On May the 5th, 1945, only days before Germany will officially surrender,
thus ending World War Two in Europe, a rather strange battle occured.
American troops of the 23rd Tank Battalion of the 12th Armored Division, Wehrmacht soldiers, French
prisoners and one SS officer will join forces to defend prisoners of war in an Austrian castle
against the Waffen-SS 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division until relief forces arrive. Known as
one of the strangest battles of the Second World War, this episode on the Battle of Castle Itter.
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It is May 1945. Germany lays in ruins, while the Russians and Americans are getting closer
to Berlin every day and most can see the war has nearly ended. Hitler has committed suicide as of
April 30th, 1945, yet some of his most fanatic supporters will fight on until the official
surrender of Germany on May 7th, 1945. Some of these fanatics who fought to the bitter end
were Schutzstaffel, commonly known as the SS, and, of these, the most zealous, the Waffen-SS.
While most German commanders were surrendering to Allied commanders,
in places like Austria many of the SS were carrying out reprisals as they could,
shooting at any windows that displayed a white or Austrian flag, executing male civilians as
possible deserters and prisoners of war in areas about to be liberated by the Allies.
In the small village of Itter, Austria lies a medieval castle
named Schloss Itter. The castle was seized by SS Lieutenant General Oswald Pohl under orders
from Heinrich Himmler on February 7th, 1943 and transformed into a prison by April 25th,
1943. It was placed under the same administration as the infamous Dachau concentration camp.
The prison contained high profile French prisoners who were of value to the Reich, among them the
famous tennis player Jean Borotra, former prime ministers Édouard Daladier and Paul Reynaud,
former commanders-in-chief Maurice Gamelin and Maxime Weygand, trade union leader Léon Jouhaux,
French resistance member François de La Rocque, and the elder sister of Charles de Gaulle,
Marie-Agnès Cailliau. Alongside these prisoners were some of their wives and family,
and a few Eastern European prisoners detached from Dachau to provide maintenance work.
On May 3rd, Zvonimir Čučković, an imprisoned Croatian, who was working as a handyman for the
castle, left under the pretext of performing an errand for the prison’s commander,
Sebastian Wimmer. Čučković was carrying a secret letter written in English by the prisoners seeking
help from the first American forces he could find. The nearest town of Wörgl was 8 kilometers
from the castle and occupied by German troops. Zvonimir Čučković went up the Inn River valley
towards Innsbruck, sixty-four kilometers away, and late that evening managed to find an advance
party of the 409th Regiment of the US 103rd Infantry Division of the VI Corps. He informed
them of the castle’s prisoners and they mounted a rescue, but were stopped by heavy shelling at
Jenbach enroute to Itter. This led them to be recalled east, taking Čučković with them.
On May 2nd, the commander of Dachau, Eduard Weiter, shot himself, as many other high-ranking
Nazis were doing at that time. This prompted Wimmer, who feared for his life, to abandon his
post. Wimmer and the SS-Totenkopfverbände guards departed Castle Itter, leaving the
prisoners to take control of the castle and arm themselves. In January 1945, injured SS Officer
Kurt-Siegfried Schrader transferred to a military hospital in Itter, bringing his family with him
to evade allied bombing raids. During his time in Itter, he often visited the castle and befriended
the POWs there. The newly freed prisoners asked him to take charge of their defenses.
Schrader quickly brought his family to the castle and began fortifying its defenses.
Failing to hear back from Čučković, the prisoners sent a Czech cook, Andreas Krobot to Wörgl on May
4th to seek help. Krobot, carrying a similar note, found the Austrian resistance in the town and was
led to Major Josef Gangl, who was commanding the remains of a Wehrmacht unit that was collaborating
with the resistance. They had defied orders to retreat and instead were protecting the local
population from the Waffen-SS reprisals. Major Gangl began to plan a raid to rescue the POWs
using his Wehrmacht unit and Austrian resistance fighters, but they were too few to perform such
a risky operation. They would need help. On May 4th, a reconnaissance unit with four
M4 Sherman tanks of the 23rd Tank Battalion, 12th Armored Division of the XXI Corps B Company, under
the command of Captain John C Jack Lee, had just reached Kufstein. The unit was idling in the town
square, awaiting relief from the 36th Infantry Division when Major Josef Gangl drove up to them
in a Kublewagen, waving a white flag. Gangl informed Lee that the SS 17th Panzergrenadier
Division were enroute and would execute the former POWs at Castle Itter. Gangl was leading twenty
Wehrmacht soldiers and could not hope to rescue and defend the prisoners from the Waffen-SS alone;
he asked for Captain Lee’s help. With a cigar in his mouth and a forty-five caliber pistol in his
holster, Lee did not hesitate agreeing to help. Lee and Gangl led a reconnaissance in Gangl’s
Kübelwagen to confirm the situation. Captain Lee and Corporal Edward Szymczyk sat in the backseat
of the Kubelwagen with their guns ready, with Major Gangl and Corporal Keblitsch in the front.
They came into Wörgl to find that Gangl’s Wehrmacht unit and the Austrian resistance
had recently pushed the Waffen-SS out of the town. After speaking to the resistance, Lee took command
and went back to Kufstein to rally a rescue force. Lee led his force, consisting of his own
M4 Sherman tank nicknamed “Besotten Jenny” and Lt. Wallaces S. Holbrook’s
“Boche Buster”. Lee was able to acquire three more Sherman tanks from the 753rd Tank Battalion
along with three squads of infantrymen from the 142nd Infantry Regiment. Unfortunately, upon
leaving Kufstein enroute to Wörgl, Lee’s column had to cross an old bridge over the Inn River.
Four of the Sherman tanks made it over, but the fifth caused the bridge to collapse and Lee was
forced to press on without his infantry support. The remnants of his force reached Wörgl and, to
further complicate things, the Austrian resistance insisted he leave behind some of his tanks to
protect the town from marauding Waffen-SS. Gangl told Lee that if he left behind some of his tanks,
he would supplement the relief force with some of his loyal Wehrmacht troops.
Lee accepted the offer and, for the first time during World War Two, American and German soldiers
would serve together in a joint operation. Lee took command of this new force consisting
of the Besotten Jenny” and “Boche Buster” M4 Sherman tanks, and forteen soldiers, of which six
were from an all-African American Company D 17th armored infantry battalion. They were accompanied
by Gangl and ten Wehrmacht soldiers as they made their way toward Castle Itter. There was only one
substantial bridge over a small river on the way, where Lee gave orders to leave Sergeant Elliot
with the Boche Buster Sherman tank to protect the crossing point. As Lee’s force continued,
they came across a squad of Waffen-SS trying to set up a roadblock. Lee’s force opened fire
on them forcing the Waffen-SS squad to flee into the surrounding forest. They found themselves at
Castle Itter just as night was beginning to fall. The armed French prisoners met their guests with
disappointment at the lack of numbers. They had expected an American armored division,
but instead received one lone Sherman tank, seven Americans and ten Germans. Shortly upon arriving,
Captain Schrader reported to Lee that Waffen-SS had been sighted in the vicinity of the castle.
Lee ordered Besotten Jenny to be parked in front of the main gate so it could defend the main road,
fed the soldiers and compiled a list of the forces they had.
Lee did not have enough vehicles to move everyone back to Kufstein, and thus they would need a plan.
Lee went over his defense plan alongside Gangl and Schrader; they would defend the castle until
American relief forces could arrive. While the surrounding area was crawling with SS,
Lee believed that the castle’s thick walls would allow his tiny force to hold the position.
Lee ordered the French prisoners to hide within the castle with the women and children,
but they refused and remained outside, taking positions alongside the Americans and Wehrmacht.
They took a machine gun from Besotten Jenny and mounted it on the rooftop of Castle Itter’s gate,
the defenders took various positions around Itter castle. The Wehrmacht defenders wore
black cloth armbands to designate them as friendly in case of friendly fire.
Throughout the night, the defenders were harassed by SS reconnaissance forces assessing their
strength with rifle and machine gun fire. The defenders shot back at the shadowy menace from
their positions upon the castle walls until dawn. On the morning of May 5th, a force of up to
one hundred and fifty Waffen-SS appeared from the local forest grounds and launched an attack.
Before the main assault began, Gangl was able to phone Alois Mayr, the Austrian resistance leader
in Wörgl, asking for reinforcements. Two German soldiers and a teenage Austrian resistance member,
Hans Waltl, left for the castle. The Waffen-SS opened fire on the castle walls
using MG-42 machine guns and a squad attempted to cut through barbed wire fixed in a ravine until a
defender shot at them, forcing them to flee. As Lee ran through the castle checking on defenses,
one allied German soldier had jumped off his wall position into the ravine, possibly to defect to
the enemy. Major Gangl speculated that the soldier most likely panicked and wanted to avoid execution
if they were overrun. Regardless, this soldier could tell the Waffen-SS where the defenses’
weakest points were. Frustrated by this, Lee demanded Gangl speak to the rest of his men.
Gangl reported back that all his men would carry the fight to the bitter end.
At 8:30am, Lee went on top of the keep with binoculars to observe the enemy. He quickly
spotted two 20mm anti-aircraft guns and two 88mm Flak guns being set up nearby. Lee also confirmed
the force to be the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division with over one to one hundred and fifty of
them converging on the castle. During the chaos, the two Wehrmacht and teenage Austrian resistance
fighters managed to sneak past the Waffen-SS and got to the castle to help with its defense.
Suddenly, the 20mm anti-aircraft guns began to shell the castle and an 88mm Flak gun lobbing a
shell into the upper floor of the main building. The 20mm cannons broke the windows of the castle
and rained chunks of its masonry everywhere. The defenders shot from their positions on the castle
as the Besotten Jenny provided machine gun fire support with her .50 caliber. Then another 88mm
shell slammed into Besotten Jenny as Corporal Szymcyk was trying to repair it. Szymcyk jumped
off the tank, running for cover as its gas tank blew, turning it into a fiery inferno.
The destruction of the Besotten Jenny signaled an assault by the Waffen-SS.
They swarmed in from the tree line to the east, sprinting towards the front gate, with others
scrambling up hill on the west trying to reach the lower walls of the castle's western side.
The defenders poured rifle and machine gunfire from the castle’s upper walls and loopholes,
causing significant casualties. Frenchmen Reynaud, La Rocque, Clemenceau and Borotra
all fired at the attackers alongside the soldiers despite Lee screaming at them to
get to safety. The SS managed to kill and wound several of the Wehrmacht defenders.
Reynaud was firing at the Waffen-SS from a dangerously open vantage point on the gate house
and Major Gangl was killed by an Waffen-SS sniper as he tried to remove Reynaud out of harm's way.
Meanwhile the 103rd Infantry Division force Zvonimir Čučković had met up with, reached
Wörgl. They were led by Major John T. Kramers, but were only four men, himself, Meyer Levin,
Eric Schwab and Eric Lutten, in a single jeep. Soon, they were met by Lt Col Marvin J. Coyle’s
2nd Battalion of the 142nd Infantry Regiment. Kramer called the castle and spoke directly to
Lee, who reported that the Waffen-SS fire was increasing on the defenders and that they were
running low on ammunition. Kramer told him that help was coming, and the force of three M4 Sherman
tanks of the 753rd Tank Battalion with troops from Company E of the 142nd Infantry Regiment
and the 103rd Infantry Division sped towards the castle with Boche Buster in the lead.
By noon, the Waffen-SS had pressed on their attack, but had not yet managed to breach the
fortress’s walls. Aware that they were almost out of ammunition, Jean Borotra
asked Lee if he could leave the castle and guide the incoming relief force to it. Lee knew that
there was little chance of Borotra surviving this, but accepted. The former tennis star put
on some Austrian peasant clothing, vaulted over a fifteen foot wall and ran forty yards right
into two Waffen-SS operating a MG-42 machine gun. Borotra calmly waved at the men, then pretended to
be foraging for food and urinated on a tree before casually walking by the two dumbfounded Waffen-SS.
Meanwhile, Lee began to plan his course of action in case the relief force did not arrive in time.
The defenders would withdraw into the castle's massive keep and resort to bayonets and fists to
make the Waffen-SS fight for every stairwell. Lee began pulling defenders off the walls
and shepherded the French towards the keep. Seeing the defenders pull back, the SS troops
pressed their attack on the castle entrance. Just before 3pm, some Waffen-SS prepared to shoot their
panzerfausts at the front gate when the sound of automatic gunfire and tanks came from behind their
positions near the village. The Waffen-SS began to scream “Amerikanische Panzer” and scattered,
running into the woods as the Boche Buster roared in, firing upon them. Soon, Krammer’s
force emerged and fired upon the Waffen-SS until around one hundred of them surrendered.
Borotra had found Kramer’s force and was recognized by the future Premier of Québec,
René Lévesque, a Québecois reporter embedded with them. Despite Borotra’s disguise, René was
a tennis buff and recognized him immediately. Borotra requested a American military uniform
and led them to rescue the castle defenders. The defenders of the battered medieval castle
broke out in cheers, rushing outside to the front entrance in celebration. The Boche Buster came to
the gate and Lee asked his tankers “What kept you?”. Captain Schrader formally handed custody
of the French POWs over to the US Army as Lee shook hands with Kramer. The battle of
Castle Itter was over. The defenders had four men wounded, with Major Gangl being the only death.
Captain Lee received the Distinguished Service Cross for defending the castle. Gangl was honored
as an Austrian national hero with a street in Wörgl named after him. Waffen-SS officer Schrader
was imprisoned for two years, but got out early partly thanks to his actions at Castle Itter.
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The battle of Castle Itter is regarded as the strangest battle of the Second World War. But
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