World War II Day by Day

Wolf’s Lair HQ, East Prussia, Germany • October 21, 1944

On this date in 1944 Adolf Hitler summoned SS-Obersturm­bann­fuehrer (Lt. Gen.) Otto Skor­zeny to Fuehrer head­quarters deep in the East Prus­sian wilder­niss near Rasten­berg (present-day Kętrzyn, Poland). The scar-faced 6-ft, 4-in Skor­zeny had made a name for him­self par­ti­ci­pa­ting in a derring-do opera­tion that succeeded in rescuing Italian dicta­tor Benito Musso­lini from capti­vity high in an Apen­nines redoubt on Septem­ber 12, 1943. At the Wolfs­schanze Hilter told his fellow Austrian that his next assign­ment would be the most impor­tant of his life: it was to cap­ture bridges over the Meuse River in Belguim by mem­bers of the Wehr­macht (German armed forces) masquer­ading as U.S. soldiers and sow con­fusion behind Allied lines during the upcoming Ardennes Offen­sive (Battle of the Bulge), eventually slated to kick off in mid-December.

Skorzeny prepared for his mission of sabotage, code­named Unter­nehmen Greif (Opera­tion Griffin), by drawing on as many English-speaking men as pos­sible from the Kriegs­marine, the German Army, the Waffen‑SS, and the Luft­waffe. The 2,676 mostly volun­teer men of the new 150th SS Pan­zer Brigade, a unit of Josef “Sepp” Dietrich’s Sixth Pan­zer Army, were told their efforts would have a deci­sive effect on the war. Dozens of the recruits were out­fitted in Amer­i­can uni­forms collected from POWs (offi­cers and enlisted men) held in German camps. At a heavily guarded mili­tary encamp­ment in Grafen­woehr, Bavaria, the men were taught how to salute like Amer­ican soldiers, took their orders in English, learned Amer­i­can slang by watching Amer­i­can movies and news­reels, polished their accents, and ate K‑rations. The usual com­mando skills were empha­sized as well. The secret brigade-in-training did not, how­ever, remain secret from Allied code­breakers at Bletchley Park in England, who inter­cepted the German High Command’s decision to set up a special volunteer force in the west whose ranks had a “know­ledge of English and American idiom.” Later, a docu­ment outlining Opera­tion Greif’s ele­ments of deception, though not its objectives, fell into U.S. hands.

Eventually 150 men out of 600 English-speakers in Kampf­gruppe (combat group) Skor­zeny were formed into Einheit Stielau, the com­mando unit assembled from the parent 150th Panzer Brigade. The men wore U.S. Army uni­forms, com­bat boots, and dog-tags, were armed with captured U.S. Army wea­pons, and drove captured Army Jeeps. Some com­mandos were directed to destroy bridges, ammu­ni­tion dumps, fuel depots, field tele­phone cables and radio stations, and with issuing false orders. Others scouted routes to the Meuse River, observed enemy strength, and sowed havoc by reversing road signs, removing mine­field warnings, and cordoning off roads with warnings of nonexistent mines.

On the start date of Germany’s Ardennes onslaught, Decem­ber 16, 1944, the 150th Panzer Brigade followed in the spear­heading tracks of three Panzer divisions. Within days Skor­zeny’s men had changed U.S. soldiers’ behavior toward one another as troops began asking other soldiers Amer­ican trivia ques­tions in order to flush out enemy infil­trators. Even British Field Marshal Ber­nard Law Mont­go­mery was caught in the Amer­ican drag­net when soldiers shot out the tires of his staff car and detained him for seve­ral hours until a British soldier was called in to vouch for the real (fuming) Mont­gomery; a rumor circu­lated that Skor­zeny had found a Mont­gomery double. In all, 44 Ger­man soldiers wearing U.S. uni­forms were sent through U.S. lines, with the last men being sent on Decem­ber 19. With Skorzeny’s “Trojan Horse trick” having been exposed and Amer­ican near para­noia ebbing (though not with­out several tragic cases of mis­taken iden­tity), the 150th Panzer Brigade was seconded to the 1st SS Panzer Division and used as a regular panzer brigade.

German Saboteurs Spread Confusion at Start of Ardennes Offensive, December 1944

Above: The Ardennes Forest (hashed area to the east of the heavy north-south front line) on the eve of the German offen­sive, known in the West as the Battle of the Bulge (Decem­ber 16, 1944, to Janu­ary 25, 1945). The offen­sive was Hitler’s failed gamble to split the Western Allies and prevent their invasion of Germany’s heavily populated and industrial Ruhr district (top of map).

Left: SS-Sturmbannfuehrer (Major) Otto Skorzeny with the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross and Helmet as com­mander of the 300-man SS unit “Frieden­thal.” Skor­zeny took more than a dozen men of his unit to Italy in 1943 when he helped snatch the deposed Italian dicta­tor Benito Musso­lini from cap­tivity. Photo from Decem­ber 31, 1942. Hitler selected Skor­zeny (1908–1975) to be the leader of Operation Greif. Admired by Hitler and almost wor­shiped by Waffen-SS men for his legen­dary exploits, Skor­zeny was loathed by regular German Army officers as a “typical evil Nazi” who employed “typical SS methods,” an “Austrian crimi­nal,” “a real dirty dog . . . shooting is much too good for him.” (Quoted in Antony Beevor, Ardennes 1944, pp. 91–92.) Skor­zeny and nine officers of the 150th Panzer Brigade were tried as war crimi­nals at the post­war Dachau Trials for allegedly vio­lating the laws of war during the Battle of the Bulge. The charge: impro­perly using Amer­ican uni­forms “by entering into com­bat disguised there­with and treach­er­ously firing upon and killing mem­bers of the armed forces of the United States.” Acquitting all defen­dants, the U.S. mili­tary tribu­nal drew a distinc­tion between using enemy uni­forms during com­bat and for other pur­poses, including decep­tion; also, it could not be shown that Skor­zeny him­self had given any orders to fight in U.S. uniforms.

Right: On December 19, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, three of Skor­zeny’s Trojan horse com­mandos, Sgt. Man­fred Pernass, Sgt. Guenther Billing, and Lance Cpl. Wilhelm Schmidt, were captured behind U.S. lines in Amer­i­can uni­forms. The three were given a mili­tary trial two days later, found guilty of espio­nage, and exe­cuted by firing squad on Decem­ber 23. Three more commandos were also tried on the same day and shot on the 26th. Seven more were tried on Decem­ber 26 and exe­cuted on the 30th. The next day three others were tried and exe­cuted on Janu­ary 13, 1945. Members of the British 29th Armoured Brigade defending bridges over the Meuse River in Belgium killed two Skor­zeny comman­dos riding in an Ameri­can Jeep on the night of Decem­ber 23/24. Opera­tion Greif’s leader, Guenther Schulz, was tried by a mili­tary commis­sion in May 1945 and exe­cuted near the German city of Braunschweig on June 4, 1945.

Left: German Mark V Panther tanks aboard railway flatbeds en route to the Ardennes, late 1944.

Right: A knocked-out Mark VG Panther tank, one of a hand­ful of German Mark IVs and Panthers assigned to the 150th Panzer Brigade and disguised to look like a U.S. M10 tank destroyer in Opera­tion Greif. Thin steel plates were welded to this Panther’s 45–ton hull and turret, minus its cupola, to mimic the silhou­ette of the Amer­ican tank hunter. Manned by a crew of five, the German tanks were painted U.S. olive drab and applied with U.S. markings. How­ever, the Panther’s distinc­tive inter­leaved wheel­train remained unchanged, so that these counter­feit M10s were readily recog­nized by U.S. troops and destroyed. Skor­zeny later strongly criti­cized the use of these con­verted Panthers, saying they could only deceive some­one at night from a distance or maybe a raw recruit up close.

Line of Fire Documentary: The Battle of the Bulge (May skip first 30 seconds)