Voilà le parfait nazi. L’histoire de sa vie dépasse l’absurdité et la cruauté de la fable Ingloriuos Basterds de Tarantino. L’auteur a dessiné le personnage principal Hans Landa en s’inspirant d’Otto Skorzeny en évitant ses traits de caractère trop insupportables.
Je me permets de le dire car dans la génération de mes grand-pères on a eu des gens trop proches de ces criminels et agents de services secrets. Ce sont des personnes dangereuses pour qui entre en relation avec eux, alors on m’a appris dès l’enfance de changer de trottoir quand on en aperçoit un spécimen même de loin. C’est un bon conseil parfois difficile à mettre en pratique. Les agents des services ne se présentent pas toujours comme tels. C’est le type de personne qu’il faut tenir à l’écart de sa vie et de ses proches sans égard de sa nationalité ou penchant politique.
Recruitment by Mossad
The Israeli security and intelligence magazine Matara published an article in 1989 claiming that Skorzeny had been recruited by Mossad in 1963 to obtain information on German scientists who were working on an Egyptian project to develop rockets to be used against Israel. Reporting on the Matara story, the major Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronot said that it had confirmed the story from their own senior Mossad source. Former Mossad head Isser Harel confirmed the story that former Nazis were recruited to provide intelligence on Arab countries.
Ian Black and Benny Morris wrote in 1991 that Skorzeny may not have known for whom he was working, but in 2010, Tom Segev published in his biography of Simon Wiesenthal that Skorzeny had offered to help only if Wiesenthal removed him from his list of wanted war criminals. Wiesenthal refused, but Skorzeny finally agreed to help anyway. Segev gave as his main source the senior Mossad agent Rafi Meidan to whom Segev attributes the primary role in the recruitment of Skorzeny.
Further details of the story were published by Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv in 2016. According to their information, a Mossad team had started to develop a plan to kill Skorzeny, but chief Isser Harel decided to attempt to recruit him instead, as a man on the inside would greatly enhance their ability to target Nazis who were providing military assistance to Egypt. He allegedly was recruited and conducted operations for Mossad from 1964, working with Avraham Ahituv and Rafi Eitan.
Other unnamed sources asserted that Skorzeny was recruited after Mossad visited his home in Spain, where he expected that he would be assassinated. After undergoing instruction and training in Mossad’s facilities in Israel, the rumoured work for Mossad included assassinating German rocket scientist Heinz Krug who was working for the Egyptian government and posting a letter bomb which killed five Egyptians at the Egyptian military rocket site Factory 333. He also allegedly supplied the names and addresses of German scientists working for Egypt and the names of European front companies supplying military hardware to Egypt.
No confirmed source can explain Skorzeny’s motives for working with Israel, but he may have craved adventure and intrigue and feared assassination by Mossad. An article featured in Der Spiegel on 22 January 2018 raised doubts as to the involvement of Skorzeny in Krug’s death, stating that Mossad boss Isser Harel ordered the murder.
30.3.2016 by Chris Woolf - Otto Skorzeny was one of the most outstanding military men of the 20th century. His specialty was daring, guerrilla-style, commando raids. He was an unrepentant Nazi, a senior SS officer, who remained involved in right-wing causes his whole life. And now it’s emerged that he was also an agent and hitman for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service.
The extraordinary story of Skorzeny’s work for Israel is documented for the first time in the latest edition of the magazine, Forward. The piece was written by Dan Raviv, a correspondent with CBS Radio News, and Yossi Melman, an Israeli author. Together the two men have written five books on Israeli intelligence operations.
“He was Adolf Hitler’s favorite military officer,” says Raviv.
Skorzeny was an Austrian, from an old distinguished but impoverished family, proud of its long military tradition. The 6-foot-4 Skorzeny was a noted duellist, and ‘fencing’ left him with a massive scar across his face.
He was an enthusiastic Nazi, joining the Austrian equivalent of the Nazi party in 1931. When World War II broke out in 1939, Skorzeny volunteered for the SS, joining a unit called Leibstandarte, which had been set up as Hitler’s bodyguard. Ostensibly a military unit, it left a trail of burned villages, massacred civilians and murdered PoWs.
Skorzeny distinguished himself for his resourcefulness, daring and deception, and soon began his commando career.
His most famous exploit was perhaps the rescue of Italy’s Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, from rebels in 1943. Skorzeny brought troops in silently by glider, landing near a mountaintop fortress, and overwhelming its defenders.
Otto Skorzeny after freeing Mussolini (in black) – 12th September, 1943 Wiki Commons /Toni SchneidersFor that Hitler personally awarded Skorzeny the Iron Cross. His action helped keep Fascist Italy fighting as Germany’s ally for another two years. The Fuhrer met with Skorzeny often, and in turn he clearly admired the dictator.
In the Battle of the Bulge, it was Skorzeny who led the German effort to send commandos behind the lines in captured US uniforms to sow confusion and sabotage key targets. Fighting in enemy uniform is a war crime, punishable by death. But Skorzeny managed to get himself acquitted by an Allied military tribunal after the war, in 1947. A year later, he escaped custody, allegedly helped by former fellow SS officers — dressed in stolen American uniforms.
Skorzeny made his way to Spain, where Fascist dictator, Francisco Franco, sheltered Nazi refugees.
He became a businessman — he was an engineer by trade. But Skorzeny was not content with that. It’s alleged he helped other Nazis escape to safety in Spain or Latin America. He also became involved in Egypt’s efforts to beef up its armed forces to confront Israel. He’s believed to have provided commando training to Egyptians and Palestinian refugees. One of his graduates is said to have been none other than Yasser Arafat.
Other Germans — scientists — were helping Egypt build up a rocket and missile program to strike Israel. This was the late 1950s, into the 1960s.
It was a nightmare for Israel, says Raviv, “thinking that German Nazi scientists were working on that … And so the Mossad did everything it could to stop it, to intimidate the Germans. (They) sent them all kind of threatening letters; phone calls in the middle of the night, both in Germany and in Egypt.”
Skorzeny was involved with the scientists.
“We learned,” says Raviv, “from really impeccable sources,” that after considering killing Skorzeny, Mossad decided to try to recruit him instead.
“And that’s what they did,” adds Raviv, “in 1962.”
Skorzeny agreed to help Israel in exchange for being taken off Israel’s hit-list. He even turned down offers of money.
Simon Wiesenthal refused to take Skorzeny off his list of Nazis who should face justice for their crimes. But Mossad forged a letter from Wiesenthal and gave it to Skorzeny to try to persuade him to help.
He agreed.
“They flew him to Israel,” says Raviv. “They tried to work on him a little bit. They took him to Yad Vashem, the famous Holocaust memorial and museum.”
But he showed no sign of remorse or guilt. Israeli intelligence analysed him and decided he had no moral compass.
But Skorzeny became an enthusiastic and cooperative agent for the Jewish State. He obtained and provided key intelligence on the scientists working for Egypt, including personal information and addresses. He mailed at least one letter bomb.
“Not only that,” says Raviv. “we have found out that he willingly participated in at least one assassination. In fact it was Skorzeny who pulled the trigger and killed one of the German scientists.”
Modern Israeli analysts, who have seen the original files on Skorzeny, cannot explain why he was such an enthusiastic agent, really helping the Israelis.
“I guess he thought it was adventure,” says Raviv, “and that Mossad is the best in the business, and somehow he enjoyed being involved with them.”
Mossad did take Skorzeny off their hit-list. In later life he got involved again in right-wing causes, founding a “consulting group,” that acted as a front for recruiting and training mercenaries to fight for right-wing regimes and military juntas from South Africa to Greece and Chile.
Skorzeny died peacefully in Madrid in 1975. At funeral ceremonies there and in Vienna, the Nazi hero was given the Hitler salute by former SS comrades and others.
One man at the funeral was none other than his now retired Mossad handler, Yosef Raanan — a fellow Austrian who lost much of his family to the Holocaust. He flew at his own expense to pay his respects to his former agent, SS Colonel Otto Skorzeny.
Former SS officers and others give the Nazi salute at Skorzeny’s funeral ceremony in Vienna, 1975 Wiki Commons
Un an après le salut nazi en 1976 les jeunes autonomes et antifascistes de Vienne occupent les bâtiment de l’ancien abattoir à Sankt Marx et le transforment en centre culturel, solidaire avec les antifascistes du Chili, les militants de l’ANC et de l’OLP .
Depuis les héritiers de Skorzeny ont travaillé pour pouvoir enfin sortir de l’ombre. Ils ont pondu des monstres équipés de systèmes d’intelligence artificiell meurtrière.
Difficile de dépasser l’amoralité d’un personnage comme Otto Skorzeny. Avec le soutien de l’IA , de Youtube, de Tiktok ou d’Instagram n’importe quelle recrue peut y arriver. Les tortionnaires de l’état islamique, les GIs états-uniens, Skorzeny, les maras mexicains, les pilotes de drônes russes ou ukrainiens, les jeunes recrues d’IDF et bientôt les fantassins des armées francaises et allemandes, tous sont unis dans le même combat contre l’humanité.
Fini la conjuration des égaux et celle des imbéciles. Ma CPU Intel est plus humaine et morale que vous. Il est temps de redécouvrir ce que c’est qu’un homme en chair et en os qui ne vit qu’une seule fois mais qui est authentique et vivant.
