The Last Battle (38 page)

30
. Belgian-born Alfred Cailliau had become a French citizen after he and Marie-Agnès moved to the Le Havre area after World War I.

31
. Reynaud,
Carnets de captivité
, 312.

32
. The former prime minister’s penchant for taking off his clothes whenever the weather was warm enough is mentioned in the memoirs of both
Reynaud and Augusta Léon-Jouhaux. Daladier himself, however, makes no mention of his nudism in his own memoir.

33
. Some sources render the cook’s last name as “Korbart” or “Krobet,” but Zvonimir Čučković—who shared a room with him for almost two years and presumably knew best—gives the man’s name as Krobot, so I have chosen to use that spelling. Čučković also says Krobot was transferred to Itter from Dachau in August 1943.

34
. Sadly, we know the full names of only two of these unfortunates: Gertrud Seibold and Gisela Sinneck-Barta. For the others, we have only first names: Sofia, Ommi, Luci, Maria, Josefa, and Olma. While Krobot and Čučković shared a room in the castle’s main building, the female inmate-servants slept on straw scattered over the floor of the schlosshof’s cramped upper level.

35
. Čučković, “Zwei Jahren auf Schloss Itter,” 10.

36
. Ibid. Daladier mentions the radio several times in
Prison Journal
, as does Augusta Léon-Jouhaux in
Prison pour hommes d’Etat
. Both indicate that it was capable of picking up stations as far afield as North Africa, the Soviet Union, and, when atmospheric conditions were right, even North America.

37
. Smyth,
The Bounding Basque
, 154–155.

38
. Daladier,
Prison Journal
, 335.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

1
. World War II Soviet “fronts” were roughly equivalent to army groups in the U.S. Army. Made up of multiple field armies, each of which comprised several corps, the 3rd Ukrainian Front by April 1945 totaled some one million men.

2
. In U.S. usage, numbered armies are identified by words, not numerals.

3
. Seventh Army was under the command of Lieutenant General George S. Patton, who relinquished command to Patch following the island’s seizure.

4
. For more details on Eisenhower’s overall plan for Austria and southern Germany, see MacDonald,
European Theater of Operations
, 436–438.

5
. Patton was promoted to full general on April 14, 1945. Devers gained four-star rank on March 8, 1945.

6
. The individual units assigned to each of Seventh Army’s three corps— the other two being VI and XV—changed fairly frequently, with divisions being moved between corps as the tactical situation demanded.

7
. Panzer-grenadier units combined tanks, truck-borne infantry, and artillery, antitank, and engineer elements.

8
. Details on von Hengl’s mission, force, and activities are drawn from his 1946 monograph
Kampf um die Alpenfestung Nord
, prepared as part of the U.S.-government-produced Foreign Military Studies, 1945–1954.

9
. Grossdeutschland was the German army’s premier combat division (and not, as widely believed, a Waffen-SS organization). Von Hengl’s belief
that elements of the division were present in Tyrol at this point in the war may not be accurate, in that most official histories (both German and American) indicate that Grossdeutschland ended the war in northern Germany. Of course, it is entirely possible that some members of the division had been sent to Austria under circumstances that are no longer clear.

10
.
Kampf um die Alpenfestung Nord
, 2–3.

11
. OKW is usually translated as High Command of the Armed Forces, and Führungsstab B was one of two operational headquarters under OKW.

12
. In the event, those few units of the two larger organizations that did manage to make it into Tyrol didn’t get far enough east to be of any real help to von Hengl.

13
. Born in 1901, Hans Buchner was a highly regarded German-born gebirgsjäger officer. After World War II he joined the West German Bundeswehr, eventually rising to the rank of general. From 1956 to 1959 he commanded the Bundeswehr’s 1st Gebirgsjäger Division.

14
. Giehl was the commandant of the Heeresunteroffiziersschule für Gebirgsjäger in Wörgl.

15
. Also referred to in some records as “Reserve Division Innsbruck.”

16
. The source of the Inn River is in Switzerland, and it flows northeastward through Tyrol and into Germany.

17
. See note 9 above. If these troops were not from Grossdeutschland, it is likely they were drawn from various Wehrmacht units that had retreated into Austria from Bavaria.

18
.
Kampf um die Alpenfestung Nord
, 2–3.

19
. Details on the formation, organization, and operations of the Austrian resistance are drawn primarily from Luza,
The Resistance in Austria
, and the Austrian Federal Press Service’s
Resistance and Persecution in Austria, 1938–1945
.

20
. In German, Provisorisches Österreichisches Nationalkomitee.

21
. Established by presidential military order on June 13, 1942, the OSS was both an intelligence-collection and analysis agency and a covert-operations organization. Headed by World War I hero William J. Donovan, the OSS saw service in both the European and the Pacific theater.

22
. “O5” was a clever rendering of the first letter of the German word for Austria, Österreich, which when typed without the umlaut is printed as “Oe.” Thus, the capital letter
O
followed by the number 5 (indicating the fifth letter of the alphabet,
e
) equals
Ö
for Austria. The symbol was created by a young Austrian medical student, Jörg Unterreiner. Resistance members would daub the symbol in paint on the sides of buildings, on streetcars, and, if they were particularly brave (or foolhardy), on the sides of German military vehicles.

23
. For two especially engrossing accounts of OSS operations in Austria, see Schwab,
OSS Agents in Hitler’s Heartland
, and O’Donnell,
The Brenner Assignment
.

24
. Luza,
The Resistance in Austria
, 245–246.

25
. Between 1935 and 1937, for example, the German-born socialist Waldemar von Knoeringen (1906–1971) established small anti-Nazi cells in Wörgl and several nearby towns.

26
. The Feb. 22 attack and one the following day were part of the 15th Air Force’s contribution to Operation Clarion, a joint U.S.-British effort to completely paralyze the Third Reich’s already much-degraded rail and communications networks by specifically targeting smaller cities and towns that might not have been heavily attacked thus far. Several thousand aircraft participated, flying from bases in France, England, and Italy. For details, see Craven and Cate,
Europe
, 731–732.

27
.
Personalakten für Gangl, Josef
.

28
. Biographical information for Gangl is drawn primarily from his personalakten and from data provided by the Stadtarchiv Ludwigsburg in Germany and the Tiroler Landesarchiv in Innsbruck, Austria.

29
. While details about Sepp Gangl’s siblings are sketchy, it appears that he had at least two brothers and one sister.

30
. I have been unable to determine the name or gender of their second child.

31
. A play on the German term
blitzkrieg
or “lightning war,”
sitzkrieg
literally means “sitting war.”

32
. Taus, now Domažlice, is in the Plzen Region of the Czech Republic.

33
. “Combined-arms,” in this context, means a coordinated and integrated operation by mutually supportive armor, infantry, and artillery units backed by tactical aircraft.

34
. Werfer means “thrower,” and nebelwerfer is literally translated as “fog thrower.” The term originally was used to describe single-barrel, cannon-like weapons used to fire smoke or gas shells.

35
. And the numbers were even more impressive with larger werfer units. According to
Rocket Projectors in the Eastern Theater
, a postwar history written as part of the U.S. government’s Foreign Military Studies series, in ten seconds a werfer regiment could fire 324 rockets, and a brigade 648.

36
. Formally designated 15cm Panzerwerfer 42 auf Selbstfahrlafette Sd.Kfz.4/1, the Opel-built Maultier weighed just over nine tons, carried between twenty and forty werfer rounds, and had a top speed on paved roads of about twenty-five miles per hour.

37
. Organizational and equipment details drawn from
Die Nebel-und Werfertruppe (Regimentsbögen)
, vol. 1, 322, as listed on the excellent German research site Lexikon der Wehrmacht.

38
. The award—an eight-pointed star with a swastika in the center—was given in recognition of the recipient’s bravery and outstanding achievement in combat. Awardees had to have already received both the Iron Cross Second Class and First Class.

39
. Paape had taken command of the brigade in late March. He wrote a fascinating postwar account of the unit’s final days,
7th Werfer Brigade, 24 March–30 April 1945
, as part of the U.S. Army’s Foreign Military Studies series.

40
. On March 10, 1945, Hitler had issued a “Führer Order” directing the creation of mobile courts-martial units whose task was to find and punish any member of the Wehrmacht or SS, regardless of rank, who was neglecting his duty. Negotiating with Allied forces or collaborating with local resistance organizations was grounds for immediate execution.

41
. Named after Fritz Todt, the engineer and high-ranking Nazi who founded it, the Organization Todt (OT) was the Third Reich’s primary civil-and military-construction agency. In the prewar years OT constructed Germany’s autobahns and frontier fortifications, and after September 1939 it expanded into military construction throughout the Reich and the occupied territories. The organization used “compulsory” workers almost exclusively; initially these were German citizens unfit for military service, but, as the war progressed, the workforce was predominantly made up of slave laborers: prisoners of war, political prisoners, and concentration-camp inmates.

42
. Details on the meeting are drawn from
Resistance and Persecution in Austria, 1938–1945
, 594–595.

43
. Though Battle Group Forster was in reserve at Wörgl, the actual defense of the city and its environs had been made part of Giehl’s responsibility.

44
. According to von Hengl’s postwar account, the initial American attack was followed by an intense artillery barrage aimed at the next town to the south, Oberaudorf, which was packed with refugees and from which all German military units had already withdrawn. Von Hengl called a brief truce, crossed the front lines under a white flag, and convinced the Americans not to shell any town in which German forces were not actually visible. His mission accomplished, the general crossed the front lines once again and resumed the fight.

45
. The full text of the message, translated in
Headquarters, 103d Infantry Division, Operations in Germany, Austria and Italy, May 1945
, 4, read: “At the present juncture of the war, everything depends on a stubborn and inflexible determination to hold on at all costs. The display of white flags, the removal of an antitank barrier, desertion from the
Volksturm
or similar manifestations are offenses which must be ruthlessly punished. All male persons inhabiting a house showing a white flag will be shot. No hesitation in executing these orders can be permitted any longer. ‘Male persons’ who are to be considered responsible in this respect are those aged 14 years or over.”

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

1
.
Prison Journal
, 292.

2
. Ibid., 294.

3
. Ibid., 296.

4
. Ibid., 283.

5
. A fiery, 80-proof German brandy.

6
. For example, in the summer of 1944 Čučković was able to repair a small electric motor that Wimmer intended to use in the farmhouse he and his wife were renovating (possibly as a postwar hideout) about 1.5 miles northeast of Schloss Itter. The SS-TV officer gave the Croat 30 Reichsmarks and allowed him to spend time with his wife, Ema, and son, Zvonimir, who had traveled down from the outskirts of Munich and were staying with a family in Itter village. For five nights Čučković was allowed to leave the castle by himself after dark but had to be back in each morning by six. See Čučković, “Zwei Jahren auf Schloss Itter,” 40.

7
. All three incidents are described in Čučković, “Zwei Jahren auf Schloss Itter,” 39–41.

8
. Daladier,
Prison Journal
, 317–318.

9
. Reynaud,
In the Thick of the Fight
, 653.

10
. Even after the war the area around Schloss Itter continued to be a way station for former Nazis seeking to escape Allied justice. Among the most infamous was Adolf Eichmann, one of the primary organizers of the Holocaust. As part of his escape to Argentina in 1950, the former SS-TV officer crossed into Austria at Kufstein and, with the help of local sympathizers, made his way to Innsbruck. From there he crossed into Italy and then traveled on to South America. Abducted by Israeli agents in 1960, he was taken to Israel, tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and executed in 1962.

11
. Daladier,
Prison Journal
, 336. Among those accompanying Weiter was his adjutant, whom Daladier described as “tall and fat, a real thug.”