Although studies of Otto Skorzeny, said to be Hitler’s ‘favourite commando’, tended to be limited and were often of highly questionable quality for much of the post-war period, this situation appears to have changed in more recent years. Some qualitatively better research material has become available and, thus, serious historians of Nazi Germany have becoming increasingly interested in demythologizing and unpacking Skorzeny’s career and reputation. One such contribution to the growing historiography came in 2018, with Stuart Smith’s Otto Skorzeny: The Devil’s Disciple (Osprey publishers).
Austrian-born Otto Skorzeny (1908-1975) was, as Smith notes, a highly controversial figure, with a complex personality. Smith had to draw on years of in-depth research to put together a ‘warts and all’ biographical study of a man who had loyally served Hitler and, significantly, had also continued his far right activities post-1945. Skorzeny joined the Nazi party in 1932 and, later, the SS in 1934, quickly rising through the ranks. During World War Two he was decorated for bravery for his military service on the Eastern Front.
He became familiar to non-German audiences for his part in a daring mission undertaken in Italy. Skorzeny had been personally selected and entrusted by Hitler with the task of rescuing incarcerated Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from a mountain-top hotel. Mussolini had been deposed in 1943, removed from power by his own Fascist Grand Council. The mission to rescue Mussolini, using a dangerous glider-borne landing for Skorzeny’s commandos, had been a complete success. Unsurprisingly, the Nazi regime’s propagandists had milked the operation for all its worth, presenting Skorzeny as a great ‘hero’ and Germanic warrior. Skorzeny himself was only too happy to take full advantage of this sudden propaganda fame, and it is from this point onwards that the ‘Skorzeny legend’ began to grow.
This was reinforced by his involvement in the ‘Battle of the Bulge’ in 1944, a last gamble by Hitler to turn the war in the West in his favour through a surprise attack on American forces in the Ardennes. Skorzeny’s SS troops had operated behind Allied lines, wearing U.S. army uniforms to sow confusion and engage in sabotage.
Indeed, an especially important section in Smith’s book is the Epilogue (pp. 319-325), in which the author deftly explores the ‘Man and Myth’ at the heart of the Skorzeny story, including the origins of distorted and a romanticised version of Skorzeny’s life and career that was helped considerably by Skorzeny himself, who devoted time during his first 18 months on the run to writing some comprehensive memoirs. A cut-down version of these were published in 1950 as Secret Commando Skorzeny, selling over 10,000 copies. Skorzeny also sold serialization rights to various French and German media outlets and, subsequently, to a U.S. publisher in 1951.
In Britain, the Daily Express also ran a series of ‘exclusive’ and rather uncritical interviews with Skorzeny that, to use Smith’s words, helped ‘cement his reputation’ with Anglo-Saxon readers. By 1958, he had appeared on BBC radio and on ITV television, and in the following year he was included in a BBC TV series titled Men of Action. Looking back on this now, it is evident that Skorzeny was given far too much leeway to craft a ‘soft’ and highly dubious version of his own life and career. It was not until much later that critics began to slowly challenge this and unpick it bit by bit. Yet, even today, some military historians appear to remain in awe of Skorzeny’s exploits and prefer to ignore his ‘politics’.
Skorzeny and Transnational Neo-Nazism
However, an arguably even more important part of Smith’s book, and a topic that is still ripe for further research by historians, is the extent to which Otto Skorzeny remained a devoted Nazi, and was involved in the attempted ideological revival of Nazism via international neo-Nazi networks after 1945. Arrested and interrogated by the Americans in 1945, Skorzeny was imprisoned but not prosecuted. Although the Americans were keen to convict him for his illegal activities during the ‘Battle of the Bulge’ in 1944 and he was tried in 1947, he was acquitted when a British military witness at the trial pointed out that the Allies themselves had also used Skorzeny-style subterfuge during the War. Ironically, while still waiting to be fully ‘de-Nazified’, in 1948 he escaped from a detention camp and fled to Franco’s Spain, where he arrived in Madrid in 1950. The Spanish capital had become something of a safe haven for numerous former fascists. With monetary help from sympathetic friends, Skorzeny built up a considerable financial fortune in Spain’s capital and, at the same time, he became an attractive draw for neo-Nazis from across the globe.
Although he denied to the British press that he was still a Nazi, in truth he remained devoted to the National Socialist creed and the evidence suggests that he was involved in helping various Nazi war criminals to escape from Europe to South America (although not on the scale that some accounts have claimed). Furthermore, Skorzeny did his utmost to encourage like-minded far right activists to re-engage in politics. In the early 1950s, for example, he forged links with the Sozialistische Reichspartei Deutschlands (SRP) – at the time West Germany’s most successful neo-Nazi party, until it was outlawed in October, 1952. Perhaps utilizing lessons absorbed from some of his infamous and deceitful wartime strategies, Skorzeny also encouraged post-war ‘entryism’ (infiltration) by neo-Nazis into private businesses, veteran’s associations and more mainstream political parties.
Interestingly, he also developed some close links with the former British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, who was himself regularly travelling across Europe and the world seeking to build a new neo-fascist network and, ultimately, a new ‘European’ far right party and movement.
As Smith points out, however, attempts at transnationalism by far right leaders in the 1950s did not lead to any new or significant extreme right movements, and Skorzeny mainly turned his attention to building up a career as a successful businessman (and arms dealer) in Spain, although the ex-SS man never abandoned his strong Nazi beliefs. In fact, in 1966, he set up a supposedly ‘cultural’ organisation dedicated to the music of Wagner; in reality, this was a front for a neo-Nazi organisation and publishing house, CEDADE, which helped print and reprint Nazi and general far right material for distribution across Europe. Indeed, as a founder and advisor to the leadership of CEDADE (the ‘Spanish Circle of Friends of Europe’), Skorzeny was able to act as an arms-length ‘godfather’ to a neo-Nazi organisation which was ambitiously designed to co-ordinate extreme right international links across Europe and to print and disseminate far right pamphlets and books across all parts of the continent and other corners of the globe.
In the 1970s, in a number of interviews he gave in Madrid, Skorzeny also strongly defended the Third Reich and claimed that the regime had been brought down by a ‘conspiracy of traitors’.
Posthumous Reputation
When he died in 1975, a Nazi flag was draped across his coffin and it is estimated that 500 Nazi sympathisers attended his funeral, where the Nazi salute was made. At the time of his death, Skorzeny was a very wealthy man, and had bank accounts in Spain, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States. It is difficult to know to what extent Skorzeny had used some of his wealth to give direct financial help to far right movements or activists across the globe. More research is required. But what is undoubtedly the case is that Skorzeny helped some of his former Nazi comrades in the post-war period, particularly some of those who were being hunted by anti-fascists and war crimes experts. And, during the 1960s and early 1970s, there is evidence that a number of the new younger generation of neo-Nazis made their way to Spain to meet a man they still regarded as a great ‘hero’ and father-figure to the international fascist cause.
The real challenge for the historian remains the need to disentangle the myth and reality that surrounds Skorzeny’s life and career, not helped by the lies and narcissistic distortions spun by Skorzeny himself when he was still alive. A certain type of glamour appears to have become attached to his life, with the more evil Nazi aspects of his activities downplayed or dismissed in some quarters.
Depressingly, Skorzeny’s own writings remain very popular both with military history enthusiasts and far right audiences today. In October, 2023, a new edition of Skorzeny’s memoirs became available in Britain, entitled Skorzeny’s Special Missions: The Memoirs of Hitler’s Most Daring Commando, published by Greenhill Books. Moreover, some hardline neo-Nazi social media forums regularly praise Skorzeny as a ‘heroic’ example of the Third Reich’s vision of the European ‘New Man’. Conspiracy theory literature has also increasingly appropriated Skorzeny and claimed that he was sent on special missions to retrieve lost ‘Nazi Gold’ and so on.
The last word should go to Stuart Smith again, who points out that the ‘myth’ that surrounds Skorzeny has eclipsed the man and taken on a life of its own.
Dr. Steven Woodbridge is a Lecturer in History and Politics
(Images: Wikimedia Commons)
Note: This is an updated version of a blog that was first published here in July, 2023.
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