Greg Annussek Hitler's Raid to Save Mussolini

Annotation

This ';lively and action-packed account' of the infamous Gran Sasso raid chronicles the Nazi paratrooper operation that freed Mussolini (WWII History). As the Allied invasion tore through Italy in the summer of 1943, Benito Mussolini was suddenly overthrown by his own people and imprisoned on the remote Gran Sasso massif of the Apennine Mountains. But Adolf Hitler quickly devised a plan to rescue his ally and friend. On September 12, a small convoy of Nazi glider aircraft crash-landed near the mountain hotel where Mussolini was held. German commandos poured out of the half-wrecked planes and quickly overwhelmed the hotel. ';I knew my friend Adolf Hitler would not abandon me,' Mussolini told his rescuers. One of the most audacious commando operations of the twentieth century, the Gran Sasso raid was also the culmination of a bizarre friendship between two of the century's most infamous dictators. This vivid narrative recounts the drama of this secret six-week operation and the disreputable characters who pulled it offincluding the raid's leader, Otto Skorzeny.