Three days before Germany surrendered, Americans and Wehrmacht soldiers fought side by side to rescue French VIP prisoners from fanatical Nazi holdouts.
The Battle of Castle Itter on May 5, 1945, is widely called the strangest battle of World War II — and for good reason. It is one of the only known instances in the entire war where American and German soldiers fought on the same side, and the only known case where an active member of the Waffen-SS fought alongside the Allies. It took place just three days before Germany's unconditional surrender.
Castle Itter in the Austrian Tyrol had been used by the SS as a prison for high-value French captives since 1943. Its inmates read like a who's who of French public life: former Prime Ministers Paul Reynaud and Édouard Daladier, former Supreme Commanders Maxime Weygand and Maurice Gamelin, tennis star Jean Borotra, trade union leader Léon Jouhaux, and Charles de Gaulle's elder sister Marie-Agnès de Gaulle.
The improbable rescue force was assembled on the fly. Wehrmacht Major Josef Gangl had already defected to the Austrian resistance and reached out to a small American tank unit under Lieutenant John 'Jack' Lee. Lee immediately volunteered for the mission and set off toward the castle with just one Sherman tank, 14 American soldiers, Gangl, and a truck of former German artillerymen — after being forced to send his heavier reinforcements back when a bridge couldn't bear the weight.
The attack came from a force of 100–150 fanatical Waffen-SS troops who had been occupying nearby hills and refused to accept that the war was lost. Throughout the night and into the following morning, they assaulted the castle with machine guns and anti-aircraft artillery. Lee's Sherman tank held the main gate until it was destroyed by an 88mm gun. At one point, tennis star Borotra — still a household name across France — vaulted the castle wall and sprinted through SS lines to deliver tactical information to the approaching relief force.
Major Gangl was the only defender killed during the battle, shot while shielding former Prime Minister Paul Reynaud from gunfire. He is honored today as an Austrian national hero, with a street in Wörgl named after him. The battle ended when a relief column from the 142nd Infantry arrived around 4 p.m. — capturing roughly 100 SS prisoners and evacuating the French VIPs to Paris within days.
The battle was fought five days after Hitler's suicide and two days before Germany signed its unconditional surrender. It stands as a remarkable footnote to the war: proof that even in its final dying hours, WWII could produce scenarios so bizarre they would be rejected as implausible fiction.