Otto Skorzeny

Operation Greif: Assassinate Eisenhower?

By Charles Whiting

On the morning of Monday, December 18, 1944, a mixed group of white MPs and black American service troops stood guard on the little bridge at Aywaille in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium. Read more

Otto Skorzeny

V-E Day: Victory at Last for World War II’s Allies

By Flint Whitlock

Within his reinforced concrete bunker, 50 feet below the garden of the New Reichs Chancellery on Berlin’s Wilhelmstrasse, German dictator Adolf Hitler, his soon-to-be bride Eva Braun, and several hundred friends, SS guards, and staff members could feel the concussion and hear the unending drumroll of thousands of Soviet artillery shells reducing the already-battered capital city of the Third Reich to unrecognizable rubble. Read more

British commandos march through the ruins of the French town of Caen. An objective of the Allied D-Day landings that was supposed to have been captured on June 6, stiff German resistance prevented the city from being liberated until a month later.

Otto Skorzeny

Fleming, Ian Fleming

By Hervie Haufler

Some accounts of Ian Fleming’s life make it seem that only at the age of 44, as an antidote to the shock of finally agreeing to get married, did he suddenly commit himself to the unplanned task of creating his James Bond novels. Read more

Otto Skorzeny

Nicholas Horthy: Hitler’s Vassal?

By Blaine Taylor

The career of Admiral Nicholas Horthy spanned not only two world wars, but also stretched across the decades from the age of sail to atomic-powered submarines. Read more

Shortly after his rescue by elite German troops, Mussolini prepares to board a Fieseler Storch for a flight to safety.

Otto Skorzeny

The Fieseler Storch Fi 156

by Blaine Taylor

On March 12, 1939, Heroes’ Memorial Day (or Veterans Day) in the Nazi Third Reich, the thousands of onlookers at the giant annual parade in Berlin were treated to an unusual sight as a small monoplane landed on the Unter den Linden between Hermann Göring’s State Opera House and the Neue Wache (New Guardshouse). Read more

Otto Skorzeny

The Largest Plot to Kill Hitler? – Operation Valkyrie

by Blaine Taylor

For Nazi Party Führer (Leader) and German Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler, July 20th, 1944 dawned as a routine working day at his principal wartime military headquarters, the Wolfsschanze (Fort Wolf) in the East Prussian forest of Rastenburg, some three hundred air miles from Berlin, in what is today Poland. Read more