The Most Unlikely Battle of the Second World War
- May 5
- 3 min read
A Day in History - 5th May 1945
It's 5th May 1945, Hitler has been dead for five days, Germany has been overrun on both fronts, and the war in Europe is almost over. A small medieval castle in the Austrian Tyrol is about to become the backdrop of one of the last and most unlikely battles of the Second World War.
Schloss Itter, seized by the German SS in 1943, was established to hold high-profile French prisoners of potential value to the German Reich. The bizarre mix of French detainees included tennis legend Jean Borotra, former Prime Ministers Edouard Daladier and Paul Reynaud, military commander Maxime Weygand and Charles De Gaulle's elder sister - Marie-Agnes. The Nazis had long practised holding such Prominenten (VIP prisoners) as potential leverage, but as the Reich collapsed, the prisoners were no longer assets. They were liabilities. The castle's SS commander, Captain Sebastian Wimmer, had orders to eliminate them should the Allies arrive in unstoppable force.
Understanding that time was running out, the prisoners composed a letter in English describing their situation and peril. On the morning of 3rd May, Zvonimir Čučković, a Croatian handyman employed in the castle, slipped away under the pretence of running an errand for Wimmer. Čučković carried the letter on foot through the mountains and delivered it to the local resistance, who passed it up the chain until it reached American hands.
Inside the castle, the situation continued to deteriorate. On the night of the 4th May, Wimmer abandoned his post and fled, leaving the prisoners effectively unguarded but no safer - units loyal to the dying Reich were still operating in the surrounding mountains and the order to eliminate the prisoners had not been rescinded.
It was at this point that Major Josef Gangl entered the picture. A veteran Wehrmacht artillery officer who had grown disillusioned with the Nazis, Gangl had been covertly supplying the Austrian resistance with weapons and intelligence while maintaining his German uniform as cover. Learning of the prisoners' plight, he made contact with Lieutenant Jack Lee of the 12th Armoured Division, whose small detachment had reached the town of Wörgl.
In the late hours of the 4th may, Lee and Gangl led a joint force towards the castle - a combination of forces that would have been unthinkable at any earlier point in the war. It consisted of Lee's Sherman tank Besotten Jenny, a small number of American infantrymen, Gangl's resistance fighters and a group of Wehrmacht soldiers, who has chosen to fight against the SS than for a regime they knew was finished.
The SS attacked at Dawn. A force of between 100 to 150 fanatical Waffen-SS surrounded the castle and opened fire. What followed defied every convention of the war that had preceded it - American soldiers and German Wehrmacht troops firing from the same battlements, defending French politicians and generals against their own countrymen's SS.
The defenders held well initially, but by the afternoon ammunition was running dangerously low. Two 20mm anti-aircraft guns and a powerful 88mm flak gun did considerable damage to the castle's keep and a direct hit from the latter reduced Besotten Jenny to a flaming wreck.
It was Jean Borota, the former tennis champion nicknamed the "Bounding Basque", who volunteered to break through the SS line, bring information to the Americans and direct reinforcements to the castle. At one point, he walked straight into two Germans manning a machine gun. Without hesitating, he waved to the Germans, pretended to urinate on a tree, and walked on.
When American units finally arrived around 4pm, the defenders were firing their last ammunition. One hundred SS were captured. Every prisoner was alive, saved by an unlikely alliance of Americans and Germans.
Gangl was the sole defender to die during the battle, killed by sniper fire while attempting to move Reynaud to safety. He was posthumously honoured as an Austrian national hero - a street in Wörgl bears his name to this day. Lee was promoted to captain and received the Distinguished Service Cross for his role in the battle.
Two days later, Germany signed the unconditional surrender. History recorded this date as the end of the war. At Schloss Itter, the war ended the only way it should have - with old enemies deciding enough was enough.
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