Mark A Cerasini - Close Up TV - BBC online - Hitler’s Idols TV - Otto Skorzeny -
Otto Skorzeny was probably the most effective special forces commander of World War II. Mark A Cerasini, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the US Special Ops Forces, 2002
Colonel Otto Skorzeny was the most daring commando the Nazi war machine produced. He was once considered the most dangerous man in Europe. Close Up, CBC television 1960
He was Hitler’s favourite Nazi commando, famously rescuing Mussolini from an Italian hilltop fortress, and was known as ‘the most dangerous man in Europe’.
After World War Two, he landed in Argentina and became a bodyguard for Eva Perón, with whom he was rumoured to have had an affair.
So when Otto Skorzeny arrived in Ireland in 1959, having bought a rural farmhouse in County Kildare, it caused much intrigue.
At 6ft 4in and 18 stone, known as ‘scarface’ due to a distinctive scar on his left cheek, Skorzeny was an easily recognisable figure as he popped into the local post office.
… Born in Vienna in 1908, Otto Skorzeny joined the Austrian Nazi party in the early 1930s. At the outbreak of WW2 he was initially involved in fighting on the Eastern Front, taking part in the German invasions of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. BBC online news 30 December 2014, ‘How did Hitler’s scar-faced henchman become an Irish farmer?’
A Viennese member of the SS ... The task is to rescue a dictator before he can be put on trial by the Allies – Benito Mussolini. Hitler’s Idols, SBS 2017
Otto Skorzeny’s bravery seals his reputation. ibid.
1932: He joins the Party and the SS. ibid.
Skorzeny is also involved in the development of superweapons. ibid.
Even Hitler’s death cannot shake his belief in National Socialism. ibid.
Skorzeny and nine others are eventually brought to trial in 1947. ibid.
Today, Skorzeny’s fabricated adventure stories continue their mythical heroism in comics and computer games. ibid.
War is inevitable, and this time, it will be truly worldwide. It will unravel everywhere and there will be no limit to its battlefields. The condemnations of Nuremberg will be one of the main reasons, which will cause this war to be a conflict whose horror will be unparalleled. These condemnations gave birth, in fact, to a new conception which makes the victor a hero and the vanquished an odious criminal. By this fact, each leader will wage war like a demon in order not to be the loser and become, consequently, a criminal. All the atrocities that can be imagined by man, will be committed during this next war, in order to prevent the enemy from acquiring victory. What I have just said, I have repeated to the American representatives and I have warned them that all of the mothers of the entire world will one day curse America. Otto Skorzeny, interview Agence France Presse (AFP), Cairo 30 January 1953