Castle Itter: Where America and Germany Fought Side by Side in WWII

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I so want to see a collab of Sabaton History and Simon Whistler

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/Th3_Wolflord 📅︎︎ Feb 10 2020 đź—«︎ replies

Meanwhile in the comments...

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/Ze_Ubermersch 📅︎︎ Feb 11 2020 đź—«︎ replies
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Deep in the Austrian alps, a mere 90 or so kilometers from Munich, sits a small, anonymous castle. From the outside, Schloss Itter isn’t much to look at. In a land filled with medieval ruins, it’s too small to attract passing tourists, too similar to a thousand forts you can find elsewhere. But Itter has something that no other castle in Austria - or, indeed, the world - can claim: a story. A story about a single skirmish that became one of the strangest battles in history. It was here, in 1945, that America and Germany fought as allies for the only time in WWII. A prison for French VIPs, Castle Itter in May, 1945, was at the mercy of SS units prowling the Austrian countryside. Desperate to prevent a massacre, a ragtag team of American GIs and disillusioned Wehrmacht soldiers teamed up to save those trapped inside. But the story of Castle Itter is more than just that of a single battle. It’s about a specific place, a specific moment in time… and the decisions made there that would change European history. The Mysterious Castle Like so many historic buildings in Europe, the precise origins of Castle Itter - or Schloss Itter, to give it its German name - have been lost to history. We know a fortress existed on this secluded spot in the 13th Century, but it’s been suggested that one may have been there since at least 800AD. What’s certainly true is that, by 1878, Itter was old enough to have gone utterly out of fashion and be rebuilt in its current faux-romantic style. For the modern Castle Itter, existing meant simply sitting back and watching as the world refused to take any notice of it. In the early 20th Century, for example, it was converted into a luxury hotel, only to fail to attract visitors. It was simply too remote, too deep into the mountains for people to bother with. However, there was one group of people who would be very taken with the Castle’s remoteness. In 1933, an unfunny Charlie Chaplin tribute act that went by the name Adolf Hitler became the undisputed ruler of Germany. Five years later, on March 12, 1938, the genocidal Tramp annexed Austria into the Third Reich. As soon as the Nazis got their first good look at Itter, they knew the had to have it. The owners of the castle were served with one of those typically Nazi notices that basically went “yeah, we’re having this place, don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.” From that point on, Castle Itter would be under direct control of Hitler’s regime. That’s not to say anyone really knew what to do with it. At first, the Castle housed the German Association for Combating the Dangers of Tobacco, which we wish we could say was a deliberately-boring pseudonym for an exciting spy agency but, nope, it was just a bunch of guys who really hated tobacco. But, by 1943, the Third Reich had finally found a purpose for their new castle. That year, Itter was converted into a subcamp of Dachau. Established all the way back in 1933, Dachau was the first, and one of the most notorious of all Nazi concentration camps. Originally it had been a small place designed to hold Social Democrats and other political prisoners. But, as the Third Reich’s list of enemies grew, Dachau too had grown, going from a single camp outside Munich to a sprawling network of 123 subcamps covering most of southern Germany and northern Austria. As Dachau had grown, so had its cruelty. Roma and LGBT prisoners had joined the Social Democrats along with, of course, thousands of Jews. Nazi scientists had begun conducting medical experiments on prisoners. In short, becoming part of Dachau was not a happy fate for Schloss Itter. However, the subcamp the Nazis established there was a different beast. It would hold not political enemies or those targeted for extermination, but VIPs. High-value prisoners the Nazis could use as hostages if the need ever arose. And the hostages the regime had earmarked for Itter were some of the most important people in Europe. The VIP Prison When Sebastian Wimmer arrived at Itter in 1943, the SS officer must’ve felt like he was beginning the strangest assignment of all time. The commandant for the new Dachau subcamp, Wimmer had probably seen his fair share of crazy stuff during the war. But it’s unlikely he’d ever had to oversee a group of prisoners like this. Interred in Castle Itter was a veritable Who’s Who of French society. There was Édouard Daladier, the former French premier who’d signed the Munich Agreement before trying to flee into exile after the Nazis invaded. There was Paul Reynaud, who’d taken over as premier after Daladier, and overseen the fall of France to the Germans. Alongside them were the generals Maxime Weygand and Maurice Gamelin. Both famous, but for very different reasons. While Gamelin had fought the Nazi invasion as head of French armed forces, Weygand had replaced him, surrendered, and then collaborated with the regime before falling foul of it. To say the two generals hated each other is kind of like saying Cain and Abel had minor disagreements. With them were both Charles de Gaulle’s sister, Marie-Agnès, and Michel Clemenceau, son of the great Georges Clemenceau and, handily, the only prisoner fluent in German. At the slightly odder end, the Castle also held future Nobel Prize Winner Léon Jouhaux; the champion tennis star Jean-Robert Borotra; and the infamous French fascist François de La Rocque, who’d turned out to be too loco even for the Nazis. Yes, that’s a lot of names to remember. Don’t worry about memorizing them all, we’ll try and remind you each time someone important crops up. By the standards of Dachau, these VIPs had it kinda ok. Remember how Castle Itter used to be a hotel? Well, the Nazis hadn’t bothered stripping out too many of its comforts, especially as they wanted their hostages in good shape if they needed to trade them. The prisoners were allowed to use the castle library, to walk the grounds relatively freely, to eat semi-decent food. They were even spared from brutality by Commandant Wimmer, who advised his guards to alternately ignore the prisoners and to befriend them. But still, a weekend in Hawaii this was not. For one thing, the prisoners hated one another. Imagine being locked inside a luxury castle alongside a bunch of people whose political views are diametrically opposed to yours. Who may actively consider you a traitor, and aren’t shy of telling you to your face. Before long the VIPs had split into three tribes who refused to interact: the rightists who’d supported Vichy France, the leftists who’d been anti-Nazi for years, and the “neutrals” who probably wondered what they’d done to deserve this. But there was also a fourth group of prisoners. Being VIPs, the hostages clearly weren’t going to help maintain Castle Itter. Nor were the SS guards, who had signed on to further the glory of the fatherland, not act as servants for a bunch of bossy Frenchmen. So the Nazis decided to bring Eastern European prisoners to the Castle, who could do all the cooking, cleaning and general upkeep no-one else wanted to. Among their number was a Croatian Communist who’d fought for Tito’s partisans and was now slumming it as a prisoner of war. His name was Zvonimir Čučković. And he’s one you’re definitely going to want to remember. Auf Wiedersehn, Adolf As WWII rumbled on, life in Castle Itter subcamp settled into a mind-numbing routine. Well, almost. As 1943 gave way to 1944, it became clear even to the prisoners that things weren’t going the way Hitler might have hoped. Their food supplies were dwindling as rationing took its toll. Eventually, oil lamps and candles came to replace electricity. By 1945, even Commandant Wimmer must’ve seen the writing on the wall. At night, Allied aircraft were droning through the sky, raining death down onto countless German cities. It’s entirely possible the inmates even saw the distant, flickering glow of fires consuming the center of Munich during the 71 bombing raids the city suffered. But rather than fill them with hope, all this evidence of Germany’s downfall filled the prisoners with paralyzing dread. We know this because, in April, 1945, Michel Clemenceau - remember? The German-speaking son of the legendary Georges Clemenceau - asked Commander Wimmer to a private meeting with himself, ex-premier Paul Reynaud, and General Gamelin. In the meeting, Clemenceau delicately reminded Wimmer that all their lives were in his hands. Wimmer - perhaps with one eye on a possible future war crimes tribunal - assured them that he had no desire to see them executed. If push came to shove, he would help them escape. It wouldn’t be long before Wimmer’s promise was put to the test. On April 29, 1945, the Allies liberated the Dachau main camp, just 93km to the north. News reached Itter quickly. But, unfortunately, something else reached the Castle just as quickly: Eduard Weiter. A former bookseller who’d made a career out of being a nobody, Weiter had been handed the keys to Dachau at the end of September, 1943, and told to get on with it. As someone who hadn’t even joined the Nazi Party until 1937, there had been some hope that this lifelong bureaucrat would be a relatively humane commandant. While we’ve seen a couple of sources say he was hands off in his cruelty, we’ve also seen others say he mass-executed 2,000 prisoners just before Dachau’s liberation. Either way, his arrival in Itter put everyone on edge. Was he here to execute the VIP prisoners too? Well, no, as it turns out. Weiter did indeed kill someone at Castle Itter, but not who the hostages expected. On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler killed himself in his bunker. When news reached Itter on May 2, Eduard Weiter took his pistol and shot himself through the heart. Gruesomely, the Dachau commandant survived the initial gunshot. Even more gruesomely, he then managed to raise the gun to his head and fire again. This time, the bullet did its job. In the wake of Weiter’s bloody suicide, something in Commandant Wimmer seems to have snapped. On the night of May 3, Wimmer and his men abandoned their posts, fleeing into the Austrian countryside. Wimmer’s promise to Michel Clemenceau had apparently been forgotten. The next morning, the VIP hostages at Itter woke up to discover they were all alone. Not 20km west, the American army was rolling through Austria’s mountains, grinding painfully onwards towards Vienna. To the north, Allied forces were securing the villages around Munich. Now all the VIPs had to do was stay alive long enough for someone to rescue them. Unfortunately, this was easier said than done. The Wolves in the Forest On the bright Austrian morning of May 4, 1945, Major Joseph Gangl, better known as “Sepp” to his friends, was exhausted. Not six months before, Gangl had been a career military man in the German Wehrmacht Army, following orders unquestioningly. By April that year, though, he’d found himself stationed in Austria, the Third Reich crumbling around him, completely disillusioned with Hitler’s regime. Before the Fuhrer even committed suicide, Gangl had contacted the Austrian Resistance, offering his expertise. And now here he was, followed by a mere 20 loyal Wehrmacht soldiers, trying to survive in an environment where wearing a German army uniform was extremely inadvisable. As Gangl moved his small company through the tiny, picturesque town of Wörgl, he may well have been thinking that he simply couldn’t wait for the war to end. If that was the case, then fate was about to throw Sepp Gangl a cruel curveball, in the form of a wild-eyed Croatian on a bicycle. OK, so remember Zvonimir Čučković, the Croatian handyman at Castle Itter we said you’d definitely want to remember? Well, when the VIPs had all woken up that morning to find Wimmer and the guards gone, they’d raided the castle armory, tooling up with pistols, rifles, and submachine guns. But even kitted out like the Expendables, the hostages had been afraid to leave Itter. In the chaotic last days of the war, rouge Gestapo and SS units had taken to roaming the countryside, on a deranged mission to kill as many non-Nazis as possible. The forests around Itter were crawling with these werewolves, who might decide to check in on the subcamp at any moment. So the VIPs had decided someone needed to go and get help. And that was how Čučković came to be riding a bike through Wörgl just as Sepp Gangl stepped onto the square. Quite how the conversation between the two went has been lost to time. The upshot is that Čučković managed to tell Gangl all about the trapped French VIPs. Tired as he was, the German army major agreed to help. Pointing Čučković in the direction of Innsbruck, where the main American forces were, Gangl ordered his men to fashion a great white surrender flag. Then they all hopped in a truck, pointed towards Itter… ...and drove headlong into the Allied 23rd Tank Battalion. Had Gangl not thought to wave his flag, there’s a very good chance this story would now include a scene where the tiny Wehrmacht force wound up on the receiving end of Uncle Sam’s finest tank shells. Instead, Gangl got to meet face to face with the last major character in our tale today: 1st Lt John C. “Jack” Lee Jr. A 27-year old from New York state, Lee just happened to be around when his commanders heard Gangl’s wild story and agreed to help. He immediately volunteered to take two tanks and 8 men and head to Itter on a rescue mission. And so it was that, in the late afternoon of May 4, 1945, the only joint US Army-Wehrmacht force fielded in the whole of WWII set off across Austria for remote Castle Itter. Had they know what fate awaited them there, they might’ve just left the prisoners to fend for themselves. Assault on Itter Despite the German surrender now being a mere three days away, the route to Castle Itter was anything but easy for Lee and Gangl’s joint force. They lost time having to dismantle an SS booby-trap, and then wound up leaving one of their two tanks behind. Finally, just before they reached the castle, they ran into a group of SS setting up a roadblock. At the sight of the tank, the SS scattered into the woods. But by now it was all too clear that they would soon be converging on Castle Itter. When Gangl, Lee, and their combined 28 troops came roaring into the castle grounds atop a tank, they probably felt like saviors. But the French VIPs inside weren’t inclined to agree. At the sight of this ragtag group, they were less “hooray!” and more “dude… is that it???”. The problem was that there was no way to evacuate the hostages without more vehicles. So Gangl and Lee decided to settle in for the night and wait for reinforcements. Lee made his men park the tank at the gate, covering the only road up. It wasn’t a bad plan. Everyone in the castle was armed. The walls were thick. They had a tank. As the strange mix of Americans, French, and Germans settled in to wait till morning, they must’ve felt pretty safe. It’s at this point that everything went Assault on Precinct 13. At 11pm, the SS units on the hills surrounding Itter suddenly opened fire. Bullets pounded into the castle walls, chipping away the ancient stone. But, in this darkness, all it did was make those trapped inside the castle hunker down and avoid the windows. All night long the gunfire from the forests kept up, interrupted only by the occasional burst of return fire from the Castle. But, as dawn broke, the nature of the game suddenly changed. Just as the sun began to rise, an anti-tank missile streaked out of the forest, smashed into the Allied tank and blew it to pieces. A second missile then slammed into the Castle, destroying an entire room. But the worst came just moments later. Barely had the sound of the second explosion stopped ringing in their ears than the Allies heard gunfire and watched in horror as over a hundred battle-hardened SS soldiers began pouring out the forest, determined to take the castle. It was the beginning of one of the final WWII battles in Europe. And it wouldn’t be won without bloodshed. As the two SS columns converged on the Castle entrance and its lowest wall, those inside took to the rooftop, returning fire. For the first time in the entire war, German Wehrmacht troops en-masse fired on Nazi SS units. Beside them, the VIP prisoners fought too. Clemenceau and ex-premier Reynaud both picked up weapons, as did tennis star Jean Borota. Even the French fascist François de La Rocque shot at the attackers with a rifle, surely one of the most surreal moments in a battle full of them. But while the Allies inflicted heavy casualties, the SS had the numbers, the weapons, and the ammunition on their side. Not long after fighting commenced, a sniper’s bullet cut through Major Sepp Gangl. The Wehrmacht officer was dead before he hit the ground, finally able to rest after six long years. By noon, the course of the battle was turning. The tiny force inside Itter was overwhelmed and forced to retreat deep inside the castle keep. Luckily, help was by now on its way. Endgame We last saw Zvonimir Čučković on May 4, cycling like mad towards Innsbruck where he hoped to meet the US Army. Well, Čučković had rode clear to the 103rd Infantry Division, a near 60km ride. There, he’d had the fortune to bump into Maj. John T. Kramers. We say fortune because Kramers was the perfect man for the moment. See, Castle Itter was technically outside his jurisdiction. When he asked his superiors for permission to advance, they were all like “uh, no.” To which Kramers effectively replied, “uh, YES. I’m off to save some lives.” However, this would be easier said than done. The road towards Itter was packed with refugees. At one point, Kramers and his men came under sustained artillery fire. By the time they reached Wörgl on the morning of May 5, they didn’t know if there was anyone left at Itter to save. Stood in the town, Kramers tried to raise Jack Lee on the radio, only to get static back. Apparently, the Major was at his wits’ end until a local man suggested using a telephone. Incredibly, someone at the castle answered. Kramers told them he was on the way. Good job, too, because by now those at the Castle were out of ammo. As they retreated deep into the castle, prepared to fight with bayonets, the SS force was literally at the gates. The Nazi loyalists dragged their anti-tank gun down, aimed it at the wooden doors… ...and then looked up in horror as one of the Wehrmacht soldiers still on the roof cried “it’s the Americans!” That was all it took. As Kramers and his reinforcements rounded the corner, the surviving SS force scattered. It was 3pm, and the Battle for Castle Itter - one of the last battles to ever be fought in central Europe - was finally over. In the aftermath, the Wehrmacht troops were arrested and placed in prisoner of war camps. The French VIPs were taken from the castle and spirited away to safer locations. There was actually a photojournalist on hand to document the moment these great men emerged from the castle, shellshocked but very much alive. And yet… and yet… the story of the Battle for Castle Itter went almost unnoticed. With Germany’s unconditional surrender two days later, it was simply knocked off the front pages, just another minor skirmish remembered only by those who had been there. It wasn’t until 2013 that historian Stephen Harding published his book The Last Battle and the wider world heard of the unlikely alliance forged at Castle Itter that spring day. By the way, if you’ve enjoyed this video, we really suggest reading Harding’s book. It’s still the only long-form English language source available on this incredible incident. But the legacy of Castle Itter and the battle there goes far beyond just that of an interesting story. The hostages at Itter were the very cream of French society, men at the pinnacle of their careers. After being rescued, they would go on to shape postwar France. Léon Jouhaux, for example, would win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1951. Others would help choose what direction France took in its fourth and fifth republics. Since it was at during time that France became a key player in the emerging European Union, this is a big deal. Imagine. If Čučković hadn’t been able to cycle fast enough… if Gangl hadn’t become so disillusioned with Nazi Germany… if Jack Lee and his tanks hadn’t just happened to be hanging around, none of these VIPs would’ve survived the war. That would mean a France, possibly a Europe, that looked very different to the one we know today. After another failed stint at being a hotel, Castle Itter is now in private hands, no longer open to the public. Yet there’s no doubting that, on one crisp spring day in 1945, the future of the whole of Europe hung in the balance between its walls. It may not be famous, but Castle Itter, and the battle that happened here, deserve to be remembered by us all.
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Channel: Geographics
Views: 520,477
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Keywords: Battle for Castle Itter, Itter Castle, When was Castle Itter built?, America and Germany Fought Side by Side in WWII, America vs Germany WWII, Castle Itter facts, castle itter ww2
Id: 7p3b0VBXKOk
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Length: 22min 3sec (1323 seconds)
Published: Tue Nov 26 2019
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