| Submit your comments on this article |
| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Revealed: Farce of German plot to kidnap Eisenhower |
| 2004-05-02 |
| They were the decisive days of the Second World War and the Nazis faced defeat. Allied troops were on French soil and Hitler, desperate to prevent an invasion of Germany, hatched a final extraordinary plan: infiltrate the US army and take Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, dead or alive. The German leader entrusted Operation Greif to the Austrian SS Obersturmbahnfuhrer Otto Skorzeny, who had rescued Mussolini from imprisonment by the Italian government in 1943, flying him off a mountaintop in a tiny aircraft. Skorzeny assembled a "crack unit" which would pose as GIs to launch their attack on Eisenhower at Fontainebleu, the Allied headquarters near Paris. Yet, as one of the mission’s survivors has now revealed, Operation Greif rapidly descended into farce. Of the 600 men who were to masquerade as Americans, only 10 could speak fluent English. Scores were caught by the Americans, exposed as Germans, and shot. According to Fritz Christ, then a 21-year-old Luftwaffe lance-corporal, many of his comrades were hopelessly ill-equipped. "Those with no English were instructed to exclaim, ’Sorry’, if they were approached by Americans, and then to open their trousers and hurry off feigning an attack of diarrhoea," he told The Sunday Telegraph last week. Mr Christ was transformed into "Lieutenant Charles Smith" from Detroit. The troops were trained to salute, shoot and even smoke like GIs, but there were fatal gaps in their coaching. Many turned up at US army supply depots and asked for "petrol" instead of "gas". They mistakenly rode four to a Jeep instead of two, as was standard US army practice. "Without prior notice, we were turned into suicide commandos," said Mr Christ, who decided to speak out to mark the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings. "At the last minute, when there was no going back, we were given cigarette lighters stuffed with cyanide capsules. It became clear that we were being sent to face terrible danger." Mr Christ says that in October 1944 he was duped into taking part in Operation Greif. Two plainclothed SS men turned up at his Luftwaffe barracks near Hamburg, asking for fluent English or French speakers. Mr Christ, who had been trained as an English translator, immediately volunteered. "I thought, ’Wonderful! I am going to interrogate American prisoners of war and be well away from the fighting’," he said. The following eight weeks surpassed his wildest expectations. At an SS training camp, the men were equipped with fake US army documents, dressed in captured US uniforms and coached to fire their US army-issue machineguns from the hip, American-style. "We had to watch American films which showed us how the GIs saluted, and even how they smoked cigarettes - never right down to the butt - and put them out. We were even given daily lessons in American slang," Mr Christ said. "We were accompanied by a fanatical SS officer who told us that our mission was to take Eisenhower dead or alive. We had detailed maps of French back roads leading to the general’s headquarters at Fontainebleu." The operation was considered so dangerous, however, that Hitler forbade Skorzeny himself from taking part. Skorzeny surrendered to the Allies in May 1945 and escaped from a prison camp in 1948. He settled in Fascist Spain and died in Madrid in 1975. Nazi high command documents suggested that Operation Greif involved 3,000 men equipped with 20 US Sherman tanks and 30 captured US reconnaissance vehicles. Yet in reality the mission was equipped with only two captured Shermans and a number of Jeeps. But though the raiders failed to achieve their goal, they did cause havoc within the US army ranks for several weeks. L/Cpl Christ survived only because he was attacked by his own side. His lorry, marked with white US army stars, was strafed by Luftwaffe fighter planes shortly after it set out from Belgium towards American army lines on December 16, 1944. "I jumped off the lorry and hid in a ditch before the vehicle exploded in a ball of fire," Mr Christ said. "Nobody had told the Luftwaffe what was going on." |
| Posted by:Bulldog |
| #7 It sounds mad, but so what? The German position at the time was hopeless, yet still they fought on. If you try to argue rationally that such an effort was madness, you're applying logic to a situation where logic had long since failed to apply. |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2004-05-02 6:48:38 PM |
| #6 But how! Check Fontainebleu in a map. It's near Paris!! Only in dreams they could travel that distance without any logistical support and assuming they dont get discovered. And where the spies? supposedelly to have any hint of success Eisenhower must be tracked. The german soldier is adding points to the story but more probably was SS propaganda machine supporting the soldiers morale, killing the enemy commander is always a boost . |
| Posted by: Anonymous4602 2004-05-02 12:12:52 PM |
| #5 I seemed to recall that Operation Greif (Griffin)was a part of the German offensive known as the Von Rundstedt's Ardennes Offensive or Battle of the Bulge. A Google search turned up a detailed account of the SS 1st Panzer Divisions Activities in this offensive as well as the mission of Skorzeny's Operation Greif http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/wwii/7-8/7-8_11.htm (Scroll down to page 270.) This document treated the Eisenhower assassination phase of Greif plan as a rumor. I'm still surprised by Fritz Christ's account because the main trust of the operation was around Malmedy in support of the Ardennes offensive. However, it is plausable that couple of tanks and several jeeps and men were split from main body to Fontainebleu. But why? |
| Posted by: GK 2004-05-02 11:36:19 AM |
| #4 Is there any newspaper that we can trust? Telegraph just went down in my ranking in a big way. Anyone that know II WWar and more precisely the Battle of the Bulge knows that was only a gossip that spread in german troops and Otto Skorzeny seeying the value boost for morale let go, also if one of them was captured. The objectif was only making a mess of US reinforcements and dont let US explode the bridges over Meuse river and others. To more info research "Operation Griffen" / 150th Panzer Brigade /Otto Skorzeny Btw that german guy was lucky most of their camrades were executed by fire squad on the spot because were wearing US uniforms and according Genebra convention can be convicted as spies. |
| Posted by: Anonymous4602 2004-05-02 11:23:01 AM |
| #3 Skorzeny wrote a book, My Commando Operations: The Memoirs of Hitler's Most Daring Commando. I have not read it. It supposedly mentions Operation Griffin which similarly used Germans dressed as GI's during the Battle of the Bulge. |
| Posted by: Zpaz 2004-05-02 11:22:15 AM |
| #2 ...All of which goes to show you the kind of thinking that can be expected from lunatic madmen hiding from the rest of the world when they know their time is running out. Any resemblance to today is, of course, purely coincidental. Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2004-05-02 10:15:02 AM |
| #1 Q. Who's buried in Grants Tomb? A. Brooklyn Dodgers! |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-05-02 7:51:09 AM |