Eduardo González
Otto Skorzeny arrived in Spain in 1951, exactly 70 years ago, protected by Francisco Franco’s regime. A former SS high command and head of the command that rescued Benito Mussolini in 1943, he set up a company in Madrid, without renouncing his Nazi and anti-Semitic political activities, and died in 1975 in our country, which he considered his “second homeland”.
Born in 1908 in Vienna, the birthplace of Adolf Hitler, Skorzeny was one of more than 100 Nazi officers who, according to the General Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, took refuge in Franco’s Spain, including such well-known elements as the Belgian Léon Degrelle, a member of the Waffen SS, exiled to Spain from 1945 until his death in 1994 and whose extradition to Belgium was systematically rejected by Franco’s regime.
Otto Skorzeny, alias Scarface (for a spectacular scar on his face, memory of a duel during his university days), joined the Nazi party in Austria in the 1930s and during World War II fought on the Eastern Front, specifically in the German invasion of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. In April 1943, he was appointed colonel of the elite German forces (the Waffen-SS), commanding the Friedentahler unit.
One of the milestones of his political-military career was his direct participation in the rescue of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who had been removed from power and imprisoned by order of King Victor Emmanuel III in July 1943. The Führer ordered Operation Oak to rescue Mussolini and personally appointed Otto Skorzeny to command the mission, which ended with the release of the Duce without a single shot. The operation was of such “military audacity” that it was praised, in those terms, by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill himself.
In May 1945, after the fall of the Third Reich and Hitler’s suicide, Scarface surrendered to the Allies. In 1947 he was tried in Dachau for war crimes and, surprisingly, acquitted for lack of evidence. Despite this, he remained in prison to answer charges brought by other countries, but managed to escape the same year from the concentration camp where he was awaiting trial thanks to the help of former SS comrades.
Scarface in Madrid: Evita Perón, Nasser and even Mossad
In 1951, Skorzeny moved to Madrid, where, thanks to the protection of the Franco regime, he established his permanent residence and began to manage an import and export company. His stay in Spain did not prevent him from continuing with his political activities, especially to help former Nazi war criminals escape to Argentina. In fact, the Austrian – who moved freely around the world with a Spanish passport – made numerous trips to this South American country and even acted as an escort for Evita Perón, the wife of President Juan Domingo Perón, with whom, according to the bad languages, he managed to maintain relations beyond the merely professional ones.
In addition, throughout the 1950s and 1960s he combined his business activities in Madrid with the work of military adviser to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, which included training in guerrilla tactics for both the country’s armed forces and Palestinian refugees, including Yasser Arafat. In 1962 there was another rocambolesque episode in the life of the former head of the SS, when he was hired by the Israeli espionage service, Mossad (according to senior leaders of this group admitted to the Haaretz newspaper), despite his undoubted Nazi and, therefore, anti-Semitic past.
Otto Skorzeny’s last years passed without a hitch, between Alcudia, in the Balearic Islands, and his flat in Madrid’s Gran Vía, from which, according to some documents, he continued to direct the Odessa network, made up of former members of the SS and which was in charge of facilitating the evacuation of Nazis to Latin America.
“Spain is my second homeland and this is where I will end my life”, he told ABC newspaper in 1970. “I’m not a political refugee, I’m in Spain because I like it,” he added. Otto Skorzeny died in July 1975 in Madrid of lung cancer and was buried in a coffin wrapped in the colours of the national-socialist flag.
