Fullbore Friday

a proper end

I first wrote about this in 2013, but as this week is the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII in Europe, let’s take a moment today to recognize what could be seen as the first step in the post-WWII USA-Germany alliance.

The Battle of Itter Castle, May 5th, 1945.

It is helpful to remember that in war, more often than not, you fight for those next to you - those you trust with your life with just a nod of the head.

Last war, last year, or even the last hour - you could have been trying to kill each other—but, in an instant—allies.

The most extraordinary things about Stephen Harding's The Last Battle, a truly incredible tale of World War II, are that it hasn’t been told before in English, and that it hasn’t already been made into a blockbuster Hollywood movie. Here are the basic facts: on 5 May 1945—five days after Hitler’s suicide—three Sherman tanks from the 23rd Tank Battalion of the U.S. 12th Armored Division under the command of Capt. John C. ‘Jack’ Lee Jr., liberated an Austrian castle called Schloss Itter in the Tyrol, a special prison that housed various French VIPs, including the ex-prime ministers Paul Reynaud and Eduard Daladier and former commanders-in-chief Generals Maxime Weygand and Paul Gamelin, amongst several others. Yet when the units of the veteran 17th Waffen-SS Panzer Grenadier Division arrived to recapture the castle and execute the prisoners, Lee’s beleaguered and outnumbered men were joined by anti-Nazi German soldiers of the Wehrmacht, as well as some of the extremely feisty wives and girlfriends of the (needless-to-say hitherto bickering) French VIPs, and together they fought off some of the best crack troops of the Third Reich. Steven Spielberg, how did you miss this story?

The battle for the fairytale, 13th century Castle Itter was the only time in WWII that American and German troops joined forces in combat, and it was also the only time in American history that U.S. troops defended a medieval castle against sustained attack by enemy forces.

Read it all and know this - why people fight is always more complicated than we think. Fun twist…one of the German officers who fought with the US Army against the Waffen SS was, himself, a Waffen SS officer.

Simple History made a solid video breaking down the battle.