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This first book to reassess the myth and the realities of Otto Skorzeny, Hitler´s favourite commando.

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SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny became a legend in his own time. ´Hitler´s favourite commando´ acquired a reputation as a man of daring, renowned for his audacious 1943 mission to extricate Mussolini from a mountain-top prison. Skorzeny´s influence on special operations doctrine was far-reaching and long-lasting - in 2011, when US Navy SEALs infiltrated Pakistan to eliminate Osama Bin Laden, the operational planning was influenced by Skorzeny´s legacy. Yet he was also an egoist who stole other men´s credit (including for the seminal rescue of Mussolini), brave and resourceful but also an unrepentant Nazi and a self-aggrandizing hogger of the limelight.
Stuart Smith draws on years of in-depth research to uncover the truth about Skorzeny´s career and complex personality. From his background as a student radical in Vienna, to his bloody service with the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front, his surprise rebirth as a commando, and his intriguing post-war career and mysterious fortune, this book tells Otto Skorzeny´s story in full - warts and all - for the first time.

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Prologue /Acknowledgements /Maps /1. The Knowledge of Pain /2. Accidental Soldier /3. Thugs in Field Grey /4. The Liberator of Mussolini /5. Special Ops and High-Value Targets /6. Miracle Weapons /7. The Stauffenberg Plot - July 1944 /8. The Scherhorn Affair /9. The SS Changes Tack /10. Operation Panzerfaust /11. Everything on One Card /12. Operation Greif /13. Implosion /14. Skorzeny´s Last Stand /15. Trial and Errors /16. Escape from Darmstadt /17. Apocalypse Soon /18. Neo-Nazis and Colonel Nasser /19. The Years of Plenty /20. Ghosts of the Past /Epilogue /Glossary /Note on the Waffen-SS /Bibliography /Notes /Index

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Stuart Smith is a business journalist. He was a Major Open Scholar in Modern History at Wadham College, Oxford, 1973-76 and completed an MA in International Relations at Sussex University, 1978-9. For 20 years, until 2008, Stuart was editor of Marketing Week, a high-circulation business magazine. He lives in the UK.

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