Gran Sasso raid

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 12th of September 1943, German paratroopers and SS commandos landed gliders on a mountain plateau more than two thousand metres above sea level in central Italy. Their target was a single man in a remote hotel. The operation, codenamed Operation Oak by the German military, was personally ordered by Adolf Hitler. Within minutes, Benito Mussolini walked out of the Hotel Campo Imperatore and into German hands. Nazi propagandists called it one of the most daring feats of the war. What the Germans did not publicise was that they already controlled the territory around the hotel before a single glider touched down. Who actually planned and led the raid, and what happened to the man they rescued, would remain contested for decades.

• 2. The Fall of Il Duce

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  The Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943 set off a chain of events that toppled Mussolini within weeks. Rome was bombed, and on the night of the 24th of July 1943, the Grand Council of Fascism passed a vote of no confidence against him. The following day, King Victor Emmanuel III had Mussolini arrested and appointed Marshal Pietro Badoglio in his place. Italians would come to call that date 25 Luglio. Badoglio's government remained outwardly allied with Germany for several more weeks while secretly negotiating a way out of the war. By the 17th of August the Allies had driven German and Italian forces out of Sicily entirely. On the 3rd of September, Giuseppe Castellano signed the Armistice of Cassibile, formally ending Italy's war with the Allies, though the armistice was kept secret until the 8th of September. When Germany launched Operation Achse that same day, its troops seized key positions across central and northern Italy. Many Italian soldiers simply refused to engage the Germans. Marshal Badoglio and King Victor Emmanuel III fled south into Allied-controlled territory, leaving a country split between two wars.

• 3. The Moving Prison

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  Badoglio's government understood one threat immediately: if Germany reinstated Mussolini, the new Italian government would be in grave danger. Mussolini was kept under heavy guard and moved repeatedly to stop any rescue attempt. When the Carabinieri arrested him in Rome on the 25th of July, they first brought him to their headquarters in Trastevere. He was held at the Carabinieri Cadet School until the 27th of July, then escorted to Gaeta. On the 28th of July he arrived at an isolated house on Ponza, an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, where he remained until the 7th of August. A private villa on La Maddalena held him next, until the 27th of August. The following day he was moved to the Hotel Campo Imperatore on the Gran Sasso d'Italia. The hotel sat on a remote plateau 2,112 metres above sea level beside a ski station. The building itself was shaped like the letter d. Two companion hotels had been planned in the shapes of v and x, which together with the d would have spelled out the Latin word dux, meaning leader, the root of the title Il Duce. They were never built. As Mussolini arrived at a prison designed to hide him, the Germans were already hunting.

• 4. Finding Mussolini

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  Adolf Hitler secretly tasked General Kurt Student with overseeing the mission to find and free Mussolini. The intelligence trail began with a private letter. SS-Obersturmbannführer Herbert Kappler learned of Mussolini's transfer from La Maddalena by intercepting a letter written by Edda Ciano. Kappler paid informants using counterfeit money produced under Operation Bernhard. His agents also intercepted a message about security arrangements at Gran Sasso, which pointed to the hotel as the likely location. To confirm it, a German doctor posed as someone interested in opening a clinic at the hotel. Hauptsturmführer Otto Skorzeny was assigned to assist Student, and on the 8th of September he personally scouted the Gran Sasso to plan a rescue. The elevation ruled out a parachute drop. Major Harald Mors and General Student designed a glider assault instead. Skorzeny then insisted on joining the raid, and several of Student's paratroopers were pushed aside to make room for Skorzeny and SS personnel. That personnel swap would have long consequences for who received credit for what followed.

• 5. The Raid on the Hotel

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  Major Harald Mors commanded the entire operation and led the ground assault on the 12th of September. German tanks and armoured cars surrounded the base of the mountain while gliders carried the airborne troops upward. Mors cut all telephone lines to isolate the hotel. Italian forestry guard Pasqualino Vitocco was killed while trying to warn the garrison. Carabiniere Giovanni Natale was shot while preparing to fire on Mors's troops. Two other carabinieri were slightly wounded by a hand grenade. Those four casualties represent the total toll of the operation. Shortly after midday, several Henschel Hs 126 aircraft lifted off from Pratica di Mare Air Base near Rome, each towing one of ten DFS 230 gliders. Each glider carried nine soldiers and a pilot. Italian General Fernando Soleti flew with them, having been arrested and compelled to board in the hope that Mussolini's guards would hesitate to shoot an officer they recognised. Oberleutnant Georg Freiherr von Berlepsch led the airborne element. The gliders were supposed to loop over the Alban Hills to gain altitude, but Skorzeny ordered the craft carrying his SS troops to skip that manoeuvre and arrive first. He then demanded a landing position close to the hotel, causing one glider to crash in the process. At the hotel, the dozens of Carabinieri guarding Mussolini had little appetite for shooting at Germans. According to the hotel managers, Mussolini leaned from his window and begged for no bloodshed. General Soleti ordered the guards to stand down. Mors climbed from the valley, introduced himself to Mussolini, and the raid was over in minutes.

• 6. Propaganda and Stolen Credit

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  German soldiers ensured the extraction was photographed and filmed from every angle. General Student's personal pilot arrived in a Fieseler Fi 156 Storch, a short takeoff and landing aircraft. The plane was already at capacity with Mussolini aboard, but Skorzeny forced his way on, making the takeoff extremely dangerous. They returned to Pratica di Mare, and Mussolini continued in a Heinkel He 111 to Vienna, where he spent the night at the Hotel Imperial. On the 14th of September he was flown to Munich and then on to East Prussia, where Hitler was waiting. The Nazi propaganda machine moved quickly. The operation was celebrated in the pages of Signal, Germany's illustrated magazine. Newsreels distributed the footage across occupied Europe. A speech attributed to Mussolini declared that the rescue would become legendary. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill acknowledged the raid in the House of Commons, calling it a daring attack completely beyond all foresight. Yet the man the propaganda celebrated was not Major Mors or Oberleutnant von Berlepsch. Skorzeny was promoted to Sturmbannführer, awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, and given the title the most dangerous man in Europe. Student's paratroopers were furious. Mors demanded that Student correct the record. Student admitted he was unwilling to provoke Heinrich Himmler. Allied media were sceptical of the Berlin boasts, but the distorted version held. In 1950 Skorzeny published a bestselling autobiography, Geheimkommando Skorzeny, and a second memoir followed in 1976. His version of events dominated the narrative for decades, overshadowing the genuine work of the paratroopers who had planned and executed the mission.

• 7. A Broken Man's Final Years

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  The man Germany had gone to such lengths to rescue was in poor condition. Mussolini had attempted suicide during his captivity. He had been seriously ill throughout the war, and imprisonment had worsened his health considerably. It was only after reuniting with his family in Munich that he began to recover. Hitler had to push him hard to return to Italy at all. Mussolini went back to establish the Italian Social Republic, a puppet state under German authority in the occupied north. That government collaborated with Germany against the Allies, now including the Kingdom of Italy. As the war in Europe collapsed in late April 1945, Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci tried to escape into Switzerland. Italian communist partisans captured them. On the 28th of April 1945, both were executed near Lake Como.