The Last Battle (20 page)

“Yugoslavia,” the Croat replied.

The civilian’s face lit up as he responded in Serbo-Croatian: “Brother, why didn’t you say so earlier? I am a Yugoslav myself, but born in America!”

Thrilled at the chance to speak his native tongue, Čučković poured out the story of his ride from Schloss Itter, adding that they needed to rescue the French VIPs as soon as possible.

“Brother, please listen to me,” the civilian
³²
said. “We are the first group to arrive here; we just got here an hour ago. We are not allowed to leave Innsbruck until our commanders arrive. They won’t get here until midnight, so it is best if you get some rest because you look like you are very tired. Come back tomorrow at seven
AM
, and we will find a solution.”

Though not pleased at the delay, Čučković saw the wisdom of getting some sleep. He’d ridden for nearly seven hours and was bone tired, and
he didn’t protest when his newfound friend led him to a nearby hotel that had been commandeered for use as a barracks. The Croat was given food, water, and cigarettes, then led to a private room. Within minutes of walking in the door he was sprawled across the bed, dead to the world.

E
VEN AS
Č
UČKOVIĆ WAS ENJOYING
his well-earned sleep, events at Schloss Itter were continuing to unfold. Sebastian Wimmer’s sudden, predawn departure had convinced the castle’s SS-TV guards that it was also time for them to leave, and, by daybreak on May 4, the French notables and number prisoners had the schloss all to themselves. At the urging of generals Maxime Weygand and Maurice Gamelin, the now-free VIPs broke into the unguarded weapons room and equipped themselves with a variety of pistols, rifles, and submachine guns.

Suddenly liberated and newly armed, two of the Frenchmen decided—somewhat inexplicably, given their still-precarious situation—that their first free act would be to stroll the 150 yards into Itter village. Paul Reynaud and Michel Clemenceau walked calmly through the castle’s now unmanned front gate, past the small inn at the foot of the access road and, further on, the building housing the offices of St. Joseph’s Church, before reaching the small square in front of the church itself. While the two men saw Austrian and white flags flying from many windows, they were surprised and alarmed to see German troops and vehicles on the roads to the northeast of the village. Though a quick glance through the binoculars he’d “liberated” from the arms room showed Reynaud that many of the retreating soldiers were just “boys in uniform, who seemed to be hardly more than 10 years old,”
³³
the sight of so many troops—and the weapons they carried—convinced the Frenchman that while he and his fellow ex-prisoners might be free, they were certainly not yet safe.

Reynaud and Clemenceau hurried back to Schloss Itter and called the French VIPs together to tell them what they’d seen. Putting their personal and political differences aside for the moment, they all agreed that the continuing presence of German military units in the area meant that no one in the castle would be truly safe until Allied troops arrived in strength. Given that Zvonko Čučković had not been heard from since his departure the day before, and that his perilous ride toward Innsbruck had so far not
resulted in the appearance of an Allied rescue force, the gathered VIPs debated their next move. The discussion was surprisingly brief and unusually free of acrimony, and the former prisoners unanimously agreed on three courses of action.

First, they would fashion a huge French tricolor banner from whatever materials they could find and then suspend it from the top windows of the keep to prevent attacks on the castle by Allied aircraft and let advancing friendly forces know of the VIPs’ presence. Second, they would summon Kurt-Siegfried Schrader from the village and formally ask him to take responsibility for their safety—not because Sebastian Wimmer had indicated that the decorated Waffen-SS man was his choice to be the VIPs’ guardian, but because the French themselves had come to know and trust Schrader over the course of his many visits to the castle. And third, realizing that it was more than likely that Čučković had been captured or killed trying to reach Innsbruck, they decided to send another bicycle-borne emissary out to contact the nearest American unit. As they were debating who that messenger should be, Andreas Krobot stepped forward. He and several other number prisoners had been listening to the discussion from the sidelines, and he calmly explained that it would make no sense for one of the VIPs to attempt the trip, only to be caught and executed on the spot. Far better for him, a mere cook, to undertake the potentially hazardous ride. Though Jean Borotra insisted that he should be the one to make the attempt, the logic of Krobot’s argument carried the day.

The first task, summoning Schrader to the castle, was carried out by Léon Jouhaux and Augusta Bruchlen, at their insistence. The labor leader and his German-speaking companion had spent perhaps the most time with the Waffen-SS man and his family during their visits to Schloss Itter, and Jouhaux apparently felt that he and Bruchlen would be able to relieve any last-minute qualms Schrader might have about throwing in his lot with the French. Despite his still-frail health, Jouhaux insisted the walk into the village would do him good. The couple covered the short distance at a steady pace, hand in hand and with Jouhaux carrying an MP-40 submachine gun slung over his shoulder. Schrader, dressed in civilian clothes, answered their knock immediately and agreed to accompany them back to Schloss Itter. When the trio returned to the castle at about one PM, they found most of the French VIPs gathered in the front courtyard waiting for them. Clemenceau, speaking in German, formally asked Schrader to accept
responsibility for ensuring the safety of the former prisoners until American troops arrived. Though the Waffen-SS officer knew beyond doubt that his presence would do nothing to prevent German troops from taking the castle if they decided to do so, he believed that in the case of an attack he might be able to negotiate some sort of deal that would save the VIPs’ lives. Schrader thus accepted “command” of Schloss Itter, with the proviso that his wife and daughters be allowed to join him within its walls.
³⁴

At the same time Jouhaux and Bruchlen set out to summon Schrader, Krobot had embarked on his own journey. Provided with an English-language plea for help—again penned by Christiane Mabire—and riding a bicycle that had formerly belonged to one of the castle’s now-vanished guards, the Czech had set out for Wörgl. The French VIPs felt the town must surely have already been captured by the Americans; Krobot wasn’t so sure, and his reservations were quickly borne out. Cycling into Wörgl along the same route Čučković had traveled the day before, and, barely thirty minutes after leaving Schloss Itter, the Czech saw Waffen-SS troops in the streets. The soldiers were firing at any window from which a white or Austrian flag fluttered. Turning down a narrow side street, Krobot encountered a man in civilian clothes standing in a doorway, peering carefully in the opposite direction as though on lookout duty. Taking a huge chance, the Czech asked the man for help. After looking searchingly into Krobot’s eyes, the man pulled the end of a small red-and-white Austrian flag from his pocket and smiled.
³⁵

Minutes later, the Czech cook was talking to Sepp Gangl.

A
NDREAS
K
ROBOT
’
S SUDDEN
appearance in Wörgl with the letter from the French VIPs put Gangl in something of a predicament.

The Wehrmacht major had intended for several days to mount a Schloss Itter rescue operation, of course, but had hesitated because he hadn’t wanted to fight a pitched battle against Sebastian Wimmer and his guard force. While Krobot’s news that the commandant and his minions had fled was welcome, Gangl knew that, even if he and his dozen or so men were able to reach the castle without running into Waffen-SS units, they would almost certainly not be able to hold it against a determined attack by troops wielding machine guns and shoulder-launched panzerfaust antitank rockets.
And if those troops were backed by artillery or armor, defending Schloss Itter and its VIPs would be virtually suicidal.

Moreover, as the new head of the Wörgl resistance, Gangl had to worry about protecting the town—and his troops—from the continuing depredations of the Waffen-SS soldiers still active in the area. The threat was demonstrated all too clearly shortly after Krobot’s arrival. As Second Lieutenant Blechschmidt
³⁶
—one of Gangl’s trusted compatriots—was meeting with Alois Mayr about the need to protect Wörgl’s warehoused food supplies from marauding bands of deserters and the thousands of refugees choking the roads of north Tyrol, firing broke out inside the Neue Post Inn. A platoon of Waffen-SS troops had somehow discovered the resistance group’s arsenal in the building’s basement; though the resisters guarding the structure had fled, an SS officer wildly fired his MP-40 in the building’s main room and threatened to kill Frau Lenk, the proprietor, and several other women who had been drinking tea in the guesthouse dining room. As the Waffen-SS troops carted off the weapons they’d discovered, Blechschmidt could do little more than watch from a safe distance and send one of Mayr’s men to let Gangl know what was happening.

The news convinced the Wehrmacht major that the only way he’d be able to ensure the safety of both the townspeople and the VIPs at Schloss Itter would be to speed the arrival of American forces. And since the Americans might not pay sufficient attention to a note-bearing civilian on a bicycle, the best way to accomplish the task, Gangl decided, was to go in search of them himself. He was, in effect, the German military commander of Wörgl, and, as such, he could officially surrender to the Americans all remaining Wehrmacht troops in the town.

Having made his decision, Gangl huddled with his deputy, Captain Dietrich, and Mayr’s deputy, Rupert Hagleitner. Dietrich would be in command until he returned, Gangl said, assisted by First Lieutenant Höckel and second lieutenants Blechschmidt and Wegscheider. Knowing that American units had reached the outskirts of Kufstein the previous evening, the men agreed that Gangl should head there instead of attempting the longer and potentially more dangerous drive west toward Innsbruck. He would make the roughly seven-mile trip in a kübelwagen, accompanied only by his enlisted driver, Corporal Keblitsch. They would take a white flag with them, but, given the number of Waffen-SS troops still in the area, they would not raise the banner until they were relatively close to the American lines.

With plans made and assignments given, just before three o’clock Gangl shoved the letter Krobot had brought from the castle into the pocket of his tunic, grabbed his MP-40, and strode to his vehicle. As Keblitsch started the kübelwagen moving, Gangl turned in his seat to shout some last-minute instruction to Dietrich, who was standing with Höckel, Blechschmidt, and Wegscheider. The sentence died in the Wehrmacht major’s throat when he realized that all four men were standing at attention, saluting him.

While we don’t know how Gangl and Keblitsch felt about their chances of actually making it to the American front line, we can safely assume that both men well understood the extreme risk they were taking. The seven miles separating Wörgl from the leading U.S. units were crawling with bands of Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht troops still loyal to the now-dead führer, and they had thrown up hastily constructed roadblocks at several points on the main Wörgl-Kufstein road. Though Gangl would have tried to bluff his way through on the strength of his rank and the combat decorations adorning his tunic, or possibly by producing Battle Group Forster documents and declaring he was on his way to rally the defense against the oncoming Americans, the discovery of the letter in his pocket or the white flag concealed somewhere in the vehicle would have been enough to get him and Keblitsch executed on the spot. Nor were die-hard German troops the only danger: There were also groups of Austrian resistance fighters in the area who might well open fire on the kübelwagen without bothering to determine if the men it carried were friend or foe. And, of course, there were all the other common World War II perils: random mortar or artillery barrages, attack by enemy aircraft, and land mines laid on unpaved side roads.