On May 5, 1945, in the final days of World War II, something occurred that had never happened before and would never happen again. American soldiers and German Wehrmacht troops stood shoulder to shoulder, defending the same ground against a common enemy.
This was not a mistake or confusion in the fog of war. It was a deliberate choice made by men who just days earlier had been trying to kill one another.
The battle lasted 12 hours. When it was over, one German officer lay dead, killed while saving the life of a French civilian. The Americans would honor his sacrifice in a way that broke every rule of conventional warfare.
This is the story of the Battle of Castle Itter, the strangest battle of World War II.
To understand what happened on May 5th, we need to go back two years.
Castle Itter sits in the Austrian Alps near the town of Wörgl in the Tyrol region. Built in the 13th century, it had served many purposes over the centuries: a fortress, a residence, even a hotel.
But in 1943, the SS requisitioned it for a very specific purpose. Castle Itter became a prison for what the Nazis called Prominente — high-value prisoners who were too important to execute but too dangerous to set free.
These were not ordinary prisoners of war. They were former leaders of France, men and women whose names had shaped European history.
Among them was Édouard Daladier, who had been prime minister of France when the war began. It was Daladier who had declared war on Germany in 1939 and who had signed the Munich Agreement a year before that. The Nazis had not forgotten.
Paul Reynaud had succeeded Daladier as prime minister in 1940. He had refused to surrender to Germany and had urged France to fight on. For that defiance, he had been imprisoned since 1942.
Then there was Maurice Gamelin, the French army's commander-in-chief at the start of the war. Regardless of how history would judge his decisions during the Battle of France, Gamelin had commanded millions of men. The Germans knew his strategic mind, and they were not about to let him return to Allied hands.
Two former French premiers were also held at Itter. Léon Jouhaux, a trade union leader and socialist who had opposed fascism for decades, and François de La Rocque, a right-wing politician who, despite his conservative credentials, had resisted the Nazi occupation and paid the price.
Perhaps the most unusual prisoner was Jean Borotra, one of the legendary Four Musketeers of French tennis. He had won Wimbledon and the French Open and had been an international celebrity. But Borotra had also been a military officer and had refused to collaborate with Vichy France. His fame had protected him from execution, but not from imprisonment.
There were others: a French general, a trade unionist, wives and family members who had been imprisoned alongside their husbands. Some had been held for years. Some had watched their health deteriorate in captivity.
The castle was guarded by SS troops, but conditions were relatively tolerable compared to the camps. The prisoners had rooms, not cells. They could walk the grounds under supervision. They received mail, though it was censored. They played chess and talked late into the night about what would happen when the war ended, if they lived to see it.
But by the spring of 1945, everyone at Castle Itter knew something was about to change. The sound of artillery grew closer every day. American forces were pushing through Bavaria. Soviet armies were closing in from the east. In Berlin, Adolf Hitler had taken his own life on April 30th. The Reich was collapsing.
For the prisoners at Itter, this should have been a moment of hope. Liberation was coming. But they knew something else, too. As the SS had retreated across Europe, they had been executing prisoners to prevent them from falling into Allied hands. Massacres had been reported at camps across Germany and Austria.
The prisoners at Itter heard the rumors. They knew they were valuable, and that made them targets. The question was not whether the Americans would arrive. The question was whether they would arrive in time.
On May 3rd, 1945, the SS guards at Castle Itter received new orders. The castle was to be abandoned. The guards were to withdraw and regroup with other SS units that were planning to make a last stand in the Alps, the so-called National Redoubt that Nazi propaganda had been promoting.
But the order said nothing about the prisoners. The SS commander at Itter, Obersturmführer Eduard Weiter, knew exactly what that meant. He had previously commanded Dachau concentration camp. He knew how the SS dealt with loose ends.
But Weiter did not have the stomach for it. On May 4th, he quietly left the castle with most of his guards. He would die by his own hand the following day. The remaining guards, sensing the end, simply deserted during the night.
By the morning of May 4th, Castle Itter's prisoners found themselves in the most dangerous kind of freedom. They were unguarded but still trapped in a castle in the middle of a collapsing Reich, with SS units roaming the countryside. They needed help, and they needed it fast.
One prisoner decided to act. Andreas Krobot was a Czech electrician who had been imprisoned at Itter for his resistance activities. He knew the local area better than anyone present at that moment. On the morning of May 4th, he volunteered to slip out of the castle and try to find American forces.
Krobot made it to the nearby town of Wörgl, but he did not find Americans. He found something even more unexpected.
Major Josef Sepp Gangl was an officer in the Wehrmacht, the regular German army, not the SS. For the past few weeks, Gangl had been quietly working with the Austrian resistance in the Wörgl area. He was not a Nazi. He never had been.
He had joined the army because that is what young Austrian men did in the 1930s. He had fought because that was his duty. But by May 1945, Gangl had seen enough. Germany had lost. The war was over, and he was not going to spend the last days of his life following orders from a regime that no longer existed.
When Krobot told Gangl about the prisoners at Castle Itter, the major made a decision. He would help them, but he knew he could not do it alone. He had only a handful of men, and there were reports of SS units in the area that were still looking for a fight.
Gangl sent Krobot toward the American lines with a message: high-value prisoners needed immediate rescue at Castle Itter. Then Gangl gathered his men, 14 Wehrmacht soldiers, and headed for the castle himself.
When Gangl arrived at Itter, the French prisoners must have struggled to process what was happening. A German officer was offering to protect them from other Germans. Édouard Daladier, who had declared war on Germany six years earlier, shook hands with a Wehrmacht major. They discussed defensive positions.
Meanwhile, Andreas Krobot had found the Americans. Krobot's journey led him to the town of Kufstein, where he made contact with elements of the US 12th Armored Division. He was eventually directed to a tank commander named Captain John C. "Jack" Lee.
Lee was exactly the kind of officer you would want in this situation. He was aggressive, unconventional, and willing to take risks. When Krobot explained the situation — French VIPs trapped in a castle, SS units nearby, a Wehrmacht officer requesting American help — Lee did not hesitate.
He scraped together a relief force: one M4 Sherman tank, one truck, 14 men, and whatever weapons they could carry. It was not much, but it would have to do.
Lee's small convoy rolled toward Castle Itter on the afternoon of May 4th. They linked up with Major Gangl in Wörgl, and the two officers, one American and one German, sized each other up.
What do you say to a man who days earlier you would have killed on sight? How do you build trust when you have been trained to see each other as enemies? Whatever words passed between them, it was enough.
Lee and Gangl agreed to work together. They would combine their forces, proceed to the castle, and hold it until reinforcements could arrive.
By the evening of May 4th, the most unusual garrison in military history had assembled at Castle Itter. Captain Jack Lee commanded the American forces. Major Josef Gangl commanded the Wehrmacht troops. Former French prime ministers helped plan the defense. A tennis champion took up a rifle. A Sherman tank named Besotten Jenny was positioned to cover the castle's main gate.
And then they waited.
The attack came at dawn on May 5th, 1945. Between 100 and 150 Waffen-SS troops approached Castle Itter from the surrounding forest. These were not regular soldiers looking to go home. These were fanatics from the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division, men who believed they were fighting for the survival of the Reich and who viewed the Wehrmacht soldiers at Itter as traitors deserving of execution.
The first shots were fired around 4:00 a.m. The SS came from multiple directions, probing the defenses, testing for weak points.
Inside the castle, Captain Lee organized the defense. The Americans and Wehrmacht soldiers took up positions at windows and on the walls. The French prisoners, despite Lee's objections, insisted on helping. Several of them took rifles and manned positions.
Jean Borotra, the 46-year-old tennis star, proved to be one of the most valuable defenders. His athletic conditioning and quick reflexes made him an effective rifleman, and his courage steadied the less militarily experienced prisoners.
The Sherman tank Besotten Jenny became the linchpin of the defense. Its 75 mm gun could reach far into the forest, and the SS troops had no anti-tank weapons. Every time the SS tried to mass for an assault, the tank would fire, scattering them back into the trees.
But around midday, disaster struck. An SS soldier with a Panzerfaust, a German anti-tank weapon, managed to get close enough to fire. The rocket hit Besotten Jenny's gun barrel, disabling the main weapon. The tank was now effectively useless.
The SS, sensing weakness, intensified their assault. They pushed closer to the castle walls. Ammunition was running low on both sides.
Major Gangl moved from position to position, directing fire, encouraging his men. The Wehrmacht soldiers and Americans fought side by side, covering each other, sharing ammunition.
It was during one of these moments, as Gangl was coordinating the defense near a window, that an SS sniper's bullet found him. Josef Gangl was killed instantly.
The man who had chosen to fight against his own countrymen, who had risked everything to protect prisoners he had never met, died within sight of the liberation he had helped make possible.
In the chaos of the battle, someone had to keep the defense together. That someone was Jean Borotra.
The tennis champion made a decision that seemed insane. He would escape the castle, slip through the SS lines, and find American reinforcements. It was suicide.
Except that Borotra was fast, faster than anyone had a right to be at 46 years old. He vaulted over the castle wall, sprinted across open ground while bullets kicked up dirt around him, and disappeared into the forest. The SS troops, shocked by his audacity, missed him entirely.
Borotra made it to American lines. He found elements of the 142nd Infantry Regiment and explained the situation. A relief column was immediately dispatched.
Back at Castle Itter, the defenders were down to their last magazines of ammunition. The SS were preparing for a final assault. Captain Lee and the surviving Wehrmacht soldiers made ready for hand-to-hand fighting.
And then they heard it: the sound of American trucks and armor approaching from the valley below.
The relief force arrived around 4:00 p.m. The SS troops, caught between the castle defenders and the approaching Americans, broke contact and fled into the mountains. The Battle of Castle Itter was over.
In the immediate aftermath, the castle looked like what it was: a battlefield. Bullet holes scarred the ancient walls. Spent shell casings littered the courtyard. The disabled Sherman tank sat silent near the gate.
The French prisoners were evacuated to safety. Within days, they would be returned to France, where they would resume their lives and their roles in postwar French politics.
Édouard Daladier would return to Parliament. Paul Reynaud would serve in several government positions. Jean Borotra would return to tennis and live to be 95 years old.
But Josef Gangl would not see any of it.
Captain Jack Lee insisted that Gangl be buried with full military honors. This was virtually unprecedented: an American officer demanding a ceremonial burial for an enemy soldier. But Lee was adamant. Gangl had died fighting alongside Americans. He had died protecting the innocent. He deserved to be honored as a hero.
The Wehrmacht soldiers who survived the battle were treated as friendly forces by the Americans, another extraordinary break from standard procedure. They were not processed as prisoners of war. Instead, they were allowed to return to their homes.
In the decades after the war, the people of Wörgl did not forget Josef Gangl. A street in the town was named in his honor. A memorial was erected. On the anniversary of his death, flowers are still laid at the site.
The Battle of Castle Itter has been called the strangest battle of World War II. And it is not hard to see why.
In 12 hours of fighting, everything that defined the war in Europe — the lines between enemies, the certainty of sides, the bitterness of years of combat — dissolved. American soldiers trusted a German officer they had met hours before. German soldiers died defending French prisoners from other Germans. A French tennis star became a combat messenger. And in the end, men who should have been enemies fought as brothers.
There is a tendency when we talk about World War II to speak in absolutes: Allied and Axis, good and evil, heroes and villains. And in the larger sense, those distinctions are valid and necessary.
But Castle Itter reminds us that even in the darkest chapters of history, individual human beings make individual choices.
Josef Gangl chose to risk everything to protect prisoners he had never met. Jack Lee chose to trust a man who wore the uniform of his enemy. And 14 Wehrmacht soldiers chose to stand with them.
The war in Europe would officially end three days later, on May 8th, 1945. But for the men at Castle Itter, the war ended when Josef Gangl fell. When the last shot was fired in defense of something that transcended nations and armies, it ended when enemies became allies.
If only for one battle. If only for one day.