The Only Battle Where Americans and Germans Fought Together | True WW2 Story

On 5 May 1945, three days before Germany surrendered, American soldiers and German soldiers stood on the walls of an Austrian castle and fought the Waffen-SS together. It is the only engagement of the Second World War in which they were on the same side. Schloss Itter, above the village of Itter in the North Tyrol, had been seized by the SS in 1943 and run as a high-value prison administered by Dachau. Its prisoners were among the most prominent people in France: former prime ministers Édouard Daladier and Paul Reynaud, former army commander-in-chief Maxime Weygand, tennis champion Jean Borotra, and Marie-Agnès Cailliau, the elder sister of Charles de Gaulle. When Hitler died and American forces closed in, the guards fled. But SS units in the area had orders to move on the castle and kill everyone inside. A Czech cook named Andreas Krobot rode a bicycle down out of the hills to find help, and found Major Josef Gangl of the Wehrmacht, who had been quietly working with the Austrian resistance. Gangl drove out under a white flag to surrender to the Americans so that he could ask them for help. Captain Jack Lee of the 23rd Tank Battalion agreed to go. What assembled inside the castle was fourteen American soldiers, ten German soldiers, Austrian resistance fighters, a defecting SS officer, and the French prisoners themselves — thirty-six defenders and one Sherman tank that could not cross the bridge, against 150 to 200 SS troops. The tank was destroyed early. Gangl was killed by a sniper while pulling a French statesman out of the line of fire. With ammunition running out and no working radio, Jean Borotra climbed the castle wall and ran through the SS cordon to reach American lines. He came back with the relief column. Every French hostage survived. The defenders lost one man. This is the true story of the Battle of Castle Itter. Subscribe for more true WW2 stories.