THE MYSTERY OF MADDALENA ISLAND
Skorzeny had imagination and good ideas. He was able to smuggle one of his SS officers, who spoke fluent Italian, onto the island disguised as a sailor.1
—General Student, Memoirs
THE GERMANS NEVER CARRIED OUT HITLER’S PARATROOPER DROP ON Santo Stefano. Sometime around mid-August, while they were still finalizing their plans to pounce on this small rock near the island of Ventotene, new intelligence emerged suggesting that Mussolini had already flown the coop. It was fortunate for Hitler that the raid did not materialize, for the Duce had never set foot on Santo Stefano.
The latest tip was apparently provided courtesy of Captain Gerhard von Kamptz, the officer who was assigned the command of the naval forces for the Santo Stefano Blitz. By pure chance, according to General Student, Kamptz had run across an old navy buddy in Rome who was then serving as the German liaison officer to the Italian naval base at Maddalena Island.2 To Kamptz’s surprise, his friend, Commander Helmut Hunaeus, passed on a juicy bit of gossip. There was a rumor going around the island, he reported, that La Maddalena was currently playing host to a very famous guest— none other than Benito Mussolini.3
Captain von Kamptz promptly went to La Maddalena to do some detective work of his own. When he returned to Rome and informed Student of what he had discovered, the general put Kamptz on a plane and the two men flew to the Wolf ’s Lair, where they arrived on August 16.4 Admiral Doenitz later summarized the story that Kamptz presented to Hitler.
“During one of his visits to Maddalena,” Doenitz noted, “Captain von Kamptz heard persistent rumors that cruisers which arrived at Maddalena some time ago brought the Duce with them. He is now quartered in a villa in Maddalena in the immediate vicinity of the naval air base and is under guard there. Von Kamptz requested an automobile under some pretext and intended to check the veracity of the rumor.”5
What Kamptz heard next must have shocked him: “The Italian in charge replied that, in view of the presence of the Duce, the only naval car available in Maddalena is being reserved for the exclusive use of the Chief of the Carabinieri.” The presence of the Duce? The loose-lipped Italian had inadvertently revealed the secret of Mussolini’s hideout. “Von Kamptz reported these observations immediately to General Student who in turn boarded a plane with him and flew to the Fuehrer Headquarters.”6
Hitler was intrigued. “The Fuehrer ordered that a raid on the villa in Maddalena is to be included in operation ‘Eiche’ [Oak]. Execution of such a raid is considered an easy matter. German ships are constantly steaming in and out of the harbor; that would make possible an inconspicuous transfer of German troops from [the nearby island of] Corsica and a surprise raid.”7 The words “included in” are interesting because they seem to imply that Operation Oak was taking on the shape of a blanket operation that might hit several targets simultaneously just to ensure that the Duce was found in one of them.
But the notion of mounting a rescue mission at this stage was premature. In fact, when Student and Kamptz arrived at the Wolf ’s Lair on August 16, Student discovered that Hitler had another theory regarding the dictator’s whereabouts, namely, that he was being held captive aboard an Italian warship in the port of La Spezia on the northwestern coast of Italy.8 The information had supposedly come from, of all people, Erwin Rommel, who had recently visited northern Italy; there, a “reliable source” revealed to him Mussolini’s secret location.*9 (Skorzeny maintained that the ultimate source of the La Spezia tip was an Italian naval officer, but neither he nor his deputy Radl mentioned Rommel’s role in the affair.)10
“He [Hitler] was convinced that Mussolini was in La Spezia,” Student remembered. “He was sure that the Italian government intended to hand him over to the enemy as a war criminal.”11 According to Student, there were two main reasons why Hitler was inclined to view Rommel’s information as credible. For one thing, the notion that the Duce had been stowed away on a warship seemed consistent with Hitler’s belief that the Italians were preparing to turn him over to the enemy (by sea) in the near future. The second factor was Rommel himself. In those days, Hitler held the Desert Fox in high esteem and was planning to give him the command of the entire Italian theater when the time was ripe. Rommel had already been given command of Army Group B, which was pouring into Italy through the Alpine passes, but Kesselring retained control of German forces in the south.
At this point, Student did not know what to believe.12 La Spezia, after all, was not totally inconsistent with other intelligence the Nazis had gathered. According to Radl, one of the agents working for the Mussolini task force in Rome had determined that the Duce had left the Pontine Islands aboard an Italian warship (destination unknown) prior to mid-August.13 The Italians had also reportedly thrown a cordon around the harbor at La Spezia, making it look as if the port had something to hide.14 Student, for one, began to wonder whether the Italian Military Intelligence Service (SIM) was getting the better of the Nazis.
“It could not be excluded,” he later wrote, “that the rumors that Mussolini was in La Spezia or on Maddalena were spread by Italian intelligence to confuse [us].”15 Even so, Student and his new SS partner (and subordinate) Otto Skorzeny had no choice but to examine the unattractive possibility of snatching the Duce from his prisonon-the-sea at La Spezia. “For twenty-four hours we battled feverishly with the problem,” Skorzeny recalled. “No doubt at G.H.Q. they imagined nothing was easier than to make a man vanish from under the eyes of the crew of a cruiser on war footing.”16
They did not lose much sleep over it. After a bit of long-distance snooping, Student was able to determine that Rommel’s piece of intelligence was yet another red herring. According to the general, the Luftwaffe had some Jaegerleitoffiziere (fighter-control officers) based in La Spezia.17 Some of these men were contacted on the sly, but they were unable to find evidence that Mussolini was being hidden in their midst. “It was quite apparent that Mussolini was not there,” Student finally concluded.*18 (The presence of Germans throughout Italy, even though they were scattered in relatively small numbers in some places, proved immensely helpful throughout the investigation.)
The island of La Maddalena, on the other hand, seemed to warrant further investigation. General Student was becoming increasingly bogged down in the detailed planning of Hitler’s military occupation of Italy at this time, so he asked Skorzeny to see what he could find out. “He threw himself in this new assignment with fanaticism and astounding energy,” Student recalled. “Soon he had results.”19
Skorzeny did not require much coaxing. Indeed, the burly Austrian seemed to possess a measure of self-confidence proportional to his size. His trademark feature was a long and menacing-looking dueling scar (dating from his University of Vienna days) that ran down the left side of his face. For Skorzeny, this old wound was a badge of honor. “My knowledge of pain, learned with the sabre,” he once commented with a characteristic touch of melodrama, “taught me not to be afraid of fear. And just as in duelling you must fix your mind on striking at the enemy’s head, so, too, in war. You cannot waste time on feinting and sidestepping. You must decide on your target and go in.”20
But Skorzeny was also something of an amateur when it came to matters of intelligence gathering and special operations. He had spent much of the war as a Waffen SS engineering officer, fixing tanks and trucks on the battlefront.* After being wounded in Russia during the winter of 1941–1942, he was sidelined to a repair depot in Berlin, where he seemed destined to sit out the rest of the war. “They undoubtedly needed engineering officers in the reserve units,” he later wrote. “But I found that I could be more useful. The thought of being no more than a conscientious working engineer did not please me.”21
As luck would have it, while Skorzeny was growing restless in the Reich capital, the Nazis were casting about for a man to head up a new commando unit known as the Friedenthal Battalion, which took its name from the small town near Berlin in which it was based (Friedenthal means “valley of peace”). Created under the auspices of Himmler’s SS, Friedenthal was set up as a rival to the famed British commandos, whose exploits during World War II were already the stuff of legend by 1943. The SS was looking for an officer with combat experience as well as technical expertise to lead the new unit. Skorzeny’s name was reportedly suggested by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who at the time was the head of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA)—the Third Reich’s labyrinthine police and spy apparatus— and who had known Skorzeny since their prewar Vienna days.
In April 1943, just a few months before Mussolini’s overthrow, Skorzeny assumed command of Friedenthal and met with his immediate supervisor, Major Walter Schellenberg, who was chief of foreign intelligence for the SS (Amt VI of the RSHA).* “Frankly,” Skorzeny later admitted, “I did not understand much of what he explained to me; after all I was only entering a realm which until now had been a total mystery to me.”22 The purpose of the new organization, as he understood it, was to carry out commando missions and acts of sabotage. Friedenthal already existed in embryonic form. Skorzeny’s task was to expand, reorganize, and inject new life into it. His assignment was accompanied by a promotion, and Skorzeny was bumped up to the rank of captain.
Naturally, he assumed that Friedenthal would be used to strike at targets behind enemy lines in the Soviet Union or in territory occupied by British and American forces. He never suspected that his first real mission would pit him against the Italians, Germany’s Axis ally. But the unusual nature of Operation Oak did nothing to dampen his zeal. As a fanatically loyal and ambitious SS man, Skorzeny was determined to carry out Hitler’s order by finding the Duce and bringing him back to Germany at any cost.
In mid-August or so, Skorzeny tried his hand at solving the mystery of Isola Maddalena. As one of his first steps, he commandeered a German minesweeper and took a lap or two around the island, located a few miles from the northeastern tip of Sardinia. As German ships were common in the area, Skorzeny probably assumed that his little cruise would not arouse undue suspicion on the part of the Italians.
Situated in the Strait of Bonifacio, the narrow sea-lane between Corsica and Sardinia, La Maddalena was roughly triangular in shape and about eight square miles in size. As Skorzeny sailed round the jagged coastline, he found himself gazing up at the island’s reddishcolored, rocky heights. He surreptitiously snapped a few photos of the harbor works and other items of interest, including the so-called Villa Webber, a small mansion on a hill overlooking the sea. Nestled among a tiny forest of pine trees, the villa was located about five hundred yards west of the small town of Maddalena on the southern coast of the island.23
The Villa Webber had figured in some of the rumors reaching German ears at this time—Commander Hunaeus, for one, had mentioned it—but Skorzeny did not know whether the information was credible or just another false clue being circulated by the Italians.24 To complicate matters, La Maddalena was surrounded by numerous other islands and islets of all shapes and sizes. Though multiple leads pointed to the general area of Sardinia, some of them indicated that Mussolini was not on La Maddalena at all but was being hidden nearby.25 For instance, when Skorzeny had paid a visit to Palau on the northeastern coast of Sardinia (opposite La Maddalena), the German commander of a flak unit stationed there said that he had heard that the Duce was convalescing in a monastery in the nearby Sardinian village of Santa Maria, which was apparently Santa Maria Navarrese on the eastern coast.26
All the leads would need to be checked out, but La Maddalena seemed to be the most promising. To figure out whether Mussolini was really on the island, Skorzeny proposed an undercover operation involving Lieutenant Robert Warger, the only man among his Friedenthal commandos who spoke perfect Italian.
“My scheme,” Skorzeny later explained in the politically incorrect language of the time, “was based entirely on the fact that all Italians have a passion for betting.”27 To exploit this stereotypical proclivity, Warger was dispatched to La Maddalena in the guise of a German sailor and passed off as an interpreter working for Commander Hunaeus, the German naval liaison.28 Warger’s real job was to spend as much time as possible drinking and carousing in the small bars of Maddalena town. Whenever he overheard the Italian patrons discussing the Duce and his fate, Warger, pretending to be intoxicated, would join the conversation and put forward the view that Mussolini was dead or seriously ill. If any of the Italians disagreed, Warger would challenge him to put his money where his mouth was.
Skorzeny figured that at least some of the locals, civilians or sailors, were probably aware that the Duce was on the island, if indeed he was. Perhaps Warger could tempt one of them into accepting a wager.
There was one potentially fatal complication in Skorzeny’s scheme: Warger was a teetotaler who never touched alcohol. In fact, he was the only Friedenthaler who did not drink. “It was only by insisting at great length on his duty as a soldier,” Skorzeny recalled, “that I managed to persuade him to violate his principles.”29 Before leaving for La Maddalena, Warger was given an impromptu lesson on the art of imbibing that apparently left him feeling ill.
“Skorzeny had imagination and good ideas,” Student later wrote. “He was able to smuggle one of his SS officers, who spoke fluent Italian, onto the island disguised as a sailor. . . . At the same time he investigated the conditions for the [rescue] operation on [my] instructions.”30
Having set Operation Warger in motion, Skorzeny decided to take some aerial photos of the island. On August 18, his Heinkel 111 departed Practica di Mare airport near Rome, refueled at Pausania on Sardinia, then climbed to an altitude of 15,000 feet and completed a reconnaissance run. The He 111 was a twin-engined medium bomber with a large, transparent cockpit, which allowed for excellent visibility.
Skorzeny squeezed into the forward gun position and using a handheld camera began taking several pictures of La Maddalena. To do this, he had to lie face down in the space adjacent to the pilot’s seat. (When the He 111 was fully manned, this position was normally occupied by the bombardier, who was also responsible for operating the manual 7.9-mm MG 15 machine gun that protruded from the tip of the cockpit.) Skorzeny had just taken a moment to admire the panoramic view of the sea below him when a sudden announcement from the rear gunner jolted him to attention.
“Look out behind us!” the gunner cried. “Two planes. British pursuit planes!”31
Skorzeny instinctively gripped the handle of the forward gun as the pilot began an evasive maneuver. The aircraft straightened out momentarily, but then went into a sickening dive. One look at the pilot and Skorzeny knew that he and the crew were in deep trouble. “Turning around,” he remembered, “I saw the pilot’s contorted face as he sought vainly to straighten out his ship. A glance through the window [of the cockpit] showed me that our left motor had failed. The plane was diving at a dizzying speed.”32
Skorzeny grabbed hold of the gun once again—this time to brace himself for impact. He felt a violent jolt when the 20,000- pound airplane hit the water and began to plow across its surface, then everything went black.33 The next thing he remembered was being dragged upwards by a member of the crew. Skorzeny and the others managed to scamper to safety through an emergency exit in the crumpled cockpit, which was quickly filling up with water. It dawned on him that he had left his camera and briefcase behind, so he climbed back into the plane through the cockpit, retrieved the items, and returned to the surface. He then hopped into an inflatable life raft with the plane’s crew (all of whom had survived the crash) and watched the He 111 disappear into the waves.*
Skorzeny and his stranded comrades found refuge on a nearby reef until an Italian cruiser happened by and picked them up. “What luck,” Skorzeny mused to himself, “that the skipper cannot guess the reason for our presence hereabouts.”34 He had escaped the crash without obvious injuries—or so it seemed at the time. A few days later, a doctor told Skorzeny that the nagging pain he felt in his chest was the result of three broken ribs.
Instead of returning to the mainland, Skorzeny made a detour to the island of Corsica to make contact with the Waffen SS unit that was stationed there. He thought that he might need its help if the Nazis decided to mount a rescue operation. When he arrived in Rome on August 20 and met with Radl, he learned that Herbert Kappler, the German police attaché, had made another discovery.35
According to Radl, Kappler had focused his attention on members of Mussolini’s immediate family, most of whom were still in Italy at this time, though the Duce’s son Vittorio had fled to the relative safety of Germany.36 He hit pay dirt with Edda Ciano, the dictator’s favorite daughter. Edda, it seems, had written a letter to her father, and Kappler had somehow managed to trace it to Maddalena Island.*37 (It should be mentioned at this point that Badoglio had agreed to facilitate the exchange of mail between Mussolini and the outside world.)
A more dramatic breakthrough soon followed. When Skorzeny reestablished radio contact with Warger, he discovered that his Italian-speaking undercover agent had actually seen the Duce!38 Skorzeny wanted to speak to Warger face-to-face, so on August 23, having evidently shaken off the effects of his plane crash in the Tyrrhenian Sea, he flew back to La Maddalena with Radl.39
Warger explained to them that he had carried out his mission as instructed and eventually found an Italian merchant who took the bet. The man delivered fruit to the Villa Webber and claimed to have seen Mussolini there. He even offered to show Warger a good spot from which to view the estate. Warger decided to stake out the villa for a few days. At some point during his reconnaissance, he spied a bald, stocky man on the terrace of the building.40 He could not see the man’s face clearly because he was too far away, but Warger was almost certain that it was the Duce.41
Skorzeny and Radl returned to Rome on August 24 and conferred with General Student.42 The three men agreed that they had finally tracked down the dictator, or so it appeared from their perspective. But not everyone in Nazi intelligence circles was inclined to agree. “Then suddenly,” remembered Skorzeny, “like lightning blazing down from a clear blue sky, we received an order from the Führer’s G.H.Q.: G.H.Q. has just received a report from Ausland Abwehr (Admiral Canaris) that Mussolini is on a small island near Elba.”43
Skorzeny was dumbfounded. He knew that Elba was a mountainous island located off the northwestern coast of Italy about one hundred miles from La Maddalena. But the whole business was more than a little suspect because there was no credible evidence that placed the Duce anywhere near Elba.
If Skorzeny is to be believed, the Elba lead originated with the Abwehr, the spy network run by the German military and headed by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. It was roughly analogous to the foreign intelligence wing (Amt VI) of the RSHA. The Abwehr and Amt VI were separate organizations with similar agendas, and the lines of demarcation between them had always been gray.44 For years, the rival agencies had competed with each other for Hitler’s favor.45 Indeed, pitting his own subordinates against each other was almost a matter of policy for Hitler.46 As wasteful and inefficient as it was, this philosophy of “divide and rule” had made it easier for the Fuehrer to control his henchmen: It was the totalitarian counterpart of a democracy’s checks and balances.47
This ongoing struggle for power within Nazi intelligence circles—which pitted the regular German military against the SS— took a strange and unexpected turn when Canaris, who was a notoriously enigmatic figure, secretly began to turn against Hitler and Nazism. The spy chief had apparently come to see the evil of Hitler’s ways—or perhaps simply the inevitability of Germany’s demise under the Fuehrer.
If Canaris really did try to thwart Operation Oak, as Skorzeny later implied, this effort may have been part of a broader campaign designed to shield the Badoglio regime from Hitler’s wrath. According to Walter Schellenberg, Himmler’s top SS spook in the RSHA, during the summer of 1943 Canaris was working in the shadows to aid Badoglio in his covert war against the Germans. Canaris accomplished this, allegedly, by reassuring the Nazi leadership that the loyalty of the new Italian regime was beyond reproach.48
Schellenberg—who was Canaris’s rival and mortal enemy— soon got wind of this activity, which he deemed nothing less than treasonous. He had made it his life’s mission to bring down Canaris, but the latter managed to escape the clutches of the dreaded SS for another year.
Whatever the reasons, during the last week of August Hitler was apparently convinced that Mussolini was hidden away either on Elba or somewhere close by.49 In light of this development, General Student thought it best to meet with Hitler in person and argue the case for La Maddalena.50 Student spent much of August, it seems, flying back and forth between Rome and the Wolf ’s Lair, often with witnesses in tow, to update Hitler on the search for the Duce. On this occasion, he brought along his SS partner because he wanted Hitler to hear the details of their La Maddalena reconnaissance “directly from Skorzeny.”51
They arrived at Fuehrer Headquarters in late August. Skorzeny found himself in the same room in which he had met Hitler several weeks earlier, and the atmosphere was probably just as imposing. According to Skorzeny, some of the most prominent figures of the Third Reich were seated at a large table. Flanking Hitler on each side were Marshal Wilhelm Keitel; General Alfred Jodl; the foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop; the SS chief, Heinrich Himmler; General Student; Admiral Doenitz; and the Luftwaffe chief, Hermann Goering. After some discussion, Skorzeny got the nod from Student to make his presentation.
He was intimidated at first, but managed to explain “in a simple and clear way” how he and his colleagues had concluded that Mussolini was on La Maddalena: “I also described the terrible adventure of our teetotaler Warger. Goering and Doenitz smiled. Himmler’s gaze remained ice-cold, and Hitler wore a rather ironic look.”52 Skorzeny spoke for about thirty minutes, after which Hitler shook his hand and announced that he had been persuaded. “Hitler was now finally convinced,” Student recalled. “He gave [me] freedom of action again.”53
Student and Skorzeny also outlined their plans for a rescue operation, which had been developed in conjunction with Captain von Kamptz and Commander Max Schulz, the latter being in charge of the German motor torpedo boats in the Mediterranean. The assault was designed to exploit the all-important element of surprise and the fact that German ships were fairly common in the waters surrounding Sardinia.
On D-day, several German minesweepers, covered by motor torpedo boats with 20-mm cannon, would swoop into the harbor and disembark the assault force. These soldiers would then head for the Villa Webber, overwhelm the 150 or so carabinieri they believed were guarding the Duce, and storm the building.
Telephone lines at the villa would be cut to prevent Mussolini’s guards from summoning reinforcements. Special squads would capture the guns guarding the exit of the port and disable a Red Cross seaplane, believed to be a getaway vehicle for the Duce, and its two fighter escorts, which were moored close to the shore. Once Mussolini was safely in German hands, he would be hustled away on board one of the escaping motor torpedo boats.*
According to Skorzeny, Hitler approved the plan and authorized its execution.* He then drew Skorzeny aside to issue a private admonition. “Something else, [Captain] Skorzeny,” Hitler said. “It’s possible that at the time that you carry out your operation, the new Italian government will still, officially at least, be our ally. Therefore if the attack fails, or if Mussolini is not on Santa Maddalena, I might be forced to disapprove of your action publicly. In that case you will have acted on your own and not informed your superiors. I hope that you understand that I will have to punish you against my will in the event of failure?”54 Skorzeny accepted the proviso.
After their meeting with Hitler, Student and Skorzeny hurried back to Rome to work out the details for the raid on La Maddalena, which was scheduled for sometime near the end of August. “All preparations were rushed forward,” Student remembered.55 Every passing day increased the risk of failure, for no one could be sure that the Duce would still be on La Maddalena at the moment the Germans came crashing through the doors of the Villa Webber. Worried about such a possibility, Skorzeny and Radl, accompanied by Lieutenant Warger, decided to visit the island and do some final checking just twenty-four hours prior to D-day.
Dressed as German sailors, Skorzeny and Warger grabbed a basket of dirty laundry and made their way into Maddalena town to the house of the local washerwoman. There, they struck up a conversation with another customer, a member of the Italian carabinieri. When Skorzeny steered the conversation toward the subject of Mussolini, the man seemed uninterested. Skorzeny got a rise out of the Italian only when he asserted that the Duce had gone the way of the ancient Caesars.
“No, no, signore, impossibile!” he protested. “I saw the Duce this very morning. I was one of the men who escorted him on board the white plane in which he left here.”56
The words stung Skorzeny because his gut told him that the Italian was telling the truth. What was worse, the story seemed to check out. Skorzeny looked for the Red Cross seaplane and discovered that it was gone. There were still some carabinieri guarding the Villa Webber, but he could see that they were manning their posts in a noticeably casual manner. According to Radl, some of them were even drinking wine.57 “So that explained their unmilitary attitude,” Skorzeny thought to himself, “there was no longer a prisoner in this prison!”58
“Everything was almost ready,” Student recalled, “when Skorzeny reported that Mussolini disappeared overnight, the country house on the shore of Maddalena was again abandoned and deserted and the white ambulance plane was gone as well.”59
It was true: The Duce was gone. And the Nazis had absolutely no idea where to look next. “In point of fact,” Skorzeny recalled, “we were back where we started from. . . . For a few days we were completely at a loss. There were rumors aplenty, to be sure; but as soon as we investigated them with the slightest care, they vanished into so much smoke.”60
Though they were unaware of it at the time, Student and Skorzeny were having an easier time keeping track of Mussolini than were the Allies. During the summer of 1943, the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, the forerunner of the American CIA, was also keeping tabs on the Duce and trying to monitor his movements. By August 16, for instance, the OSS learned from an Italian informant that Mussolini was on Ponza, though he had left that island on August 8. Ten days later on August 26, Allen Dulles, the head of the Bern office of the OSS, wired an intelligence update to Washington, D.C.: “Mussolini is now on the island of Maddalena, according to latest reports.”61 This information was accurate at the time, but was out of date within two days or so.
La Maddalena had been a close call for the Italians. As the month of August was drawing to a close, they had become increasingly nervous about the security of the island. Mussolini’s presence there was apparently an open secret among the local population, and the Duce’s captors feared that it was only a matter of time before the Nazis picked up the scent.62 Believing that a German rescue attempt was in the making, they decided to move their prisoner yet again— just hours or days before Skorzeny was ready to nab him.*63 It was an instance either of very good fortune or of inside information: No one can say for certain.
All Mussolini knew was that on August 28 at around 4:00 A.M., he was rustled from his bed in the Villa Webber and led to a seaplane with Red Cross markings that was waiting for him in the harbor below.64 After a flight lasting about an hour and a half, the plane touched down on mainland Italy at a seaplane base, Vigna di Valle, on Lake Bracciano, a short distance northwest of Rome.65 This was not far, incidentally, from the headquarters of the Third Panzergrenadier Division, the same German unit that Hitler had planned to use to capture Rome in the immediate aftermath of the coup.66
On exiting the aircraft, the Duce was greeted by his new senior jailer, Police Inspector Giuseppe Gueli, who had replaced Saverio Polito after the latter was injured in a car accident.67 Mussolini was then shown to the “usual motor-ambulance” (as he later put it), which whisked him away in an easterly direction, beyond the towns of Rieti and Cittaducale.68 The Duce and his convoy traveled into the heart of the Abruzzi region of central Italy, a rugged but beautiful area known for its mountains (the Apennines) as well as for the olive groves and vineyards adorning its rolling hills. After passing through L’Aquila, the regional capital, the convoy drove another fifteen miles or so before arriving at its destination: a small inn called La Villetta, located near the village of Assergi.69
La Villetta was merely a pit stop. Mussolini was scheduled to spend a few days there under the watchful eyes of his two primary guardians of the moment, namely Gueli and Lieutenant Alberto Faiola, before being transferred to a more secure location nearby.70 The Italians were about to up the ante. The Duce’s next prison, they assured themselves, would make the Nazis think twice before launching a rescue attempt.
La Villetta was a small, rustic-looking place, to be sure. But it stood in the shadow of the tallest mountain ridge in the Apennines: the majestic Gran Sasso d’Italia (Great Rock of Italy).
*Rommel was in Bologna on August 15 for an Axis conference with the Italians.
*Mussolini was never at La Spezia.
*The Waffen SS was the combat wing of the large and complicated organization known as the Schutzstaffel (SS). In general, many members of the Waffen SS fought on the frontlines in conventional military units during World War II, though Hitler did consider these so-called elite (and fanatical) troops more “politically reliable.” See Keegan, Waffen S.S., 130–155.
*“Amt” is the equivalent of “Department.” The Friedenthal Battalion was designated as Group S of Amt VI within the RSHA.
*It is not clear why the Heinkel’s engine failed. In his memoirs, Skorzeny denies that the Heinkel was actually shot down by the enemy fighters.
*According to some reports, Kappler’s discovery occurred earlier in the investigation. See Deakin, 544.
*The raid may have been more complicated than Skorzeny made it out to be after the war. Mussolini later claimed that the Maddalena rescue operation was supposed to involve a bogus British submarine and German commandos dressed in English uniforms. Benito Mussolini, Memoirs, 132.
*It is worth mentioning that Hitler’s military plans for the German occupation of Italy were fairly well advanced by this time. Thus, if the rescue mission led to an open break with the Badoglio regime, the Nazis were prepared to subdue the Italians by force.
*The date set by the Nazis for the Maddalena raid is a bit fuzzy. But by all accounts, they missed Mussolini by a matter of a few days at the most.