Friend of Foe

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FRIEND

GI artilleryman—

or enemy in

disguise come

to raise fatal

havoc behind

Allied lines? That

was the fix the

German ruse

posed in the

Ardennes attack.

This man,

photographed

at Murrigen,

Belgium, was the

genuine item.



N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 5

In the fight for the Ardennes, a fiendishGerman scheme shattered Allied certaintyabout who was real and who was not

BY ANTONY BEEVOR

OR FOE?



W O R L D W A R I I54

For this mission Skorzeny had unlimited powers. His

officers had the authority to obtain whatever they

want ed by sayi ng, “Order from the Reichsführ er.”

Revealing only that they were going to be undertak-

ing “interpreter duties,” the high command summoned

English-speaking officers and noncommissioned officers

from all the services—some were navy men, the rest Waffen

SS, army, and Luftwaffe—to Schloss Friedenthal outside

Oranienburg, in northeast Germany. At Oranienburg SS offic ers interrogated candi dates in

English, explaining that they would be part of a special unit,

the 150th Panzer Brigade, and swearing them to secrecy,

with leaks punishable by death. Like Skorzeny, their com-

mander, the wonderfully named Colonel Friedrich Muscu-

lus, had student-dueling scars. Musculus, a tanker, promised

that the 150th Panzer Brigade would have a “decisive effect

on the course of the war.”

ON OCTOBER 21, 1944, THE DAY HITLER SUMMONED SS COMMANDO OTTO SKORZENY

to East Prussia for a personal briefing, not even Field Marshals Gerd

von Rundstedt or Walter Model, who would be leading it, knew the dic-

tator was planning a massive attack in the Ardennes. Skorzeny, six feet

four inches tall and with a large scar on his left cheek from his days as a

student duelist, towered over the bent and sickly Führer.

“Skorzeny,” Hitler said, “this next assignment will be the most

important of your life.”

Fro m ARDE NNES 1944 : The Batt le of the Bulg e by Antony Beevor.

Publi shed by arran gement with Viking , a n im print of Penguin Publis h-

ing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright ©2015

by Antony Beevor.

As a component of

the attack, first called

Operation Watch on

the Rhine and then

Operation Autumn

Mist, Operation Greif (“griffin”) would be a special venture,

Hitler explained. Handpicked troops operating captured

American vehicles and clad in olive-drab uniforms would

penetrate Allied lines and cause mayhem and confusion—the perfect duty for the Austrian colonel, whom even fellow

officers described as a “typical evil Nazi” and “a real dirty

dog.” Of the hulking SS man, a panzer general once said,

“Shooting is much too good for him.”

German guards march GIs

captured in the Ardennes on

December 17, 1944. The

POWs’ motley dress reflects a

scarcity of winter clothing.

Otto

Skorzeny




The group moved en masse to a training facility at Grafen-

wöhr, in Bavaria. There, superiors assigned a young navy

lieutenant named Müntz to hunt for American uniforms at

POW camps. Müntz had until November 21 to collect 2,400

complete outfits, including those for 10 generals and 70 offi-

cers, as well as genuine American identity cards, pay books,

and other paperwork, to go with the American and British

currency they would be issued. Planners did not know that

the U.S. Army itself was so short on winter uniforms that GIs

were freezing in the Hürtgen Forest, Lorraine, and Alsace.Nonetheless, bearing an order signed by Hitler himself,

Müntz first went to Berlin to the department of prisoners of

war, whose head, after declaring that Müntz’s undertaking

was illegal under international law, provided him with writ-

ten instructions to show camp commanders. Müntz set off

with a truck and crew.

The POW camp commander at Fürstenberg an der Oder

refused the order to strip 80 GIs of their field jackets. The

brigade called off the scavenger hunt and recalled Müntz

lest the Red Cross hear of the row and alert the Allies.

At Grafenwöhr, officers gave all orders in English to men

kitted out in the few uniforms Müntz and his men had man-

aged to obtain. Trainees learned to salute in the American

style and other quirks, such as eating K rations “with the

fork after laying down the knife.” They studied the nuances

of American smoking, including the affectation of pausing

before lighting a cigarette to tap the smoke on the pack. To

absorb idiomatic terms such as “chow line” and to improve

their “American” accents, the trainees watched Hollywood

movies and newsreels. Instructors also taught all the usual

commando skills, such as close-quarter combat, demolition,

and use of enemy weapons.

G

iven more details of Operation Griffin, some men

expressed doubts about fighting in enemy uniform.

An SS lieut enant col one l dec lared that shirk ers would be sentenced to death. Another blow to morale came

when supervisors issued ampules of cyanide hidden in cheap

cigarette lighters.

On the other hand, Skorzeny inspired. SS men worshiped

him for his exploits: in Italy, he had been among comman-

dos who rescued defeated dictator Benito Mussolini, while

in Hungary he had led a special ops team that kidnapped the

son of Hungarian leader Miklos Horthy to pressure Horthy

into letting a Nazi sympathizer assume power. To those who

GERMANS IN AMERICAN VEHICLES

AND UNIFORMS WERE TO CAUSE

MAYHEM BEHIND ALLIED LINES.

A GI rests upon a German

Panther tank disguised as an

Allied M10 tank destroyer.

Skorzeny’s troops used similar

Panthers in sheep’s clothing.




men were divided into demolition groups to blow up bridges

and ammunition and fuel dumps; reconnaissance groups

to scout routes to the Meuse and observe enemy strength;

and teams to disrupt American communications by cut-

ting wires and issuing false orders. Each strike team had a

“speaker,” chosen for his grasp of American idiom. Three or

four men rode in each jeep. But four in a jeep was a mistake.

The Americans seldom packed a jeep so full. As the nervous Einheit Stielau commandos waited to set

off, an officer from headquarters tried to assuage them.

American soldiers in German uniform had been captured

behind German lines, he claimed, adding that the army

would take a lenient view and treat the captured GIs, who

by rights could be shot as spies, instead as prisoners of war.

On December 16, 1944, the day the Ardennes attack

began, eight of Skorzeny’s nine Einheit Stielau jeep

teams—the best English speakers, some carrying vials

of sulfuric acid to fling in sentries’ faces if an encounter went

sour—slipped through the American lines. Some cut com-munications wires and carried out minor sabotage, such as

changing road signs. At least one team managed to misdirect

an American infantry regiment.

But Operation Griffin’s greatest success was to trigger

an Allied overreaction bordering on paranoia. The Griffin

teams’ impact multiplied thanks to a simultaneous drop of

German paratroopers who generally came to grief but in the

process set GI teeth on edge.

At a bridge on the edge of Liège, American military police-

men stopped four men in a jeep. The interlopers were

dressed in U.S. Army uniforms and spoke English with

American accents, but when asked to show the trip tickets

that every GI driver carried they produced blanks. The MPs

ordered them out of the vehicle and found German weapons

and explosives, and swastika insignia under their American

uniforms. The jeep, investigators discovered, had been cap-

tured from British forces at Arnhem.

The MPs handed over their prisoners’ commander, Lieu-

tenant Günther Schultz, to a mobile field interrogation

unit. Schultz appeared to be cooperating fully. He admitted

serving in Einheit Stielau and told questioners that his com-

mander had said their orders were to “penetrate to Paris and

capture General Eisenhower and other high-ranking offi-cers.” Schultz was parroting Skorzeny’s line of palaver, but

it is still not clear whether he believed what he was saying,

was in on the original rumor, or simply was trying to impress

his interrogators to save his skin.

Schultz described an “Eisenhower Action” carried out by a

“special group” commanded by an Oberleutnant Schmidhu-

ber operating directly under Skorzeny. The plot to kidnap or

assassinate Eisenhower included about 80 men, he said. Par-

ticipants were to rendezvous in Paris at the Café de l’Epée or

loved him the Austrian offered “conspicuous friendship.”

One wrote later, “He was our pirate captain.”

The training camp at Grafenwöhr reverberated with

rumors about the mission. Some said the action was going

to be an airborne reoccupation of France. Skorzeny later

claimed to have spread a yarn about heading to Paris to

kidnap General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Skorzeny split his 2,400 recruits into two units. Thelarger portion kept the name 150th Panzer Brigade. This

much stronger force spread nearly 2,000 men among para-

troop battalions, Panzergrenadier companies, heavy mor-

tars, antitank guns, and two captured M4 Sherman medium

tanks—augmented with German Mark IVs and Panthers

unconvincingly masquerading as Shermans, painted olive

drab with the white American star, some of them without the

official surrounding circle. Commanders of other German

units participating in the offensive would exert no control

over Skorzeny’s troops, who were assigned to secure bridges

over the Meuse at Andenne, Huy, and Amay. Hiding by day,

they would move by night, using side roads and tracks tooutpace the regular army panzer spearheads.

Skorzeny’s smaller force comprised the 150 best of the

600 English speakers he had rounded up. He called the troop

Einheit Stielau, or “Stielau’s unit,” after the captain who led

it. Mounted mostly in jeeps and in American uniform, the

The dynamic

Skorzeny (with

Benito Mussolini

in 1943) inspired

his men with his

rakehell daring.




the Café de la Paix, Schultz was not sure which. He claimed

that another German special operations unit, the Branden-

burger commandos, also was involved. Despite the improb-

ability of 80 German soldiers assembling in a Parisian café,

the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) believed Schultz. The

next morning, Eisenhower found his security stepped up

such that he almost was a prisoner.

In like fashion, an alarmed CIC directed General OmarBradley not to use a car, nor depart or arrive at the front

door to his billet, the Hôtel Alfa in Luxembourg. He was

to use the kitchen entrance at the hotel’s rear and move to

rooms deeper in the building. For now, his vehicles and his

personal helmet would not display general’s stars. Bradley

now traveled sandwiched between a machine-gun-mounted

jeep in front and a Hellcat tank destroyer behind.

The idea of German commandos behind American

lines, dressed as GIs and wielding GI-issue weapons,

badly rattled American soldiers. Troops barricaded

every route to interrogate vehicles’ occupants. “Question thedriver because, if German, he will be the one who speaks and

understands the least English,” orders read. “Some of these

G.I. clad Germans are posing as high-ranking officers. One

is supposed to be dressed as a Brigadier General…. Above all

don’t let them take off their American uniform. Instead get

them to the nearest PW [prisoner of war] cage, where they

will be questioned and eventually put before a firing squad.”

Hoping to trip up fakers, sentries and MPs improvised

questions: quizzes on baseball; the name of the president’s

dog or Betty Grable’s current husband; and “What is Sina-

tra’s first name?” Stopped by a sentry told to watch for “a

kraut posing as a one-star general,” one-star Brigadier

General Bruce C. Clarke missed an answer about the Chi-

cago Cubs. “Only a kraut would make a mistake like that,”

his interlocutor declared, detaining Clarke for half an hour.

Even Bradley was held captive for a short time, despite

having correctly named the capital of Illinois, which the MP

insisted was not Springfield.

Britons moving about in the U.S. Ninth Army rear area

aroused considerable suspicion. Actor David Niven, a recon-

naissance officer in British Army uniform, was stopped and

questioned by an American sentry. “Who won the World

Series in 1940?” the guard demanded.“I haven’t the faintest idea,” the urbane Niven claimed

later to have replied. “But I do know that I made a picture

with Ginger Rogers in 1939.”

“OK, beat it, Dave,” the GI said. “But watch your step,

for crissake.”

With an aide, Briti sh Major General Allan Adai r, com-

mander of the Guards Armoured Division, stopped at a

checkpoint manned by black soldiers. The aide could not

find his or his chief’s papers. After standing by and watching

SO YOU WANT TO

BASED ON OPERATION GRIFFIN

TRAINING METHODS

Subtle cultural touches set Germans and Americans

apart. To pass as GIs, Skorzeny’s undercover troopers

had to relearn many basic activities and gestures.

IMPERSONATE ANAMERICAN

STEP 1

Smoke holding cigarette between the first two

fingers held upright, with thumb toward chin.

Figure 1German style



Figure 2 American style



STEP 2

Indicate the number three by closing thumb over

pinky finger and raising middle fingers.

STEP 3

Cut food holding a knife in right hand and fork in

left. To eat, set knife on plate edge, transfer fork to

right hand, spear morsel, and raise to mouth.




American intelligence officer gasped.

“Gerd?” the lieutenant said.

“Gunther!” Unwin said.

The cousins enjoyed a battlefield reunion.

The night of December 17, GIs captured a Skorzeny

strike team at the Belgian town of Aywaille, fewer than a

dozen miles from the Meuse. A search of the trio turned up

German papers and stacks of American dollars and British

pounds. One commando captured at Aywaille repeated thestory about the plan to seize or kill General Eisenhower,

confirming CIC’s worst fears. Reports described orders

given a group of Frenchmen, formerly of the paramilitary

militia and the SS Charlemagne Division, to sabotage fuel

dumps and railcars while disguised in American coats and

pretending to be escapees from Nazi forced labor.

Within days, the Aywaille three were tried and sentenced

to “be shot to death with musketry,” the eventual fate of at

least eight Einheit Stielau personnel. One group, slated for

the two Britons engage in much fruitless searching, the large

noncom in charge finally said, “General, if I were you, I’d get

myself a new aide.”

Another popular security check was to examine for reg-

ulation underwear, which led to a dramatic sequence of

events for one Allied soldier.

Like others in his family, Gerald “Gee” Unwin, a Jewish

soldier in British uniform, had left Germany for England

soon after Hitler came to power. His Anglicized name

replaced his original moniker, Gerhardt Unger. In Brussels

on leave the evening of December 16, Unger/Unwin, who

spoke with a heavy German accent, wound up in a bar drink-

ing with GIs from the U.S. First Army. Hearing their new

friend’s story, the Americans mentioned their intelligence

officer, Lieutenant Gunther Wertheim. Funny coincidence,

Unwin said; one of his cousins had the exact same name.In the wee hours of December 17, Unwin accompanied

his new friends to their unit, based near where the Germans

had first broken through. Near Eupen, Unwin and his com-

panions came to a roadblock. In Allied uniform but lacking

paperwork to justify being in the area, Unwin was arrested.

Guards holding him in a school classroom had him drop his

trousers; army issue shorts kept Unwin from being shot but

did not get him released. The next day he was marched into

another room to be interrogated. Seeing his next subject, the

WITHIN DAYS, THE STRIKE TEAM

WAS TRIED AND SENTENCED TO “BE

SHOT TO DEATH WITH MUSKETRY.”

At checkpoints across

the battle zone, wary

GI sentries had to

assume every vehicle

could be carrying

German saboteurs.




stopping. As we were by now in contact with the Americans,

this jeep was not fired on, but as it refused to stop the mines

were drawn across the road and it was blown up, killing two

of the three men in the vehicle, found to be Germans.”

A

long with the Einheit Stielau teams’ general impotence,

the 150th Panzer Brigade proved a complete anticli-

max. Skorzeny, who had known dolled-up Germantanks would not fool Americans except perhaps at night, gave

up all idea of thrusting through to the Meuse bridges when

the 150th bogged down in mud and the immense traffic jams

congealing behind the 1st SS Panzer Division.

The evening of December 17 Skorzeny asked Waffen SS

general Sepp Dietrich for permission to recast his force

as an ordinary panzer brigade. Dietrich, pestered by an SS

panzer corps commander’s demands that he withdraw the

Austrian’s men, who were “hindering the operation of the

corps by driving between vehicles and doing exactly as they

pleased,” consented, telling Skorzeny to take the 150th

Panzer Brigade to Ligneuville.On December 21, in a freezing fog, the 150th attacked north

to Malmédy. Skorzeny’s men forced back a regiment of the

U.S. 30th Infantry Division until American artillery loosed

new proximity-fuzed rounds that exploded as they neared

targets. In that day’s fighting more than 100 men of the 150th

were killed and 350 wounded. Shrapnel nearly cost Skorzeny

an eye. He withdrew the 150th Panzer Brigade from the

offensive, ending Operation Griffin. By chance, as with Ein-

heit Stielau, the 150th had achieved the goal of sowing confu-

sion. The attack on Malmédy convinced the Americans that

the 6th Panzer Army was preparing a drive north.

The “Skorzeny effect” lingered well after its perpetrators

had departed the field of battle. Tension at Allied check-

points remained high, and across the region, both at the

front and behind the lines, anxiety about the infiltrators

persisted. Talk of the commandos’ methods and disguises

took on a life of its own.

“German agents in American uniforms are supposedly

identified by their pink or blue scarves, by two [finger] taps on

their helmets and by the open top button on their coats and

jackets,” an aide of Bradley’s noted in his diary for December

22, 1944. “When Charlie Wertenbaker aTimemagazine jour-

nalist came this evening, we pointed to his maroon scarf, warned him of a shade of pink and he promptly removed it.”

And at Bas tog ne, a cro ssr oad s tow n whe re Americ an

paratroopers had held out against Hitler’s besieging forces,

shivering Volksgrenadiers found dead GIs in the forest and

stripped them of coats and boots. When these Wehrmacht

troops finally lost resolve and tried to come in from the cold,

wary GIs, remembering Skorzeny’s commandos and seeing

olive drab on Germans, considered the men approaching

with hands raised—and shot many of them dead.

a firing squad, sought a reprieve on grounds that they had

faced certain death if they refused to follow orders. “We

were sentenced to death and are now dying for some crim-

inals who have not only us, but also—and that is worse—

our families on their conscience,” they said. “Therefore we

beg mercy of the commanding general; we have not been

unjustly sentenced, but we are de facto innocent.” The Allies

rejected the appeal; Bradley confirmed the sentences.Three other Einheit Stielau operatives were to be exe-

cuted on December 23 at Eupen, near where captured

German army nurses were being interned. The doomed men

asked that before they were shot they hear the nurses sing

Christmas carols. With GI riflemen standing by, “the women

sang in clear strong voices,” a witness said. The guards “hung

their heads struck by the peculiar sentimentality of it all.”

The officer in charge was “half afraid that they’d shoot at the

wall instead of the man when the command was given.”

That same day, British troops of the 29th Armoured Bri-

gade were guarding the bridge over the Meuse at Dinant in

heavy fog. “An apparently American jeep drove through oneof the road blocks approaching the bridge on the east side

of the river,” the commanding officer of the 3rd Royal Tank

Regiment wrote. “This road block, as were all the others, was

mined by the 8th Rifle Brigade who had established a mov-

able barrier and arranged for mines to be pulled across the

road should any vehicle break through the barrier without

Military policemen

ready Skorzeny

trooper Günther

Billing, dressed in

U.S. Army fatigues,

for execution by

firing squad.

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