The Nazi Conspiracy by Brad Meltzer

Author:Brad Meltzer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

In a few hours, the Storch will land safely on an airfield outside Rome. There, the two passengers will board another plane, this time bound for the Austrian city of Vienna, where German authorities will receive them and Il Duce’s safety will be guaranteed.

Skorzeny did it. He rescued and freed Mussolini.

He also proved something that Nazi leaders will soon take to heart: With the right person in charge, anything is possible.

40

Vienna, Austria

September 13, 1943

“You have performed a military feat which will become part of history. You have given me back my friend Mussolini.”

It’s close to midnight when Adolf Hitler speaks these words by phone to Otto Skorzeny, shortly after the Waffen-SS officer was shown to his suite in a grand hotel in Vienna.

The energy at the hotel has been electric since Skorzeny and Mussolini arrived there an hour earlier, surrounded by the military escorts who met them at the airfield outside the city. Entering the hotel, they were received like conquering heroes.

Since the moment Skorzeny arrived in his suite, people have been coming in to congratulate him. Shortly before midnight, a Colonel from the Viennese garrison entered to formally bestow upon him, on behalf of the Führer, the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, the highest military honor in the Reich. Shortly after that, he received the personal call from Hitler.

It will continue like this for days. Skorzeny travels with Mussolini from Vienna to Munich, where the Germans have set up a headquarters for the deposed Italian Prime Minister. Here, with Nazi help, he’ll plan his next moves. And here, too, Skorzeny is wined and dined, feted like a hero.

The news of Skorzeny’s spectacular rescue of Mussolini quickly spreads throughout Germany. After a difficult stretch in the war, Nazi officials have been so starved for good news, the story of Il Duce’s rescue comes at just the right time.

Perhaps no one is more thrilled than Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who has just been handed a gift. “Let us rejoice with all our hearts that the Duce has been restored to liberty,” he writes. “The news of his liberation will create the greatest sensation throughout the world … I now have a feeling that our lucky streak has set in.”

Goebbels is on hand in East Prussia, along with dozens of other top Nazi leaders, when Mussolini and Skorzeny make their grand arrival at the Wolf’s Lair so that fellow fascists Mussolini and Hitler can be reunited.

“Hitler and Mussolini embraced after their long separation,” Goebbels records in his diary. “A deeply moving example of fidelity among men and comrades was here shown. I suppose there is nobody in the world who can fail to be impressed strongly by so touching a ceremony.”

The world press, of course, picks up the story about Skorzeny’s stunning rescue of Mussolini from the mountaintop prison. At first, most of the Allied press assumes that the account of the rescue, initially broadcast by the Reich’s news services, is Nazi propaganda. It seems simply too far-fetched to be true.

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