The Battle of Castle Itter: When the US and Germany Fought Together in WW2

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It was one of the strangest battles of WW2 in which a most unlikely team of soldiers came together in one of the most heroic stories of the war.

Early in the afternoon on May 3, 1945, a Yugoslavian prisoner named Zvonimir Čučković left the gates of Austria’s Itter Castle, the looming fortress on a hill where he was being held by SS guards and bicycled into the thick forests beyond. He was supposed to be running an errand for the prison’s commander, Sebastian Wimmer - a not infrequent occurrence, as Čučković had earned the commander’s trust as a maintenance man and electrician who had helped convert the castle into a German prison.

But Čučković had an ulterior motive that afternoon. He was carrying a contraband note written by English-speaking prisoners inside. He had agreed to take the note out of prison and present it to the first group of American soldiers he encountered. And so, instead of running the errand and returning to the castle as he usually did, he continued riding.

Čučković considered making the short ride west to Wörgl, a small city close to the German/Austrian border. But the town was still densely occupied by German troops, and so instead he made the much longer trip to Innsbruck, riding over 40 miles along the Inn River valley. He reached the city that evening, where he succeeded in tracking down a group of Americans - the 409th Infantry Regiment of the American 103rd Infantry Division - and passed on his note. The unit did not have the authorization to move forward with a rescue attempt themselves, but they promised Čučković a definitive answer from their headquarters by the next morning.

What followed is one of the more extraordinary and unlikely stories of World War II; the story of an American Army commander working together with his enemy - an SS captain and a Wehrmacht major - to lead a mixed company of American and German troops to an Austrian castle and rescue a group of French political prisoners. What is now known as, the Battle for Castle Itter.

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