to act as Naguib's military adviser.

Otto Skorzeny recruited a staff made up of former SS and Wehrmacht officers to train the Egyptian army.

Otto Skorzeny stayed on to serve as an adviser to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The Israeli security and intelligence magazine Matara published an article in 1989 claiming that Otto Skorzeny had been recruited by Mossad in 1963 to obtain information on German scientists who were working on an Egyptian project to develop rockets to be used against Israel.

Otto Skorzeny allegedly was recruited and conducted operations for Mossad from 1964, working with Avraham Ahituv and Rafi Eitan.

Otto Skorzeny allegedly supplied the names and addresses of German scientists working for Egypt and the names of European front companies supplying military hardware to Egypt.

Otto Skorzeny rarely visited after 1963 and sold Martinstown House in 1971.

Otto Skorzeny was a founder and an advisor to the leadership of the Spanish neo-Nazi group CEDADE, established in 1966.

Otto Skorzeny died of lung cancer on 5 July 1975 in Madrid.

At no point in his life did Otto Skorzeny ever denounce Nazism.

Otto Skorzeny was given a Roman Catholic funeral Mass in Madrid on 7 August 1975.

Otto Skorzeny's body was cremated afterwards, and his ashes were later taken to Vienna to be interred in the Skorzeny family plot at Doblinger Friedhof.

Otto Skorzeny was portrayed in the television drama series Mussolini: The Untold Story and Mussolini and I, and the drama film Walking with the Enemy.