The last days of the Second World War were incredibly chaotic. To nearly every German soldier
it became clear the war had been lost, both in the Wehrmacht and even among some ideological diehard
Waffen-SS. Europe was filled with large groups of refugees, displaced persons and bands of soldiers
that either were looking for another front to fight at or tried to reach the western allied
powers before the Soviets caught them. A very curious event happened during this chaotic time:
in Tyrol, Austria, a centuries-old castle housed prominent French political prisoners.
When a fanatical SS division attempted to take the castle, a German Wehrmacht unit ended up
fighting side-by-side with a United States army unit to defend these prisoners. It was
the only time during the entire war that the Germans and Americans fought side-by-side,
and it is often described as the ‘strangest battle of the entire war.'
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Battle of Castle Itter
This castle, Schloss Itter, was used as a prison for French people of interest
such as former French presidents, ministers and former commanders of the French army.
These people had been seized from France following Germany’s rapid conquest of the
country nearly five years earlier and were locked up as political prisoners, as a sort of bargaining
chip if you will. Among the imprisoned were former prime ministers Eduard Daladier and Paul Reynaud.
Now the Itter Castle wasn’t a regular prison. The guest rooms of the castle had been converted
to ‘prison cells’, but the ‘prisoners’ were free to move around. Furthermore, they had
a full staff consisting of Dachau prisoners and there was ample food and water available.
SS-Totenkopfverbände soldiers guarded them. In early May these men too realised the war was lost.
Itter was a subunit of the Dachau concentration camp, and the fact the commandant of Dachau,
Eduard Weiter, fled to Itter as the camp was liberated and then proceeded to take his own life
was quite the big giveaway the war wasn’t going well for the Germans. Following this
event Itter’s prisoner commander fled together with the guards, leaving the prisoners behind.
Following their abandonment the prisoners armed themselves. They were aware of a hostile SS
division in the vicinity and they weren’t too wrong about that. Closeby, the 17th Waffen SS
Panzer-Grenadier Division, was preparing itself to recapture the castle. Knowing the allies
were close by, the prisoners had already sent an arrested Yugoslavian communist resistance fighter
that worked at the castle as a handyman to try and get the Americans to come to rescue them.
When he didn’t return the group sent their cook to try and find Allies to rescue them as well.
Meanwhile, the handyman hadn’t disappeared or anything. He managed to reach Innsbruck
where US troops were stationed. Innsbruck was over 14 hours of walking away, but roaming SS
units occupied all nearby towns. Although the castle wasn’t in their military jurisdiction,
the US commander, Major John T. Kramers assembled a small rescue troop to go with the handyman.
As for the cook, he reached Wörgl, a small Austrian town. The Austrian resistance
ruled over it and the cook was brought to its leader, Wehrmacht commander Major Sepp Gangl.
Gangl was a highly decorated Wehrmacht officer that had refused official orders to retreat into
Germany. Together with his unit, they were somewhat renegades that now occupied the
Austrian town and led its anti-Nazi resistance. They realised defeat was imminent and tried
to protect the town’s population against SS war crimes. Gangl commanded 20-odd men, not enough to
protect the castle against a larger SS division. Realising this, he decided to call in the help
of the Allied powers, rapidly advancing in the area. He took a white flag and managed to contact
and surrender to a nearby US tank commander, Jack C. Lee junior and explain the situation.
Lee agreed to assemble a rescue party, but not before scouting around the castle together with
Gangl. It was one of the most curious alliances that were forged during the entire war.
A United States tank commander taking a Wehrmacht commander on a reconnaissance mission. Upon return
commander Lee assembled his own rescue party. The next morning, together with 14 US soldiers,
Gangl, a tank, driver and truck with 10 former Wehrmacht soldiers they approached the castle.
But obviously, while all this was going on the situation at the castle wasn’t dormant.
As a matter of fact, and this is just one of the many twists in this weird story,
the prisoners requested an SS-Hauptsturmführer they befriended, Kurt-Siegfried Schrader, to
take charge of its defence. So when Gangl and Lee arrived with their troops the situation must have
been rather odd - French politicians and persons of interest, under the command of a SS officer,
greeting US soldiers and a former Wehrmacht officer coming to their aid.
Nevertheless, the defence force was small. They were vastly outnumbered. Even with the
prisoners taking up arms, they would be no match for the ‘black brigades’ of the elite
SS division preparing the recapture. The US tank was placed at the castle’s entrance and
the men took up defensive positions. On the morning of the 5th of May,
the SS assault was launched. Around 150 Waffen-SS soldiers chipped down at the castle’s defences.
Lee’s tank was destroyed, although everyone survived the blast that destroyed it,
and the castle walls were heavily damaged. The battle went on for hours. As the ammunition
of the defending force was about to run out at 4 PM that day the column of tanks under the
command of Kramer, contacted by the Yugoslav handyman, arrived. Some SS soldiers fled,
and approximately 100 were arrested and subsequently sent to prisoner of war camps.
The French prisoners were brought to safety and arrived in France four days later.
For his exploits, Lee was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Gangl was
the only fatal casualty of the assault and was posthumously declared an Austrian national hero.
And, well, 2 days after this strange battle Germany signed its unconditional surrender
officially bringing the second world war in Europe to an end.
Another Wehrmacht vs SS situation
Now, although this was the only time Americans fought side-by-side with the Germans, by the end
of the war, it wasn’t too rare for Wehrmacht soldiers to counter the Waffen-SS actively.
One such example is the story of Wichard von Alvensleben, a Wehrmacht officer. When the
commanders of various concentration camps realised the war was over during the final weeks of the
war, many set up transports of valuable, prominent prisoners to the Dachau concentration camp.
In total, 139 prisoners were put on transport, including family members of Claus von Stauffenberg
who led the failed attempt on Hitler’s life in the 20 July plot, Dr Hjalmar Schacht, co-conspirator
of the plot and Sigismund Payne Best, the British SIS officer that was kidnapped during
the Venlo incident preceding the invasion of the Netherlands. I made a video about both events.
At any rate, the evacuation of the prisoners was under the command of Obersturmführer Friedrich
Bader and Edgar Stiller. Because the communication lines had broken, they only received orders to
evacuate the prisoners, unsure what to do with them next. They received the order to execute
all prisoners if they risked getting arrested by Allied troops. Waffen-SS and Sicherheitsdienst
soldiers guarded the transport of prisoners. In buses and trucks the prisoners were transported,
initially to Labourcamp Reichenau in Innsbruck, Austria. But this camp couldn’t house the
prisoners so they were moved to the Hotel Prager Wildsee, a municipality in South Tyrol,
where they arrived on the 28th of April. This entire area saw fierce Nazi resistance against
the rapidly advancing allied forces. The hotel Prager Wildsee was, to the
surprise of the captors, occupied by Luftwaffe generals and their staff. The only option was
to move the prisoners to the little town of Niederhof, 12 kilometres north of the hotel.
In the town, accommodation was prepared for the prisoners, and the SS and SD men
went on a drinking binge. Later that night one of the prisoners discovered a note in the
wallets of a drunkenly passed-out SD officer that called for the execution of several prisoners.
In addition, the drunk guards started to behave more aggressively towards the group of prisoners.
The next day one of the prisoners, Colonel Bogislaw von Bonin, who was
imprisoned after allowing a retreat from Warsaw following the Soviet Vistula-Oder offensive,
asked the local Wehrmacht liaison office to get in touch with an old friend. He ringed General Hans
Röttinger, who had his headquarters closeby in Bolanzo. He identified the high-profile prisoners
and communicated the incredibly dangerous situation the prisoners were in and the fear
they were to be executed. In response, Röttinger’s superior Generaloberst Heinrich von Vietinghoff
decided to send a Wehrmacht unit to Niederhof to ensure safe supervision of
the prisoners and make sure no laws were broken. Wehrmacht captain Wichard von Alvensleben was
tasked with the protection of the prisoners. Together with two men he went to Niederhof
where he ran into Friedrich Bader. Von Alvensleben said he was a representative from generaloberst
Heinrich von Vietinghoff and that Bader’s mission to transport the prisoners was completed.
As a Wehrmacht Captain he had no authority to give orders to the SS, however,
and indeed, Bader refused to accept the order. In a precarious position and heavily outnumbered
Von Alvensleben left the town and called for a Wehrmacht group to be dispatched to Niederhof.
Forty-five minutes later 15 Wehrmacht officers arrived, which still was not enough in case
chaos would break out. As such a larger army unit was requested, and 150 extra Wehrmacht soldiers
arrived 2 hours later. The group then re-entered the town, positioned themselves in the town square
and von Alvensleben once again negotiated with Bader and Stiller about the release
of prisoners. A tense situation developed where a firefight between the SS-troops and Wehrmacht unit
was a genuine possibility. Only after a near-standoff and the realisation among the
captors they were heavily outgunned, did they concede. The prisoners were handed over to the
Wehrmacht unit that was to protect them from now on, and Bader and Stiller’s men retreated.
They moved inland and the Wehrmacht moved the prisoners back to the Prager Wildsee Hotel.
There they resided with the Wehrmacht protecting them until the Allied forces
finally rescued them four days later and the Wehrmacht soldiers, including von Alvensleben,
voluntarily surrendered. The soldiers were released from US custody later that year.
Both the story of Castle Itter and the stand-off between the Wehrmacht and SS in Niederhof are
curious tales from those final days of the second world war, where the line between ally and foe was
very blurred, leading to very strange situations. Thank you for watching this video. If there’s a
topic or event you’d like to know more about, let me know your thoughts in a comment.
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