World War II’s Strangest Battle: When Americans and Germans Fought Together

[Valin]

Daily Beast

Andrew Roberts

May 12, 2013

Days after Hitlers suicide a group of American soldiers, French prisoners, and, yes, German soldiers defended an Austrian castle against an SS divisionthe only time Germans and Allies fought together in World War II. Andrew Roberts on a story so wild that it has to be made into a movie.

 

The most extraordinary things about Stephen Harding's The Last Battle, a truly incredible tale of World War II, are that it hasnt been told before in English, and that it hasnt already been made into a blockbuster Hollywood movie. Here are the basic facts: on 5 May 1945five days after Hitlers suicidethree Sherman tanks from the 23rd Tank Battalion of the U.S. 12th Armored Division under the command of Capt. John C. Jack Lee Jr., liberated an Austrian castle called Schloss Itter in the Tyrol, a special prison that housed various French VIPs, including the ex-prime ministers Paul Reynaud and Eduard Daladier and former commanders-in-chief Generals Maxime Weygand and Paul Gamelin, amongst several others. Yet when the units of the veteran 17th Waffen-SS Panzer Grenadier Division arrived to recapture the castle and execute the prisoners, Lees beleaguered and outnumbered men were joined by anti-Nazi German soldiers of the Wehrmacht, as well as some of the extremely feisty wives and girlfriends of the (needless-to-say hitherto bickering) French VIPs, and together they fought off some of the best crack troops of the Third Reich. Steven Spielberg, how did you miss this story?

 

The battle for the fairytale, 13th century Castle Itter was the only time in WWII that American and German troops joined forces in combat, and it was also the only time in American history that U.S. troops defended a medieval castle against sustained attack by enemy forces. To make it even more film worthy, two of the women imprisoned at Schloss ItterAugusta Bruchlen, who was the mistress of the labour leader Leon Jouhaux, and Madame Weygand, the wife General Maxime Weygandwere there because they chose to stand by their men. They, along with Paul Reynauds mistress Christiane Mabire, were incredibly strong, capable, and determined women made for portrayal on the silver screen.

 

There are two primary heroes of thisas I must reiterate, entirely factualstory, both of them straight out of central casting. Jack Lee was the quintessential warrior: smart, aggressive, innovativeand, of course, a cigar-chewing, hard-drinking man who watched out for his troops and was willing to think way, way outside the box when the tactical situation demanded it, as it certainly did once the Waffen-SS started to assault the castle. The other was the much-decorated Wehrmacht officer Major Josef Sepp Gangl, who died helping the Americans protect the VIPs. This is the first time that Gangls story has been told in English, though he is rightly honored in present-day Austria and Germany as a hero of the anti-Nazi resistance.

 

(Snip)