Book Review — Gran Sasso: a novel by Gary Parkins (ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8456564931)

Reviewed for Hermes by Prosper Keating

Gran Sasso is the latest novel by Gary Parkins, who served with 3 PARA in the early to mid-1970s, completing two tours in Northern Ireland. Some of you will know him as the Security Operations Manager of the prestigious London store Harrods, a post he occupied for thirty-two of the forty-two years he spent with the firm.

A keen military historian, Parkins is a member of the Western Front Association but he is just as interested in Second World War history. As the title of his new book indicates, the narrative — part-action, part-love story — centres around the rescue by German paratroopers and Waffen-SS commandos in September 1943 of deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from captivity in a  requisitioned mountain top hotel over 2,000 metres above sea level.

Parkins’ narrative offers an interesting alternative view of the Gran Sasso rescue and the reasons behind it. “The growing strength of the Italian Communists in the northern part of the country was of great concern not just to the Germans but also to the Allies.”, says Parkins. By this stage of the War, the threat posed by the Stalinist regime and its proxy forces throughout western Europe and the Balkans was very clear.

Parkins suggests that the idea of rescuing Mussolini and installing him as the head of a new Italian fascist state covering central and northern Italy and known as the Italian Social Republic or, popularly, the Republic of Salò was planted in Hitler’s mind by the British secret services acting on Winston Churchill’s orders.

Much has been written over the years about the Gran Sasso raid, code-named Operation Eiche or Oak by the Germans. Many accounts lavish excessive attention on the involvement of SS-Hauptsturmführer Otto Skorzeny and a detachment of his SS-Jagdverband commandos and it is refreshing to see that Parkins resists this tendency. There is no doubting Skorzeny’s bravery as his wartime military record speaks for itself but he was also an inveterate self-promoter during and after WW2.

Skorzeny’s thirst for fame almost resulted in the death of Mussolini. Skorzeny, who had already muscled in on the operation by turfing the Luftwaffe Fallschirmjäger occupants out of two of the raiding group’s DFS 230 assault gliders to make space for his detachment of Waffen-SS commandos, insisted on flying off the mountain top with Mussolini and the pilot of the light aircraft, Luftwaffe Hauptmann Gerlach.

In fairness to Skorzeny, whose parent unit was the SS-Leibstandarte “Adolf Hitler’, he had been ordered by Hitler personally to find Mussolini and had exposed himself to considerable danger during his search, as Parkins relates. However, Operation Oak was planned and executed by Luftwaffe Major Harald Mors, under the direct command of the German Airborne Divisional Commanding General Kurt Student.

Mors was CO of the 1^st Battalion of Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 7, formed in France in February 1942. Essentially, I./FJR 7 was the elite Fallschirm-Lehr-Bataillon. Before being renamed, the FS-Lehr-Btl was the Airborne Division’s Demonstration and Testing Battalion and was used in a number of special operations. As the Gran Sasso raid shows, the FS-Lehr Btl men continued to be viewed as an elite within an elite.

After the assault gliders landed on the tiny plateau in front of the Hotel Campo Imperatore, disgorging their occupants, led by Oberleutnant Freiherr von Berlepsch and, of course, Hauptsturmführer Skorzeny. The funicular railway station in the valley below had been occupied by Major Mors, whose assault group cut the telephone lines, effectively isolating the hotel. The 200 Carabinieri guarding Mussolini were preparing to defend the hotel but surrendered on the orders of the Italian General Fernando Spoletti, brought along by the Germans at gunpoint for this purpose.

Mussolini was to be evacuated in a lightweight Fieseler Storch aircraft flown by Luftwaffe Hauptmann Heinrich Gerlach, General Student’s personal pilot. The Fallschirmjäger manhandled rocks out of the way to create as much space as possible for a take-off. German photographic archives contain an interesting series of shows showing Gerlach arguing with Skorzeny, who insisted on flying off the mountain with Mussolini and got his way.

Handicapped by the extra weight of the gigantic Skorzeny, the Fieseler Storch plunged off the plateau into a ravine and were it not for Gerlach’s skill in pulling the flimsy Storch out of its near-vertical dive, would have crashed. Adolf Hitler awarded his fellow Austrian Skorzeny the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross 1939 and, on Skorzeny’s recommendation, also decorated Gerlach with the Knight’s Cross.

Governed during its existence from Salò, Verona and then Milan, the Italian Social Republic existed from September 23^rd 1943 to May 1^st 1945. Ironically, Benito Mussolini, weary and demoralised, wanted to retire but Hitler convinced him otherwise by threatening to destroy several Italian cities.

The new Fascist state was never more than a German puppet, defended by German troops although it had its own military units. These German and Italian units certainly made life harder for the Communist partisans — amongst other elements — but in the end, Mussolini and his mistress were murdered by Communists and hung upside-down in Milan where their bodies were desecrated by a mob inflamed by Nazi and Fascist brutality.

How convincing is Parkins’ thesis? Did Mussolini’s restoration to power prevent a Communist takeover of nothern Italy ahead of advancing Allied forces? Buy the book and make your own mind up. Even if you think it unlikely, Gary Parkins spins a gripping yarn, his style evoking not just that of Len Deighton but also that of Sven Hassel. I could go on about other aspects of the book but that would risk turning this review into a spoiler.

Prosper Keating — 4.12.2023