The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - January 11, 2026


PREVIEW： Epochs #245 ｜ The Gran Sasso Raid


Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

158.81253

Word count

3,397

Sentence count

217

Harmful content

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

23

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Operation Ochsen is the story of a German mission to rescue Benito Mussolini from captivity in North Africa in 1943. It's a story about a desperate mission to save the Italian Prime Minister, who was surrounded by his own troops and surrounded by German soldiers.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome back to Epochs. As I promised last time, I will continue the story of Verdun.
00:00:26.340 Unfortunately, because of timings and because I started the breakfast show this morning, because I didn't manage my time perfectly this week, I'm going to have to do one more filler episode before I finish off the Verdun story.
00:00:38.380 So anyone that's waiting for the last episode of the Verdun story, many apologies.
00:00:44.240 But this week, because I thought last time was such a roaring success, I thought it was anyway, the SAS story.
00:00:49.960 And people seemed to like it, said more Special Forces missions and raids, if anything.
00:00:58.020 I've got to fill one more week. I'll do it with another Special Forces raid.
00:01:02.120 There's so many to choose from, so many brilliant ones.
00:01:04.200 But I've decided to talk about Operation Eiche, or Operation Oak.
00:01:11.520 And if anyone who doesn't know what Operation Oak is, was, it was the 1943 German, Nazi German, mission to rescue Mussolini.
00:01:22.160 So I'm going to talk to you all about that today, and I'll tell the story as though you've never heard of it before.
00:01:31.000 You know, people that know their stuff and are into World War II history and Special Forces stuff will probably know all about it, because it's quite famous in those terms.
00:01:39.560 But I think a lot of people might never have heard of it at all.
00:01:42.680 So I'll tell the story as though it's entirely new to you.
00:01:46.280 All right, let's jump straight in.
00:01:48.460 So what happened was Mussolini, in 1943, i.e. two years before the end of World War II, was actually deposed and removed from power and arrested by his enemies.
00:02:02.340 And Hitler didn't like that and rescued him. 0.99
00:02:05.640 Okay, that's the story in the smallest possible nutshell.
00:02:09.240 But let's tell you a bit more about it.
00:02:11.120 So Italy had quite a bad war, really.
00:02:14.540 Pretty ignominious.
00:02:16.420 And one thing I will say is that a lot of Italian troops have got a reputation, sort of a jokey reputation for being terrible soldiers.
00:02:24.520 They're not.
00:02:25.160 They're as good as anyone else, basically.
00:02:27.260 Their senior command was very poor.
00:02:30.000 The average Italian soldier was, like I say, as good as any other soldier, essentially. 0.99
00:02:35.820 But they were equipped with bad equipment, and their senior, their top brass were really crap. 0.76
00:02:40.920 And, of course, Mussolini at the very, very top, making pretty bad, sort of grand strategic decisions over and over again. 0.94
00:02:49.260 So the idea that the average Italian soldier is just a surrender monkey or is terrible at fighting, that's not fair, and it's not true.
00:02:56.820 But they had a bad war from the top, basically.
00:03:01.480 So, I mean, so they controlled a lot of North Africa.
00:03:05.020 And by 1943, they had been entirely kicked out of North Africa.
00:03:11.300 You know, the Germans had had to send over Rommel, the Desert Fox, and the Africa Corps to help the Italians not just completely immediately lose to the Brits in North Africa.
00:03:24.200 Because Britain controlled Egypt, and we had a big base of operations in Cairo, and it would have been relatively straightforward for us to just sweep the Italians out of North Africa. 0.99
00:03:35.080 But the Germans prevented that for a long time. 0.67
00:03:38.600 But eventually still, even with the help of the Americans by 1943, eventually the Allies, the Brits and the Americans, kicked the Germans and the Italians out of North Africa entirely.
00:03:49.440 And, of course, so that's like a massive, massive humiliation and defeat for Mussolini and his government.
00:03:58.300 And then there was the invasion of Sicily, and Sicily is part of Italy, right?
00:04:03.880 It is Italian.
00:04:05.660 The Allies sent in both Montgomery and Patton to race across Sicily and take Sicily.
00:04:12.100 That's a whole massive story in and of itself.
00:04:13.800 So eventually, by sort of late, late spring, early summer in 1943, it was looking really bad for Mussolini and his government and the whole Italian war effort.
00:04:28.340 And Mussolini had been the leader of Italy since the early 20s.
00:04:33.480 He'd been the leader of Italy for like 20 years.
00:04:36.000 So he was like an elder statesman in a way, not elder as in he was old, but he'd been on the scene for many, many years, much longer than Hitler, for example.
00:04:45.880 But he had like basically a vote of no confidence.
00:04:48.400 He didn't rule as an absolute tyrant, like the way, I mean, he was tyrannical and he was a dictator and all that sort of thing.
00:04:56.320 But his position wasn't like that of, say, Stalin, where nobody could question his position and there was no way he could be removed from power or Hitler, similar as Hitler. 0.78
00:05:09.400 Mussolini's position wasn't like that.
00:05:12.040 He did, at least on paper, rule at the behest of the king, King Emmanuel of Italy.
00:05:17.560 And there was like a ruling body, something like a parliament.
00:05:22.540 It's not a parliament, but, you know, a ruling body that if they voted to remove him, they could.
00:05:28.580 So he was sort of an autocrat light, if you like.
00:05:34.460 Anyway, Mussolini could be removed by political machinations in Italy.
00:05:40.380 And that's what happened after the Sicily stuff, after North Africa and Sicily, there was, you know, a political turmoil in Italy.
00:05:48.440 You know, a lot of people were thinking, you know, we've trusted Mussolini, you know, he's had a good innings for 20 years. 0.96
00:05:54.940 And the net result of all of that is that we're getting our asses handed to us all over the world. 0.97
00:06:02.060 Right. 0.77
00:06:02.640 This was supposed, the Mediterranean was supposed to be our sea.
00:06:06.360 Mayor Nostrum, you know, he was supposed to be, we were, this wasn't supposed to happen.
00:06:11.240 He was supposed to do much better than this.
00:06:13.160 He was supposed to be a new Caesar, right?
00:06:15.280 He was supposed to sweep all before him and on and on and on.
00:06:18.700 And all he's given us is defeats.
00:06:22.900 So Mussolini's political, first political downfall comes around quite quickly.
00:06:29.800 Like late at night, there was all sorts of meetings and votes going on.
00:06:33.880 And the powers, the powers that be just under Mussolini voted that he should, he should resign, right?
00:06:42.760 He's got to resign.
00:06:44.720 And so Mussolini, not being a Stalin type figure, sort of accepted it.
00:06:51.600 I mean, he probably realized the writing was on the wall himself, at least politically at this stage.
00:06:56.420 Like, you know, he was, he was done politically.
00:06:59.920 He'd lost support in the country and within the inner sanctums of, of political power.
00:07:06.420 His position had been eroded to the point where they were forcing him to leave office.
00:07:11.760 And so he, he, he complied with that.
00:07:16.260 Um, so he goes to the king, you know, to formally resign, which is what you do.
00:07:24.200 And at that point, the king has him arrested.
00:07:26.780 I think Mussolini didn't see that coming.
00:07:29.820 Well, certainly didn't see that coming.
00:07:31.540 Didn't think that would happen.
00:07:33.080 But at that moment, like straight away, he's, he's arrested.
00:07:36.520 And kept under arrest.
00:07:39.700 Okay.
00:07:39.920 So that, all that happens in like the summer of 1943, the late summer of 1943, all of that happens.
00:07:47.720 But if anyone knows their history, they're like, wait, but Mussolini doesn't die until
00:07:52.420 murdered by a mob until what, like April, 1945.
00:07:57.380 So what happens during all that time?
00:07:59.460 Well, Hitler and German special forces rescue him. 0.95
00:08:04.900 So that's what this story is.
00:08:07.660 Operation Oak.
00:08:09.680 All right.
00:08:10.040 So what happens is the, the Italian cabal that have arrested Mussolini sort of suspect
00:08:16.900 or know really that the Germans and a lot of Italy is occupied by German forces.
00:08:23.320 The German army is, is totally bolstering up all of Italy. 0.90
00:08:29.460 And they know that allied forces at some point will invade Italy.
00:08:33.980 And they did the Anzio bridgehead and all that stuff.
00:08:37.600 That's a bit later, but they know that the allies are going to invade and liberate Italy.
00:08:42.920 The Germans know that.
00:08:43.780 So the Germans sort of flooded Italy with loads of soldiers, few divisions, few divisions.
00:08:49.440 And so they know that this Italian cabal that have got Mussolini, they know that if the 0.96
00:08:55.660 Germans could, they would try and rescue him.
00:08:58.440 Well, they suspect that and they suspect correctly.
00:09:00.620 So they keep moving Mussolini around all the, all the time.
00:09:05.240 Like every few days, they take him somewhere new.
00:09:07.520 They take him to some little remote island in the Bay of Naples, or they take him to some
00:09:11.460 other little remote island.
00:09:12.560 A few days later, a week later, whatever, take him to a little remote island just off
00:09:16.140 of Sardinia.
00:09:16.840 And then they move him back to the mountains, the Upper Nine Mountains somewhere and keep
00:09:22.140 moving him around just, you know, because they know the Germans will try and capture him.
00:09:26.280 And they calculate that correctly because Hitler, Hitler's thinking is like, it's just really, 0.93
00:09:33.300 really embarrassing to fascism, to European fascism.
00:09:36.960 It's embarrassing to Hitler personally.
00:09:38.680 He thinks if Mussolini is captured and then killed, you know, maybe put on trial and maybe
00:09:44.820 publicly executed, all of that is just an embarrassment to him, Hitler. 0.90
00:09:49.140 So he doesn't want that to happen.
00:09:51.020 He considers Mussolini something like a personal friend.
00:09:55.000 I mean, Hitler didn't really have many personal friends.
00:09:57.580 And I don't think like Mussolini was like a proper, proper mate, you know, but nonetheless,
00:10:03.740 Hitler thought of him as a true ally and something of a friend.
00:10:07.180 And certainly politically, it would be in Hitler's interest to rescue him if he could. 0.91
00:10:13.740 And he would install Mussolini as like a proper puppet, German puppet, in any sort of northern 0.64
00:10:20.000 Italian rump state during the last years of the war.
00:10:23.920 That's what Hitler wants. 0.97
00:10:25.240 So Hitler had seen that earlier on in the war, British special forces had achieved various
00:10:36.700 sort of incredible, amazing things, you know, in North Africa, if nothing else.
00:10:42.080 2-2-SS or L detachment, special forces, commandos, dropping deep behind enemy lines and achieving
00:10:50.460 remarkable things.
00:10:52.160 Hitler had seen that that was done and possible. 0.95
00:10:55.100 Germans already had some sort of equivalents.
00:10:57.600 But when Hitler sees it, he decides he wants his own version of that. 0.93
00:11:01.940 He wants paratroopers that are like, you know, will do remarkable things.
00:11:07.780 Apparently, he tells his sort of senior staff to sort of make that happen.
00:11:13.540 And to begin with, the story is that a lot of that order sort of passed around through various
00:11:19.920 parts of the Wehrmacht, various parts of the German army or services.
00:11:23.980 And no one really wants to do it.
00:11:25.880 They think it's just one of Hitler's whims.
00:11:28.300 But eventually, it does sort of happen.
00:11:30.900 And well, I've got an account here from a man called Otto Skorzeny.
00:11:36.280 Now, if anyone knows about this operation, he is sort of one of the main protagonists in
00:11:42.000 it, if not the main protagonist.
00:11:44.100 And there's an account here from him, just a few pages, of exactly how it all went down.
00:11:49.240 Now, we have to take it with a pinch of salt, because we know Skorzeny actually survived 1.00
00:11:53.460 the war and didn't die until sort of old age in the 1970s.
00:11:57.360 And we know that his account is a little bit not entirely trustworthy.
00:12:02.480 Most of the details are correct.
00:12:04.460 But here or there, it might be a bit sketchy or not entirely true.
00:12:07.640 So I'll interrupt myself quite a lot to sort of tell you when I think that's the case,
00:12:12.340 or when other historians have said they think that's the case.
00:12:14.880 There's another important player in Major Moors of the paratroopers, because Skorzeny is an 0.90
00:12:21.080 SS man.
00:12:22.700 The mission to rescue Mussolini is undertaken by both paratroopers, i.e. just army, I mean
00:12:29.280 specialists, but army guys under this Major Moors, and then a few SS guys, and Skorzeny is
00:12:38.740 their leader.
00:12:40.820 Skorzeny makes out that it was largely an SS mission.
00:12:44.880 And they, they should take all the credit for it.
00:12:48.340 But most scholars, World War II historians think now that it was mostly a paratroop operation.
00:12:55.420 And there was only like 11 SS guys involved, not 50.
00:13:00.760 And the planning was mostly army planning, you know, not SS planning and all that sort of
00:13:07.820 thing.
00:13:07.960 So, but I'll, I'll interrupt myself when I think Skorzeny is not being a hundred percent
00:13:14.820 accurate here, but there's a little paragraph or a couple of paragraphs here, just talking
00:13:18.920 about the general picture before the actual mission starts.
00:13:22.600 So I'll read that.
00:13:23.420 We're told, quote, Otto Skorzeny was a junior Waffen-SS officer serving in Berlin when a chance
00:13:31.840 decision resulted in his overnight appointment as chief of Germany's special troops, prompted
00:13:38.480 by the success of the raid on St. Nazare by British commandants.
00:13:43.660 See, Hitler had seen that and said like, we need chaps that can do exactly that. 0.98
00:13:49.480 Yeah.
00:13:49.720 After, after Hitler had seen the successful British raid on St. Nazare, Hitler ordered the 0.94
00:13:54.360 setting up of a German equivalent.
00:13:55.960 The army high command, however, regarded the order as another Hitler whim and pushed it
00:14:02.480 around departmental pending trays.
00:14:05.000 Eventually, it landed up on the desk of someone who remembered a university acquaintance who
00:14:10.220 might do as leader of the new unit.
00:14:12.480 And so Otto Skorzeny found himself plucked from behind a desk and breveted chief of special
00:14:17.980 troops to mark the occasion he was promoted to the rank of captain.
00:14:22.240 As the world was soon to discover, the German army had inadvertently appointed a man who
00:14:27.880 not only believed in the commando concept, but had the ability to carry it out.
00:14:32.720 Born in Austria in 1908, Skorzeny was physically imposing, six foot four, with a duelling scar
00:14:38.980 from ear to chin, charismatic and daring.
00:14:42.420 Within six months of his appointment, Skorzeny had not only welded together a commando force,
00:14:47.380 but had brought off the most improbable exploit of the war, the rescue of the Italian
00:14:52.100 dictator Mussolini, in September 1943, from the mountain prison where he was held by Italian
00:14:58.120 forces intent on surrender to the Allies.
00:15:01.160 Yeah, the people that had captured Mussolini.
00:15:03.080 They were just waiting for the Allies to properly invade Italy, which was soon to come.
00:15:08.840 And their idea was to just immediately surrender to them and hand Mussolini out.
00:15:13.840 Right.
00:15:14.420 So time was of the essence, basically.
00:15:15.960 Other dazzling adventures quickly followed.
00:15:19.980 In September 1944, Skorzeny kidnapped the son of the Hungarian regent and occupied the
00:15:25.540 citadel of Budapest, a move which prevented Hungary concluding a separate peace with the
00:15:30.380 USSR and rescued a million encircled German troops.
00:15:34.520 During the Ardennes Offensive, December 1944, he organised, quote, American brigades, quote,
00:15:40.400 As disguised Germans, to cause havoc behind enemy lines, Eisenhower was a prisoner in 0.60
00:15:45.920 his own HQ for a week.
00:15:49.280 With the conclusion of the war in Europe, Skorzeny, now a Major General, was declared by the Allied
00:15:55.040 prosecutor to be, quote, the most dangerous man in Europe, quote, and charged with war crimes,
00:16:00.340 the most serious of which related to, quote, fighting in enemy uniform, quote, during the
00:16:05.240 Ardennes Offensive.
00:16:06.060 At one stage, it looked as though Skorzeny would hang.
00:16:09.900 His fate, however, was averted when his defence lawyer called as a witness the British war
00:16:14.700 hero, Wing Commander Forrest Yeo Thomas, who revealed that the British had done the same
00:16:19.860 thing in reverse as a matter of course.
00:16:22.360 Skorzeny was duly acquitted.
00:16:24.760 On his release from a prisoner of war camp, he settled in Spain, where he returned to his 0.93
00:16:29.660 pre-war occupation of engineering.
00:16:31.640 One of the most influential pioneers of special forces, Skorzeny died in 1975.
00:16:37.800 The following is Skorzeny's own account of his greatest triumph, the liberation of Mussolini
00:16:42.660 from Grand Sasso, a mountain range, to the north of Rome, end quote.
00:16:47.880 Okay, so, yeah, at this point, Mussolini, they'd moved him to the mountains north of Rome, and
00:16:57.140 the little place, sort of like a little ski hotel place, was called Grand Sasso.
00:17:02.560 And so what it was, up in the mountains, it's like 2,000 metres up, and there's like a little
00:17:11.000 hotel there, well, I say little, it's sort of four storeys, like, what, like 70-odd rooms,
00:17:16.460 maybe 100 rooms total.
00:17:18.120 So it's sort of a medium-sized, not tiny, but certainly not massive hotel, perched on
00:17:23.060 the top of this mountain plateau area.
00:17:26.480 And the only way up to it, other than some serious mountain climbing, was one cable car.
00:17:34.660 I mean, that was the idea, that's why they put him there, because it's, you know, the
00:17:38.440 idea was that it's very, very, very difficult for any rescue party to even get there.
00:17:43.620 There's one cable car, you know, and he's being guarded, Mussolini's being guarded by like 0.96
00:17:48.740 a hundred-odd Italian policemen, and the one cable car station at the top of the mountain
00:17:54.840 and at the bottom of the mountain, he's guarded by like another hundred-odd.
00:17:59.280 So they think he's pretty safe.
00:18:01.340 I mean, on paper, he's pretty safe there, right?
00:18:05.000 It's almost impossible to get to him, and then he is guarded by quite a few people.
00:18:09.440 So that's the idea.
00:18:11.780 Now, the German sort of intelligence services were sort of following Mussolini around, following
00:18:20.980 the trail of where Mussolini had been.
00:18:23.980 They're trying to find exactly where he is, and often they're sort of just behind, just
00:18:28.800 behind Mussolini.
00:18:29.780 They realise, oh, we're only like a few days late, or a few hours late.
00:18:32.900 He's just been moved again.
00:18:34.800 Anyway, they find out that he's being held at this hotel, this sort of ski resort hotel
00:18:40.920 place on Gran Sasso, about 50 miles north of Rome, in the Apennine Mountains, the Abruzzo
00:18:48.280 Mountains, and they find out he's there, and they know he'll be moved again quite soon.
00:18:52.740 So everything, time is absolutely of the essence.
00:18:56.060 You know, like almost every day, every hour counts.
00:18:58.520 They know he's there, or they're pretty sure he's there.
00:19:01.420 They send a spy there.
00:19:02.840 They send a doctor chap who his story, his cover, is that the Germans are considering
00:19:12.180 turning that hotel into some sort of hospital or a makeshift hospital, and this guy is being
00:19:17.260 sent there to check if it's an appropriate location to turn this hotel into a hospital.
00:19:22.880 But what he's really there to do is check if Mussolini's really there.
00:19:26.460 They think he's there.
00:19:27.120 They're pretty confident he's there, but they need to know for sure, because loads
00:19:30.660 of guys' lives are going to be put on the line for this.
00:19:32.960 So they need to be 100% sure Mussolini is there.
00:19:35.300 Anyway, this doctor spy finds out that Mussolini is definitely there.
00:19:40.100 So it's go.
00:19:40.640 It's like, go, now.
00:19:41.820 That's, you know, often how special forces operations go.
00:19:44.600 Like, it's now or never, so they do.
00:19:47.400 All right, we'll let Scorsini himself tell the story.
00:19:51.980 And as I say, some of it has to be taken with a pinch of salt, and I'll let you know when
00:19:57.580 we think that's the case.
00:19:59.780 All right, so Scorsini himself writes this, quote.
00:20:02.400 September the 10th, 1943.
00:20:06.220 We had not been out of our uniforms for two nights and days, and though our general was
00:20:10.820 in the same case, it was essential that I should see him with a view to making the great
00:20:15.080 decision, i.e. to pull the trigger on this operation, Operation Oak, and do it.
00:20:21.360 But first, I discussed all the possibilities with Rattle.
00:20:24.420 He's just one of his SS pals. 0.84
00:20:26.360 We both fully realized that speed was absolutely vital.
00:20:31.640 Every day, every hour that we delayed increased the danger that the Duce, Mussolini, might
00:20:37.100 be removed elsewhere.
00:20:39.080 Nay, even worse, delivered over to the Allies.
00:20:41.920 This supposition subsequently turned out to be most realistic.
00:20:45.660 One of the terms of the armistice agreed by General Eisenhower was that the Duce should 0.98
00:20:50.260 be handed over.
00:20:50.980 A ground operation seemed hopeless from the start.
00:20:54.060 The idea of sending in, like, the full army and, you know, surrounding the whole mountain
00:21:00.220 or the whole region, really, and doing it that way.
00:21:03.920 They didn't really have the resources, didn't really have the time.
00:21:07.140 An attack on the steep rocky slopes would have cost us heavy losses, as well as giving good
00:21:11.860 notice to the enemy and leaving them time to conceal their prisoner.
00:21:15.740 We hope you enjoyed that video, and if you did, please head over to lotusseaters.com for the
00:21:22.300 full unabridged video.