CHAPTER 5
THAT ANDREAS KROBOT had managed to make it safely from Schloss Itter to Wörgl was nothing short of miraculous. Despite von Hengl’s withdrawal of his battered forces to positions east of the castle, the roads along which the Czech cook had ridden west were not free of danger. Die-hard Waffen-SS troops were increasingly active in the area, setting up roadblocks, searching for deserters, and engaging any Austrian resisters they encountered. Through a combination of good luck and extreme caution Krobot had nonetheless managed to evade the obstacles, arriving in Wörgl with a tale of French honor prisoners in need of immediate rescue.
THE CONDITIONS THAT ULTIMATELY made such a relief mission necessary had been developing for many months. Though the French prisoners had certainly fared far better than the vast majority of the Nazis’ captives, the essentially benign routine at Schloss Itter began to change as Germany’s military fortunes steadily deteriorated throughout the latter half of 1944. Food became increasingly scarce for both the prisoners and their guards, and a growing shortage of fuel for the castle’s generators meant that candles and lanterns ultimately replaced electric lights. More ominously, the members of the castle’s guard force began taking the threat of enemy action more seriously. On October 7, 1944, Édouard Daladier witnessed an example of this higher level of readiness and recorded in his diary that he’d
watched the SS go rushing about the castle. Red flares went off. It was all either preparation to ward off a commando raid or a positioning exercise in anticipation of an attack from the village or from down in the valley. The maneuvers lasted two hours, and enlisted men and officers alike went through them in dead seriousness.1
Just ten days later, Daladier noted, the decidedly second-string guards—most of whom had never fired a shot in anger—were reinforced by twenty-seven combat-experienced Waffen-SS troops, who arrived at Schloss Itter bearing several additional machine guns and crates of ammunition. The newcomers immediately began reinforcing the castle’s defenses with what the elderly Frenchman described as “speed and discipline,”2 setting up sand-bagged firing positions and felling trees to be used to block the approach roads. And there were other measures as well. On October 27 Wimmer announced that he was instituting a defensive alarm system. One type of siren would indicate an Allied air attack; when it sounded, the French prisoners could decide for themselves whether to take shelter in the castle’s cellars, with the understanding that if they didn’t, it was at their own risk. The other alarm would sound if a ground attack were imminent; in that case the prisoners were to move immediately to the cellars. If they didn’t, Wimmer said, they would be taken there by force.3
While the danger of the French prisoners being killed or injured by an errant Allied bomb was real, they were in many ways more vulnerable to the increasingly erratic behavior of Sebastian Wimmer. The castle’s commandant had always been mercurial and subject to fits of unreasoning anger, but his personality swings had become far more pronounced following a mid-July 1944 trip to Munich to attend the funeral of his brother, who had been killed days earlier in an Allied bombing raid. The city had been subjected to another massive air attack the day before Wimmer’s arrival, and on reaching the city the SS-TV officer couldn’t find a taxi or working streetcar. As he was walking through rubble-filled streets toward the makeshift morgue that held his brother’s remains, the air-raid sirens wailed yet again, and falling bombs obliterated the building. Wimmer, Daladier recalled, “returned to Itter totally demoralized.”4
Schloss Itter’s commander increasingly sought to alleviate his demoralization with alcohol, often drinking steadily from morning until late at night. Prisoners and guards alike tried to avoid Wimmer anytime after noon: though he was usually calm for the first few hours after opening a bottle of Asbach Uralt,5 later in the day his true nature would reveal itself in screaming rages and random violence. While the SS-TV officer generally didn’t focus his alcohol-fueled anger on his VIP charges, he had no compunctions about tormenting the number prisoners. One of his favorite targets was Zvonko Čučković; while Wimmer would occasionally treat the Croat handyman with something approaching kindness,6 his more usual attitude is illustrated by two incidents that occurred during the winter of 1944–1945.
In the first, Čučković was working on Wimmer’s staff car in the small courtyard between the castle’s front gate and the schlosshof when the SS-TV officer staggered up to him and without saying a word punched the Croat in the face. Knowing well that any reaction would only further enrage the drunken Wimmer, Čučković said nothing and quickly snapped to attention. The castle’s commandant nevertheless hit him again and was about to punch the Croat a third time when he realized that Maurice Gamelin—out for his daily constitutional—had walked up behind him. Wimmer saluted the French general, who returned a withering glare and said, “You cannot beat a prisoner,” before turning his back and walking away. Wimmer staggered off, muttering to himself, and didn’t leave his suite for two days.
The second incident was potentially more dangerous for Čučković. Just after a particularly heavy snowfall, a seriously inebriated Wimmer summoned the Croat to the guardroom and began screaming at him for not repairing a leaking toilet in the commandant’s suite. Čučković tried to explain that he’d ordered the necessary rubber washer from the supply depot at Dachau, but it hadn’t yet arrived. Wimmer shrieked that he wasn’t interested in excuses and ordered the Croat to spend the next two nights shoveling snow in the rear courtyard from six PM until six AM. Had it not been for the occasional help provided by the two SS enlisted men who’d been tasked to watch him—their assistance most probably an attempt to curry favor as Germany spiraled ever closer to defeat—Čučković might well have died of exhaustion or exposure.
Wimmer’s outbursts increased in both frequency and virulence as the Allied armies got closer to Schloss Itter. Fortunately for Čučković, one of the worst wasn’t aimed at him. On March 20, 1945, the Croat was again working on the commandant’s staff car when Gertrud, one of the female number prisoners, ran up to him with the news that Wimmer was about to shoot Andreas Krobot. Rushing to the castle’s scullery, Čučković found a scene of pandemonium: An obviously drunken Wimmer was pointing his Walther P-38 pistol out an open window at the terrified Czech cook, who was standing in the middle of the castle’s small vegetable garden. All of the female prisoners who worked in the kitchen were standing to one side, sobbing loudly, as Wimmer screamed at Krobot, “You dog, come one step forward and one to the left,” apparently trying to line up a better shot. Čučković grabbed a large knife from a nearby rack, determined to kill the commandant if he shot Krobot, but the sudden appearance of Wimmer’s wife defused the situation before any blood was spilled.7
By the first month of 1945, the Waffen-SS troops who’d temporarily bolstered Schloss Itter’s defenses had moved on, leaving behind a guard force infected with what Daladier called “utter consternation” because of Germany’s clearly terminal military condition. In a January 30 diary entry, the Frenchman wrote:
This is the twilight of the gods. . . . All the radios have been locked up in the Commandant’s office for the last few days, probably to keep the garrison’s morale from caving in, but in spite of all the precautions, disastrous news reports continue to filter through. The SS [men] can see the clenched jaws and the faces of [Wimmer and Otto]; their strained and downcast looks tell them just as much as they could ever learn from listening to the field communiqués. . . . I could see the dejection on the faces . . . of the soldiers. . . . [Čučković] told me that we had to be on our guard. Some of the SS troops were talking about suicide. Others planned to seize all the food supplies . . . get drunk and shoot us.8
The last possibility was of real concern to Daladier and his fellow honor prisoners, for they knew all too well that their lives might not be worth much to Nazis intent on covering up their crimes. Reynaud was seen as especially vulnerable, and during the last days of April, Clemenceau—who spoke fluent German—took it on himself to summon Wimmer to a meeting with Reynaud and Gamelin. In their presence, Clemenceau reminded the castle’s commandant that the lives of Reynaud and indeed all the French prisoners were in the SS officer’s hands.
“It is possible that you may shortly be told to hand over President Paul Reynaud,” Clemenceau said. “If President Reynaud is taken away, you know for what purpose it will be. You also know the Allies will hold responsible all those who help in an action of this nature. What do you mean to do?”
Recounting this conversation in his memoirs, Reynaud said that Wimmer replied that he was only accountable to his conscience (an attribute, it must be said, that was completely absent during the SS-TV officer’s time in Poland and at Majdanek and Dachau). Wimmer also said, however, that the deaths of Reynaud and the other prisoners would not be compatible with Germany’s postwar interests and that he would aid in their escape if it became necessary.9
Despite Wimmer’s pledge, the arrival at the castle of a nearly constant stream of senior SS-TV officers kept the French on edge. Often accompanied by their families and always loaded down with weapons, baggage, and booty, the SS men used Itter as a way station as they attempted to escape the advancing Allies.10 Most of the fleeing Nazis stayed only long enough to requisition what food and water they could, but on the night of April 30 SS-Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Eduard Weiter, the last commander of Dachau, settled in with a retinue of his subordinates and their wives and children.
It was not Weiter’s first visit to Itter; he had inspected the castle and its prisoners in October 1943 and at that time had spoken with Reynaud and several of the other French captives. On this, his final visit, Weiter—whom Daladier later described as “obese and apoplectic, with the face of a brute”11—drunkenly bragged to Wimmer that he had ordered the execution of some two thousand prisoners before leaving Dachau for the last time. Hearing of Weiter’s boast, the French captives at Itter were therefore understandably concerned that his arrival signaled their own executions. As it turned out, however, the only death Weiter had on his mind was his own. As Reynaud later recounted, early on the morning of Wednesday, May 2,12 “I heard in the room next to mine a couple of shots: [Weiter] had just shot himself near the heart, and then finished himself off with a second shot behind the ear.”13
A group of Weiter’s SS minions slapped together a pine box and hauled it up to his room but found that it was too large to fit through the door. Improvising, they dragged his corpse into the hallway and manhandled it down several flights of stairs and into the garage in the schlosshof. There they unceremoniously dumped the body into the pine coffin, and one of them left to speak with the priest of Itter village’s small parish church of St. Joseph. At that point Reynaud, Gamelin, Jouhaux, and Clemenceau—wanting to positively identify the dead man as the senior Dachau officer who had inspected Itter months earlier, so as to allow the Allies to cross him off any list of wanted war criminals—demanded to see the corpse. As Reynaud later recalled: “It was a frightful sight. Soldiers had stolen the dead man’s boots. His bloodstained shirt was half opened to show his breast; his head was thrown back; his mouth was wide open and his eyes staring. This torturer looked like one of the damned.”14
Once the Frenchmen had agreed that the corpse was indeed that of Weiter, SS men carried the crude coffin out the castle’s front gate and started toward the village, only to encounter the soldier who had gone off to speak to the priest at St. Joseph’s. The clergyman, to his credit, had categorically refused to let Weiter be interred in holy ground, so the SS men hurriedly buried the “butcher of Dachau” in an unmarked grave in a small clearing just outside the castle’s walls. His only monument was a heap of brush meant to hide the patch of newly turned earth.15
Weiter’s suicide seemed to galvanize Wimmer. Early on May 4—after first asking several of the VIPs to sign a statement saying he had treated them “correctly” and then assuring Reynaud and Daladier that he would find a way to protect the French prisoners against reprisal by the roving bands of Waffen-SS troops active in the surrounding hills—the SS-TV man abruptly fled the castle with his wife. Wimmer was only marginally true to his word, however, since all he did to ensure the promised “protection” for the VIPs was to enlist the aid of an acquaintance, a war-wounded officer recuperating at home in Itter village. And in what Wimmer may have intended as a final irony, the man he tapped to be the French VIPs’ surrogate savior was himself a decorated member of the Waffen-SS.
AT FIRST GLANCE SS-CAPTAIN Kurt-Siegfried Schrader appears to be the very archetype of all the evil Nazis who have goose-stepped across cinema screens for the past seventy years. He peers with frightening intensity from the official photo attached to his personnel file, the highly polished death’s head totem on his peaked officer’s hat almost pulsating with menace and the double lightning-stroke SS runes on his collar obviously worn with arrogant pride. But it is not simply the uniform and facial expression that speak of his dedication to the cause: the man portrayed in the personalakten—and in Schrader’s own postwar writings16—was for most of his military career the personification of the dedicated Waffen-SS officer.
Born in Magdeburg in August 1916, Schrader was the third and youngest child of a minor prewar judicial official who at the time of his son’s birth was a soldier serving in France. With the end of World War I Schrader Senior returned to his former post, his position and influence increasing considerably over the years, even as his politics veered sharply to the right. In 1930 the elder Schrader attended a Nazi rally in Leipzig and upon his return proclaimed to his family that Adolf Hitler would be the “savior of Germany.”17 Kurt-Siegfried was soon drawn into his father’s politics, and at the age of fourteen he joined a pro-Nazi youth group. The organization was still illegal in what at the time was the federal state of Prussia, and, when young Schrader was caught handing out Nazi propaganda stickers to his fellow students, he was expelled and thereafter prohibited from attending public schools. Undaunted by the expulsion, Schrader enrolled in a right-wing private school and joined the Hitler Youth movement. He participated in several large Nazi rallies, and, when Hitler was named Germany’s chancellor in January 1933, Schrader remembered that it was as if a bright light had suddenly illuminated what had been a dark and forbidding horizon.
In 1934 Schrader’s considerable intelligence—and his father’s political connections—led to the eighteen-year-old’s admission to a two-year program at an elite military-political school in Berlin. Following his graduation the young man spent a compulsory six months in the civilian Reich Labor Service,18 after which he had expected to do his required two years of military service with the Nürnberg-based Artillerie Regiment 7. When that unit turned down his application, a former teacher suggested that Schrader apply to one of the military units then being formed within the SS. He did, and in April 1937 he joined the field telephone company of the SS-Nachrichtensturmbann (signals battalion).19
As a junior enlisted man in the communications unit Schrader took part in both the March 1938 Austrian Anschluss and the annexation of the Czech Sudetenland the following October. Upon the conclusion of the latter operation Schrader was tapped to attend four weeks of infantry training provided by the SS regiment Germania, and in April 1939 he entered the SS officer candidate school in Braunschweig. Schrader enjoyed both the military and political aspects of his officer training, later remembering that it was at Braunschweig that he “really got serious” about his professional life.20 And it was after his graduation and commissioning as a second lieutenant that the young officer got serious about his personal life: in January 1940 Schrader married his girlfriend, Annaliese Patales.
The war didn’t initially intrude on the newlyweds. For the first year of their marriage Schrader was assigned to various staff positions in eastern Germany, and in January 1941 he took up a three-month posting to Prague as the adjutant in a replacement battalion. He and Annaliese apparently enjoyed their time in the former Czech capital, for Schrader recalled that they “had everything their hearts could desire.”21 In April the young SS officer received a plum assignment as adjutant in Heinrich Himmler’s newly formed guard unit, the Begleitbataillon Reichsführer SS. After organizing and equipping in Berlin, the battalion moved to Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s field headquarters near Rastenburg in East Prussia, where it provided perimeter security.
That relatively safe assignment didn’t last long. Soon after Germany’s June 1941 invasion of Soviet Russia, Schrader’s unit was sent to join the forces besieging Leningrad. In late November Schrader, the battalion commander, their driver, and two escorting motorcyclists were ambushed by Russian partisans while inspecting unit dispositions. The Waffen-SS22 men escaped with their lives, but Schrader was wounded in the ankle. He was first sent to a military hospital in Tosno (a Leningrad suburb) and then evacuated west by hospital train. It was a slow trip, mainly because Russian partisans kept blowing up sections of the track. He finally arrived in East Prussia and was put on another hospital train to Prague, where he was reunited with his wife in mid-December. Within days of that reunion the Schraders welcomed their first child, a daughter they named Heidi. Because of his wounds, in early 1942 Schrader was temporarily released from active duty and allowed to enroll in Berlin’s Humboldt University; for two semesters he studied biology and geography while living with his wife and daughter.
Schrader put his uniform back on in October 1942, when he was assigned as the battalion adjutant in the 7. SS-Freiwilligen Gebirgsdivision (volunteer mountain division) “Prinz Eugen,” which was fighting partisans near Pancevo, in the southern Banat area of Serbia. In February 1943 he was tapped to be the adjutant of the 22nd SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment, part of the 10th SS-Panzer Division “Frundsberg,” then being formed in Angoulême, in France’s Charente department. While he was thus engaged, Annaliese gave birth to their second child, daughter Birgit, in Berlin. Concerned for the safety of his family, he took advantage of a proclamation by Reichsminister Josef Goebbels that mothers with small children could leave the capital to avoid the increasingly heavy Allied bombing. Annaliese and her daughters first moved in with her parents near Bielefeld, some 200 miles southwest of Berlin; when the bombing got worse there, they moved to Augsburg, another 350 miles to the southeast.
At the end of 1943 Schrader decided to move his family yet again, this time to a place he assumed was unlikely to attract the attention of Allied bombers—the Austrian Tyrol. He had heard that an officer he’d known in Prague, none other than “Wastl” Wimmer, had just taken command of the Special Prisoner Facility at Schloss Itter. Schrader contacted Wimmer, who offered to find a place for Annaliese and the girls in Itter village. The castle’s commandant obtained a small but comfortable house (probably by requisitioning it from its rightful owners), and Schrader was apparently able to get time off to move his family from Augsburg to Itter. Soon after that move, in January 1944, the Schraders’ Berlin apartment was destroyed by an Allied bomb.23
In March 1944 “Frundsberg” was deployed to Ukraine, and in April it underwent its baptism of fire near Tarnopol. The division was rushed back to France in response to the Allied landings in Normandy in June and immediately went into action southwest of Metz. Beginning on June 29 “Frundsberg” took part in the German counteroffensives near Caen, and the fighting was intense—Schrader called it “an inferno” and “murderous.”24 His unit was subjected to constant attack by Allied aircraft, naval gunfire, and artillery, and within just a few weeks 22nd SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment had been effectively destroyed. In early July Schrader himself fell victim to Allied aircraft: a fighter-bomber strafed the kübelwagen25 in which he was riding, and he suffered severe wounds to his head and right leg. Indeed, so grievous were his injuries that at the field aid station where he was initially treated, someone crossed out his name on the first page of his soldbuch (the twenty-four-page personal identity document carried by all German soldiers) and then rewrote it in very black ink, an indication that he was not expected to live.
Schrader did survive, however, and was transferred first to a field hospital in Dijon and then by train to a larger hospital in Munich. Within days of his arrival there, word came of the July 20 attempted assassination of Hitler. Apparently already disillusioned with Nazism, the bedridden Schrader had lots of time to think. He ultimately came to a conclusion that was especially momentous, given his SS oath: he “mentally broke” with the führer, the Nazi Party, and the Third Reich. His only goal now was to protect his family and make it through the rest of the war unscathed.26
While Annaliese Schrader was able to visit her husband once a week, taking the train from Wörgl to Munich, Allied air attacks on Germany’s rail networks were making the trip increasingly time-consuming and significantly more dangerous. In January 1945 Schrader was able to get himself transferred to the small military hospital in Wörgl, and within days of his arrival in Austria he had convinced his doctors to let him live with his family in Itter village. This marked the start of a time of relative peace for Schrader: he had no military duties, wore no uniform, and was able to spend quality time with his wife and young daughters. Indeed, his only official task during this time was to make twice-weekly trips to the Wörgl hospital for examinations and consultations with his doctor.
Schrader made the journeys as a passenger in a staff car provided by his old comrade Wimmer. In order to exercise his damaged leg, the injured Waffen-SS man would walk the several hundred yards from his home in the village to Schloss Itter, where the guards would usher him into the courtyard. While waiting for the staff car to be readied, Schrader would often fall into conversation with some of the German-speaking French VIPs, to whom he apparently made known his disgust with the Nazi regime. His views earned him such a warm welcome among the schloss’s French guests that Schrader began making regular social visits to the castle, sharing cigarettes and rough Tyrolean red wine with the likes of Clemenceau, Jouhaux, and Bruchlen during wide-ranging discussions of politics and philosophy. Schrader would sometimes bring his wife and daughters along during his visits to the castle, and the children made such an impression on Andreas Krobot that he would make small cakes, torts, and other sweets for them. The Czech cook’s kindness to Heidi and Birgit touched Schrader, and the unlikely friendship that developed between the political prisoner and the Waffen-SS officer would ultimately save the latter’s life.
As pleasant as it was, Schrader’s Tyrolean idyll couldn’t last. Germany’s horrendous casualty rates in the last months of the war meant that virtually any soldier who could fog a mirror and hold a weapon would be put into the front line. In March 1945 Schrader—despite being far from recovered and still needing a cane—was declared fit for duty and assigned as the adjutant in SS-Feldersatz Brigade 502. Though officially a replacement unit intended to provide trained infantry troops to field units, the brigade was put directly into the line to help prevent the American capture of the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine River at Remagen. The German defense failed, and Schrader barely escaped capture. What remained of Feldersatz Brigade 502 was withdrawn to Nabburg, some fifty miles east of Nürnberg. There Schrader received orders assigning him to a unit near Budapest, Hungary, but when he reached Vienna in mid-April, the local Waffen-SS commander told him that Budapest had already fallen to the advancing Russians. He was ordered to instead present himself for duty at the SS-Führungshauptamt, the operational headquarters of the SS, which had moved from Berlin to Bad Tölz, Bavaria, just thirty-four miles northwest of Itter. But again enemy action forced a change in plan. The train27 Schrader boarded in Vienna on April 24 was attacked by Royal Air Force fighter-bombers near the city of Melk, Austria, destroying the engine and forcing all the passengers to seek shelter in the nearby woods. The British aircraft returned repeatedly to strafe the train’s occupants in what Schrader called a “rabbit hunt”; when the attackers eventually departed, a replacement locomotive appeared, several undamaged rail cars were attached, and Schrader’s trip west continued.
That journey ultimately took the train to the major railway junction at Wörgl, and Schrader, in no hurry to get to Bad Tölz and hoping for a chance to see his family at Itter, took the opportunity to go in search of an officer he thought might be able to change his orders. That man was none other than Lieutenant Colonel Giehl, commander of both the mountain troops’ NCO school and the newly constituted battle group that bore his name, with whom Schrader had become acquainted during his convalescence in Wörgl. The Waffen-SS officer was in luck; Giehl told him it was no longer possible to get to Bad Tölz, because American forces had already taken Munich and were moving rapidly south. Instead, on April 28 Giehl added Schrader to the battle group staff as a supply and logistics officer.
While pleased to again be stationed close to his family, Schrader had no intention of participating in Germany’s obviously terminal war effort. For several days after joining Giehl’s staff the twenty-nine-year-old Waffen-SS officer carefully sounded out the battle group’s other staffers on their feelings about continuing the fight. It must have been a very delicate investigation indeed, for the wrong word to the wrong person could well have put Schrader in front of a firing squad. Moreover, the officers Schrader cautiously approached—all of whom were Wehrmacht—would certainly have had their own serious misgivings about sharing their true beliefs with a highly decorated member of the Waffen-SS, the same organization whose troops were even then hauling “defeatists” out of their homes and shooting them or hanging them from lampposts simply for displaying white flags.
Perhaps it was a genuine desire to end the war without further bloodshed and destruction, or possibly it was a less honorable (though no less understandable) wish to simply survive the conflict: for whatever reason, Schrader and several of his Wehrmacht colleagues on the battle group staff overcame their mutual suspicion and decided to trust one another. Then, having revealed themselves to be in favor of immediate peace instead of continued war, the officers went to Giehl and convinced him that further combat was pointless. On May 2 the battle-group commander ordered his troops to stop fighting and surrender to the advancing Americans as the opportunity arose; he also told his staff officers to make their way home as best they could. Knowing that roving bands of Waffen-SS troops and Gestapo men were summarily executing as deserters any soldiers caught on the road without orders officially releasing them from duty, Schrader asked Giehl for a signed discharge statement. Written hurriedly on a sheet of scrap paper, the document read:
CONFIRMATION
SS Captain Schrader from the Reserves reported for duty on April 28, 1945, to serve his country. As he is of no use in battle due to his injury, he was released from my staff to return to his hometown, Itter.
In lack of an official seal, signed
Giehl,
Lieutenant colonel and commander28
While the document was something less than a full discharge—to protect himself should Schrader be arrested, Giehl wrote that he’d “released” the Waffen-SS officer from duty because of his injuries rather than discharging him from the military altogether—it was well phrased. And it worked: though stopped several times between Wörgl and Itter by Waffen-SS troops and Gestapo men manning hastily erected roadblocks, Schrader was not detained. He made it safely home and put away his uniform, assuming his war was over.
THOUGH EDUARD WEITER’S suicide in the early hours of May 2 was apparently the trigger for “Wastl” Wimmer’s ultimate departure from Schloss Itter, the castle’s commandant was also unnerved by an event that occurred the following day. Zvonko Čučković, whom Wimmer had assumed he’d browbeaten and bullied into cringing obedience, had disappeared without a trace. The SS-TV officer was convinced—rightly, as it happened—that the Croat handyman had left the castle and gone in search of Allied troops he intended to guide back in order to rescue the French prisoners.
Čučković’s flight on May 3 was the result of rare agreement between Paul Reynaud and Édouard Daladier. The news pouring from the clandestine radio hidden in Reynaud’s room clearly indicated that American forces were advancing into Tyrol, with Innsbruck as their initial objective. Knowing that the breakdown of German military discipline in the area would only increase the vulnerability of themselves and their fellow honor prisoners, the two decided that someone should leave the castle and go in search of the closest Allied unit. Čučković seemed the ideal choice, in that the Croat often left the castle to do errands for Wimmer. Indeed, for several days Zvonko had been biking back and forth the two miles between Schloss Itter and the farmhouse in Mühltal29 in which the Wimmers were apparently intending to hide out, working to install electric lights. When the elderly Frenchmen approached Čučković with their plan, he readily agreed. Christiane Mabire wrote a letter in English explaining the prisoners’ plight, which Čučković was to present to the first Americans he encountered. All that remained was to find a plausible reason for the Croat handyman to leave the castle.
Ironically, Wimmer himself provided the reason. Just before noon on May 3 Čučković was in the schlosshof’s garage when the commandant walked in and asked him if he had enough parts to finish installing the electric bedside lamps in the farmhouse.
“Sir,” Čučković replied, “I have enough material.”
“Good, you will accompany Sergeant Euba on foot this afternoon and ensure that there is electricity in those two lamps.”
Understandably concerned that the presence of one of the castle’s guards would prevent his escape, Čučković responded that he could accomplish his task more quickly if he were allowed to bike to Mühltal by himself. After peering intently at the Croat for a few moments, Wimmer turned and walked off. Not knowing whether he’d somehow given himself away, Čučković remained rooted to the spot, trying to decide what to do next. Before he reached a decision, Wimmer returned with a bicycle.
“I’ve put your tools in the basket,” the commandant said. “Let’s go.”
Čučković pushed the bike to the front gate, which Wimmer unlocked and pulled open. Glancing at his watch, the Croat noted that it was one thirty, just as Wimmer said, “Be quick about it.”
“I will be, Captain,” Čučković replied and started pedaling up the schlossweg, the short access road, toward Itter village. As he passed the small St. Joseph’s Church, the Catholic handyman muttered a quick prayer: “Dear Lord, please help me get to the Americans today.”30
Čučković headed northeast out of the village and covered the distance to Mühltal in less than twenty-five minutes—and kept right on going. He intended to make first for Wörgl and then turn southwest on the road along the south bank of the Inn River. He calculated that he could travel the thirty-five miles to Innsbruck in less than three hours, passing through Kundl, Jenbach, Schwaz, and Hall. What he hadn’t counted on was the presence along his route of so many armed German soldiers. The main road between Wörgl and Mühltal was busy with troop trucks and kübelwagens carrying men of Battle Group Forster east to take up blocking positions near Söll, and when Čučković reached Wörgl, he noted scores of Waffen-SS troops going door to door, apparently searching for deserters. The Croat managed to cycle through the town without being stopped, but, as he turned onto the road leading to Kundl, some four miles on, a commanding voice shouted “Halt!”
Čučković stopped instantly and looked around. A squad of men of the Grossdeutschland division had emplaced four MG-42 machine guns to cover the road junction, and one of the soldiers was walking forward, his machine pistol pointed straight at the handyman. Mindful that the letter in his pocket—written in English and asking American forces to rush to Schloss Itter—could condemn him to a quick death if discovered by the Wehrmacht troops, Čučković put on his most ingratiating smile and bowed his head slightly as the soldier approached.
“Who are you, and where are going?” the man barked.
“Sir, I am on the way to Kundl,” Čučković replied carefully.
“What do you want there?”
“Sir, Captain Wimmer at Schloss Itter ordered me to install some electric lights,” the Croat said. “He told me it was very important that I do the work and return quickly.”
The mention of Wimmer’s name and rank seemed to ease the soldier’s suspicion, and, after a quick look at the tools in the bicycle’s basket, he waved his hand dismissively and grunted, “On your way, then.”
Čučković remounted and pedaled on. Just west of Kundl he was forced to the side of the road as two Tiger tanks rumbled by, headed east toward Wörgl. The men in the commander’s hatches were wearing black Waffen-SS tunics, and daubed on the turret sides in white paint were the slogans “Loyal to the Führer!” and “People to Their Weapons!” The tankers stared at Čučković but didn’t stop, and, as soon as they passed, the Croat resumed his journey west. He’d gone only a few miles when a Waffen-SS trooper guarding a small bridge near Jenbach halted him. Čučković gave him a variation of the story he’d earlier told the Grossdeutschland soldiers, this time saying Wimmer had ordered him to Schwaz to do some unspecified electrical work. The tale was apparently just as convincing, for the SS man allowed him to pass. A few hundred meters along the road the Croat stopped to rest, and he noticed a military truck coming toward him from the west. The vehicle roared past and then stopped briefly to pick up the soldier on the bridge. Seconds after the truck moved on, a huge explosion demolished the span. The unexpected detonation startled Čučković, who jumped back on his bike and set off quickly down the road, exhorting himself, “Forward, Zvonko, you’re in no man’s land!”
Zvonko was indeed between the lines and passed through Schwaz and Hall without seeing anyone; the only movement in either town was the fluttering of white and red-white-red (Austrian) flags from upper-floor windows. Čučković could hear occasional gunshots in the distance and was shocked by the sight of a dead civilian lying in the road as he reached the outskirts of Innsbruck. Pedaling toward the center of the city, he rounded a corner and was suddenly confronted by more tanks. Skidding to a halt he fully expected to be riddled by gunfire but then realized that the vehicles all bore large white stars. Čučković’s long, lonely ride was over: he’d found the U.S. Army.
The Croat had literally run into the lead elements of Major General Anthony C. McAuliffe’s 103rd Infantry Division. The famed paratrooper31 and his men were completing their largely unopposed capture of Innsbruck, and the roadblock Čučković encountered marked the most easterly edge of the American line. A soldier wearing a brassard and with “MP” lettered in white on his helmet walked up to the Croat and spoke to him. Gesturing to indicate that he spoke no English, Čučković handed the man the letter written by Christiane Mabire. The soldier scanned it quickly and then motioned the Croat to follow him.
The MP led Čučković to Innsbruck’s town hall, which had been turned into the division’s makeshift headquarters. The building was crowded, and the MP called out to a civilian wearing a colored armband. The two spoke for a moment; then the civilian turned and, in German, asked Čučković where he was from.
“Yugoslavia,” the Croat replied.
The civilian’s face lit up as he responded in Serbo-Croatian: “Brother, why didn’t you say so earlier? I am a Yugoslav myself, but born in America!”
Thrilled at the chance to speak his native tongue, Čučković poured out the story of his ride from Schloss Itter, adding that they needed to rescue the French VIPs as soon as possible.
“Brother, please listen to me,” the civilian32 said. “We are the first group to arrive here; we just got here an hour ago. We are not allowed to leave Innsbruck until our commanders arrive. They won’t get here until midnight, so it is best if you get some rest because you look like you are very tired. Come back tomorrow at seven AM, and we will find a solution.”
Though not pleased at the delay, Čučković saw the wisdom of getting some sleep. He’d ridden for nearly seven hours and was bone tired, and he didn’t protest when his newfound friend led him to a nearby hotel that had been commandeered for use as a barracks. The Croat was given food, water, and cigarettes, then led to a private room. Within minutes of walking in the door he was sprawled across the bed, dead to the world.
EVEN AS ČUČKOVIĆ WAS ENJOYING his well-earned sleep, events at Schloss Itter were continuing to unfold. Sebastian Wimmer’s sudden, predawn departure had convinced the castle’s SS-TV guards that it was also time for them to leave, and, by daybreak on May 4, the French notables and number prisoners had the schloss all to themselves. At the urging of generals Maxime Weygand and Maurice Gamelin, the now-free VIPs broke into the unguarded weapons room and equipped themselves with a variety of pistols, rifles, and submachine guns.
Suddenly liberated and newly armed, two of the Frenchmen decided—somewhat inexplicably, given their still-precarious situation—that their first free act would be to stroll the 150 yards into Itter village. Paul Reynaud and Michel Clemenceau walked calmly through the castle’s now unmanned front gate, past the small inn at the foot of the access road and, further on, the building housing the offices of St. Joseph’s Church, before reaching the small square in front of the church itself. While the two men saw Austrian and white flags flying from many windows, they were surprised and alarmed to see German troops and vehicles on the roads to the northeast of the village. Though a quick glance through the binoculars he’d “liberated” from the arms room showed Reynaud that many of the retreating soldiers were just “boys in uniform, who seemed to be hardly more than 10 years old,”33 the sight of so many troops—and the weapons they carried—convinced the Frenchman that while he and his fellow ex-prisoners might be free, they were certainly not yet safe.
Reynaud and Clemenceau hurried back to Schloss Itter and called the French VIPs together to tell them what they’d seen. Putting their personal and political differences aside for the moment, they all agreed that the continuing presence of German military units in the area meant that no one in the castle would be truly safe until Allied troops arrived in strength. Given that Zvonko Čučković had not been heard from since his departure the day before, and that his perilous ride toward Innsbruck had so far not resulted in the appearance of an Allied rescue force, the gathered VIPs debated their next move. The discussion was surprisingly brief and unusually free of acrimony, and the former prisoners unanimously agreed on three courses of action.
First, they would fashion a huge French tricolor banner from whatever materials they could find and then suspend it from the top windows of the keep to prevent attacks on the castle by Allied aircraft and let advancing friendly forces know of the VIPs’ presence. Second, they would summon Kurt-Siegfried Schrader from the village and formally ask him to take responsibility for their safety—not because Sebastian Wimmer had indicated that the decorated Waffen-SS man was his choice to be the VIPs’ guardian, but because the French themselves had come to know and trust Schrader over the course of his many visits to the castle. And third, realizing that it was more than likely that Čučković had been captured or killed trying to reach Innsbruck, they decided to send another bicycle-borne emissary out to contact the nearest American unit. As they were debating who that messenger should be, Andreas Krobot stepped forward. He and several other number prisoners had been listening to the discussion from the sidelines, and he calmly explained that it would make no sense for one of the VIPs to attempt the trip, only to be caught and executed on the spot. Far better for him, a mere cook, to undertake the potentially hazardous ride. Though Jean Borotra insisted that he should be the one to make the attempt, the logic of Krobot’s argument carried the day.
The first task, summoning Schrader to the castle, was carried out by Léon Jouhaux and Augusta Bruchlen, at their insistence. The labor leader and his German-speaking companion had spent perhaps the most time with the Waffen-SS man and his family during their visits to Schloss Itter, and Jouhaux apparently felt that he and Bruchlen would be able to relieve any last-minute qualms Schrader might have about throwing in his lot with the French. Despite his still-frail health, Jouhaux insisted the walk into the village would do him good. The couple covered the short distance at a steady pace, hand in hand and with Jouhaux carrying an MP-40 submachine gun slung over his shoulder. Schrader, dressed in civilian clothes, answered their knock immediately and agreed to accompany them back to Schloss Itter. When the trio returned to the castle at about one PM, they found most of the French VIPs gathered in the front courtyard waiting for them. Clemenceau, speaking in German, formally asked Schrader to accept responsibility for ensuring the safety of the former prisoners until American troops arrived. Though the Waffen-SS officer knew beyond doubt that his presence would do nothing to prevent German troops from taking the castle if they decided to do so, he believed that in the case of an attack he might be able to negotiate some sort of deal that would save the VIPs’ lives. Schrader thus accepted “command” of Schloss Itter, with the proviso that his wife and daughters be allowed to join him within its walls.34
At the same time Jouhaux and Bruchlen set out to summon Schrader, Krobot had embarked on his own journey. Provided with an English-language plea for help—again penned by Christiane Mabire—and riding a bicycle that had formerly belonged to one of the castle’s now-vanished guards, the Czech had set out for Wörgl. The French VIPs felt the town must surely have already been captured by the Americans; Krobot wasn’t so sure, and his reservations were quickly borne out. Cycling into Wörgl along the same route Čučković had traveled the day before, and, barely thirty minutes after leaving Schloss Itter, the Czech saw Waffen-SS troops in the streets. The soldiers were firing at any window from which a white or Austrian flag fluttered. Turning down a narrow side street, Krobot encountered a man in civilian clothes standing in a doorway, peering carefully in the opposite direction as though on lookout duty. Taking a huge chance, the Czech asked the man for help. After looking searchingly into Krobot’s eyes, the man pulled the end of a small red-and-white Austrian flag from his pocket and smiled.35
Minutes later, the Czech cook was talking to Sepp Gangl.
ANDREAS KROBOT’S SUDDEN appearance in Wörgl with the letter from the French VIPs put Gangl in something of a predicament.
The Wehrmacht major had intended for several days to mount a Schloss Itter rescue operation, of course, but had hesitated because he hadn’t wanted to fight a pitched battle against Sebastian Wimmer and his guard force. While Krobot’s news that the commandant and his minions had fled was welcome, Gangl knew that, even if he and his dozen or so men were able to reach the castle without running into Waffen-SS units, they would almost certainly not be able to hold it against a determined attack by troops wielding machine guns and shoulder-launched panzerfaust antitank rockets. And if those troops were backed by artillery or armor, defending Schloss Itter and its VIPs would be virtually suicidal.
Moreover, as the new head of the Wörgl resistance, Gangl had to worry about protecting the town—and his troops—from the continuing depredations of the Waffen-SS soldiers still active in the area. The threat was demonstrated all too clearly shortly after Krobot’s arrival. As Second Lieutenant Blechschmidt36—one of Gangl’s trusted compatriots—was meeting with Alois Mayr about the need to protect Wörgl’s warehoused food supplies from marauding bands of deserters and the thousands of refugees choking the roads of north Tyrol, firing broke out inside the Neue Post Inn. A platoon of Waffen-SS troops had somehow discovered the resistance group’s arsenal in the building’s basement; though the resisters guarding the structure had fled, an SS officer wildly fired his MP-40 in the building’s main room and threatened to kill Frau Lenk, the proprietor, and several other women who had been drinking tea in the guesthouse dining room. As the Waffen-SS troops carted off the weapons they’d discovered, Blechschmidt could do little more than watch from a safe distance and send one of Mayr’s men to let Gangl know what was happening.
The news convinced the Wehrmacht major that the only way he’d be able to ensure the safety of both the townspeople and the VIPs at Schloss Itter would be to speed the arrival of American forces. And since the Americans might not pay sufficient attention to a note-bearing civilian on a bicycle, the best way to accomplish the task, Gangl decided, was to go in search of them himself. He was, in effect, the German military commander of Wörgl, and, as such, he could officially surrender to the Americans all remaining Wehrmacht troops in the town.
Having made his decision, Gangl huddled with his deputy, Captain Dietrich, and Mayr’s deputy, Rupert Hagleitner. Dietrich would be in command until he returned, Gangl said, assisted by First Lieutenant Höckel and second lieutenants Blechschmidt and Wegscheider. Knowing that American units had reached the outskirts of Kufstein the previous evening, the men agreed that Gangl should head there instead of attempting the longer and potentially more dangerous drive west toward Innsbruck. He would make the roughly seven-mile trip in a kübelwagen, accompanied only by his enlisted driver, Corporal Keblitsch. They would take a white flag with them, but, given the number of Waffen-SS troops still in the area, they would not raise the banner until they were relatively close to the American lines.
With plans made and assignments given, just before three o’clock Gangl shoved the letter Krobot had brought from the castle into the pocket of his tunic, grabbed his MP-40, and strode to his vehicle. As Keblitsch started the kübelwagen moving, Gangl turned in his seat to shout some last-minute instruction to Dietrich, who was standing with Höckel, Blechschmidt, and Wegscheider. The sentence died in the Wehrmacht major’s throat when he realized that all four men were standing at attention, saluting him.
While we don’t know how Gangl and Keblitsch felt about their chances of actually making it to the American front line, we can safely assume that both men well understood the extreme risk they were taking. The seven miles separating Wörgl from the leading U.S. units were crawling with bands of Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht troops still loyal to the now-dead führer, and they had thrown up hastily constructed roadblocks at several points on the main Wörgl-Kufstein road. Though Gangl would have tried to bluff his way through on the strength of his rank and the combat decorations adorning his tunic, or possibly by producing Battle Group Forster documents and declaring he was on his way to rally the defense against the oncoming Americans, the discovery of the letter in his pocket or the white flag concealed somewhere in the vehicle would have been enough to get him and Keblitsch executed on the spot. Nor were die-hard German troops the only danger: There were also groups of Austrian resistance fighters in the area who might well open fire on the kübelwagen without bothering to determine if the men it carried were friend or foe. And, of course, there were all the other common World War II perils: random mortar or artillery barrages, attack by enemy aircraft, and land mines laid on unpaved side roads.
Whether Gangl and Keblitsch stuck to the main road and bluffed their way through roadblocks or avoided them by going cross-country on forest tracks is unclear. All we know is that despite the myriad potential dangers of their journey, the two men made it to the outskirts of Kufstein unscathed. But then they faced a hazard of a different kind. They would be driving into a city newly occupied by American troops—soldiers wary of ambush, of snipers, and of all the other hazards common to warfare in built-up areas. And Gangl was likely aware of recent events that made their approach to the American lines even more risky, despite the large white flag now flying from the kübelwagen’s antenna: For several days the Allied radio stations to which Gangl’s resistance colleagues listened had been reporting the unspeakable horrors discovered by the American units that liberated Dachau and other concentration camps near Munich. As a seasoned combat veteran who had undoubtedly seen his share of horror on the Russian Front, Gangl would have realized that if the GIs moving into Kufstein had been among those who had witnessed the gruesome conditions inside the camps, they might not be in any mood to accept the surrender of two Germans, white flag or not.37
Some forty-five minutes after leaving Wörgl, Gangl and Keblitsch rolled into the southern end of Kufstein and found . . . no one. The streets were deserted, and white bedsheets and red-white-red Austrian flags hung from shuttered windows. Driving slowly toward the center of town with their own white flag flying high, the two men rounded a corner and found themselves barely thirty feet from four American M4 Sherman tanks, two parked on either side of the street. Keblitsch stopped the kübelwagen immediately, and both men slowly and carefully raised their hands in the air. GIs wearing padded tanker helmets appeared from behind the armored vehicles and moved forward, their M3 submachine guns pointed at the Germans. Dropping to their knees in response to yelled commands from the advancing Americans, Gangl and Keblitsch—their hands still in the air—must have wondered if they were about to be gunned down in the street. Instead, both men were quickly frisked, told to stand, and with their hands still in the air hustled toward the rear of the nearest Sherman. Waiting there was a squat, powerfully built man wearing a wrinkled khaki uniform and a .45-caliber automatic pistol in a shoulder holster, his teeth clenching a well-chewed but unlit cigar.
Assuming the man to be in charge, Gangl introduced himself in passable English, said he wished to surrender the German garrison in Wörgl, and added that he had information about important French prisoners. After motioning toward his tunic pocket and getting a nod from the officer in return, Gangl carefully retrieved Christiane Mabire’s letter and proffered it to the American. The man unceremoniously ripped the envelope open and quickly scanned the letter, then hoisted himself aboard the Sherman, and dropped into the turret. Minutes later he reappeared and climbed onto the tank’s rear engine deck, a wide smile on his face.
Looking down at the German major, the American said his name was Lee and that it looked like they were all going on a rescue mission.38