The Nazi thug who became a murderer for Israeli Mossad
Hitler’s favourite Otto ‘Scarface’ Skorzeny moved to Ireland where he plotted to kill Egyptians, writes Liam Collins
IT is where the 3rd Duke of Leinster kept a mistress and today it is an upmarket wedding venue — but between 1959 and the mid-1960s, Martinstown House, near Kilcullen, Co Kildare was the lair of Otto ‘Scarface’ Skorzeny, Hitler’s favourite SS commando and a Nazi ‘Our Boys’ hero.
The Austrian-born Nazi, whose white Mercedes could be seen purring across The Curragh, lived openly in Ireland for six weeks at a time, obeying the terms of a residency permit initially granted by the controversial Conor Cruise O’Brien.
Skorzeny, the man credited with the daring glider rescue of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from an Italian mountain prison in 1943, among other exploits, said he wanted to buy horses and live quietly in the Irish countryside.
Interviewed at the house for a TV programme shortly after the Israeli secret service of Mossad had kidnapped his Nazi compatriot and accomplice Adolph Eichmann from Argentina — bringing him back to Israel where he was tried and sentenced to hang in 1961 — Skorzeny seemed almost blase about something similar happening to him.
The reason becomes apparent in a Netflix documentary, Inside The Mossad, after watching Mossad agents talking about their dirty work. By 1962, Skorzeny was actually working for the feared Israeli intelligence service. His job: eliminating high-ranking German scientists who had been recruited by the Egyptian presidents Naguib and Nasser to develop long-range missiles which could attack Israel.
According to veteran Mossad agent Rafi Eitan, Skorzeny went about his work as an agent with the military efficiency and ruthlessness that had made him one of Germany’s top commanders during World War II.
The Mossad man says that, at this time, up to 100 German scientists were working with the Egyptian state — either in Cairo or secretly in Germany — on a missiles programme to potentially be used against Tel Aviv.
Following their success at capturing Eichmann, Israeli intelligence had no problem identifying other Nazi targets — and prominent among them was the colourful Skorzeny, now a businessman with an “import export agency” living openly between Madrid and Kilcullen.
Originally it was decided to kill him in another Mossad covert operation, but despite his Nazi past there was a lingering sense of admiration among the Israeli agents at his military exploits and cavalier approach to a life of danger.
“He was the most dangerous man in Europe, an excellent military man,” says Mossad’s Rafi Eitan in the documentary, confirming a long-held rumour that Skorzeny had been ‘turned’. Instead of killing him, Mossad recruited him.
“It was a positive move to help us reach every German technician,” says Eitan, whose nickname in the spy agency was ‘Mr Kidnap’. “We offered Skorzeny a way out of fear. Ex-Nazis didn’t know whether they were to be targeted or not.”
And that certainly applied to the 6ft 4in German commander whose rescue of Mussolini was just one of the cloak and dagger operations he spearheaded during a rampaging career that took him from Vienna to the centre of power in Hitler’s Third Reich.
As the war drew to a close, his last major mission, Operation Greif, involved dressing English-speaking German soldiers in American army uniforms to get behind Allied lines. Their mission, it was rumoured, was to assassinate General Dwight Eisenhower.
In 1947, Skorzeny stood trial for war crimes at Dachau but was acquitted; pending other charges he escaped, wearing a US military police uniform. He turned up in 1950 in Paris, which he fled after being recognised sitting in a cafe on the Champs-Elysees, and later located to Madrid where he was given a Nansen passport (for stateless individuals) by the Franco government.
In 1952 — on the recommendation of a former Nazi colleague now working with the CIA — he was recruited as a trainer by the newly independent Egyptian state.
Several Palestinian refugees also received commando training, and Skorzeny planned their raids into Israel in 1953-1954. One of these Palestinians was Yasser Arafat.
Then in 1957, he applied, without explanation, for a visa to visit Ireland. It was granted by Conor Cruise O’Brien, then a senior official in what was called the Department of External Affairs.
“Skorzeny, who is now stateless, is on the UK Home Office ‘Black List’ as an undesirable character,” wrote O’Brien in a memo which was published in a recent volume of Documents on Irish Foreign Policy 1957-1961.
“I think this means no more than that he made their faces red in the matter of Mussolini. We are not aware of any specific war crimes charges against him. I see no objection either to the granting of the Visa (if the Department of Justice assent) which they probably will on our recommendation. Of course if the Skorzenys come here there may be some adverse comment in the English popular press, but I think we should be prepared to endure that with fortitude,” he wrote.
Skorzeny and his second wife Countess Ilse Luthje came, very publicly to Dublin, staying at the Portmarnock Country Club hotel, where they hobnobbed with the city’s ‘social glitterati’, including, it was said, a young up and coming TD, Charlie Haughey who had been elected to the Dail the year before.
Giving his nationality as Spanish, Otto Rolf Skorzeny applied again for a Visa in 1958 “to visit a friend” in Ireland, and while on the three-week visa purchased the ‘gothic’ Martinstown House and 167acre estate from a branch of the Guinness family — with money that appeared to be just as mysterious as himself.
When he applied for permanent residency status in Ireland in 1959 on this occasion, another Department official, Timothy Horan, wrote: “Though he was acquitted on charges of war crimes, he was refused entry to the US and Canada and, in the case of Canada at least, the suggestion is that the main reason for the refusal is that he was still pro-Nazi.”
Horan also objected to the way the Skorzenys had “forced the issue” by buying property before getting residency in Ireland.
But the Secretary of the Department of Justice, Peter Berry, who would later play such a major role in the Arms Trial, advised that he should be given permanent residency and his minister, Oscar Traynor, supported him.
Minister for External Affairs Frank Aiken and his top official Con Cremin were against it. In the end they prevailed, with Skorzeny given permission to visit his Kildare mansion for no more than six weeks at a time, provided he gave an undertaking not to attempt to enter Britain.
Kildare historian Reggie Darling remembered Skorzeny from the 1960s. “He was a big man and stood out because of the scar across his face. Everyone knew who he was. I wouldn’t say he was particularly friendly. He didn’t really mix with local people.
“Skorzeny liked to drive up to Dublin and park his car outside the Gresham Hotel on O’Connell Street. He considered the parking fines of £1 to be good value.”
By now the legend of the Austrian-born ‘scarlet pimpernel’ was growing. He was alleged to have turned up in Argentina, a favoured destination of Nazis arriving through what were known as ‘ratlines’ — a network operated by powerful Nazi and fascist sympathisers. He became friendly with Juan Peron, the country’s president, and it was said he was bodyguard to his beautiful wife Eva.
His desire to buy horses and retire to Ireland seems to have faded with his failure to get permanent Irish residency. He continued to visit regularly but according to Mossad agents other things were occupying his thoughts by mid-1962, this preoccupation having mainly to do with saving himself from the terrifying retribution of the Israeli secret service.
“He gave us secrets and took part in intimidating scientists,” says agent Rafi Eitan in Mossad. “He wrote letters and called their families,” he says. According to others the letters were terrifying and he did a lot more than just engage in a campaign of intimidation again the scientists, some of them former colleagues in the German war effort.
On September 11, 1962 German scientist Heinz Krug, who travelled regularly to Cairo, left his office in Munich to meet “someone” to discuss the threats against him and his family “that was driving him crazy”, according to authors Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, writing in 2016. The man the scientist was going to meet was Otto Skorzeny, who he believed was sympathetic as they had both served the Nazi cause together.
He believed the former lieutenant-colonel in the feared Waffen SS could advise him how to escape the clutches of Mossad.
Instead Skorzeny was now “one of the Israeli spy agency’s most valuable assets” and drove Krug to a “safe place” in a forest — where he coldly shot him dead. Three Israeli agents who were on standby poured acid over his body and buried him in a lime-lined grave, never to be seen again.
Later, a letter bomb exploded in the Cairo office used by the German scientists, injuring a secretary. Other German scientists travelling to and from Egypt, believed to be involved in its weapons programmes, were intimidated and their families threatened.
“By January 1965 there were no more German scientists left in Egypt,” said a smiling agent Eitan enigmatically in Inside The Mossad.
“Skorzeny is a rather controversial character of some notoriety, and that circumstance could arise in which the fact of our accepting him for permanent residence could be used against us,” warned Con Cremin, the civil servant in the Department of Justice who advised Frank Aiken not to grant him permanent residency back in late 1959.
It was certainly a blow to the feared wartime commander and it may have been worse for his wife who had social pretensions. They continued to visit Ireland until 1963. After that their visits ceased altogether before Martinstown House was sold in 1971.
Maybe Skorzeny now knew he was safe from Mossad and no longer needed to hide in the Irish countryside.
But then the former German commando wasn’t a man to show fear and was probably ready to deal with whatever threat they posed with the reckless bravado that had characterised his rise through the ranks of the German army.
After suffering and recovering from a strok, Otto Skorzeny died a short time later from lung cancer in July 1975.
His funeral Mass took place in a Catholic church in Madrid and his ashes were taken to Vienna. Old friends, comrades and supporters from his dark past gave the Nazi salute as a last goodbye.
And standing unknown in the background, according to writers Raviv and Melman, was Joe Raanan, the former Mossad agent who had recruited him, “as a personal tribute... from an old spy handler to the best, but most loathsome, agent he had ever ran”.
‘Israeli agents poured acid over his body and buried him in a lime-lined grave never to be seen again’