Just recently news has been released by a CIA analyst that during the Cold War there were double agents who worked for the CIA while remaining secretly loyal to communist spy agencies. There were nearly 100 fake CIA "agents" in East Germany, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. These "agents" made up false intelligence that was then passed on to the U.S. policymakers for years.
Benjamin B. Fischer, the CIA's former chief historian, explained that the CIA ignored the law of averages by hiring the agents on such a large scale. He also said that when the CIA learned of the infiltration they mostly ignored the policy failure. 
Failing to recognize the wrong information that was passed proved to be a mess for the agency, but the entire idea of preventing the double agent deception was dismissed by the CIA and was considered insignificant.
Fischer began working as a CIA officer in 1973 when he joined during the Cold War and was placed in the Soviet affairs division. He eventually sued the agency in 1994, stating that he was mistreated after he criticized the agency for mishandling the case of the CIA officer, Aldrich Ames. Ames had been unmasked as a counterintelligence official.
Of course, after this information was made official, the agencies were questioned about whether they were handling the situation properly. During the 1970s, many of the workers questioned the CIA for even considering using the counterspies. Many had wondered whether these counter-agents could ever be truly loyal to the agency.
Not only did this happen in the 1970s, but it also happened on December 30, 2009, at a CIA base near Khost, Afghanistan. On Dec. 30, 2009, seven CIA employees were killed by a suicide bomb at a fortified base in Afghanistan near the Pakistani border.
The bomber, a Jordanian doctor named Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, had gotten inside the highly secure base by duping both the CIA and the Jordanian General Intelligence Department, who thought he was a trusted informant.
But al-Balawi remained a loyal insurgent working for al-Qaida. After telling American and Jordanian officials that he had information that could help capture key Taliban and al-Qaida leaders - and going through several security checkpoints - al-Balawi set off the 30-pound bomb that was strapped to his body.
The attack was carried out in revenge for the 2009 killing of the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.
Double agents are known as foreign nationals that are recruited by a spy service. These recruits are considered trustworthy and loyal to the CIA but maintain allegiance to their original agency as well. They have the job of feeding false information to the "enemy," but they also retain information that their other agency would find useful. Double agents are different than foreign penetration agents, who are also known as moles, as these agents spy from within the agencies while they pose as CIA officers.
The CIA's first double agent failure happened in Cuba when it was revealed by the Cuban intelligence officer Florentino Aspillaga in 1987. Aspillaga uncovered that at least four dozen recruits hired over a 40-year span had been working for the communist government in Havana, supplying false information to the CIA.
During the year after Aspillaga announced the false agents, Cuba announced that there were at least 27 CIA agents who were arrested. Along with the names of the agents, Aspillaga found secret communications and photographic gear. This fiasco was immediately covered up by the congressional intelligence oversight committees.
Some recruits in East Germany were also double agents working for the Ministry of State Security. Two men who admitted to being double agents, Klaus Eichner, and Andreas Dobbert, said that working against the CIA was difficult without the inside sources. The two men wrote that the spy service was not able to place double agents in the CIA itself. However, they did not see that as an issue since they could get into the CIA operation in East Germany easily.
Another Eastern German double spy, Markus Wolf, said that if a double agent wasn't already hired by their agency, it was easy to turn the rest into double agents. He also wrote that he found a CIA officer working in West Germany who wanted to recruit East Germans to work for them. Wolf ended up sending his double agents to work for the CIA.
Fischer said that some U.S. intelligence officials admitted the failure on the CIA's part. Bobby Ray Inman, a former CIA deputy, admitted that the whole double agent fiasco went on for nearly 20 years. 
Fischer said one of the worst failures involved a lack of a warning in 1961 of plans to build the Berlin Wall.
Another major double agent failure happened in the Soviet Union after its collapse in 1991. The failure was revealed after a double agent, Aldrich Ames, was arrested for spying for Moscow since the 1980s. Ames helped the Soviet Union pass along a combination of accurate and false information. Ames' job started in 1986 and continued throughout the years to 1993. After that, he was handled by the post-Soviet SVR intelligence service.
The KGB agency ended up sending a false defector to the CIA. Aleksandr Zhomov tricked the agency into believing that he could supply the information on how the KGB had unmasked and arrested many of the double agents during the 1980s. Believing him, the CIA paid Zhomov one million dollars. He was then dispatched by Moscow to protect Ames from being discovered as the one who made the leak earlier.
In 1995, the CIA admitted that they had reports from eight years previous, including 35 from double agents. After that news had leaked, the CIA's inspector urged that the officers overseeing that information be reprimanded. Those men included William H. Webster, Robert M. Gates, and R. James Woolsey. However, the accused claimed that they did not know of the misinformation and should not be punished.
Fischer believes that what made the CIA, even more, vulnerable was the fact they accepted volunteers to walk in off the streets if they were interested in the agent job. This increased the vulnerability of the CIA - since there wasn't enough vetting, almost anyone could walk in and be accepted for the job.
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In the Nazi-occupied Soviet Union, German soldiers had a very real fear of witches. Namely, the "Night Witches," an all-female squadron of bomber pilots who ran thousands of daring bombing raids with little more than wooden planes and the cover of night - and should be as celebrated as their male counterparts.
In June of 1941, the Axis powers pushed into the Soviet Union using the largest invading force in the history of warfare. The infamous Operation Barbarossa saw about four million troops wade into Russia from the west, establishing a line that threatened to overtake Moscow itself. The offensive was one of the most violent and terrible military actions in World War II, with countless atrocities committed against the Russian people. 
The battle-hardened male soldiers of the Soviet Union held the front lines against the Axis forces, keeping the invasion from overtaking the capital.
From the start of the war, Colonel Marina Raskova, a Soviet pilot who was known as the "Russian Amelia Earhart," began receiving letters from women across Russia wanting to join the war effort in any way they could. Many women served support roles at the time, but it was difficult to make it to the front. Raskova lobbied to finds ways for women to take a more active role in the war and was highly successful in her efforts, leading to women being eligible for the draft and even convincing the military to establish all-female units.
In October of 1941, the order came down from Joseph Stalin that Raskova was to establish a trio of all-female air squads. The only one reported to have remained exclusively female was the team of night bombers, the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, where everyone from the pilots, to the commanders, to the mechanics, were women.
The regiment began filling out in 1942, with young women ranging in age from 17 to 26, transferring to the small town of Engels to begin flight training. The future pilots were greeted by Raskova herself with a no-nonsense, military manner. The women were issued size 42 boots, outfitted with ill-fitting military uniforms made for bulkier male soldiers. Their hair was cut short. As one of the pilots would recall in a later interview, "We didn't recognize ourselves in the mirror-we saw boys there."
The women faced significant obstacles even before they began engaging in combat-namely, with the equipment. They had to fly Polikarpov Po-2 aircraft-two-seated, open-cockpit biplanes that were obsolete even by the standards of the day. Made of plywood frames with canvas stretched over them, the craft was light, slow, and provided absolutely no armor. The benefit of the planes was that they had a slower stall speed than the standard German fighters, making them hard to target, and they could take off and land just about anywhere. However, this came as a literal cold comfort to the aviators who had to fly the ships through walls of enemy fire in the dead of night, with the freezing wind whipping around and through the exposed cockpits, often giving the pilots frostbite.
But this did little to discourage the women of the 588th. Starting with an initial bombing run on June 8, 1942, the all-female squadron would harry Nazi forces with overnight bombing runs all the way until the end of the war. At the peak of the regiment's strength, it had as many as 40 two-person crews, flying multiple bombing runs as soon as the sky darkened, taking part in as many as 18 in a single night. The light planes could only carry six bombs at a time, so as soon as one run was complete, the pilots would be re-armed and sent back out for another run. Of course, this tightly controlled weight limit also meant the women could not bring parachutes and had to fly at lower, more easily spotted, altitudes.
Using such vulnerable craft to make their bombing runs, the cover of night was crucial to their success and survival. Three planes would leave simultaneously, with two of the airplanes drawing searchlights and gunfire, and the third sticking to the darkness, to drop the bombs. To remain hidden, the pilots would also kill their engines when they got near their target, and simply glide over it, deploying their payload.
As the silenced bombers sailed over the Nazi forces, making a light "whooshing" sound, German soldiers began referring to them as "Nachthexen" or "Night Witches," a name the pilots of the 588th quickly took on with pride. Rumors began to spread among the Germans that the Soviets were giving the women pills and treatments that gave them the night vision of a cat. One of the most famous of the Night Witches, Nadezhda Popova, who herself flew 852 missions, earning her multiple medals and the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, described the situation a bit more accurately in Albert Axell's book Greatest Russian War Stories: 1941-1945, saying, "This was nonsense, of course. What we did have were clever, educated, very talented girls."
Unfortunately, not everyone was so impressed with the 588th regiment's fortitude and military prowess. Many in the Soviet military still found the idea of women flying in combat to be laughable, despite their clear ability. Undeterred by the lack of faith from many of their male counterparts, the women embraced their identities, and are said to have painted their lips with navigational pencils and to have drawn flowers on the side of their aircraft.
By the end of the war, the Night Witches had flown somewhere about 30,000 bombing raids, delivering around 23,000 tons of munitions right to Nazi's. The 588th lost 30 pilots during the fighting, and 23 pilots, including Popova, were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The squadron was never disbanded but was instead converted into the 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, which continued to fight for the Soviet Union.
It was Popova who perhaps best summed up the stubborn resilience and passion of the Night Witches. "When the wind was strong, it would toss the plane," she said. "In winter, when you'd look out to see your target better, you got frostbite, our feet froze in our boots. But we carried on flying."
The Night Witches didn't have great planes, or superior bombs, or even very much support for their unit, but they nonetheless became one of the most remarkable fighting forces of World War II. No sorcery needed.
Operation Crazy Horse-named after Lakota warrior - took place from May 1966 to June 5, 1966, was a search and destroy mission during the Vietnam War conducted by military forces of the United States, South Vietnam, and the Republic of South Korea in two valleys in B�?¬nh Dinh Province of South Vietnam.
The objective of the operation was to destroy the Viet Cong (VC) 2nd Regiment (approximately 2,000 men) believed to be in the area and thereby prevent an attack on the U.S. Special Forces Vinh Thanh Civilian Irregular Defense Group camp (CIDG). The U.S. forces had the continuing objective of protecting Highway 19 and the base camp of the 1st Cavalry Division at An Khe from harassment by the VC.
In September 1965, the 1st Cavalry Division, newly arrived in South Vietnam, carved out Camp Radcliff, its base, near the town of An Khe to ensure that Highway 19 which reached from the coast of South Vietnam to the Central Highlands city of Pleiku remained under the control of allied forces.
Almost immediately the 1st Cavalry began mounting operations against communist forces in the Vinh Thanh Valley, 10 miles northwest of An Khe. Vinh Thanh Valley was small, approximately 12 miles long and less than 3 miles wide, but heavily populated and dominated by the Viet Cong.
Ten miles east of Vinh Thanh Valley was the Suoi Ca Valley. The two valleys were separated by a chain of heavily-forested mountains rising as much as 2,600 over the river valleys. The soldiers dubbed Suoi Ca Valley "Happy Valley" (not to be confused with another American-named "Happy Valley" near the city of Danang). A trail crossing the mountains between the two valleys was named the "Oregon Trail." The U.S. estimated that a regiment of main force VC guerrillas controlled Suoi Ca Valley.
In late 1965, sweeps through the two valleys by the 1st Cavalry failed to find large numbers of VC. They were believed to have fled the valleys, but to have returned after the 1st Cavalry withdrew to its base.
In early May 1966, Montagnard irregulars and U.S. Special Forces soldiers in the Vinh Thanh valley reported clashes and increased activity by the Viet Cong in the area and a possible major attack on May 19, the birthday of North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh. 1st Cavalry Division commander Maj. Gen. John Norton ordered Operation Crazy Horse to preempt the attack and attempt to destroy the VC regiment believed to be in the area. Norton was prepared to dedicate up to five battalions of 1st Cavalry troopers to the task.
The Americans began Operation Crazy Horse with heavy harassing artillery fire designed to disrupt a possible attack on the CIDG camp and to prepare for a helicopter landing. The initial helicopter landing was at Landing Zone Hereford on a ridge overlooking the Vinh Thanh valley and Special Forces camp three miles distant.
Shortly after landing on May 16, Company E from the 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment became engaged with a VC battalion on a ridge near the landing zone.
Because of bad weather, little air support was available to the Americans who were surrounded, during a break in the rain Company C 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment was landed and moved to support Company E. After an all-night fight at close quarters, the VC withdrew leaving behind 38 bodies and having killed 28 Americans. Persuaded that they had located the VC regiment, Norton sent in two battalions on May 17 to find and pursue the VC.
The 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment landed at Landing Zone Hereford while the 2/12th Cavalry touched down at Landing Zone Horse, in the mountains east of the Vinh Thanh Valley. The strategy was that the Americans would trap the VC between the two battalions, but, after initial firefights, the Americans searched eastward for several days mostly without success.
On May 21, the situation at Landing Zone Hereford had been quiet for several days. It was decided that C Company, 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment would move off the hill to conduct operations in the valley below. Over the protests of the company commander, an under-strength weapons platoon of 20 soldiers was left alone at the landing zone while one company of the 1st Cavalry returned to An Khe and another departed the landing zone by foot on a search and destroy mission.
Less than an hour after the platoon was left alone, the VC attacked with mortars followed by an infantry assault. By the time reinforcements arrived, 15 American soldiers and journalist, Sam Castan, had been killed. The five survivors who had escaped the carnage returned to the hilltop. The VC retired uncontested from the area.
Dispatch editor Michael Christy-who commanded the same company (C Company, 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment in 1969)-wrote an article on what happened at LZ Hereford that appeared in Vietnam magazine: http://www.historynet.com/last-stand-at-lz-hereford.htm.
On May 24th, in the wake of the VC attack at Landing Zone Hereford, Maj. Gen. Norton changed strategies, called off search and destroy missions temporarily as he no longer wanted his soldiers "to go banging around in the enemy's backyard," and attempted instead to encircle the area where the VC were believed to be, cut off their escape routes, and called in artillery and airstrikes while Americans, South Korean, and South Vietnamese military units attempted to ambush VC units presumed to be fleeing the area.
The peak allied strength devoted to Operation Crazy Horse was four American, one Vietnamese, one South Korean, and one CIDG (Montagnard with Special Forces advisers) battalions. One of the few significant clashes came on May 26 at Landing Zone Monkey where an American company was briefly under siege and a helicopter was shot down. By the end of May, it was apparent that most of the VC had escaped. Operation Crazy Horse was officially terminated on June 5, 1966.
Despite the failure by the Americans to engage the VC in large battles of attrition, the U.S. declared Operation Crazy Horse a success. The U.S. estimated that 507 VC had been killed at a loss of 83 Americans, 14 South Koreans, 8 South Vietnamese, and an unrecorded number of Montagnards.
The operation also revealed, however, a limitation of airmobile warfare in heavily forested mountains. With only a few feasible places where helicopters could land, communist soldiers could anticipate likely landing sites and prepare to contest the landing or ambush the Americans as they fanned out from the landing zone.
Three months later the 1st Cavalry was back in Binh Dinh again with Operation Thayer to attempt once again to eliminate North Vietnamese and VC influence in the province.
It is a common theme among Medal of Honor recipients that they had no idea they were earning one during their gallant actions. They simply set out to do their duty as they saw fit, and, before they knew it, they had the nation's highest military honor around their neck.
When 1st Lieutenant Cecil Bolton found his men pinned down by excessive machine gun and mortar fire, he simply did what he perceived was his duty as a leader. Setting on with his task, he was oblivious to the fact that, by the time he returned, he had committed one of the most remarkable gallant acts of leadership in the war.
When his men were taking heavy fire in the dark of night, Bolton attempted to call in fire until he was wounded in the legs and knocked unconscious by a German artillery shell.
When he awoke, he did so with an anger and determination to eliminate the threat. Wading through the ice-cold water with a two-man volunteer team, he alone then charged the machine gun and killed both Germans. On his way back, they took out an enemy sniper, and when he noticed an 88-mm artillery gun firing on his men, he decided to eliminate them too.
Wounded again on the way back and unable to walk, Bolton ordered his men to leave him behind so as not to cause their deaths. With his men heading to safety, he began his long, slow crawl to friendly lines. When he arrived, he passed out and woke up as the newest recipient of the Medal of Honor.
Cecil Bolton was born in 1908 in Crawfordville, Florida. Despite coming of age for military service in the 1920s, Bolton forwent military service as he sought to make a living like any American wading through the Depression. However, when his nation came under attack, despite being well into his 30s, Bolton didn't hesitate to answer the call. In July of 1942, Bolton joined the United States Army with little idea he would emerge from the war as a national hero.
Perhaps due to a natural maturity for his age, Bolton quickly established himself as a capable leader amongst a sea of 18-year-old recruits. By November of 1944, Bolton found himself a 1st Lieutenant with E Company, 413th Infantry Regiment of the 104th Infantry Division. As the Allies were pushing closer to Germany, the 413th was in the Netherlands near the Mark River. The Germans were continuing to put up a stiff resistance, and on the evening of November 2nd, Bolton and the men of E Company learned that first-hand.
Cecil Bolton had just led his men across the Mark River in the Netherlands in the dark of night when two German machine guns located their position. The enemy fire was remarkably accurate and began to take their toll on the men of E Company. Making matters worse, the area in which they were pinned down began to be rocked by accurate and pre-set artillery fire. Bolton did his best to call in for fire upon the enemy machine guns preventing his advance, but the darkness of the night concealed their position and only the flashes of the muzzles were visible to guide them.
While attempting to get a fix on the enemy, a German shell landed nearby knocking Bolton to the ground. His legs were severely wounded, and when he woke up, he had to crawl to the forward positions. Somehow able to regain the strength to walk, Bolton had a stubborn determination to give violence back to the enemy. He organized a two-man bazooka team that was taken on a volunteer basis given the risk of action. He then proceeded to wade through freezing waters to reach the enemy undetected.
With the two-man team providing cover fire, Bolton then charged the enemy emplacement alone. With hand grenades thrown with accurate precision, he quickly dispatched the first machine gun alone. He then led the other two men on a blistering assault of the 2nd. An enemy sniper attempted to prevent their advance but quickly found out that this was a group that would not be stopped. With the sniper now KIA, Bolton killed the first gunner with the carbine while the other two men killed the rest.
Having accomplished enough, it would have been understandable for the gallant men to return to friendly lines. However, when they noticed an 88-mm gun wreaking havoc on their friends, they didn't hesitate to act. Once again, they waded through the icy canal to line up a shot with the bazooka. With just the silhouette of the gun to guide them, Bolton directed a perfect shot and took out the gun.
On their return, Bolton was again the recipient of enemy fire that struck him in the legs. Now unable to walk at all, Bolton refused to allow himself to be the cause of his men's deaths. He ordered them to return without him over their objections, and they reluctantly left him. Bolton, as it turns out, decided he wasn't quite ready to die. Alone and under fire, he crawled his way back to friendly lines. Upon reaching relative safety, he finally collapsed.
Remarkably, Bolton survived his wounds. For his actions that day under intense fire and at great risk to himself, Cecil Bolton received the nation's highest military honor. While German fire ended his combat experience in World War II, Bolton proved that he still had a little fight left in him. He went on to serve one more time in the Army, this time reaching the rank of Colonel.
He eventually passed away at the young age of 56 and is now buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. Military history will forever record the fact that while the Germans took out his legs, they simply couldn't keep Cecil Bolton down.
Otto Skorzeny was born in Vienna into a middle-class Austrian family which had a long history of military service. His surname is of Polish origin, and Skorzeny's distant relatives came from a village called Skorzecin in Greater Poland region.
In addition to his native German, he spoke excellent French and was proficient in English. In his teens, Skorzeny once complained to his father about the austere lifestyle the family was enduring; his father replied, "There is no harm in doing without things. It might even be good for you not to get used to a soft life."
He was a noted fencer as a member of a German-national Burschenschaft as a university student in Vienna. He engaged in fifteen personal combats. The tenth resulted in a wound that left a dramatic dueling scar - known in academic fencing as a Schmiss (German for "smite" or "hit") - on his cheek.
In 1931 Skorzeny joined the Austrian Nazi organization and soon became a member of the Nazi SA. A charismatic figure, Skorzeny played a minor role in the Anschluss on March 12, 1938, when he saved the Austrian President Wilhelm Miklas from being shot by Austrian Nazis.
After the 1939 invasion of Poland, Skorzeny, then working as a civil engineer, volunteered for service in the German Air Force (the Luftwaffe), but was turned down because he was considered too tall at 6 ft 4 in and too old at 31 years old in 1939 for aircrew training. He then joined Hitler's bodyguard regiment, the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) as an Officer Cadet.
Skorzeny took part in the invasion of the Soviet Union with the SS Division Das Reich and subsequently fought in several battles on the Eastern Front. In October 1941, he oversaw a "technical section" of the German forces during the Battle of Moscow. His mission was to seize important buildings of the Communist Party, including the NKVD headquarters at Lubyanka, and the central telegraph office and other high priority facilities before they could be destroyed. He was also ordered to capture the sluices of the Moscow-Volga Canal because Hitler wanted to turn Moscow into a huge artificial lake by opening them. The missions were canceled as the German forces failed to capture the Soviet capital.
In December 1942, Skorzeny was hit in the back of the head by shrapnel; he was evacuated to the rear for treatment. He was awarded the Iron Cross. While recuperating from his injuries he was given a staff role in Berlin, where he developed his ideas
on unconventional commando warfare. Skorzeny's proposals were to develop units specialized in such warfare, including partisan-like fighting deep behind enemy lines, fighting in enemy uniform, sabotage attacks, etc.
In April 1943 Skorzeny's name was put forward by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the new head of the RSHA, and Skorzeny met with Walter Schellenberg, head of Amt VI, Ausland-SD, (the SS foreign intelligence service department of the RSHA). Schellenberg charged Skorzeny with command of the schools organized to train operatives in sabotage, espionage, and paramilitary techniques. Skorzeny was appointed Commander of the recently created Waffen Sonderverband z.b.V. Friedenthal stationed near Berlin (the unit was later renamed SS Jagdverband 502, and in November 1944 again to SS Combat Unit "Center,", expanding ultimately to five battalions).
The unit's first mission was in mid-1943, Operation Francois. Skorzeny sent a group by parachute into Iran to contact the dissident mountain tribes to encourage them to sabotage Allied supplies of material being sent to the Soviet Union via the Trans-Iranian Railway. However, commitment among the rebel tribes was suspect, and Operation Francois was deemed a failure.
Skorzeny arranged a meeting with the leaders of the former administration in Byelorussia, all of whom had beat a hasty retreat to Berlin in June and July 1944. These men, Radislaw Ostrowsky, V.I. Rodko and Mikola Abramchyk, agreed to cooperate in finding recruits and staff for several sabotage schools that could train infiltrators. Such line-crossers, it was felt, could serve as rallying points for partisans who had already fled to the woods.
Two SD facilities were established, one at Dahlwitz, near Berlin, and a second at Walbuze, in East Prussia. Radio communications, encoding, demolitions and assassination techniques were taught at these schools. FAK 203 also established a Byelorussian camp at Insterburg, which was run by Major Gerullis. This facility was later evacuated to Boitzenburg, in Pomerania, and was eventually transferred to Jagdverband Ost.
On the night between 24 and 25 July 1943, a few weeks after the Allied invasion of Sicily and bombing of Rome, the Italian Grand Council of Fascism voted a motion of no confidence against Mussolini. On the same day, the king replaced him with Marshal Pietro Badoglio and had Mussolini arrested.
Hitler's common procedure was to give similar orders to competing organizations within the German military. So, he ordered Skorzeny to track Mussolini, and simultaneously ordered the paratroop Gen. Kurt Student to execute the liberation.
Mussolini was being transported around Italy by his captors (first to Ponza, then to La Maddalena, both small islands in the Tyrrhenian sea). Intercepting a coded Italian radio message, Skorzeny used the reconnaissance provided by the agents and informants (counterfeit notes with a face value of 100,000 pounds forged under Operation Bernhard were used to help obtain information) of SS-Obersturmbannf�?¼hrer Herbert Kappler to determine that Mussolini was being imprisoned at Campo Imperatore Hotel, a ski resort at Campo Imperatore in Italy's Gran Sasso massif, high in the Apennine Mountains.
On September 12, 1943, Skorzeny and 16 SS troopers joined the Fallschirmjager to rescue Mussolini in a high-risk glider mission. Ten DFS 230 gliders, each carrying nine soldiers and a pilot, towed by Henschel Hs 126 planes started between 13:05 and 13:10 from the Pratica di Mare Air Base near Rome.
The leader of the airborne operation, paratrooper-Oberleutnant Georg Freiherr von Berlepsch entered the first glider, Skorzeny and his SS troopers sat in the fourth and fifth glider. To gain height before crossing the close-by Alban Hills the leading three glider-towing plane units flew an additional loop. All following units considered this maneuver unnecessary and preferred not to endanger the given time of arrival at the target. This led to the situation that Skozeny's two units arrived first over the target.
Meanwhile, the valley station of the funicular railway leading to the Campo Imperatore was captured at 14:00 in a ground attack by two paratrooper companies led by Major Otto-Harald Mors, who was commander-in-chief of the whole raid. They also cut all telephone lines. At 14:05 the airborne commandos landed their ten DFS 230 gliders on the mountain near the hotel; only one crashed, causing injuries.
The Fallschirmjager and Skorzeny's special troopers overwhelmed Mussolini's captors (200 well-equipped Carabinieri guards) without a single shot being fired; this was also because General Fernando Soleti of the Polizia dell Africana Italiana, who flew in with Skorzeny, told them to stand down. Skorzeny attacked the radio operator and his equipment and stormed into the hotel, being followed by his SS troopers and the paratroopers. Ten minutes after the beginning of the raid, Mussolini left the hotel, accompanied by the German soldiers. At 14:45 Major Mors accessed the Hotel via the funicular railway and introduced himself to Mussolini.
Subsequently, Mussolini was to be flown out by a meanwhile arrived Fieseler Fi 156 STOL plane. Although under the given circumstances the small plane was overloaded, Skorzeny insisted to accompany Mussolini, thus endangering the success of the mission. After an extremely dangerous but successful lift-off, they flew to Pratica di Mare. There they continued immediately, flying in a Heinkel He 111 to Vienna, where Mussolini stayed overnight at the Hotel Imperial. The next day he was flown to Munich and on September 14 he met Hitler at Fuhrer Headquarters Wolf's Lair in near Rastenburg.
The landing at Campo Imperatore was in fact led by First Lieutenant Georg Freiherr von Berlepsch, commanded by Major Otto-Harald Mors and under orders from General Kurt Student, all Fallschirmjager (German air force paratroop) officers; but Skorzeny stewarded the Italian leader right in front of the cameras. After a pro-SS propaganda coup at the behest of Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler and propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Skorzeny and his Special Forces (SS-Sonderverband z. b. V. "Friedenthal") of the Waffen-SS were granted much of the credit for the operation.
In 1970, a cancerous tumor was discovered on Skorzeny's spine. Two tumors were later removed while he was staying at a hospital in Hamburg, but the surgery left him paralyzed from the waist down. Vowing to walk again, Skorzeny spent long hours with a physical therapist; and, within six months, he was back on his feet. Skorzeny died of lung cancer on July 5, 1975, in Madrid. He was 67 years old.
He was given a Roman Catholic funeral Mass in Madrid on 7 August 7, 1975. His body was cremated afterward, and his ashes were later taken to Vienna to be interred in the Skorzeny family plot at Doblinger Friedhof.
The First World War was a conflict of unprecedented ferocity that unleashed such demons as mechanized warfare and mass death in the twentieth century.
After the last shot was fired and the troops marched home, approximately three million Soldiers remained unaccounted for. Some bodies were found, but they bore no trace of identification. Many more men had been blown to smithereens or had simply vanished from the battlefields where as many as hundreds of deadly shells had fallen on every square yard.
An unassuming English chaplain first proposed a symbolic burial of one of those Unknown Soldier in memory of all the missing dead. Subsequently, the idea was picked up by almost every combatant country.
Acclaimed author Neil Hanson focuses on the lives of three Soldiers - an Englishman, a German, and an American aviator - using their diaries and letters to offer an unflinching yet compassionate account of the reality of fierce battle on the front lines. He describes how each man endured nearly unbearable conditions in the trenches and in the air and relates what is known about their deaths on the battlefields of the Somme, within gunshot sound of one another. He delves into their familial ties, the ideals they expressed in their letters. He brings to life the combatants who perished without a trace, skillfully showing how the Western world arrived at the now time-honored way of mourning and paying tribute to all those who die in war.
The tales of the three young men killed in their prime are told with a good blend of humanity and history. The impact on their families is addressed as well. The detail is amazing, and I felt like I knew these guys and might have been sitting with them as they wrote their letters.
I believe this is one of the best books on the First World War, capturing some of the histories of the war, its beginning and much of the human toll the war took in the numbers of killed, maimed and otherwise traumatized by the mechanized killing over four long years.
For me, this is one of the most powerful and moving books I have read in a long time and I highly recommend it not only for the information it contains but also for the reality it presents.
Readers Reviews
Neil Hanson has done a superb job of research and writing in this powerful book on the hundreds of thousands of men with 'no known grave'. A haunting and grim tour of the trenches told in the words of three men, one a Briton, a German and an American flier - all victims of the war and none found a known grave. The letters that were incorporated into the text and the writer's gripping style makes this a hard book to put down as it features many little-known facts of the 'missing', their families and their personal connections.
~Ironmike
Outstanding! I got to know each of these men. I liked them. I mourn the shadows they left behind. Each man deserves his time in this book. Well Done, Author, Well done!
~Sally Quick
This is a fascinating book. It is by turns sad, gross, uplifting, and a constant reminder of what can go wrong. While some may find the details a bit overwhelming, they are part of the whole, and for me, could not be left aside. The author crafted a memorial to this era, and to this war.
~ Catherine L. Johnson
This is an excellent non-fiction account of three Soldiers who are buried in no known graves. The three men are brought back to life through their letters home and their accounts of the war. The author has put a human face on the many thousands of men whose bodies were never recovered from the battlefields of France. The story of the German soldier is of interest because we are not exposed to many such stories from the other side of the front line. The book also contains a great deal of information on the conduct of the war, much of it new to me. I highly recommend this book.
~Bill Miller
This was an excellent book, well researched and beautifully written. I felt I knew each of the Soldiers-Paul, Alec, and George-and I grieved at their deaths and the waste of their young lives as though they were my own sons and not just men who died over ninety years ago.
I was fascinated by the History surrounding the burial of the Unknown Soldier, the building of the Cenotaph and indeed the story of the first Remembrance Day.
I highly recommend this book to any who want to learn more about this period in history.
~Harriet E. Cuming
Hanson painstakingly details the efforts to recognize the many thousands of unidentified Soldiers strewn about the hillsides of Flanders and northern France. Descriptive detail is given to the final memorials for the Unknown Soldiers at the Cenotaph, the Arc de Triomphe, and America's own Tomb of the Unknowns, as well as scores of other memorials recognizing those "unknown but to God". Hanson also closely follows the heart-wrenching efforts of Grace Seibold, George Seibold's mother and the Gold Star Mothers who took their anguish to their own graves of not knowing where their sons' bodies lay interred.
Hanson concludes his work with an exhaustive 100 pages of notes and bibliography. I can say with unwavering certainty that this book is, in my humble opinion, Pulitzer material. I have read many books of Pulitzer notoriety that pale in comparison to this magnificent work. This is an extraordinary and exhaustive account that will forever change your understanding of the Great War.
~Monty Rainey
About the Author
A full-time professional author for over twenty years, Neil Hanson is the author of a series of popular histories, hailed by critics as 'astonishing', 'brilliant', 'haunting', 'extraordinary', 'marvelous', 'superb', 'superlative', 'a triumph', 'a masterpiece' and ranked by one critic alongside 'Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves and other immortals.
As an anonymous 'ghostwriter' and 'manuscript doctor', Neil has also written or rewritten over forty other books, including a New York Times No.1 best-seller.
He has written and broadcast for national media on three continents and lectured and delivered workshops all over the world.
A former Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Leeds Trinity and York St John Universities and now an RLF Consultant Fellow, Neil has helped hundreds of undergraduates and school students to improve their academic writing.
For a complete list of his books, please go the following site: https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/neil-hanson/351244/