SOWING HYSTERIA ACROSS THE WESTERN FRONT

ANOTHER GERMAN IDEA, Operation GREIF, or CONDOR, proved no more competent. Under the flamboyant Viennese commando officer Otto Skorzeny, 2,000 men had been recruited into the 150th Armored Brigade for behind-the-lines sabotage, reconnaissance, and havoc. Their motor fleet included a dozen Panthers modified to resemble U.S. Sherman tanks, German Fords painted Allied olive drab, and a small fleet of captured U.S. Army trucks, jeeps, and scout cars. About 150 men who spoke English would lead raiding parties to seize three Meuse bridges. They were issued captured or counterfeit identification documents, as well as GI uniforms, many of which had been taken from American prisoners under the pretext of disinfection. To mimic American cigarette-smoking techniques and other mannerisms, the men studied the famous actor Humphrey Bogart in the movie Casablanca.

All for naught. The Sixth Panzer Army’s troubles on the north shoulder disrupted Skorzeny’s timetable, and a set of GREIF orders discovered on a dead German officer alerted the Americans to the deception. On Monday, December 18, First Army military police stopped three men in a jeep near Aywaille who were unable to give the day’s password; a search revealed German pay books and grenades. Four others on a Meuse bridge in Liège included a GI imposter who carried the identification card of a captain but the dog tags of a private. He and his comrades were found to be wearing swastika armbands beneath their army field jackets. In all, sixteen infiltrators were swiftly captured in American uniforms, and an additional thirty-five were killed without effecting a single act of sabotage on the Meuse. Most of Skorzeny’s brigade eventually returned to the regular German infantry and were sent into battle near Malmédy, where inexperience and a lack of artillery led to heavy casualties. Skorzeny himself suffered a nasty head wound.

The sole accomplishment of GREIF was to sow hysteria across the Western Front. A talkative, imaginative German lieutenant captured in Liège claimed to be part of a team sent to kill Eisenhower. Colonel Skorzeny, he said, had already infiltrated American lines with 60 assassins. Rumor quickly increased the number to 150. It was said that some infiltrators carried vials of sulfuric acid to fling in the faces of suspicious sentries, that many spoke English better than any GI, that they recognized one another by rapping their helmets twice, or by wearing blue scarves, or by leaving unfastened the top button of a uniform shirt. It was said that some might be costumed as priests, nuns, or barkeeps.

Captured German soldiers trained by Otto Skorzeny had pretended to be Americans.

Military police at checkpoints sought to distinguish native English speakers from frauds by testing their pronunciation of various words, including wreath, writhe, wealth, rather, and with nothing. Some asked the identity of the Windy City, since an intelligence report advised that “few Germans can pronounce Chicago correctly.” Other questions included: What is the price of an airmail stamp? What is Sinatra’s first name? Who is Mickey Mouse’s girlfriend? Where is Little Rock? The American photographer Robert Capa, who had a Hungarian accent, was arrested for failing to know the capital of Nebraska. The military historian Forrest Pogue, when asked the statehouse location in his native Kentucky, carefully replied, “The capital is Frankfort, but you may think it is Louisville.”

With Skorzeny and his assassins presumed to be still at large, Eisenhower reluctantly agreed to move from his villa in the Paris suburb of St.-Germain to smaller quarters nearer his office in the Trianon Palace Hotel in Versailles. Each day his black limousine continued to follow the usual route to and from SHAEF, but with the rear seat occupied by a lieutenant colonel named Baldwin B. Smith, whose broad shoulders, prominent head, and impatient appearance made him a perfect body double for the supreme commander.