In my 'New Member' thread, we got a little off topic and wound up discussing Otto Skorzeny - Za posted a Wiki link to Skorzeny's biography, and I read that Wikipedia reference, and stumbled across this passage,

On October 21, Hitler, inspired by an American subterfuge which had put three captured German tanks flying German colours to devastating use at Aachen, summoned Skorzeny to Berlin and assigned him to lead a panzer brigade.

EDIT: Is there a way to trace down the original author of the Wikipedia article, and ask him directly? I'm not familiar enough with Wikipedia to know how to do that.

-whatever

-Lou

another EDIT: the 745th Tank Battalion was involved in the battle for Aachen Here's an excellent, detailed description of the Reduction of Aachen, with no mention of a 'subterfuge operation'.

-whatever

-Lu

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5 out of 4 people have difficulty with fractions.

no-one has replied how odd.......... yes the op was a failure in the Bulge battles, it was a joint effort of camo'd US/German vehicles to look like a US armored formation with German truppen with English language skills dressed in US army uni's. also taking part were LW Fallshirmjägern in a disastrous glider affair where they were to land and regroup and fight behind US lines then connecting with Skorzeny's troops. any German of course caught in US uni's were immediately given trial and shot as spies.

The prime objective of the op was to re-route existing signs, erasing crossroads with other names and just get US troops hopelessly lost....this of course was all of the Grief incident. A Pz Brigade he was not

E ~

I'm sorry, Erich - I wasn't clear. You are correctly referring to Operation Greif, which was a German subterfuge operation at the Battle of the Bulge. The reference in Wikipedia seems to refer to an American subterfuge operation at Aachen, which inspired Operation Greif. THAT's the one I'm curious about.... the AMERICAN operation at Aachen.

Thanks for your response!

-whatever

-Lou

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5 out of 4 people have difficulty with fractions.

got it. what book references do you have on Aachen or do you ? the armor situation in the city was quite limited obviously of close compacted buildings, and most were dug in at some point with the typical German AT emplacements

I searched this six ways from Sunday, and nothing seems to be available online. Hopefully someone has read this somewhere and can follow up with this. What an interesting topic.

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"The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance." Socrates

At the moment, I have only referred to my extremely limited personal library and the internet. In Citizen Soldiers, Ambrose relates an action at what is referred to as Dawson's Ridge, located east of and overlooking Aachen, wherein a German attack was led by a single captured Sherman, but no reference to anY American subterfuge.

...still looking...

-whatever

-Lou

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5 out of 4 people have difficulty with fractions.

found this information

Wikipedia:About - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contacting individual Wikipedia editors

If you need more information, the first place to go is the Help:Contents. To contact individual contributors, leave a message on their talk page. Standard places to ask policy and project-related questions are the village pump, online, and the Wikipedia mailing lists, over e-mail. You can also reach other Wikipedians via IRC and e-mail.
Also, you could try the Wikimedia Foundation meta-wiki, a site for coordinating the various Wikipedia projects and sister projects (and abstract discussions of policy and direction), and there are many different places for submitting bug reports and feature requests.
For a full list of contact options, see Wikipedia:Contact us.

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American by birth, TEXAN by the grace of GOD!

just looking through Skors memories, the 150 Pz Brigade was in the Ardennes and then he was summed back to see Hitler in Berlin on the last day of 1944.

Started work on supporting positions in Austria for the so called Redoubt and then placed on the Oder with a small band to defend the Schwedt area from the Soviets before heading back to Bavaria mtns. Besdies his rather stealth work on espinoge in the Soviet Union which actually existed for some time after thewar was over

I think I've found the source for the story.
It appears to be a direct quote from David Irving's 'Hitler's war':
Which is available online;
Before anyone clicks on the link, which is a part of his website, I'd advise they do a quick check on Irving's name if they're not otherwise familiar with him, controversial figure who I'd suggest you make your own mind up on:
David Irving: Hitler's War, Germany 1939-45, ch 41

I can't see any real reason why there couldn't be some truth to the story but haven't yet noticed any other account of it.

Cheers,
Adam.

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It's only the Internet.

I am unable to find anything that shows the americans using either captured vehicles or disguised vehicles at Aachen.

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American by birth, TEXAN by the grace of GOD!

I'm pretty new at this type of historical research......














.......so, how do you prove something DIDN'T happen???

(...I need a beer!...)

-whatever

-Lou

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5 out of 4 people have difficulty with fractions.

easy, just counter with facts from various sources of what actually happened. Since I have not been able to find anything that depicts the Americans using such subterfuge, then it is questionable. The trick is in the research.

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American by birth, TEXAN by the grace of GOD!