Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 234 - Otto Skorzeny Part 2: Otto the Hype Man

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

Skorzeny launches the mission to rescue Benito Mussolini from a ski resort, it does not go well. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: Stuart Smith. Otto Skorzeny: The Devil’s Disciple Dr Robert Forczk. Rescuing Mussolini: Gran Sasso 1943 Otto Skorzeny. Hitler’s Commando

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. And now back to the show. Hello, and welcome back to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me as always is Liam. Hello, Liam. Hi, Joe. How are you doing today bud uh dude i am actually pretty good uh the phillies are in game three of the world series in which they're currently kicking the shit out of the houston astros obviously by the time this comes out we'll know who won the series uh i had some pretty good whiskey earlier um feeling pretty good feeling pretty good that's good um all of my sports teams are still dog shit um yeah you guys traded t.j hawkinson and the red wings the other day the the lions are are awful the tigers are taking their their

normal winter break 68 year rebuild aren the Pistons good now? I wouldn't say good. They're exciting though. They've got like a young core. They're fun to watch at least from like what I understand. Yeah, they're better than they have been. I still want to use the word good. Oh no, they're two and six. My bad.

Fun to watch, but they're not good. But they're two and six. How are the wings doing? You guys lost us five one the other day yeah and we lost two i forget who by like seven four three and two that's not very good yeah uh like the red wings are fun to watch uh they they really are because we have some really really good young talent like generational talent is it tage thompson tag thompson i believe it's tag oh he had three goals and three assists against you that's uh like morris seidler is uh or morate seidler is an amazing person to watch play hockey uh dylan larkin's great but the team as a whole is fucking terrible yeah uh i like lucas

raymond i think he's great yeah um and you know it's gonna be like that unfortunately for probably the next couple seasons um who's the gm now steve eiserman yeah still eiserman well i mean you're in good hands at least yeah that that's why i'm not super worried about it um assuming he doesn't get sick of it and fucking quit or retire or something. I don't know. I don't know, dude. I feel like obviously you'd like to inherit a dynasty, but I feel like it's more interesting when you like ownership is going to give you the green light

to get anyone you want like within reason like and you want to be able to. I feel like it's harder, but maybe more fun if you're a GM to like do it this way. Yeah, honestly, one of the things that pisses me off the most is years ago, It's harder, but maybe more fun if you're a GM to do it this way. Yeah. Honestly, one of the things that pisses me off the most is years ago, Steve Eiserman was, I believe, the VP of Hockey Operations before he went to Tampa Bay. Yeah. And the owner, who at the time was Mike Illich, was still alive. And he wanted to make Steve Eiserman the general manager then. And he wanted to make Steve Eiserman the general manager then.

But Ken Holland, who was general manager, was going to be effectively promoted out of the GM role. He was going to stay in the operation, probably get more money and just not be GM anymore. And he refused, which led to Steve Eiserman going to Tampa Bay and building what the Tampa Bay bay lightning turned into and the thing is is like some of the players that they have that they've won multiple stanley cups with including vasilevsky like legitimately the best goalie to enter the nhl and 20 fucking years in my opinion uh would have been a red wings draft pick um but the red wings if not for that basically because we were not looking for a goalie at the time because we were sold on jimmy howard who was not good uh so it's like one of those things in sports history where you're like it could have been so much different but it wasn't and that's why i drink yeah yeah

and that's why i'm not i probably will not live to see the red wings win another stanley cup not at this rate yeah yeah not with that not with how much you drink yeah that's right baby uh you know who else won't live to see the red wings win another stanley cup auto scores any uh is that right because he's already dead i'm not good at segways it's 6 a.m leave me alone i mean he wasn't as much as a hockey fan as he was a sword fighting enthusiast. What a fucking freak. We all have our sports. But yeah, we're in part two of the Auto Scorzeny series. It'll be three parts. And

when we left you last time, Scorzeny, the stem lord sword fighting fan turned Nazi commando managed to politic his way into the command position of the SS commando units to politic his way into the command position of the SS commando units as one does. Now

this collection of spies, rejected soldiers and concentration camp guards in case you forgot about that part. Yeah. We're finally going to get their big break. They're going to do the big operation that Skorzeny kind of saw them doing when he formed

or trained the ss commandos the rescue of benito musolini yeah how's that turnout i mean it works and that works great yeah then it gets hanged upside down that's my point you know i don't see that as a problem i don't see that as a problem scoreboard baby now this really this really makes me think of like an Ocean 11 type heist movie. But in the end, they open up a suitcase and instead of finding, I guess, money. I haven't seen any of the Ocean 11 movies or I guess Ocean's movies. They're not all Ocean 11. But instead of opening up the suitcase to find poker chips or whatever, they just find a sweaty Italian fascist.

That's what i hate yeah i hate when that happens however we do kind of have to explain why mostly need to be rescued in the first place because it is quite funny if you want a more detailed look at the utter and complete failure of the italian military at least during uh their their greece campaign you should go listen to our greco-italian war series we haven't talked about the rest of their misadventures yet in africa but we'll get there it's hard not to call the italian military in world war ii like the misadventure central yeah yeah having a misadventure because it's like what are you guys doing here hanging in there way longer than they should have yeah for the purpose of the story we have to jump until 1943.

Things are going very, very badly for the Axis as a whole. The Battle of the Atlantic was pretty much over. German U-boats had been savaged so badly by anti-submarine warfare they had to pull them all back home. The British began bombing Germany

with a saturation campaign over Hamburg. The German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, had long since lost the ability to really protect their own skies and the german people are rapidly learning about the finding out phase that comes after fucking around the eastern front was becoming pretty clearly hopeless to everybody not named adolf hitler as a full two-thirds of the entire german military was

committed and they would eventually suffer fully 80% of their entire war losses and that campaign. So it doesn't go great in case this is the first time anybody's hearing of the Eastern Front. It's bad. And then there were the goddamn Italians. Both the Nazis and the Italians are pushed out of North Africa. The second

battle of El Alamein broke the back of the African Front. Then came the Allied landings that made up Operation Torch and the catastrophic loss of Tunis. With North Africa in Allied hands, Italy was wide open for an invasion. And as if that wasn't bad enough, Italy had actually sent soldiers to take part in Operation Barbarossa in the east. operation barbarossa in the east okay which is a fun fact many people aren't aware of is if you if you had really bad luck and end up being drafted into the italian army during world war ii you could have ended up in stalingrad because that's where the most of the italian units went and virtually none of them returned well sucks to suck too bad bad. Bye, Rocco. Imagine thinking you're going to...

Maybe you're a hardcore believer in Mussolini's new Roman Empire thing he wanted to build. You're like, wait, how the fuck did I end up in Stalagrit? I want to go home. I want to go home. Say what you will about the stupid

second Italian Empire, but at least it's warm. Towards the end of the preparation for the eventual invasion of Italy, Italian forces were spending more time running than fighting, and you know, good on them for not wanting to fight. By May of 1943, the Italian king,

who technically was still in charge of the government, like... Yeah, and like he... Mussolini was technically a dictator by the king's allowance right yes so you know the italian king at this point was starting to realize you know maybe i shouldn't have listened to this guy uh i mean it's not like he uh was fooled into it or anything the italian king vastly benefited from Mussolini being in charge. Like we talked about during our Greco

Italian War series, a lot of the stuff that Mussolini took over, he personally gave to the king. At this point, he's starting to realize that Italy is going to be mud stomped into the ground.

In the shitter, one might say. Yeah, and he wanted to get out of it. And he was still letting Mussolini hang around in office. See what I did there? He's hanging around. Get in. He mentioned his own pun. Yeah, sorry.

Now, the allure of Mussolini-type fascism was quickly fading within the royal halls and even with his own party, as people began to recognize a sinking ship when they saw one. It wasn't exactly helped by the fact that Mussolini himself was falling apart at the seams. Most fascists, Hitler, Mussolini, whatever, add whoever to the list you want. Most people think of them as they're at least good public speakers like if you look at uh mussolini speak he's you know animated he's he's pretty much

cartoonish mussolini goes too far in my opinion um but oh yeah wow yeah mussolini you've stepped over the line sir uh but like he's quite enough fucking democrats 2018 shit like he uh he he is um he's over the top of his mannerisms he looks quite funny to me but apparently that was worked great for people in the 30s um i don't get it doing pantomime uh in order to execute a whole bunch of people yeah yeah uh and like he was a lot like hitler and hitler lot from Mussolini. They practiced in mirrors, their body language before they went on stage. There's actually a photo series that someone took of Adolf Hitler that came out years, years, like nobody ever knew that existed, where he had his photographer take pictures of him striking poses that he would later do during speeches. It's very funny but at this point musolini was so stressed he wasn't sleeping he wasn't eating that he couldn't even give a public speech without fucking it up and

looking stupid so like the one thing he had going for him yeah poor baby musolini but the one thing he had going for him he couldn't even do anymore um his secret police the ovra warned him that there were so many plots against his life that they couldn't keep track of them all. And he didn't seem to care all that much. He's like, yeah, fine, whatever. Like, please, please, someone kill me. I want to stand. Maybe he was hoping.

I think at this point he was a realist enough to know that the war was ending for him badly. And if he got assassinated before that happened, maybe he wouldn't be remembered as the guy that got hung upside down by partisans. It's hanging for people. Whatever. By July 10th, 1943, the Allies invaded Sicily where Italian forces crumbled like so much Parmesan cheese. Now, both the king and Mussolini were completely and totally unprepared for this, which means the military was also unprepared for this. Oh, wow. I can't believe that.

I know. I know everybody assumes that the Italian military would have totally been ready for competence. Yeah. But everybody knew the invasion was coming, but nobody really did anything about it and when it started they both effectively stopped running the day-to-day of the government and the fascist party itself so at this point as everybody is aware of all these little catty bitches tend to do they all turned against one another namely mussolini uh they started taking powers away from mussolini and the king didn't stop them. Interesting.

Yeah. They eventually came to the conclusion they needed to exit the fascist party itself. It was like, this war is a bad idea. We should probably get our own separate peace from the allies and leave Germany to go down alone. Now, this led to a meeting between Mussolini and Hitler about this issue. And it devolved into Hitler just screaming at Mussolini for being an idiot. Not wrong. The worst guy

you know is right. That kind of situation. Mussolini countered this by telling him, look, Adolf, things aren't really all that bad as they seem. And as this apparently calmed down Adolf Hitler for about five seconds, only

for an Italian aide who was acting as a messenger to barge into the room and tell Mussolini that the Allies were bombing Rome for the first time. Oh, Jesus, what? Now, while Mussolini was in this meeting, various party factions, the king and other

people were all plotting how to get rid of him. And the way to do this was there was something called the Grand Council of Fascism. Why is there a council? You're doing it wrong, I feel like. This is like the party body that could that voted on things they could vote to get rid of. They could vote suggestions to the king as well and they voted to recommend the king fire Mussolini

and he did and then Mussolini was arrested now this is almost entirely a show this is kind of like that scene if you've ever seen Valkyrie where a guy who fucked up and accidentally gave von Stauffenberg too much power suddenly tries to arrest everybody because he thinks it's going to save him.

Everybody involved in the situation helped Mussolini come to power and had benefited from it. But they were hoping like, hey, if we show the allies that were really over this Mussolini shtick by arresting him, then maybe they will agree to the separate peace treaty. Maybe we won't be brutally executed by the Soviets, right? Yeah, yeah. This, like, arresting of Mussolini wasn't a public thing. He was kind of,

it was kind of like a gentleman's threat. Was there a plan to, like, reveal it to the public, or is it just kind of like a you go into the corner until we work out, like, what's going on in the war? It really seemed like they planned on handing him over to the allies or is it just kind of like a you go into the corner until we work out like what's going on in the war it really seemed like they planned handing them over to the allies really yeah as i suppose for more favorable terms right absolutely yeah sure of course and it was more of like a gentleman's arrest like hey you you're gonna be sent to this like you're under house arrest effectively yeah that's what i was like so you have guards we're not gonna let you leave but hitler didn't know that. And from

what Hitler could see, Mussolini simply vanished. And now Pietro Badoglio is in charge of Italy. What a name. Yeah. Despite the Italians attempting to keep their war exit plans a secret from the Nazis until they could get them hashed out with the Allies for sure.

For sure. Right, right, right. The Nazis knew pretty quickly. And that's because the Nazi representative to the Vatican, which is in Rome, heard about them. And he told Hitler the upcoming plans of the Italian government that they're planning on getting out of the losing war. Now, obviously, that meant Italy would suddenly open up as a highway for allies directly into southern Europe, which is something Hitler realistically could not allow if you were as deluded as him and still believe that the war is winnable. We're gonna fuck your butt

right in the gothic line. Yeah. Ugh. It's full of marinara and oil. An army of men in overly tight pants and blue sunglasses is gonna march up from the boot. Being defeated by a bunch of Euro trash weirdos would be an insulting way to go. I will say that.

Their fiats will block out the sun. Oh my God, there's so many of them. Now, Hitler also didn't see a way of controlling italy without mussolini and that's because the italian fascist party was actually quite weak it was mussolini entirely like there's a reason why once mussolini was gone um now of course recent history has shown that my sentence is only uh uh makes sense in the 1940s because there's fascism again there's his what his granddaughter is an italian member of parliament right uh i i believe so or whatever her name is but uh like he was he was not popular like the fascist party was not popular when he fell in

the fascist party fell like people just like like, oh, thank God. People immediately... Like a total earthquake. Yeah. The flags that they were forced to hold out. It was like someone flipped a switch and like, oh, cool. We can just share your kingdom again. So Hitler saw that like, oh, shit. There's no supporting party functionaries that can take over from Mussolini.

Arguably, Nazi Germany probably would have been the same way. Maybe not, but probably. Without Hitler, the Nazi party probably would have collapsed into a pile of infighting. That would be my thought. Yeah. And so Hitler realized, well, if I'm going to keep Italy

on my side, I need Mussolini to keep Italy on my side, effectively. So they needed to go find him on the house arrest him and put him back in charge. And when Hitler made this decision, Otto Skorzeny was drunk off his ass in Berlin.

Someone called him, told him he needed to get a plane the next few hours to go meet Hitler personally at the Wolf's Lair, something he had never done before. And he was not told why. He is not yet Hitler's favorite commando. Now, rather than getting sober, Scorsese simply drank

more on the flight over. Yeah, I would too, man. He was so drunk by the time he got there, one of Hitler's personal aides mispronounced his last name, which I believe I might also be mispronouncing. Because his last name uh which i believe i might also be mispronouncing because his last name is actually polish and he changed the pronunciation to sound more german because

he's a nazi uh so he uh he's like no that he's just screaming his fucking head off so loud that hitler actually overheard it um and like like i said hitler never met scores any before and scores any was by far the lowest ranking person in that entire meeting including the aid yeah yeah the things that you get when you're drunk but nobody seemed to care like because like you know your boss is adolf hitler and he invited him there personally what is the aid what are you gonna What are you going to do? Be like, wow, what an asshole. Right.

Exactly. I assume that happened a lot in situations like this. Sure. Now, Hitler laid out his plan for rescuing Mussolini to a room of special forces officers from the Army, the Air Force, and the SS. Because remember, we've talked about this before, but German paratroopers, the Fallschirmjäger, were actually in the Air Force, unlike pretty much everybody else. And before asking which of them had fought in Italy or knew the country at all, because obviously that kind of knowledge would be usable, none of them had, other than Skorzeny. Oh, they're going to do a reverse Glorious Bastards. Actually, kind of, yeah.

But he had never actually fought in Italy. He told Hitler he knew the country very, very well, which was a total and complete lie. He'd been to Italy twice and was on vacation. Outstanding. Like he had rented a motorcycle or something and scooted around. All you need to plot a military operation there. Then, according to Skorzeny at least,

Hitler asked the men what they thought of Italy as a whole. And the other officers all said something vaguely supportive of them as an Axis ally, etc. Like, you know, the PR stuff. While Skorzeny told Hitler that he actually hated Italy and he hated

Italians too. Yeah, okay. Seemingly that was enough. And Skorzeny was named the direct operational commander of the mission uh answering only to kurt student who was the commander of german airborne forces now because this is nazi germany it's actually more complicated than that because since scores any was in the ss and Himmler was in charge of the SS, and that meant that Himmler was also weirdly in charge of Skorzeny personally,

despite not having anything to do with the operation. Because Nazi chains of command are more like a spiderweb of bullshit than an actual functional chain of command. Oh, of course. This led to a moment where Himmler almost fired Otto Skorzeny from being operational commander because he discovered that Skorzeny

was a smoker, which Himmler hated. Which is kind of ironic because Hitler hated smokers too, and he hired him. Not terrific communication here, boys. I think that's the only thing that saved him from getting fired and therefore his mythos is that since Hitler picked him personally, even Himmler couldn't fire him.

Right. But yeah. Then the entire operation moved to Rome, where it'd be headquartered while the German intelligence branches tried to figure out where exactly they're keeping Mussolini because nobody had any idea. Oh, weirdly enough, I have to mention this. Their mission also had a additional secondary goal if they could pull it off which was kidnap the pope what why kidnap the pope i don't

i don't know why it was a nazi sympathizer anyway go read hitler's pope yeah i know it's up for debate shut up i mean the it's it's kind of inarguable that the Catholic Church was largely, at best, indifferent towards the Nazis. There was individual priests that were very obviously and clearly anti-Nazi and saved Jews and stuff like that, but the

weight is on the other side of the scale. But I think the kidnap the Pope thing going off of future scorzeny operations was more of a extortion idea like we have the pope the whole church needs to be on our side right okay that's that's a weird they would roll out that plan an awful lot um so yeah kidnapping the pope sometimes you get to kidnap the fucking Pope. I do. Of course, that never actually happened. And they never really planned for it because even a room full of Nazis planning to rescue Benito Mussolini recognizes plan as being very, very stupid.

German intelligence had zero idea where the hell the Italian government was keeping Mussolini. That's because the Italian government actually heard of the German plans to rescue him because they've been allies for so long. There's going to be spies on either side, or at least sympathetic people. So the Italians said they move him constantly. They had double agents feed the Germans bad information. And this led the Germans to think he was in about three different places all at once, and all of them are wrong. Though this was all uncovered in the stupidest possible fucking way. Through a police contact and a German intelligence agent, they located Mussolini in a

ski resort in the Gran Sasso Mountains. And the German agent's tactic to figure this out, well, he simply pretended to be shit-faced and walked around the town where they thought that Mussolini could be in and was telling people, hey, did you know Mussolini's dead? Only for some local people to be like, no, he's not. I saw him over in that hotel. And that's all it took. Sometimes history is dumb as hell. While all of this is going on, the new Italian government signed an armistice with the Allies and the Germans went from Allies to invaders, disarming much of the Italian army, while some parts of the Italian army did try to fight back, join the Allies, etc., etc. Which I'm honestly not even sure if that made a real difference in their fighting abilities at this point.

Most Italian army units surrendered to the Germans without a fight. And the cases where they didn't, or even showed even a little bit of resistance the Germans are very comfortable to shooting them all this happened at the massacre of the Aki division where they killed thousands of Italian POWs it's like one hell of a U-turn the Germans

began to get spooked that the Italians would just execute Mussolini rather than allow him to fall into German hands which to be fair was a good idea and exactly the order that Pietro Badaglio had given should a rescue operation be attempted on the hotel. And with American invasions streaming up from the south of the boot, it was only on September 11th that the orders were given to actually plan the tactical portion of the Mussolini rescue operation, which meant actually plan to do it.

You want to guess how long he had to do this? I don't know, about six weeks. Oh, wow. You're charitable. Try again. Six days. One day. One whole day.

Oh, that's some Liam Anderson shit, baby. Now, here were Skorzeny's options. None of them are good. All of them are crazy. A ground assault. This would have been a problem, as they would be charging up a mountain they would have been charging up a mountain where there was no roads going to a ski resort instead they would have to and i swear to fucking god this is true assault and take over a ski lift and then ride it up to

the hotel that's just kind of embarrassing right like show imagine you're like a fucking seal team and you're like slowly cranking up a 1940s italian ski lift then there was an airborne landing because everybody likes throwing paratroopers at problems because the problem's solved or at least you have fewer paratroopers. Now, hey, I was in the 82nd airport. I can say that. Also, so can everybody else because we're terrible. Now, we've already talked about how terrible the Germans were at airborne warfare. Again, go listen to the Greco-Italian series. It underlines it greatly.

But there is an added wrinkle. It's a ski resort in the mountains. Nobody had jumped into fucking mountains before, and they weren't entirely sure how that... Yeah, that would almost certainly be how that ended. But they had no idea how it would work. How would the parachutes work at this altitude? How would the planes get up high enough to make it safe?

The answer is it wouldn't have worked. And they did not have time to test it because, again, they had one day. Now, to Skorzeny's credit, which is something I will not be saying very often, even he was like, that's very stupid. We should not do that. And it was the only option he turned down without any debate and nobody really argued with him. Then there were gliders, also known as evidence that God hates paratroopers. It was on paper the best option somehow, but also by far the most dangerous.

And everybody knew how much Hitler hated them after the failed landings on Crete. Well, they eventually succeeded again, throw enough paratroopers at a problem and it'll be solved or you'll have less paratroopers. Now, gliders had also never been thrown at mountains before either. So nobody was sure what exactly would happen, what to expect, how the gliders would react in that kind of altitude with mountains and the weather around

them, et cetera. Also, there's only one available landing zone and it was smaller than any glider pilots had ever tried to land on before. And again, they would not have time to train for this because they have one day. Deciding that any one of these ideas was kind of bad, he decided on two of them. A ground assault to seize the ski lift in order to cut off the hotel so the Italians can set off reinforcements.

At the same time, gliders rain down on the hotel and maybe land in enough men alive to complete the mission. Oh boy. Okay. It's often said that Skorzeny planned all of this himself with Kerch students simply signing off on it. However, Skorzeny is the

only person who tells the story that way and that's largely how it's been spread through his own writing and storytelling. When you think about it, it makes sense. This guy, realistically, only ever operationally a very low-ranking officer. And remember, before this, he was a transport guy. Right.

And had been riding a desk or teaching basic training. He didn't have, from what I can tell, any real operational experience, education, or ability to plan a large-scale operation that involved land and ground forces like this. But Kern's students sure did, even if he wasn't good at it. He did technically take over Crete eventually. And for Kernstuen's part, he survived the war and wrote about it. He said Skorzeny had little to do

with actual planning, but rather it was a guy named Halard Mors that did most of the legwork. Skorzeny wasn't even originally supposed to take part in the mission itself, but rather a side quest about fetching Mussolini's family. This pissed him off. Where are we kidnapping the Pope

though? That's a B plot I'm here for. Unfortunately that plot has no legs. Ah, come on. You gotta try to kidnap the Pope. You gotta. Yeah, paratrooper landing into the Vatican. The Swiss guards, they're just going gonna throw their halberds up at you as you're coming down they have mp5s now have you

not seen that episode of archer oh yeah i know they do and i know they have actual guns too but i'd like to believe that if the nazis invaded they'd just be chopping them up with halberds because it's funnier i i do like the idea of elite and whatever. I'm not even going to bother to say the German paratroopers landing with MG42s and shit and just getting absolutely wrecked by a bunch of guys who are half hungover carrying halberds. Dressed as fucking

clowns. Court jesters, yeah. He wasn't actually supposed to take part in the assault. He bitched and moaned to kurt student until he got put in one of the gliders going towards muslim hotel baby students like fine i'll put you in there just leave me the fuck like lose my fucking talking to me lose my number he and his ss commandos were still only to play second fiddle to students paratroopers, which is more evidence that student plan this and not scores. Any scores? Any was not a guy to try to not be involved in things.

He wanted his SS commandos and himself to be involved in everything because he wanted the glory. So like the fact that the main force, this would be paratroopers is evidence enough that scores. Any was not the main brain behind this kind of thing. But the paratroopers were supposed to rescue Mussolini. And then Skorzeny and his men were really only supposed to act as his personal guard after that, get him to a waiting plane, and then wave goodbye as he goes to Berlin. They were supposed to just stand outside the hotel. They were not even supposed to go in. They were supposed to just stand outside the hotel.

They were not even supposed to go in. Now, what Skorzeny absolutely did do, almost undoubtedly, was get the mission approved by Adolf Hitler. Right. As we've talked about before, after Crete, Hitler hated airborne operations, which is why he never approved another large-scale one ever again. Sure. But in this situation where Skorzeny was absolutely telling the truth, Hitler did like Skorzeny mostly because of his attitude. Stuhn had happened to be really bad at public speaking. So when presenting the mission to Hitler, he simply had Skorzeny do it, leading to the plan to be approved.

And Hitler, who approved it, eventually gave Skorzeny all of the credit for it, which I'm sure made student very happy. Um, now another somewhat important thing that scores any did was kind of just be an optimist. He never saw a mission that he was involved in as failing or as stupid. Uh, so when Curtin student was kind of like on the fence of this planet works, uh,

scores any was always there like, nah, bro, this is totally going to work. Let's go. It's in the bag, bro. Let's go. He was a hype's go he was a hype man yeah he was uh the the the guy named i believe alligator uh who stood out in the crowd for mike tyson and just yelled guerrilla warfare for like a million dollars a day i love that i love that fucking guy yeah i think his name was

alligator um not his birth name of course but yeah his uh nom de guerre but yeah he was a hype man and like if there's one thing that hitler liked it's fucking hype men like that was joseph gerbil's entire job was to be a hype man he loved that guy uh yo big a you're doing great right before i take a 45 to the dope but it's fine yeah i'll be right back and we're gonna poison my entire family because we failed. Bye! Oh, bye! Oh, scoreboard, you dumb Nazi bitches. Without Skorzeny, most of this

probably wouldn't happen, but it was not a product of his tactical genius. It was a product of, I don't know, probably being hit in the head with a sword too many times and he couldn't see a dumb plan when one was in front of his face. What are you going to do, you know? Of course, when Skorzeny eventually wrote about all this, he became the central figure in the whole thing,

leading to what is effectively the beginning of his own myth-building, because this is where the result of this is him becoming, quote, Hitler's favorite commando. Anyway, right from the beginning, the operation went to shit. For starters, the plan called for 12 gliders, and for some reason, they could only get 10. It feels like a weird place to cheap out on, right? Like you've already got 10 of 12.

I think it's because they had a day. Like, yeah, we can get two more gliders. Can we get another fucking 10 hours? Yeah, all right. Then because of intense secrecy and one whole day of planning, virtually nobody knew about any of the plan other than the top commanders themselves. Not the paratroopers, not the commandos, nothing.

Only about five people were completely aware of what was happening. That's counting people like Adolf Hitler and Himmler and shit. This is like frat e-board fucking party planning shit. Yeah. planet shit. Yeah. The glider pilots, remember, were going to have to dangerously land in a very, very small chunk of rock, had no idea what their mission was, where they're supposed to fly, but more importantly, where they were going to be landing. So they were informed right before they took off, which I'm sure they're very happy about. The entire briefing of the operation took so long, again, because they told them right before it was starting, and they ended up taking off late.

Part of that brief was Kurt Stuhn, who was telling his pilots that they expected 80% of the people on the gliders to die. We love a good motivational speech. Fucking terrific, bud. That's amazing. Imagine getting hyped up for your super secret Nazi mission. You're like, oh, 20 of y'all are going to make it back, so don't be too happy. Like, oh, cool.

Oh, and then right before they actually took off, the Allies bombed the airfield that the gliders were going to be taking off from, which made the whole thing even later. As they were flying towards the target, they got hammered by heavy winds, which rocked the gliders so badly, according to the book Devil's Disciple, all the SS commandos vomited everywhere and since the

glider was so small it probably looked like that scene from Team America for some reason can we splice in the sound of that guy vomiting from Team America right here thanks Dave of that guy vomiting from Team America right here. Thanks, Dave. For some reason,

the planes towing the gliders had no radio communication with one another either, or also the gliders. Nobody could talk to anybody. What like i get it's done in a day but like even so yeah you i mean you know you know what existed before this mission was planned radios radio right now uh so that meant the the towing planes got too far apart and then the uh the pilots and the crews are surprised by another thing. There really was no landing zone as originally planned.

It was seen on a map and by aerial reconnaissance, which was much, much higher, so they couldn't see detail all that well, that the area was supposed to be mostly flat, if, I mean, unfortunately, small but flat, right? However, when they got closer,

they realized that it wasn't one glider pilot called it a quote ski jump that dropped off into an abyss good job good job it was a ramp that ramped them directly off the mountain then the element of surprise was ruined as the gliders were fighting against the wind to aim towards the death trap of the landing zone there happened to be the same time as the changing of the guard in the hotel that was stationed there. So all of these Italian guys streamed out of the nearby building to go home or come into work. And they saw there was 10 goddamn gliders hanging in the air above them. Now, this would normally be where they all get shot to hell, right?

Right. get shot to hell right however the only thing that probably stopped the gladiators from being riddled full of holes uh was the italians just thought that they were americans who are no longer their enemies remember right so like nobody bothered to shoot at them i don't know why they like why i mean why you would think that right yeah maybe they're just hanging out up there maybe they want to see the gran saso mountains right until they eat shit into a snowbank sure yeah then the gladiators crashed down into the landing zone paratroopers and SS men stumbled out profusely vomiting from air sickness Scorsese

had a concussion and was rocked so hard by the landing and vomit that he like stumbled over his own feet getting on the glider didn't even bring a gun another guy crashed landed a glider so hard a man broke both of his ankles. And then we were treated to a scene of a man,

army crawling arm over arm out of the glider, screaming while still trying to go to his assigned place. Christ on sale. In the middle of all of this confusion, the Nazis released what is honestly my favorite secret weapon. They didn't want to fight anybody. They were hoping that the Italian guards would not fight. So they brought a secret

weapon to make that more possible. A high-ranking Italian military policeman, a dedicated fascist who's wearing his uniform, was thrown out of a glider and sent running towards the Italians, screaming, in Italian, don't shoot don't shoot just imagine what the scene looks like you're

you're an italian guard getting off of work and then just want to go home dude you know yeah then suddenly a dozen fucking gliders slam into a mountainside there's vomiting and broken nazis everywhere right suddenly your boss comes running out no dude i want to go home

like you freaks can do whatever weird shit this is in the morning yeah i already put in my eight hours i'm going home i don't give a fuck about any of this you guys can shoot at them if you want goodbye all plans are thrown out of the window as gliders haphazardly slammed into earth into the earth and everybody's shit and puked everywhere the italians just put up their hands and surrendered as the paratroopers formed random groups and started running into the hotel where Mussolini was like the guards is like I don't know what's

happening here but I don't want to I don't want to mama mia that's a lot of broken Nazis he was. The guards were like, I don't know what's happening here, but I don't want anything to do with this. Mamma mia! That's a lot of broken Nazis. There were still guards on the inside of the hotel, but they failed to respond, which was another bit of fun Italian fuck-upery, because

one of their commanders was taking a nap. Now, yeah. I don't want to wake my commander up either. Now, Bedoglio had split the command of the guard force into three. One for police, one for the Carabinieri or military police, and the other for the army. This is really, really dumb, but he did it as a political check because there were still quite possibly a few loyal fascists within the ranks. Oh, sure, sure, sure. And he wanted one to kind of act as a check and balance

against the other to make sure nobody was going to help break Mussolini out. However, that also meant no one commander could command the guard force. All three of them would have to do it together, but one guy got sleepy. By the time they could wake the first guy up, the Nazis were

already in the hotel, and for some reason, the guards had no established protocol in place for the event of, you know, having to do the one job that they had, which is stop the rescue. There was one guy who did have a job that he almost did.

It was a military policeman ordered to kill Mussolini should the Germans show up. And he's seeing his Italian comrades surrender and nobody fire a single goddamn shot in anger. He's like, you know what? I'm not doing this.

He saw it because he figured probably rightly if he shot Mussolini, the Germans would get pissed off and execute all of them. Right. Which probably true. 12 minutes after landing without a single shot being fired,

Skorzeny burst into Mussolini's room and he was free, which remember, that was not Skorzeny's job. Right. Well, okay, one shot was fired. A German paratrooper fell out of a glider, then blew a hole in the roof of the glider as he fell out. Well done, fuckass. Yeah. The only

deaths were at the ski lift when the paratroopers were sent to secure that. Ran out and stabbed two Italians to death for reasons nobody's entirely sure of. Yikes.

Yeah, I think it was for fun because they didn't need to stab anybody to death. Oh, they're Nazis. Yeah, they do that. All of the 10 German wounded came from a glider that crashed into the ground

and fell halfway down a cliff. Should have finished the job, Earth. After that, Mussolini was packed into a plane and flown off with Skorzeny by his side, which, again, was not part of the plan. Skorzeny, without any orders, simply refused to leave his side until Mussolini was personally standing in front of Hitler.

Right. Just to make sure he got all the credit that he could. Oh, of course. Right. Now, Skorzeny doesn't read it that way. He says that his orders were to keep Mussolini safe and he couldn't be sure Mussolini was safe if he wasn't at his side. Now, I will give him that.

If you don't know what happens next, that makes sense. However, they're using a very, very small plane. It had just enough fuel and lift capacity for pilot co-pilot Mussolini. And remember, Skorzeny is fucking huge. He's a big ass guy. He's bigger than both of us and we're big dudes. We are big dudes. He's almost seven feet tall.

I think actually he is seven feet tall. He probably weighs close to 300 pounds because it's hard to be seven feet tall and not weigh at least is seven feet tall. He probably weighs close to 300 pounds because it's hard to be seven feet tall and not weigh at least 300 pounds. Right, of course. Especially a guy who's as physically active as him and drinks as much as he does. So he packs himself into

this tiny plane that absolutely cannot carry him. So the whole flight back, the pilot is literally fighting to keep the goddamn thing in the air. So he almost killed it. I've also seen that episode on our channel. Yeah, exactly. And to be fair,

Skorzeny nailed this to a T. He knew how to play Nazis. He knew what Hitler wanted. Right. After Mussolini was delivered, he was called on the phone personally by Adolf Hitler and promoted SF's Sturmbannfuhrer,

which is roughly a major. Right. He was also awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross because the Germans like very stupid names for things. And it was one of the highest awards the Nazis gave out. As you can tell, now Skorzeny was a made man in the Nazi world. He knew exactly what they wanted. None of this was like... He did not need to be involved in any of this and the mission would have gone just as good. But he knew how to further his own goals. And that is on track with him going all the way back to when he was a lowly

SS office worker in Austria and didn't have a job when he married some construction manager, millionaire's daughter for a job. Yes. Yeah. Scorsese wasn't the only person. It's something that gained by pumping up his mythos. And it's something we're still kind of dealing with today. Like we talked about the Nazi government was a plate of spaghetti stuck to a wall of different political groups,

all of which hated one another. This included the intelligence of which there's all the branches of the military had their own intelligence, including the SS, all of the branches of the military and the SS, which is remember was both military and political. The SS was an entire shadow government and military rolled into one. And it was personally created by Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich to effectively become that.

Remember when we talked about... So it wasn't an accident, right? No, of course not. They were in charge of the police. They're in charge of intelligence. They're in charge of their own military branches. Remember how we talked about in our Kursk series how Hitler wanted everything to be the SS because they were the good ones and they were loyal to him.

And they were the ones loyal to him specifically, right? Yeah. Although I also remember Firemind. Yeah. Let's just say it didn't work out to the ss's uh benefit bitches now hoping to score one for the ss joseph gerbils made to make sure uh to start telling everyone that scores any an ss man had personally planned commanded and completed the entire mission with his commandos he didn't even talk about the paratroopers uh and and therefore the entire air force because he was only wanted

everything to be ss like at one point gerbils wanted uh like the ss to have its own air force which they kind of did why because he wanted everything to be the ss okay yeah yeah okay just that just doesn't i mean i know nazis so i'm not exactly making sense here territory but i mean i guess the navy basically has its own Air Force but then the Marines and yeah now it certainly didn't hurt that Skorzeny looked the part if you look

up at if you find a picture of him he looks like a piece of Nazi propaganda cartwheeled off of a page at you like right he's the perfect propaganda guy remember that big gnarly scar across his face is absolutely something that Nazis liked. Right.

Skorzeny's SS commandos' next mission would look a lot like his last, targeting one of Germany's allies, this time Vichy France, specifically Philippe Pétain, the figurehead ruler. Like in Italy, rumors started to go around that Pétain was going to surrender to the Allies in the Uno reverse card situation. The US, the UK, and free French forces were going to come in and free him

and then take him back to be like, you know, the figurehead. Now they're in control. Pétain at this point is effectively under house arrest by the Germans. He had no power. Skorzeny and his team would be the shitty Frenchman's personal bodyguards to make sure this did not happen. So nothing happened because there was no allied operation to free baton.

Why the fuck would they do that? They already had to go. They didn't need another French guy, right? Like the goal was the unassailable leader of the Allied Free French. They did not need Philippe Pétain, who was a brain-dead fascist. Not to mention very old at this point, if I remember correctly. Yes, yes, he was. That's why he wasn't executed.

Yeah. One of the reasons he wasn't executed, although he should have been. And he was a national hero from World War I. Yeah, I never done. I fucking know. Yeah. Which is what he's like a painful character to read about because you can't read about Pétain in World War I and be like, not

come away like, well, you know, after a long series of bad French leaders and not saying Pétain was great, but you know, there was no really great leaders in World War I because they all just smashing conscripts against the wall. But you know, he was the hero that they needed when they needed them.'s better than joseph jaffra but like then fast forward a couple years and he's a fascist uh political puppet great stuff um now the best

anybody can think of is the entire plan to free baton was little more than a paranoid heroine delusion that only existed in Hitler's brain. So fun stuff. But there's also a mission that is well-known but probably never happened. We've talked about it before on a different episode. We can assume this because the only records of this operation were Soviet press releases and not even Skorzeny himself says it happened.

And when you hear about how big this plan could have been, Skorzeny would absolutely admit if it was real. When this man won't lie about an accomplishment in order to make himself look better, you can probably be sure it didn't happen. This is of course, Operation Long Jump, or the Nazi plan to assassinate FDR, Stalin, and Churchill all at once while they're meeting in Iran. We talked about it briefly before and I still stand by my opinion that despite the fact this never happened, it was almost

certainly like an NKVD propaganda thing to make like to show allies how good of an ally the USSR is because like we saved everybody's lives and I also stand by my opinion that even though it would have been the Nazis doing it if

this mission was true and was carried out and successful it would have been a net positive for humanity now hear me out on this Churchill and Stalin are obvious ones but FDR was about to die anyway and his vice president at this time was not Harry Truman but rather a Hear me out on this. Churchill and Stalin are obvious ones, but FDR was about to die anyway. And his vice president at this time was not Harry Truman, but rather a different guy who was much better than Truman.

Like he wanted he like he was fully on board, like after the war ended to continue being allies at the USSR. The Cold War probably wouldn't have happened. He was he was openly against the use of nuclear weapons. He was a labor guy. He would have been much better than Truman. And he was also one of the reasons why in the next election, FDR dumped him and picked Truman is because he was vehemently anti-segregation. It would have been so much better. So yeah, if Operation Long Jump would have succeeded, because it's not like nazis were going to win at this point they were going to lose it didn't

matter who was in charge of any of these countries uh so if operation long jump would have succeeded the post-war uh global landscape would have been so much better like uh anyway it probably didn't happen now according to the nkvd the entire operation came to a screeching halt because they stopped the ss commandos via high-speed camel chase led by an armenian nkvd agent which cool dudes rule dudes rock but in reality again it probably not got it never got past the planning stage because even squirzetti himself thought it was so over the top he would never be able to pull it off so it in reality it was probably more of a suggestion that someone had one time um because i mean that's gonna happen

like kidnapping the pope like hitler's gonna come up with something stupid or himmler's gonna come up with something stupid and everybody's like he wants to fucking what you know it's it's not like they had a democratic process for these things um however there is one operation that did happen that we know uh without a shadow of a doubt that that did happen that scores any helped plan and run that even he does not like to talk about though he does admit that he did take part in it. And that's called the ominously named Operation Peter. Oh, I don't know if I like that. Yeah, it could be bad

for a lot of reasons. Now, this took place in Denmark and Denmark fell to the Nazis in 1940 and the Nazis, believing the Danes to be good old Aryans themselves, attempted to turn them into something of a model

German colony. And the Danes went along with it because that's the easiest way to survive a situation like that. However, within three years of Nazi mismanagement, general occupation-related bullshit, and an increasing amount of rationing, the Danes were

pretty over it, and the resistance movement began to spread pretty far and wide across the country. And to be completely clear, there is resistance movements from day one. It's not like every not like every dane was like nah this is fine you know like there there was resistance from day one uh and in in all occupied countries that is generally the case like most people in occupational settings you don't want to be the nail that sticks out gets hammered everybody just kind of kept their head down because they're fucking nazis so like we don't really want to find out

what they'll do to us if we tell them to fuck off, you know. Of course, the Nazis responded by flooding the country of 50,000 soldiers who are all probably really really happy that they were sent to Denmark rather than the Eastern Front. As you can imagine,

this did not dampen Danish resistance efforts. In fact, it only inflamed them because now there are soldiers everywhere. Right, of course. So Hitler decided he would do the only thing he knew how to do to stamp out dissent, a reign of terror. And the

man to commit that reign of terror was Otto Skorzeny. Oh, boy. They would not be doing it in uniform. They were to secretly terrorize the resistance while undercover. And they snuck into Denmark on false passports as Austrian tourists. You know that...

Outstanding. That tourism season of 1943 Europe. Yeah, of course. So that border patrol probably should... Like, I'm not a big believer in borders or nation states. Like, at some point... Yeah. I'd like to check on that.

And when I say terrorism, I mean terrorism. They were ordered to set off car bombs at cultural institutions, businesses, and landmarks. They also carry a string of assassinations against anyone they thought even slightly connected to any kind of anti-German activity.

This included priests, journalists, and other people. And to be clear, this would be shocking for Denmark because their resistance wasn't like that. They did acts of sabotage and stuff like that, but leaving dead bodies in the street

was kind of not their thing. But then Skorzeny's boys would leave the bodies somewhere that they would be found like some Republic leave a note in Danish claiming that they were the resistance, uh, and, and doing all of these things, hoping to turn the people against the resistance themselves. Um, now this mission failed entirely and scores any seemingly lost control of his men because Skorzeny himself was not in Denmark. He was in the planning stages and stuff like that.

And the men that he deployed seemingly turned into a roving serial killer gang stalking the Danish countryside. Yeah. Virtually everyone went rogue. And while I say that this happened while Skorzeny was not there, to be clear, I think if he was and in direct command, it probably would still look the same. Because remember what their goal here was, is to be violent psychopaths and get people to believe that the Danish

resistance was doing these things. This lasted for a year. Nobody's entirely sure of how many people they killed it's thought to be several dozen um many of whom were only tangentially connected to any kind of resistance activity or anything it really did seem like they turned into a random death squad um yeah yeah uh but it lasted a year and uh scores any pulled them them out. Now, jumping forward to 1943, sorry, 1944, things you would have guessed got even worse for the Nazis. Yeah.

As they tend to do, specifically in Yugoslavia. Evading Yugoslavia was a terrible idea that collapsed the country as an imploding guerrilla warfare led by multiple partisan leaders, but mostly partisan superhero, Tito. Generally, the Nazis left their bottom tier soldiers from, say, Romania and Italy and whoever else they thought couldn't fight very well on garrison duty in areas they took over. However, that also meant that Tito and his boys tore those dudes apart, meaning Germany had to eventually dump what they believed to be real soldiers into the country to try to control things and anti-partisan warfare when they

really did not have soldiers to spare anywhere. So Skorzeny and his boys were dispatched to find and assassinate Tito. In order to do that, they had to try to find somewhere where his headquarters was and where Tito had been hiding and popping out of the forest to ambush Germans this whole time. Of course they did this the most German way possible. They dispatched three different branches of the intelligence. Uh,

all of them remember, they all hate each other. Uh, and they were not working together, uh, trying to find Tito. They all had their own mission. Effectively Nazi looming tower.

Each of them insisted they'd found where Tito was in all had their own mission effectively. Nazi looming tower. Each of them insisted they'd found where Tito was. In three different places, all of them simultaneously. Of course. The local army commander, a guy named Lothar Rendalick, hated the SS, but not for the reasons the rest of us do. He just hated them for political reasons, not because

they were the SS. So he was actually trying to sabotage Skorzeny and anyone who wasn't directly connected to him because of course he wanted the glory of killing Tito. He had been put in charge of killing Tito and beating the resistance and didn't want anybody else to steal that from him. Also because it would probably

make him look bad. So while Skorzeny and the SS planned to send in their commandos to capture or kill Tito, Rendulic was doing the same thing with his own detachments from the army. So of course, none of these fucking idiots found Tito. They probably never would have if it wasn't for some snitch from Tito's forces. As the Germans routinely offered huge amounts of money to people to try to get them to turn on whatever resistance or partisan group they were a member of, this guy took a bag of cash, told the Nazis that Tito

and around 6,000 of his men were camped out around the town of Drevar and fucked off with his money and probably got executed shortly thereafter. Of course, Skorzeny went on the one plan that he always had, throw paratroopers at the problem via regular drops and some gliders. Small problem, though. Tito's intelligence network was actually much better than the German militaries he had known about the plan including exactly what unit the Nazis intended on using because of course he knew who Skorzeny was for at least six months Skorzeny's own scouting methods also tipped them off because Skorzeny liked to go on these scouting missions himself and he would get in slow low-flying scout planes and just circle over areas uh and he did this for weeks so everybody's like oh the scout planes back they must be coming here you know small problem though tito wasn't even in that town his headquarters was in a cave near the town but

yeah now scorzini actually did know this uh through informant, but he didn't tell Rendalic because he didn't want to share the glory with him either. This led Rendalic to make the wrong location the target of the entire mission. Outstanding work. Love it. So, on May 25th, 1944, when the mission was launched, the commandos

wandered into the town facing very little resistance, only to find that, yep, there is no Tito here. Then, while already on the ground, they heard about the cave and had to turn around and start running through the woods to try to locate it. And of course, this area is fortified because there's 6,000 partisans there.

They never did find the cave, but what they did find was a bunch of pissed-off Yugoslav partisans who shot them to pieces. Skorzeny was so sure of his plan, like all plans that he has anything to do with, that would go off without a hitch, that the paratroopers also had no kind of support, air support, artillery, nothing.

So they just kind of got in a fight in the middle of the forest with some partisans for two days. After two days, they did finally call the mission off with the Nazis pulling back, having captured nothing other than To's military dress uniform which they stole from the dry cleaners in town that's just that's absolutely fucking terrific but jesus wept now skorzeny was not an overall command rendelik was so that meant skorzeny escaped any blame for the fuck up because

hitler still loved him so he gets all the credit when things go right when he's not in command and none of the blame when things go wrong when he's not in command in fact his special forces detachments were even expanded after this fuck up because Hitler's rationale was if we had more SS commandos we

could have pulled this off instead of using the army after this there was a small but successful kidnapping mission in Hungary when the Skorzeny boys kidnapped the regent's son after hearing that the Hungarian government was in negotiations with the Soviets for a way out of the war. After that, they blackmailed him into resignation to make way for the neo-Nazi Aero Cross Party movement. cross-party movement. Now, the only real notable part of this operation, which is why I'm skimming right over it, is that the commandos rolled the child up into a carpet, like a cartoon, in order to secure

him, which is kind of fun. Now, this leads us to the last part of today's episode, and probably the second most well-known, or maybe most well-known thing anybody knows about Skorzeny, and any operation he had a hand in. Operation Grief during the Battle of the Bulge.

You might know this as the time Germany deployed commandos dressed as Americans who spoke English into American lines in order to soak chaos and confusion in the Allied rear areas. Right, right, right. I won't be going into the details of the Battle of the Bulge. That'll obviously be like a multi-parter at some point. Instead, we'll be just talking about Skorzeny's part in it. Now, from the details I've said, while trained commandos in stolen uniforms

who spoke English with their flawless fluency and American accent would take a ton of time and effort to put together. And you would expect that kind of thing to be given that kind of time since Hitler himself said Operation Grief was one of the most important

parts of the entire battle plan of the battle of the boy instead all right that's got a lot riding on this one hi guys instead skrizen he was given seven weeks to plan everything um oh that's better than a day that is better yeah uh now everybody really didn't like him that wasn't in the ss at this. The military gave him virtually no help. Volunteers didn't exactly rush forward to take part. This is because everybody knew, well, a huge part of it was lack of English language skills, but also because everyone knew that if they were captured wearing an American uniform, per the law of land warfare, they could just be executed on the spot.

Executed, yeah. Yeah. And Hitler was worried about that little detail too because he forbade Skorzeny from personally taking part in the operation. Skorzeny did speak English. Right. Was this like, I can't afford to lose you?

Yes. I don't, okay. Yeah. And because like being a POW was not an option, you would just be shot. Right, you would just be executed, right. And like all good top secret missions, they were simply told, the Nazis told everybody about this plan. Like being a POW was not an option. You would just be shot. Right. You would just be executed. Right. And like all good top secret missions,

they were simply told, the Nazis told everybody about this plan. Siegfried Westfall, an army general, simply passed around a pamphlet to all of his soldiers asking anybody who was in good shape and spoke American accent and English to volunteer for a special mission. The fucking thing even names Skorzeny, meaning that anybody who got their hands

on like say allied intelligence would know immediately that there's some kind of raid being planned against Americans with people dressed as Americans great operational security guys and of course allied intelligence did find out about this Scorzeny got

furious and try to cancel the entire mission but nobody wanted to be the guy to tell Hitler that his idea was stupid and impossible. Now, so the mission went ahead. The plan went ahead, despite everybody knowing that allied intelligence was pretty largely in on the plan.

They didn't know exactly what they're going to do, but they knew something like it was coming. I think that the quote that best sums up how things worked in the Nazi government at the time was said by Himmler, who said after being told about canceling the mission because the Allied intelligence leak said quote, it's idiotic, but it must be done.

Oh, okay. Yeah, fair enough. That's the government in a nutshell right there. Now this plan called for 3,000 English speaking Nazi commandos. You want to guess how many they got? 35 35 10 10 people

in the end there they end up scraping together a few hundred more people who knew a few words of English in a situation I assume looked a lot like that scene from Inglorious Bastards when they decide who speaks the best Italian right then realizing the plan wasn't going to work at all unless they ditched the idea of needing

to know any English. So then they changed it just being German guys in captioned American gear who would sneak behind enemy lines while saying totally silent. Then if the plan was going bad enough and falling apart, the Germans didn't actually have enough captured American gear to make

it possible. Just one guy with a colt in a jeep with three tires oh by the way the Phillies won 7-0 I hope by the end of this series people don't watch your

descent into madness if they lose the series as a whole. Also, the Bruins came back from 5-3 down in the third period to win it 6-5 in overtime. Who are they playing? Stanley Cup, baby. The fucking Pens. The Pens. The Pens fucking suck now.

They're 4-4-1. You suck. Yeah, they suck. 4-4-1 is not a good record. It's 500. They suck. 4-4-1 is not a good record. It's 500. Now,

another problem with this operation, of course, is you're giving people American guns. You need American ammo so they can use them. Their entire stockpile of American ammunition for the operation blew up randomly because they were storing it wrong. Good job. Outstanding work, you fucking moron. Finally, after countless delays, the operation

began on Decembercember 16th 1944 and it was a huge failure it seems to actually live on in american memory more than um than it was successful uh for starters the u.s knew about the operation because of westfall's stupid ass so soldiers on the front line had been warned about Germans dressed up like Americans because when you know it, it's really hard to break through defensive line by just walking up to him and be like, hello, my fellow Americans, may I come in?

Ones that did get close to the line ran into a secret weapon the Americans had to deploy to stave off the infiltrators. You want to guess what it was? Fire mines? Fire mines. That would be cooler. It's actually dumber and cheaper than that. Soldiers had actually just been giving simple orders

and then set up checkpoints and ask anybody who came through random questions about American culture, like sports teams, geography, and stuff like that. This was foolproof. It caught every team that tried to come through. It also caught Americans who didn't know about sports. For example,

general Bruce Clark was nearly shot after answering a question about baseball wrong. I love that. I love the stupid country. I think he was asked. And remember, this is the forties where baseball truly was the American pastime. So like everyone would have known about baseball,

but I think his question was like, who, like what city is this team from think his question was like, who, uh, like what city is this team from? And he's like, fuck, I don't know, Boston or something.

Right. And it was fucking dropped him for it, which does sound like a Boston sports fan thing to do. I, cause we love America. One of the commando teams of actual english speakers got burned because according to one of the soldiers that caught them they were too nice to be american like i guess because they didn't walk up to the checkpoint like how's it going you fucking cunt they're like oh these guys

these guys are nazis uh the team of four men were all arrested, taken out back, and shot. Now, there is part of the operation that did succeed. It did cause chaos at Allied command, mostly for preventative measures. For instance, they gave Eisenhower a body double to just drive around in circles all day. In case Skorzeny was trying to assassinate him, which he wasn't. Most of the effects are psychological, which was part of the goal, but the plan still required the

commandos to actually do damage to the American line to make a breakthrough easier, and they never even came close to pulling that off. Some small victories, like English-speaking commandos managed to cause a traffic jam, which is kind of funny. That paralyzed the road so that the route couldn't be used to respond to the German attack. commandos managed to cause a traffic jam uh which is kind of funny congratulations um that paralyzed the road so that the route can be used to respond to the german attack and there was another case

where an english-speaking commando managed to talk a unit commander uh into going the wrong way when responding uh to the german breakthrough with like really small things like that a lot of the commandos simply got caught because they weren't convincing enough or because, again, they didn't speak English. At least 15 commandos were executed. The most accurate estimate is about maybe eight men

were able to infiltrate in some capacity or another, but the vast majority were killed before they even got close. Other teams saw that they were fucked when they got close to the American line just turn around went back after the failure of the battle of the ball just scores any took part in a

few more operations all of which also ended in failure these are mostly just normal military operations that blow up bridges to slow down the American advance in the West because he was into everything this power never deal Soviets ever again if you remember from part one. Now the war is finally coming to an end

and Skorzeny finally decided that, you know what? This Nazi shit is not worth dying for. As American forces rolled into Western Germany in May of 1945, he sent a letter under a white flag to an advancing unit telling them that he and his commandos

would be willing to surrender them the next day. And he did. And that is where we'll pick up next time. Oh, fun stuff. And next time is where we get into some very, very strange Nyon conspiracy type shit. It's going to be fun.

But that is Otto Skorzeny Part 2. Liam, plug your shows. 10,000 losses. Well, there's your problem. And Cedar, screw it. Outstanding. Everybody, thank you for listening. You make everything we do possible.

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Uh, and also it's nice seeing positive, uh, support for things. Unleash me when, when we don't get positive. Yeah. It's nice seeing positive support for stuff that we spend hours,

um, doing, um, for you guys. Um, and until next time, uh, I don't have a fun quip for this one.

Don't lose an eye in a sword fight. Don't be a Nazi. Don't be a Nazi, man.