A DARING mission by the SAS to “kill or kidnap” Nazi general Erwin Rommel during World War Two has been revealed a whopping 80 years later.
Rommel, dubbed “Desert Fox”, was a senior member of Hitler’s war machine who commanded forces in North Africa.
Corbis – GettyThe SAS were plotting to kill Field Marshal Erwin Rommel[/caption]
GettyAdolph Hitler and Colonel-General Erwin Rommel during his honour with the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross in 1941[/caption]
BNPSBrit Tom Moore, one of the six commandos, in Germany in 1945[/caption]
After the Nazi’s French castle was found by SAS Major Bill Fraser, a team of six commandos were assembled to target the officer dubbed “Desert Fox” in the weeks after D-Day in June 1944.
The plan involved a sniper hiding in the woods on the opposite bank of the River Seine to the chateau.
Then they would shoot him from 400 yards while the Nazi military supremo walked in the Italian gardens.
If they managed to take him alive, they would have brought in an aircraft to whisk him out of Nazi-occupied France from a prepared landing strip.
The secret plan was approved by Field Marshal General Bernard Montgomery.
He hoped that by capturing or eliminating Rommel, it would break the deadlock in the weeks after the Normandy invasion amid stalemate fears.
The intelligence dossier on Rommel was incredibly detailed – including the routes he used to travel to and from the chateau, in the village of La Roche-Guyon, 50 miles west of Paris.
It went as specific as the times he usually left the building – which at between 5am and 6am before returning at about 6pm.
He also dined at about 7.30pm and, crucially, after dinner went for a stroll in the grounds, on terrain which was open to a sniper shot from the far bank of the Seine.
One of the six commandos who parachuted in for the high risk operation was British Corporal Tom Moore.
BNPSA young Tom Moore[/caption]
BNPSTom Moore’s daggers[/caption]
The other elite soldiers were Frenchman Captain Raymond Lee, Second Lieutenant Robert Raillard, Sergeant Pierre Durban, Sergeant Fedossef from Russia, and defecting German Sergeant Max Mark.
But, almost straight after landing behind enemy lines at Dourdan, south west of Paris, on July 25, they learnt that Rommel had been badly injured in an RAF airstrike.
This was while being driven in his staff car from his chateau to the frontline.
Instead of aborting the mission, they met up with French Resistance fighters to mount a series of increasingly bold operations against the enemy.
During an “extremely fruitful week”, they ambushed road convoys, derailed and set a train on fire, shot up another one, and even stormed a German military command post.
This is where Rommel’s staff were stationed and thought that if they couldn’t get him, they’d go after the “courtiers”.
On the night of August 7, they dashed through the darkened streets of Mantes to the command post.
One of the commandos stabbed the sentry guard at the entrance, whose screams alerted those inside.
GettyErwin Johannes Eugen Rommel, also known as ‘Desert Fox’[/caption]
BNPSBNPS.co.uk (01202 558833) Pic: QuercusBooks/BNPS Pictured: Tom Moore by a plane in 1945[/caption]
As the door flung open they opened fire on everyone who ran outside with Bren guns.
A dozen Germans were killed in the shoot-out before they ran out of ammunition.
Vastly outnumbered by the enemy, the commandos had to run for six hours before shaking off their hunters, reaching their farm headquarters completely exhausted.
The friendly farmer produced several bottles of wine to celebrate the attack, their last before they returned to the American lines.
For Cpl Moore, the war was personal as his brother Jack was killed in the Battle of the Java Sea in February 1942.
He did not like to talk about his war exploits so his story has only emerged from the recently discovered family archives of SAS hero Paddy Mayne.
Cpl Moore had served in North Africa and Italy earlier in the war, where it is believed he met Couraud.
After Operation Gaff, he carried out secretive operations in Germany then disarmed enemy forces in Norway.
Then followed a three year post-war stint in India before he returned to Britain to work as a machinist with Rootes Motors in Coventry, Warks, and raise a family.
Nazi Rommel committed suicide by cyanide pill in October 1944 after he was implicated in the July 20 plot to assassinate Hitler.
The team’s hair-raising exploits are told in unprecedented detail in a new book by military historian Damien Lewis, SAS Daggers Drawn.
Inside bizarre theory that Hitler fled Germany
ON APRIL 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.
The maniacal Nazi boss decided to take his own life in the Führerbunker in Berlin after it became clear that Germany would lose the Battle of Berlin.
But in the months and years following his death, however, conspiracy theories circulated over whether or not he actually died – and if he escaped instead.
It all began with the Soviet Union’s decision to seed two contradictory narratives in 1945: that Hitler died by taking cyanide or that he had survived and fled to another country.
Joseph Stalin himself even outright denied Hitler was dead when asked by US President Harry Truman.
It is known some Nazis used hidden escape routes called “ratlines” to flee from Germany as the Third Reich collapsed, with some finding shelter in South America.
Conspiracy theories about Hitler’s death run rampant even some 76 years after he shot himself in the Fuhrerbunker.
Declassified documents unearthed by The Sun Online showed how the UK and US hunted for Hitler for ten years after the end of World War 2 as they feared he was still alive.
Secret documents reveal investigations into claims Hitler had a body double, U-boat sightings in Argentina, and claims that Adolf was photographed alive in Colombia.
One document reported to the FBI in 1947 even described a town called “Casino” near Rio Grande in Brazil which appeared to be “entirely populated” by Germans.
FBI agents interviewed an informant, who claimed to be a former French resistance fighter, who said he saw Hitler and Eva Braun sitting at a resort in the town.
Many notorious Nazis did manage to escape to South America, but it is accepted by history that Hitler and Eva Braun were not among them.