tion derived its name micki maus from a play on the son’s nickname
Nikki). In a surprise ambush on 15 October, the son was seized by
Skorzeny’s men, rolled up in a Persian carpet, and taken to an aircraft
bound for Vienna. Within a few days, Horthy weakened under the
extreme pressure and resigned from office, allowing Skorzeny to oc-
cupy the Citadel with minimal resistance and the leader of the radical
Hungarian fascist party to take the reins of government.
The last major special forces operation under Skorzeny’s
command—greif (Griffin)—occurred in conjunction with the Ar-
dennes offensive of December 1944. A brigade composed of several
thousand English-speaking German soldiers, outfitted with American
uniforms and military vehicles, was organized to seize two bridges on
the Meuse and spread chaos behind American lines. Only a handful
of these disguised commando teams succeeded in penetrating enemy
territory and inflicted merely minor damage. The greatest impact of
the operation was unintended, as General Dwight D. Eisenhower,
rumored to be the object of an assassination or abduction plot by
German special forces, became a virtual prisoner of his own troops
for a short period.
In the final months of the war, Skorzeny received a further promo-
tion and was awarded the Oak Leaves to the Knight’s Cross, Germa-
ny’s highest military honor. But on 15 May 1945, he surrendered to
American forces in Styria and was held as a prisoner of war. Two
years later, at the U.S. war crimes tribunal in Dachau, Skorzeny was
acquitted of having committed illegal practices during the Ardennes
offensive, largely because of a British intelligence officer’s admis-
sion of having directed operations in German-occupied France no
less irregular in nature. Following his release by the Americans, Ger-
man authorities arrested him, but in July 1948 he escaped from the
internment camp in Darmstadt and fled to Spain, where he resumed
his prewar career as an engineer and later began an import-export
firm based in Madrid.
Skorzeny’s name frequently surfaced in connection with the ru-
mored secret organization Odessa and its efforts to organize escape
routes for ex-SS officers. Reports also circulated that he was an
advisor to Gamel Abdel Nasser of Egypt and Juan Perón of Argen-
tina. In 1952, the German government cleared him in absentia of all
wartime criminal charges; the Austrian government followed suit in
SKORZENY, OTTO • 423