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(Sunday, September 12, 1943, 2:05 p.m. Central European Summer Time; during the Allied invasion of Italy, part of the Italian Campaign of World War II) — Benito Mussolini, the recently deposed Italian dictator who was imprisoned at the Campo Imperiale Hotel in the Abruzzi Mountains, “escaped” this afternoon during the Gran Sasso raid, led by Hauptsturmführer Otto Skorzeny.
Airborne commandos landed their ten DFS 230 gliders on the mountain near the hotel at 2:05 p.m. CEST. One crashed and caused injuries.
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The Fallschirmjäger (the paratrooper branch of the German Luftwaffe) and Skorzeny’s special troopers overwhelmed Mussolini’s captors, 200 well-equipped Carabinieri guards, without a single shot being fired.
The Italian General Fernando Soleti had been forced to fly with Skorzeny on the raid, as a hostage; making himself known to the soldiers who guarded the hotel, Soleti ordered them not to shoot.
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Skorzeny attacked the radio operator and his equipment and stormed into the hotel, followed by his SS troopers and the paratroopers.
Ten minutes after the beginning of the raid, Mussolini left the hotel, accompanied by the German soldiers.
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At 2:45 p.m. CEST, Mors accessed the hotel via the funicular railway and introduced himself to Mussolini.
Mussolini was then to be flown out by a Fieseler Fi 156 STOL plane that had arrived in the meantime. Although under the given circumstances the small plane was overloaded, Skorzeny insisted on accompanying Mussolini, which endangered the mission’s success.
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After an extremely dangerous but successful takeoff, they flew to Pratica di Mare. They then immediately continued to fly in a Heinkel He 111 to Vienna, where Mussolini stayed overnight at the Hotel Imperial.
The next day he was flown to Munich, and on Sept. 14, 1943, he met Hitler at Führer Headquarters, in Wolf’s Lair, near Rastenburg.
