The Rescue of Benito Mussolini During the Grand Sasso Raid Known as Operation Eiche
By: J.C. Scull
Tags: Nazis, Fascism, History, World War II, Adventure

On May 16th, 1943, the air bombardment of Rome by American and British planes began in earnest. This was followed by the Allied invasion of Sicily on July 9th, 1943. These events sent a clear message to King Vittorio Emanuele of Italy as well as to Mussolini’s own Grand Council of Fascism of the inevitable military defeat the country was facing.

During the evening of July 24 and the early hours of the 25th, the Grand Council met to discuss the immediate future of Italy. While everyone in attendance understood the magnitude of the moment and were afraid to create a rift with Mussolini which could later cause them problems, they needed to discuss the many military reverses suffered by the Italian military.

Previously, Il Duce had seemed tired and disheveled and appeared to be looking for a way out of his position of power. Some within the Council argued that the dictatorship had brought Italy to the brink of military disaster, elevated incompetents within the government, and alienated large portions of the population.

On that night, the Kingdom of Italy’s Grand Council voted a motion of no confidence against Mussolini. On the same day, King Emanuele replaced him with Marshal Pietro Badoglio, a veteran of both World War One and the Ethiopean conflict. Immediately after receiving word of his dismissal, Mussolini was arrested and moved through various secret locations until ending somewhere near the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Upon hearing of Mussolini’s removal from power, Adolf Hitler flew into a rage. He saw the dismissal of his Axis partner as a betrayal by disloyal elements within the government and armed forces of Italy. He openly spoke about possible drastic measures he was willing to take in order to not only restore Mussolini to power but also to reign in on Italy’s latent insurgency and disloyalty. Hitler considered actions such as invading Italy, kidnapping the royal family, arresting officials in the new Italian government, even imprisoning the Pope in retaliation.

After being dissuaded from these actions by cabinet members, Hitler remained determined to find where Mussolini was being kept and rescue him. He felt Il Duce would most likely be placed on trial for crimes committed during his time in office, eventually leading to a death sentence; an outcome he could not accept as it would be an embarrassment to the Nazi and fascist war effort.

Set on finding a way to rescue Mussolini, Hitler recruited two military officers to separately formulate plans to rescue Il Duce from wherever he was being kept captive. He ordered the Hauptsturmführer (a rank equivalent to captain) Otto Skorzeny and paratroop General Kurt Student to find and rescue Mussolini.

Otto Skorzeny was successful in intercepting a coded Italian radio message as well as receiving informant help for which he paid with counterfeit £100,000 in currency. These counterfeit notes were part of Operation Bernhard; a covert Nazi operation to destabalize Britain’s economy by counterfeiting British pounds.

All the information received by Skorzeny, led him to the Gran Sasso massif, a remote and defensible mountain plateau in the Abruzzi Mountains north of Rome. Mussolini was kept at the Albergo Rufigo (also known as Hotel Campo Imperatore), a secluded luxury hotel some 7,000 feet above sea level. Mussolini had been transferred to this large structure after his short stay by the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Hotel Campo Imperatore in 1943 — By Gabriele Altimari — Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17459173

To carry out the mission, Skorzeny assembled a force of 90 handpicked airborne troops who were sent by glider to the mountain top where Mussolini was held. He used ten DFS 230 gliders, each carrying nine soldiers and a pilot, towed by Henschel Hs 126 planes which started between 13:05 and 13:10 from the Pratica di Mare Air Base near Rome.

Skorzeny and his SS troopers sat in the fourth and fifth glider. Due to some of the gliders taking an extra loop around the Alban Hills, Skorzeny’s two units arrived first over the target.

They were to overpower any resistance and then fly Mussolini to German territory aboard a Fieseler Storch, a light aircraft not capable of carrying more than two passengers.

On September 12, 1943, German paratroopers captured the rail line that ran from the valley floor up the mountain. This was done to ensure that no Italian reinforcements would interfere with the rescue attempt. Skorzeny’s gliders with its men made landings near the hotel and effectively surprised and captured Mussolini’s guards. They did this without firing a single shot. They then proceeded to escort the dazed and frail former dictator to the waiting plane.

Fieseler Fi 156 used to rescue Mussolin — iWikimedia Commons

The main reason why Skorzeny and his special troopers were able to overwhelm Mussolini’s well-equipped captors who numbered over 200 men was simple; General Fernando Soleti of the Italian African Police, who flew in with Skorzeny, told the Italian troops to stand down. After securing the radio station, Skorzeny stormed into the hotel with his troopers and escorted Mussolini to the Fieseler Fi 156 STOL plane. This happened withing ten minutes of his entry into the building.

Skorzeny insisted on accompanying Mussolini in a plane rated to carry two adults at the maximum. This could have endangered the success of the mission had the light Fieseler Fi failed to take off and crashed. However, after an extremely dangerous but successful take-off, they flew to Pratica di Mare. There, they switched to a Heinkel He 111 bomber and flew to Vienna. The next day Mussolini was at Munich and on September 14, he met Hitler at the Führer Headquarters Wolf’s Lair.

Mussolini walks out of the hotel after being rescued. Wikimedia Commons

When Mussolini finally met Hitler, they greeted each other warmly. However, Il Duce’s appearance was gaunt and weak. He was no longer the robust and ostentatious leader of Italy’s fascist movement Hitler once knew. The reality was that Mussolini was a defeated men.

While there was little pro-Fascist sentiment left in Italy, the Nazi leader installed Mussolini as the leader of a puppet regime he called the Italian Socialist Republic, in the town of Salo on Lake Garda in northern Italy. Unfortunately, few Italians rallied to support the former Duce. In fact, his days were already numbered.

On July 26th, 1945, after finding out that Nazi Germany was in the midst of negotiating an unconditional surrender, Mussolini joined a convoy of German soldiers and fellow fascists and attempted to reach the border with Switzerland. The convoy was ceased by a group of partisans who removed him and his girlfriend Clara Petacci and placed them in a farmhouse in the village of Giulino di Mezzegra on the shores of Lake Como.

On April 28, 1945, Mussolini and Petacchi were executed by a firing squad.

Skorzeny on the other hand became known as the most dangerous man in Europe. His adventurous exploits became well-known. Besides his rescue of Mussolini during Operation Eiche, he was involved in the removal from power of Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy. He also led Operation Greif in which German soldiers infiltrated Allied lines by dressing as U.S. soldiers, utilizing U.S. Army equipment as well as speaking flawless English.

After the war, he was charged at the Dachau Military Tribunal with breaching the 1907 Hague Convention for his participation in Operation Greif, however was acquitted after a former British SOE agent F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas testified that he and his operatives had worn German uniforms behind enemy lines.

In 1948, Skorzeny escaped from an internment camp and hid in a Bavarian farm for 18 months. He later settled in Spain under the Franco regime. After that he became a military advisor to Egypt and Argentina, where he also acted as bodyguard to Eva Perón, wife of President Juan Perón. In 1962, Skorzeny was allegedly recruited by Mossad and conducted several operations for the spy agency. Skorzeny died of lung cancer at the age of 67 on July 5th, 1975 in Madrid, Spain.