The war in Europe was practically a corpse. Hitler had put a bullet in his head in a bunker in Berlin five days ago. The German High Command was crumbling like wet cake. The roads were clogged with thousands of Wehrmacht soldiers walking west, hands raised, begging to surrender to the Americans before the Russians got them.
Captain Jack Lee of the 12th Armored Division leaned against the side of his Sherman tank, “Besotten Jenny.” He was a quintessential American tanker: cigar in his teeth, grease under his fingernails, and a look in his eyes that said he was entirely done with this continent.
He was waiting for orders to stand down. He was waiting for a bottle of schnapps and a boat ride back to New York.
Instead, he got a German major waving a white flag.
The German approached warily. He wasn’t dirty or disheveled like the others. His uniform was pressed. He walked with the stiffness of a career officer.
“Don’t shoot,” the German called out in crisp English. “I am Major Josef Gangl. I wish to surrender. But first, I need your help.”
Jack spat a piece of tobacco onto the snow-dusted road. “You need my help? Buddy, you lost. The only help you’re getting is a truck ride to a POW camp.”
“There is a castle,” Gangl said urgently, pointing up toward the jagged peaks of the Alps. “Schloss Itter. It is a prison for high-value French VIPs. Prime Ministers. Generals. Tennis stars.”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “So?”
“The SS guards have fled,” Gangl said. “But the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division is moving in to execute the prisoners before the war ends. My men… we want to protect them. But we are too few. We need your tank.”
Jack looked at Gangl. He looked at the Sherman. He looked at his crew.
This was insane. A German Wehrmacht officer asking an American tank commander to help him fight the SS. It sounded like the setup to a bad joke.
“Let me get this straight,” Jack said, flicking ash from his cigar. “You want us to team up? You and me? To fight Nazis?”
Gangl nodded. “For the prisoners. They are innocent men.”
Jack looked at the mountain. He thought about the orders to wait. He thought about the court-martial he’d face if this went south.
Then he thought about the SS. He hated the SS. Everyone hated the SS. Even the Germans hated the SS.
“Alright,” Jack grinned, a reckless, cowboy grin. “Saddle up, Major. Let’s go save some politicians.”
The Unholy Alliance
The convoy that rolled up the winding mountain road toward Castle Itter was the strangest sight of World War II.
Leading the way was “Besotten Jenny,” its 76mm gun swaying menacingly. Riding on the back of the American tank were ten American GIs. And sitting right next to them, sharing cigarettes and checking their Mauser rifles, were ten soldiers of the Wehrmacht.
“This is weird, Sarge,” Jack’s gunner muttered, eyeing the German soldier next to him. “I spent the last two years trying to kill guys in that uniform. Now I’m giving him a light?”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Jack said over the intercom. “Just keep your eyes on the trees. The SS are out there.”
They reached the castle. It was a medieval fortress straight out of a fairy tale—stone walls, turrets, a heavy gate.
The prisoners came out to meet them. It was a surreal “Who’s Who” of pre-war France. There was Édouard Daladier, the former Prime Minister. There was Jean Borotra, the famous tennis champion. There was General Maxime Weygand. They were wearing suits, drinking wine, and arguing with each other.
“Captain Lee!” Daladier exclaimed, shaking Jack’s hand enthusiastically. “You are our savior!”
“Let’s save the speeches for later,” Jack said, eyeing the surrounding woods. “Get inside. Everyone.”
Jack positioned his tank, Besotten Jenny, right in front of the main gate. He ordered the Wehrmacht soldiers to take positions on the north wall. He put his GIs on the south wall.
“Listen up!” Jack yelled, addressing the mixed group of Americans, Germans, and French politicians. “The SS are coming up that road. They have artillery. They have rockets. We are the only thing standing between them and a massacre. I don’t care what flag you salute. Today, we all bleed the same color.”
Major Gangl stood beside him. The two officers—enemies just hours ago—exchanged a nod.
“We will hold,” Gangl said.
The Siege
The attack began at dawn on May 5th.
It started with the scream of an 88mm shell.
CRACK-BOOM!
The shell slammed into the main gatehouse. Stones exploded. Dust filled the courtyard.
“Contact front!” Jack screamed.
From the tree line, the SS emerged. There were hundreds of them. They weren’t the tired, broken boys Jack had seen on the roads. These were the fanatics. The ones who wanted to burn the world down before they left it.
Machine gun fire raked the castle walls.
Jack jumped into Besotten Jenny. “Traverse left! High explosive! Fire!”
The tank’s main gun roared. A tree on the ridge disintegrated, taking a squad of SS machine gunners with it.
But the SS had an 88mm anti-tank gun.
WHAM.
A shell hit the tank. Besotten Jenny shuddered violently. Smoke poured from the engine deck.
“Bail out! Bail out!” Jack ordered.
The crew scrambled out of the burning tank, dragging their Thompson submachine guns. They retreated into the castle keep.
Now, they were trapped.
The battle turned into a chaotic, close-quarters firefight.
On the battlements, a German Wehrmacht soldier was manning an MG42 machine gun. His loader was an American private.
“More ammo!” the German yelled in German.
“Here!” the American yelled, slapping a belt of bullets into the receiver.
They fired together, cutting down a wave of SS troops trying to breach the wall.
In the courtyard, the French politicians—men in their sixties and seventies—refused to hide in the cellar. Jean Borotra, the tennis star, grabbed a rifle.
“I have not played a match in years,” Borotra shouted, firing over the parapet. “But my aim is still true!”
Jack Lee was everywhere. He was on the roof, directing fire. He was in the courtyard, checking the wounded.
He ran into Major Gangl near the gate.
“They are bringing up a flak gun,” Gangl said, wiping soot from his face. “If they set it up, they will blow the doors off.”
“We need to snipe the crew,” Jack said.
“I will do it,” Gangl said.
Gangl ran to a better vantage point. He leaned out, aiming his rifle at the SS gun crew setting up down the road.
He fired. One SS man fell.
He fired again. Another fell.
But then, a sniper from the woods saw the German officer’s silhouette.
Crack.
Gangl’s head snapped back. He crumpled to the stones.
Jack ran to him. He dragged the German major behind cover.
Gangl looked up at Jack. There was blood on his lips. “The prisoners…” Gangl whispered. “Keep them safe.”
“I got ’em, Josef,” Jack said, using the man’s first name for the first time. “I got ’em.”
Gangl died there, in the arms of an American Captain, defending Frenchmen from his own countrymen.
The Last Stand
By noon, the ammunition was running low. The tank was a burning wreck. The castle walls were pockmarked with craters.
The SS were preparing for the final assault. They were moving closer, sensing the weakness.
Jack sat in the main hall of the castle. He checked his Colt 1911. He had two magazines left.
He looked around the room. The American GIs were bandaging the Wehrmacht soldiers. The French VIPs were huddled in the corner, praying.
“Well,” Jack said, lighting a cigarette. “It’s been a hell of a morning.”
“What do we do, Captain?” a young private asked.
“We fix bayonets,” Jack said calmly. “And we make them pay for every inch of this rock.”
Just then, the ground began to shake.
A low rumble. Not the sharp crack of tank fire, but a deep, rhythmic thrumming.
“Tanks!” a lookout screamed from the tower. “Tanks coming up the road!”
Jack stood up. “Theirs or ours?”
“I don’t know!”
Jack ran to the window. Through the smoke, he saw a shape emerging from the tree line. It was big. It was green. And it had a white star painted on the hull.
“It’s the 142nd!” Jack yelled. “The cavalry is here!”
A column of American tanks and infantry swarmed up the road. The SS, caught between the castle walls and the relief force, broke. They scattered into the woods, dropping their weapons, fleeing like rats.
The relief force breached the gate.
The American Major leading the relief column jumped off his jeep. He looked around the courtyard.
He saw the burning Sherman. He saw the dead SS bodies. And then he saw the defenders walking out of the keep.
He saw Captain Jack Lee, covered in soot.
He saw the French politicians in their dusty suits.
And he saw the Wehrmacht soldiers, still holding their rifles, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the GIs.
The Major walked up to Jack. He looked confused.
“Captain Lee?” the Major asked. “What the hell is going on here? Why are there Krauts with guns in your perimeter?”
Jack took the cigar out of his mouth. He looked at the surviving German soldiers. They looked back at him with exhausted respect.
“They aren’t Krauts, Major,” Jack said softly. “They’re the defenders of Castle Itter.”
The Aftermath
The Battle of Castle Itter went down in history as the “strangest battle of WWII.”
Major Josef Gangl was honored as a hero in Austria. A street in the nearby town of Wörgl was named after him. He died fighting the ideology that had ruined his country.
Captain Jack Lee survived the war. He went back to New York, drank his schnapps, and rarely spoke about the day he commanded a German platoon.
But the story survived.
It survived because it didn’t fit the narrative. It wasn’t about “Good Americans vs. Bad Germans.” It was about something deeper.
It was about the moment when the uniforms stopped mattering.
Years later, a journalist asked one of the surviving French prisoners about that day.
“We were enemies,” the Frenchman said. “But in that castle, under the fire of the SS, we became a strange kind of family. The American Cowboy and the German Knight. They showed us that even when the world is burning, honor does not burn.”
Epilogue
May, 2015. Castle Itter.
A small ceremony was held at the castle gate.
There were wreaths laid for the Americans. Wreaths for the French. And a wreath for Josef Gangl.
An old man stood in the crowd. He was the son of one of the Wehrmacht soldiers who had fought on the wall.
He touched the cold stone of the gatehouse. He looked at the spot where the American tank, Besotten Jenny, had burned.
“My father told me,” the man said to a reporter, “that for five years, he fought for hate. But for one day—the last day—he fought for love. And that was the only battle that mattered.”
Above the castle, the Austrian flag and the American flag flew side by side, snapping in the wind, guarding the ghosts of the strangest alliance the world had ever seen.
