The Last Battle: When U.S. And German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe

by Stephen Harding

  Telling Sutton to save his ammo until he had a definite target, Lee continued up the circular stairway to the small door leading into the gatehouse’s cramped upper level. Inside he found Worsham and McHaley lying prone behind the now-quiet .30-caliber, surrounded by spent brass and wreathed by floating dust kicked up by the machine gun’s firing. As McHaley fed another belt of ammo into the weapon, he told Lee that when Sutton had started shooting at the interlopers, the west side of the gatehouse had almost immediately come under rifle and machine-pistol fire from troops hidden on the upper floor of the small inn on the schlossweg. He and Worsham had laid down suppressing fire, aiming at muzzle flashes and the occasional shadowy figure they could see silhouetted in the building’s windows. Despite their somewhat exposed position, they themselves hadn’t been directly targeted, and when the MG-42 had opened up, it seemed to be aimed at Sutton’s position, not at them. When Besotten Jenny’s .50-caliber had gotten into the act, McHaley said, the enemy fire had briefly shifted toward the tank but then died out completely.

  Cautioning the two young soldiers to stay alert, Lee descended via the circular stairway in the guard tower on the eastern front corner of the gatehouse. Emerging back in the courtyard, Lee knocked gently on one of the inner gates and then eased it open enough to squeeze through into the covered entryway. As he moved inside, he found himself looking down the barrels of Petruchovich’s M1 and Pollock’s BAR; recognizing Lee, the infantrymen lowered their weapons and turned back toward Basse and Szymczyk, who were crouched on either side of the small door that pierced the right half of the outer gate. The door was open just enough to give a clear view of Besotten Jenny, and, as Lee moved up beside him, Basse whispered that Szymczyk and Rushford had just traded places when the shooting started. When the MG-42 opened up, Rushford had popped up in the commander’s hatch, swiveled the big Browning around on its rotating ring mount, and started banging out .50-caliber rounds. Spent brass littered the top of the tank’s turret, its rear deck, and the ground around it.

  Conferring in whispers, Lee and Basse agreed that the enemy was obviously looking for a way into the schloss that didn’t require a direct assault down the narrow, sloping approach road toward the sturdy and well-defended gatehouse. Since the Germans on the castle’s upper levels hadn’t fired when the GIs in the gatehouse did, the attackers might not yet have a clear idea of the defenders’ numbers. Given that a full-scale attack wasn’t likely until the besiegers had determined how many men and what type of weapons they were facing, Lee told Basse to rotate the GIs up to the main building in pairs so they could eat and clean up. In the meantime, Lee said, he was going to check on the “castle Krauts.”

  When he reached the schloss’s Great Hall he was surprised to find most of the French VIPs gathered in front of the room’s huge, ornate fireplace. Several large logs were burning fiercely, and, in reply to Lee’s pointed query about why they all weren’t in the cellars as he’d directed, Augusta Bruchlen responded simply that they’d been driven upstairs by the cold. They’d emerged—shivering, though all were wearing coats—just after Lee had raced down to the gatehouse, and despite the sounds of battle they’d decided that warmth was a more immediate concern than safety. On behalf of the others, Bruchlen asked Lee if they could remain in the Great Hall; he agreed, but only on the conditions that they stay away from the heavily curtained windows, that no one leave the building, and that they all immediately return to the cellars if the firing resumed. As he moved toward the stairway, Lee also cautioned them not to give in to the temptation to go back upstairs to the relative comfort of their rooms, pointing out that Sepp Gangl and his men were stationed on the keep’s upper floors and that their defensive firing in the event of an attack would almost certainly attract a hail of enemy gunfire.

  Heading up to the first floor, Lee found Blechschmidt sitting on a chair to one side of the French doors leading out onto the broad veranda that stretched the width of the building’s south side. With crenellated, five-foot-high parapet walls, the structure offered a relatively safe perch from which to observe the ravine below. Using hand gestures and a few halting words of English, the young German officer explained that he’d stationed a man in the small, circular turret that projected a few feet over the wall at the veranda’s eastern corner, from where the soldier could overlook both the front courtyard and the base of the south foundation wall. Blechschmidt then pointed to a man crouched in the shadows in the opposite corner, from where he could keep on eye on the large rear courtyard and the foundation wall to the west.

  Lee clapped the German lieutenant on the shoulder and then moved down the hallway toward the heavy wooden door that led from the main building into the keep. Ascending the narrow stone stairs from floor to floor, he found two Germans on each, one peering out a window on the north side and the other on the south. Gangl and Schrader were on the fourth floor, standing just outside the door to Wimmer’s former suite and looking out one of the two windows on the keep’s east side. Joining them, Lee realized they were keeping an eye on two soldiers who had obviously climbed out the window and down onto the roof of the Great Hall. Gangl explained that he’d directed the men to take up observation positions behind the crenellations on the roof’s far corners. Schrader added that two more men were similarly concealed on the roof of the keep.

  Lee smiled his satisfaction with the officers’ preparations. Noticing that sunlight was beginning to peek through the windows of Wimmer’s former room, Lee checked his watch. Even as his mind registered the time—six AM—he heard the unmistakable rattle of an MP-40 coming from the floor directly below. Taking the stairs two at a time with the German officers close behind, Lee emerged on the third floor and immediately saw one of Gangl’s troops—obviously the one who’d fired the MP-40—curled on the floor in one of the south-facing rooms. The man lay directly beneath a shattered window, and incoming bullets were making the curtains dance before thudding into the chamber’s ornate wooden ceiling. Dropping to their knees, Lee and Gangl scrambled across the floor, grabbed the soldier by his ankles, and jerked him out into the relative safety of the hallway.

  Propping the man against the wall, Gangl grilled him in rapid German, turning every few seconds to give Lee a rough translation. The soldier—a young Austrian-born private—had spotted a small group of Waffen-SS troopers approaching the castle from the direction of Hopfgarten. The intruders had already gotten past the concertina wire and were running up slope toward the base of the foundation wall when the young soldier—who’d been drafted into the Wehrmacht just weeks before and had no combat experience—slammed the window open and in seconds emptied an entire thirty-two-round magazine at them. His rash action had had immediate consequences: in addition to rifle and machine-pistol fire aimed at the keep, an MG-42 had come briefly to life, raking the entire south side of the schloss before being suppressed by .50-caliber fire from Rushford in Besotten Jenny. And though Lee didn’t know it at the time, the enemy machine-gun fire had come very close to eliminating one of the French VIPs: several rounds had slammed into a wall just inches from the head of Édouard Daladier, who was taking his customary early morning walk in the rear courtyard in defiance of Lee’s order that all the French former prisoners remain inside the castle.3

  Despite the heated response the young Wehrmacht trooper’s act had elicited, his fire had also apparently succeeded in prompting the Waffen-SS men to pull back into the woods at the bottom of the ravine. Reports from Blechschmidt’s two lookouts on the veranda and from the men on the keep’s roof confirmed that no attackers had made it to the base of the foundation wall. Gangl and Schrader both concurred with Lee’s assessment that the aborted assault was another attempt to probe the castle’s defenses rather than to breach them, but all three officers also agreed that the coming of a new day—and with it, the increasing potential for the arrival of a significant Allied relief force—might well prompt the enemy to launch an all-out attack without waiting to find an exploitable chink in the castle’s defenses.r />
  Though the schloss’s defenders had thus far managed to deal with the enemy’s initial probes, Lee and the two German officers knew that a determined assault by what might well be several hundred battle-hardened Waffen-SS troops could have but one possible outcome. Only the timely arrival of a major relief force could guarantee the survival of Schloss Itter’s French VIPs and their American and German guardians. And though Lee and his newfound allies didn’t yet know it, the two forces dispatched to rescue them would both be significantly delayed—one by enemy action and the other by military bureaucracy.

  BEFORE LEE AND his mixed armor-infantry, American-German rescue party left Kufstein the previous evening, the young tanker had been assured by Colonel George E. Lynch that the 2nd Battalion of his 142nd Infantry Regiment would be “right behind them.” As part of the 36th Infantry Division’s advance from the Inn River valley eastward toward Kitzbühel, 2nd Battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Marvin J. Coyle’s four rifle companies—E, F, G, and H—and their supporting artillery and tank units were to strike southwest from Kufstein to Wörgl on the morning of May 5, and after securing the latter turn southeast and move down the Brixental Valley toward Hopfgarten.4 The advance would take the 2nd Battalion right past the base of the ridge atop which Itter village sat, and Lynch was certain that Coyle and his men would be able to quickly relieve Lee and his troops. But, as so often happens in wartime, Lynch’s plans were derailed and the 2nd Battalion’s advance delayed by unforeseen circumstances.

  The trouble started almost immediately after 2nd Battalion’s jeeps, trucks, and halftracks rolled out of Kufstein at seven AM, led by the attached M4 Shermans of Company B, 753rd Tank Battalion.5 Coyle’s orders from regimental commander Lynch directed him to follow Lieutenant Colonel Everett Simpson’s 3rd Battalion as far as the junction leading to the Söll-Sankt Johann road, about three miles south of Kufstein, at which point Simpson’s unit would turn directly east while 2nd Battalion moved on toward Wörgl. The only route toward the junction was a two-lane road that for about two miles of its length was sandwiched between the Inn River and a line of steep-sided hills, and near the hamlet of Kirchbichl the 3rd Battalion ran into a hastily emplaced timber-and-stone roadblock defended by Waffen-SS troops wielding small arms and panzerfausts. It took about thirty minutes to eliminate the resistance and another twenty for the GIs to clear the obstructions and reboard their vehicles, and 3rd Battalion had only moved about another half mile when it encountered a blown bridge. Though troops of the 111th Engineer Combat Battalion were immediately brought forward to deal with the situation, the two infantry units were halted for another ninety minutes.

  Nor did the 2nd Battalion’s luck improve. Almost as soon as Simpson’s 3rd Battalion turned off at the road junction, Coyle’s column encountered a massive crater—the result of demolition charges planted by withdrawing German units—spanning both of the road lanes in a built-up area with no available bypass. Fearing an ambush, Coyle deployed dismounted infantrymen to protect the leading tanks and the engineers who came forward to fill the crater. That effort took another hour, and it wasn’t until eleven o’clock that the 2nd Battalion renewed its advance toward Wörgl. Though Austrian resistance fighters who greeted the arriving Americans insisted that all German troops had left the town, Coyle’s soldiers undertook a thorough block-by-block clearance sweep, a process that occupied them for far longer than Coyle would have liked. Even as he prepared the battalion for the move east out of Wörgl, Coyle—having not heard from Lee since the previous night—was already wondering if his men would find anyone left to relieve at Schloss Itter.

  Though Coyle didn’t know it, the leader of the other American column trying to relieve Schloss Itter was also wondering whether he’d make it in time. Having gotten on the road just after sunup, Major John Kramers and his rescue force had initially made good time. As Meyer Levin later recalled:

  We romped along a fine road lined with cheering Polish, Czech, French and Russian ex-slaves and ex-prisoners, who here, as everywhere, seemed to have sprung up out of the ground the instant the liberation blew their way. It was a fine warm day6 and the mountain scenery was first class and we had a fine tourist ride for some 20 miles on the road to Worgl.7

  Their seemingly idyllic road trip through the Inn River valley soon turned sour, however. Just past Jenbach—about halfway between Innsbruck and Wörgl—Kramers’s column was hailed by a group of Austrian anti-Nazi partisans who’d been fighting running battles with Waffen-SS units farther along the road. According to Levin:

  Our little party paused for reflection. There we were, alone in what was still Kraut land. Liberating a castle full of big names was important, but it was also important not to get killed in so doing, especially on the day when fighting was supposed to have stopped. To add point to the argument, there came a familiar whine, which we thought we had heard for the last time. Then the blast, and 100 yards away there was a black burst. The boys in the tanks promptly backed among some trees, for cover. The soldiers hopped off their truck, took positions in a ditch, and watched the shells come down.

  “They’ve seen us.”

  “If they’re shooting for us, that’s lousy poor shooting.”

  “Yah, but it’s eight-eights and they got observation on this road.”

  Major Kramers made a swift “reccy” up the road, did some radio talk with headquarters, and decided we couldn’t clear the road to Itter without help.8

  As Kramers was discussing the situation with Lutten, the French liaison officer, the radio in their jeep crackled. It was the division command post, and the news wasn’t good. Not only would they not be getting reinforcements, the 103rd’s chief of staff, Colonel Guy S. Meloy, was ordering the rescue force to turn around and head back toward Innsbruck. Thunderstruck, Kramers reminded the senior officer that the French VIPs were in mortal danger and, as respectfully as he could, asked why on earth he was being ordered to abort the mission when the rescuers were well over half the way to Itter. The answer left Kramers stunned: His column had crossed the map coordinates that marked the boundary between the 103rd and 36th divisions’ respective areas of operation. He and his men were, in effect, “trespassing” in the 36th’s territory.9

  While Kramers well understood that moving unannounced through another division’s area of operations could be dangerous—friendly forces unaware of his column’s presence might well mistake it for an enemy unit and attack—he also believed at that point that his ad hoc detachment was the only force capable of saving Schloss Itter’s French prisoners. Being careful not to sound insubordinate, Kramers pointed out to Meloy that the question of unit boundaries and areas of operational responsibility had not kept the initial rescue plan from being approved by the division commander, Major General McAuliffe, less than twelve hours earlier. Going further, he reminded the chief of staff that the murder of a gaggle of French VIPs by the Nazis would not reflect well on either American division. Struggling to keep his anger in check, Kramers all but pleaded to be allowed to keep going, but to no avail.

  Directed in no uncertain terms to return to Innsbruck, the military-government officer made what under the circumstances was a very gutsy, and admittedly foolhardy, decision: he would send back the four tank destroyers and the infantrymen from the 409th as ordered, but he, Lutten, Sergeant Gris, and Čučković would continue to Schloss Itter in the jeep. How he planned to either liberate or defend the French VIPs is unclear, given that the only weaponry he now had at his command were the M3 submachine guns and .45-caliber pistols he, Lutten, and Gris were carrying. As Kramers was about to pull away, Levin and Schwab made their own bold decision: despite the obvious folly of driving deeper into what was still enemy-held territory—on roads quite possibly mined and almost certainly crawling with die-hard German troops—the two journalists immediately volunteered to follow along in their own jeep. As dangerous as the trip to Schloss Itter might turn out to be, neither man intended to miss what was shaping up to be one hell of a story.10


  EVEN AS SCHLOSS ITTER’S two would-be relief forces were struggling to stay on the move, the castle’s defenders were suffering a crisis of trust.

  Just after eight AM, as Lee and Gangl were inspecting the defenses on the schloss’s north side, firing erupted from the gatehouse. When the two officers got there, Basse explained that one of Gangl’s men had apparently used a rope to lower himself from the veranda outside the VIPs’ dining area to the base of the sloping foundation wall directly west of the gatehouse. One of the wall’s supporting stone buttresses had hidden him from view until he took off running down into the ravine, heading in the direction of Hopfgarten. With a pointed glance at Gangl, Basse said that none of the “tame Krauts” had opened fire on their erstwhile comrade. By the time the Americans in the gatehouse realized what was happening, the escaping Wehrmacht trooper had run through the breach in the concertina made earlier by the Waffen-SS men and was well into the trees. Though the GIs had opened up with M1s and Pollock’s BAR, they hadn’t hit the fleeing soldier.11

  A quick headcount by Gangl and Lieutenant Höckel showed the escapee to be a German-born soldier of no great political conviction who’d probably decided to go over to the Waffen-SS simply to avoid immediate execution should the castle be overrun. Whatever his motives, the man’s escape was a dire development. He knew exactly how many troops were defending Schloss Itter, where they were positioned, the type and number of their weapons, and even how much ammunition they had—information he would almost certainly reveal to the SS men in order to demonstrate his loyalty. What must have been worse still, from Lee’s point of view, was the fact that none of the other Germans had fired at the defector as he loped toward the trees. Did that mean that the man’s comrades harbored the same idea—to find a way to give themselves up to the Waffen-SS and claim they’d been coerced into helping the Americans in hopes of avoiding a bullet in the back of the head?