7 Mistakes That Exposed German Soldiers Posing as Americans

December 17, 1944. A bridge over the Ambleve River at Aywaille, Belgium. An American jeep, three men in American uniforms carrying American weapons, and a military policeman asking for the password. They did not have it. Six days later all three were tied to posts and shot. They were Germans of Otto Skorzeny's Operation Greif, and the missing password was only the third of seven mistakes. The last one ended with Eisenhower himself kept inside his own headquarters. On paper the plan made sense. In the first days of the Ardennes offensive, a special brigade in American jeeps and American uniforms would race ahead, take the bridges over the Meuse and spread confusion behind the lines. Many American units were new to combat, and in a sudden breakthrough nobody would be sure who belonged where. The trouble started before a single man was trained. The order asking for English speakers went out so widely that Allied intelligence got a copy. Out of all the volunteers, by Skorzeny's own count, about ten spoke real American English. The brigade had been promised American tanks and jeeps. It got two Shermans and a fraction of the jeeps. Germany could build a costume. It could not build the mass culture underneath it. The same jeeps, the same helmets, the same rations, and slang picked up from the same radio shows and ballgames came from abundance, and in late 1944 Germany had none to spare. What we go through: The secret order that announced the plan in writing Why only about ten men could truly pass as American The jeep teams that slipped through on December 16 The password and countersign, and the word you cannot bluff Small habits a man cannot memorize The paybooks under the field jackets, and why they decided between prisoner and firing squad Wilhelm Schmidt, Günther Billing and Manfred Pernass at Henri-Chapelle Panthers dressed as M10 tank destroyers, and the failed attack on Malmedy The Eisenhower rumor, Versailles and the lookalike decoy in his car Omar Bradley, the capital of Illinois, and Betty Grable's husband Bruce Clarke held five hours over the Chicago Cubs David Niven, the World Series and Ginger Rogers Skorzeny's trial at Dachau in 1947, and why he walked out acquitted Said plainly: some of the stories that came out of this, like teams giving themselves away by riding four to a jeep or asking for petrol instead of gas, are hard to pin to any one checkpoint. Skorzeny always denied any plan against Eisenhower, and there is no solid evidence one existed. Where the record is thin, the video says so. What beat the disguise was not a battle. It was a password, a paybook and a ballgame. And then the Americans turned those same ordinary details on everyone in uniform, generals included. Next time you watch a war film where the spy walks through the gate in the enemy's coat, ask yourself what he would say if the sentry asked him who won the World Series. Tell me in the comments: what question would you have asked at that checkpoint? And would you have known the capital of Illinois? #OperationGreif #BattleOfTheBulge #WW2 #OttoSkorzeny #WWIIHistory #Ardennes #Eisenhower #OmarBradley #Malmedy #WW2Stories #MilitaryHistory #GermanCommandos #Spies #HistoryDocumentary #1944