The end of The Second World War was also the fall of the Nazi Regime. However neo-Nazi powers and
movements keep on resurging from time to time. But was there a secret organization dedicated
to establishing a Fourth Reich? Welcome to Nutty History and this is the story of Otto Skorzeny,
the real-life supervillain behind the Neo-Nazi secret organization of the cold war era.
Otto Skorzeny just like his beloved Fuhrer wasn’t a German but an Austrian. The
Skorzeny family lived in Vienna and even though it was your usual run-of-the-mill,
middle-class family. But they also had a long history of military service.
Otto was born in the year 1908 and during his childhood, he wasn’t too happy about
his family’s austere lifestyle. When he complained to his father about it,
his father replied "There is no harm in doing without things. It might even be good for you
not to get used to a soft life." This lesson would stick with Otto for the rest of his life.
When he became a student at the Vienna University, Otto joined German-national Burschenschaft, which
was a traditional student association inspired by liberal and nationalistic ideas. Burschenschaft
is known for playing a significant role in the unification of Germany in 1871. As its member,
Otto got the chance to represent the association in fencing and he soon became a star of the group.
Otto participated in a total of fifteen personal combats and in the tenth fight he got hit across
the face which left quite an intimidating dueling scar. Thanks to the wound, Otto was later known as
Scarface in the SS, which helped his notoriety and terror. Skorzeny joined the Austrian Nazi
Party in 1931 and his charm and influence soon helped him to become a member of the Nazi SA
also known as Storm Detachment, which was the original parliamentary wing of the Nazi Party. On
March 12th, 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria and if it wasn’t for Otto Skorzeny, the then
Austrian President Wilhelm Miklas would not have survived the attack on his life by Austrian Nazis.
After Germany invaded Poland on September 1st, 1939, and triggered a set of events in motion now
remembered as the second world war, Skorzeny left his job as a civil engineer and signed up for the
Luftwaffe aka the German Air Force. However, he was turned down on the grounds of being too tall,
he was six foot four, and too old for he was roughly 31 years of age to be trained for aircrew.
This made Otto join Hitler's bodyguard regiment, the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler or LSSAH.
Ok, Nazis were apparently really bad at acronyms among other things. Skorzeny was among the SS
Division Das Reich and took part in many battles on the Eastern Front. His performance on the
battlefield earned Skorzeny the charge of a “technical section” of German forces during
the Battle of Moscow. His mission was to seize important buildings of the Communist Party,
including the NKVD headquarters at Lubyanka, and the central telegraph office, and other
high-priority facilities, before they could be destroyed. He was also ordered to capture the
sluices of the Moscow-Volga Canal because Hitler wanted to turn Moscow into a huge artificial lake
by opening them. The missions were canceled as German forces failed to capture the Soviet
capital. Skorzeny continued to serve the German cause in the Soviet Union until December 1942
when an explosion caused Shrapnel to hit him in the back of the head. He was evacuated from
the action after that but also was rewarded with Iron Cross. While recuperating from his injuries,
Skorzeny worked as a staff in Berlin, where he developed his ideas on unconventional commando
warfare. A few weeks after the Allied invasion of Sicily and the bombing of Rome, the Italian Grand
Council of Fascism voted a motion of no confidence against Mussolini. The same day, the king replaced
Mussolini with Marshal Pietro Badoglio and had him arrested. By this time Skorzeny had been made
head of German special forces and in charge of a unit of elite SS commandos. On Hitler’s orders,
Skorzeny and his men descended in gliders upon the remote Italian mountain-top hotel where
Mussolini was held captive. Overwhelming the Italian guards with the surprise attack,
Skorzeny and his men freed the deposed dictator. With this success, Skorzeny further enhanced his
reputation with Hitler and was promoted to major. He gained international renown when Mussolini was
paraded in front of the media with Skorzeny at his side. Winston Churchill even described the mission
as "one of great daring". The feat of rescuing Benito Mussolini earned him the Knights Cross of
the Iron Cross; the highest award Nazi Germany could bestow. Now, Otto Skorzeny was the Nazis'
go-to man for such operations. Another occurred in 1944 when Skorzeny and his men captured the
son of the Hungarian regent, Admiral Horthy. Once Miklós Horthy was secured after a brief firefight,
Skorzeny's team then rolled him up in a carpet and put him on a plane to Berlin. After the
failure of the July 20, 1944 assassination plot on Hitler, Skorzeny again played a leading part
in rounding up and torturing anti-Hitler conspirators. After D-Day, he led commandos
into Allied lines wearing American uniforms to capture U.S. weapons and attack from the rear.
The Allies dubbed him the “most dangerous man in Europe” for his daring raids and wild schemes.
And he proved them right by almost assassinating Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin
Roosevelt at the Tehran Conference in 1943. Hitler had authorized Otto Skorzeny to carry
out an assassination plot of the Allied leaders, kind of like they did in in Tarantino’s movie.
In glorious bastards when they killed Hitler and his group of top Nazi leaders. However,
thanks to Russia’s Internal Affairs ministry’s espionage the plan was foiled. Otto Skorzeny
was captured and incarcerated for two years after the fall of Berlin.
He was tried for his war crimes but he managed to find a technicality to argue
his way to be acquitted. But that was not the end of troubles for Skorzeny as he still
had to be tried for denazification. But then something quite odd happened. On July 27, 1948,
three US Military police officers entered the POW camp where Skorzeny was kept and claimed that they
had been ordered to take Skorzeny to Nuremberg for a legal hearing. Skorzeny, he never got to
that hearing. In fact, there was no hearing at Nuremberg. The US Military police officers
were actually former SS officers who helped Skorzeny to escape. Interestingly, Skorzeny
claimed afterward that the SS officers were aided by the US authorities to facilitate his escape.
Interestingly this was made possible by Allies’ West German government arbitration board declaring
Skorzeny denazified in absentia. The question was, was the USA helping Skorzeny all this time?
Popular media has perpetuated a myth that the ODESSA network was a secret Nazi organization
created by Otto Skorzeny to build the Fourth Reich and bring back the Nazi domination over the world
by rescuing and recruiting ex-Nazis from all over the world. If real-life was a James Bond movie,
ODESSA network would have been a fact but luckily that wasn’t the case. ODESSA Network
was the codename created by USA’s intelligence for the operations carried out by ex-Nazis to
aid and rescue fellow ex-nazis from POW Camps. But when the name was published in the media,
it caught the attention of people’s imagination and became a pop culture phenomenon.
But as they say, every fiction has some basis in the truth, the inspiration for SPECTRE, HYDRA,
and all other fictional Nazi secret organizations in pop culture do take inspiration from the life
of Otto Skorzeny. Look at the scars on Skorenzy’s face and Blofeld’s face played by Donald Pleasence
and Christoph Waltz for starters. This can’t be a mere coincidence! After escaping Allied Powers’
POW camp, Skorenzy did indeed set up a special team to extract and rescue other ex-Nazis from
Germany but the organization was named “Die Spine” which would translate to The Spider. Skorzeny had
set up an Import/Export agency in Madrid and though much of the business was legitimate,
it was also a front for Die Spine’s functions. It’s confirmed that Die Spine helped as many as
600 former SS men escape from Germany to Spain, Argentina, and from there to other countries.
Over the years, Skorzeny, Gehlen, and their network of collaborators supposedly gained
enormous influence in Europe and Latin America. Skorenzy also worked with various countries’
Intelligence departments to increase his power and prowess in the meantime. On the indirect
directions from the CIA, Skorzeny and his former SS colleagues trained the Egyptian Army and Arab
volunteers in 1952 to retaliate against English troops stationed in Suez Canal. And in 1953-54,
Skorzeny aided training Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian rebellions against Israel and also
planned their raids via the Gaza Strip. Skorenzy was also constantly traveling between Spain and
Argentina where he acted as an advisor to President Juan Perón and as a bodyguard for
his wife, Eva Perón. It is believed that the real purpose of these visits was to set up the Fourth
Reich in Latin America. Oh and also, to have an affair with Eva Perón. In the 1960s, Skorzeny set
up the Paladin Group, which he envisioned as "an international directorship of strategic domination
carried out by the joint effort of paramilitary operations by soldiers and political warfare by
civilians". Don’t ask me to say that again. Based near Alicante, Spain, the Paladin Group
specialized in arming and training guerrillas. Some of its operatives were recruited by the
Spanish Interior Ministry to wage a clandestine war against the terrorist group ETA. Skorzeny also
had no problem in playing both sides as in 1963 when he switched parties and was hired by MOSSAD,
the intelligence agency of Israel to assassinate German rocket scientist Heinz Krug who was working
for the Egyptian government. Former Mossad head Isser Harel confirmed that a number of
ex-Nazi operatives were also employed by Israel to gain counterintelligence
on Arab countries. Most of these Ex-Nazis were allegedly working for The Paladin Group.
Interestingly, fictional NAZI groups like SPECTRE and HYDRA also appeared in literature for the
first time in the 1960s. Which makes you kind of wonder. Hmm… The dream of establishing the
Fourth Reich however, fortunately, remained a dream only. Spain’s dictator Francisco
Franco and Skorzeny both died in the same year 1975 and with Juan Peron died a year earlier.
So, what do you think? Was Otto Skorzeny a real-life supervillain? Is The Paladin Group still
working in the shadows to establish an alt-right Fourth Reich? If you enjoy our videos and learning
history, smash that like button. Have any ideas for history videos, let us know in the comments.