File:Otto_Skorzeny.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Otto Skorzeny was an Austrian military officer who served in Nazi Germany's elite Waffen-SS during World War II, becoming famous for leading high-risk commando operations including the daring 1943 rescue of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. His career exemplifies the complex history of Nazi military organizations and remains studied as part of World War II history, though his postwar activities and alleged involvement in covert operations remain subjects of historical debate.
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Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Otto
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- Austria
- Place of birth
- Vienna
- Place of death
- Madrid
- Occupation
- engineer
- Educated at
- TU Wien
- Languages spoken
- German
- Conflict
- Anschluss
- Military branch
- Mossad
- Military rank
- Obersturmbannführer
- Image
- Otto Skorzeny.jpg
Show 10 more facts
- date of birth
- 1908-06-12
- date of death
- 1975-07-07
- Commons category
- Otto Skorzeny
- member of
- Sturmabteilung
- manner of death
- natural causes
- place of burial
- Döbling Cemetery
- name in native language
- Otto Skorzeny
- allegiance
- Argentina
- start of work period
- 1931-00-00
- pseudonym
- Rolf Steinbauer
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Encyclopedic overview
Otto Johann Anton Skorzeny (12 June 1908 – 5 July 1975) was an Austrian-born German SS-Obersturmbannführer in the Waffen-SS during World War II. During the war, he was involved in a number of operations, including the removal from power of Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy and the Gran Sasso raid that rescued Benito Mussolini from captivity. Skorzeny led Operation Greif in which German soldiers infiltrated Allied lines wearing their enemies' uniforms. As a result, he was charged in 1947 at the Dachau Military Tribunal with breaching the 1907 Hague Convention, but was acquitted.
Skorzeny escaped from an internment camp in 1948, hiding out on a Bavarian farm as well as in Salzburg and Paris before eventually settling in Francoist Spain. In 1953, he served as a military advisor to the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. He was allegedly an advisor to Argentinian president Juan Perón. He died of lung cancer on 5 July 1975 in Madrid at the age of 67.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Otto Skorzeny” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.