In the final days of World War II, Americans, French and Germans join forces in an Austrian castle to fight off diehard Nazis.

Now That Should Be A Movie.

Short pitch.

It’s called The Battle of Castle Itter.

It is an Action War Drama.

In the vein of Valkyrie.

It is like Fury meets Downfall.  

It follows brash tank commander Captain John C. “Jack” Lee, Jr.

And respected Wehrmacht officer turned resistance fighter Josef “Sepp” Gangl.

As they try to protect important French political prisoners from being murdered by the SS in the final days of World War II.

Problems arise when nearly two hundred SS men and heavy artillery surrounded the castle in which the French prisoners are held.

Together Lee and Gangl will set aside their differences and learn to trust each other as they fight off attack after attack as they wait for rescue.

The idea came to me when reading about the story of the Battle for Castle Itter in The Last Battle by Stephen Harding. 

My unique approach would be the odd coupling of the various personalities of Americans, Germans, and French as they unite to fight a common enemy.

A set piece would be when Lee’s Sherman Tank is hit by enemy artillery. In the ensuing explosion, Americans survive by jumping into the ravine surrounding the castle. Inside the castle, A German mother throws herself over her children and is wounded by flying mortars and stones. The older, aristocratic French gentlemen who have been standing around in the courtyard are galvanized in action by the sacrificial actions of the German mother. They grab rifles and machine guns and join the Americans and Germans on the castle walls to fight off the SS.

Target audiences would be action and war movie fans, history nerds, military history buffs, and teenagers and men ages 15-40.

Audiences would want to see this movie because of its themes of courage, adventure, trust, honor, devotion, redemption, and fighting off evil Nazis in an epic last stand.

Today’s book I would like to recommend as a movie is The Last Battle: When U.S. and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe by Stephen Harding, from Da Capo Press.

Located in the Tyrol region of Austria, Castle Itter is an 18th-century castle constructed on the site of a Middle Ages fort. During World War II it was seized by the Third Reich and placed under the Administration of the Dachau concentration camp. However, the castle was not used to exterminate prisoners but to keep important French political prisoners, so-called VIPs, alive \ to use as bargaining chips as necessitated by the course of the war.

These VIPs included Edouard Daladier, sixty-one, an important and prominent French politician with socialist leanings who had served as both Prime Minister and Minister of Defense. Maurice Gamelin, seventy-one, Chief of the Army Staff of the French Army who had been fired weeks before the French capitulated in 1940, his daily calisthenics kept him in good health. Leon Jouhaux, sixty-four, secretary general of one of France’s largest trade unions, had been outspoken against the Vichy French leader Phillipe Petain. He would later be joined by his forty-six-year-old secretary and “companion” Augusta Bruchlen. Paul Reynaud, sixty-seven, the former prime minister who had resigned rather than surrender to Germany. As a member of the center-right Democratic Alliance Party, he had spent the last two decades in a political rivalry with Daladier. He would be joined by his secretary Christiane Dolores Mabire, who was four decades younger than him. These are the French we’re talking about after all.

Maxime Weygand, seventy-eight, who succeeded Reynaud as defense minister, had advised capitulation to spare France the destruction of an unwinnable war. He had worked with the Vichy government until an arrest order was issued by Hitler himself.  When Weygand arrived with his wife Marie-Renee-Josephine at the castle, Reynaud greeted him by yelling across the courtyard that he was a traitor and collaborator.

Although a member of a far-right veterans’ group, forty-seven-year-old Jean Borotra was not a politician but a tennis champion. As director of the Commission of General Education and Sports, the “Bounding Basque” had banded all French teams from competing against German ones after the Nazi round of Parisian Jews. Refusing to collaborate with the Nazis, he was fired and later arrested attempting to cross into Spain. Like Gamelin, he kept himself in shape so he could one day fulfill his dream of escaping.

Marcel Granger, forty-four, was an intelligence agent who had been arrested by his own fellow Frenchmen. Because he was the brother-in-law of a daughter of the exiled French genera Henri Giraud who was serving with the Allies, Granger was spared the slow death of a work camp. German officials were hoping with so many family members and friends in custody, Giraud would turn against helping the Allies.

Other prisoners included Michel Clemenceau, a seventy-eight-year-old successful entrepreneur whose opposition to the Vichy French had caught the eye of the Gestapo. Francois de la Rocque, a sixty-year-old right-winter who had worked with the collaborating Vichy government while gathering intelligence for the Allies. Marie Agnes, forty-six, and her husband Alfred Cailliaus were the last prisoners to arrive at Itter. They had worked in low-level resistance but were arrested because Marie Agnes’ brother was the Free French general Charles de Gaulle.

Instead of uniting in common defiance of their Nazi captures, the VIPs were divided along political differences and social lines. They ate at different tables and spent time alone in their private rooms, writing self-aggrandizing memoirs that vilified their opinions. Their woman naturally sided with them.

Some did resist. Having received hearty reactions, the VIPs would secretly pass some of the leftovers off to the female concentration camp inmates the SS had brought to the castle as servants. The prisoner-electrician, a Croatian resistance fighter named Zvonimir “Zvonko” Čučković, smuggled a radio to Reynaud, who hid it in his room. After listening to the BBC, Raynaud would then pass the information along to the other inmates. The tennis player Borotra escaped three times, making it several miles before his recapture. His only punishment was being “grounded” in his room. If the story of the Battle of Castle Itter had been brought to the screen in the 1960s, he possibly could have been portrayed by Steven McQueen, the Tunnel King from The Great Escape.

By the spring of 1945, being recaptured and returned to Schloss Itter was probably the safest thing for Borotra. As the Nazi government and the German army collapsed in the face of the Allied advance, diehard Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS units began rooming the Austrian wilderness with little regard for the lives of anyone not still goose-stepping. Heinrich Himmler issued orders that anyone waving a white flag would be shot. The SS and Gestapo were hanging suspected deserts and murdering prisoners to cover up their crimes. The French VIPs released that since they were no longer needed as bargaining chips, their lives were forfeit in the eyes of radical Nazis. 

By April 30th, elements of the US Seventh Army were less than fifteen miles from the castle. As they tightened the noose around the area, the Allies understood it would cause a concentration of diehard Nazi units, which would result in stiffening resistance. There were rumors that the Reich planned to use the Alps as a final fortress where guerilla tactics would wear down the Allies. Some Nazi units were Gebirgsjäger, infantry trained to fight in the Alps. Commanding one of the units was Josef Gangl.

Born in Bavaria in 1910, Josef “Sepp” Gangl joined the German Army in 1928 as it was one of the few jobs available to an eighteen-year-old male in the country’s stagnant economy. Gangl rose through the ranks to reach that of major. He served through the war, including on the Eastern Front and at Normandy. Three times he was rewarded for his bravery in combat. One of these rewards was the Iron Cross. His last reward, the German Cross in Gold, was given to him on March 8, 1945.  

The Allies benefited from their advance in the Alps with contact with the Provisional Austrian National Committee. Numerous Austrian resistance groups had put their difference aside to guard bridges and other structures against destruction by the retreating German Army. It was with one of these resistance groups that Josef Gangl made contact in hopes he could avoid the unnecessary sacrifice of his men in the final moments of a lost war.

Meanwhile at Castle Itter, the SS commandant Sebastian “Wastl” Wimmer had fled. This good news was twofold. First, Wimmer was a drunk often given to blind rages. After his brother had been killed during an Allied bombing raid on Munich, his temper became even more violent. Čučković had to stop Wimmer from killing the cook, Andreas Krobot. Second, with Wimmer gone, this left SS Captain Kurt-Siegfried Schrader in charge. Unlike Wimmer, he was a personable officer. While recovering in hospital from a war wound, he had “mentally broke” with the Nazi party after hearing of the July 20^th assassination attempt on Hitler. He often had conversations with the French prisoners who could speak German. He would bring his wife and children to the castle, for whom Krobot made cakes. On April 29^th Schrader was officially discharged from the SS. Schrader made sure he had papers signed by his commander officer stating that he had been discharged due to injury. This paper saved his life whenever the Gestapo and SS men stopped him on his way back home. He then gathered up his family and took them to the castle for safekeeping.

At the castle, Reynaud and Daladier came to a rare mutual agreement to send for help. The first messenger would be Čučković, who left on a bike. Whenever he was stopped, he claimed that Wimmer had sent him on an errand. After a seven-hour ride, the electrician reached American lines. After informing the officers of the situation, he was told that nothing could be done since the castle was in the jurisdiction of a different army division.

With the Nazis gone, from Itter, the French put aside their political and personal differences, raiding the armory, and arming themselves. Then using whatever materials they could find, they fashioned together a French tricolor banner and raised it over the castle. When Cockovic had not returned after a day, the VIPs asked the cook Krobot to go find help.

Krobot made it to the village below the castle. The main street was filled with Gestapo and SS men killing male villages for having raised white flags. Taking a side street to avoid the carnage, he ran into a man he thought he could trust. The man pulled a small Austrian flag in his pocket. It was Sepp Gangl.

Krobot explained the situation to Gangl, who realized that American officers would be more likely to believe another military officer than they would a civilian like Cuckovic or Krobot. Gangl discussed the situation with the officers under his command. They agreed with him. Gangl took the letter from Krobot, and, with a white flag on his person, stepped into his Kübelwagen. As his driver appeared and started the bucket car, Gangl noticed that his officers were saluting him, perhaps for the very last time.

Although only seven miles separated Gangl from the American position, the mission was still very dangerous. If SS men guarding the roadblocks discovered the letter or the white flag, Gangl and his driver would be executed. Austrian resistance fighters unaware of the mission could ambush the Kübelwagen. Random mortar, artillery, aircraft fire, or landmines could take the vehicle out at random. And Gangl to be careful with the timing of raising his white flag. If he put it up too soon, he would be shot by SS men. If he put it up too late, he could be taken out by American ambushes or snipers. The GJ Joes were warry of tricks that the trapped emeny might employ out of desperation and could open fire without hesitation, especially after hearing of the horrors discovered at the concentration camps.

Fortunately for Gangl, the GJs he encountered did not open fire. They took him to their commander, a college football star from Nebraska who had found his niche in war. A newly minted captain, John C. “Jack” Lee of Company B of the 23rd Tank Battalion, 12th Armored Division, was a soldier like Gangl. He too had received medals from his country, including the Bronze Star. With the knowledge that a cease-fire could be declared in the coming hours, many GJs were content to lay low, avoiding the “honor” of being the last American killed in action in Europe. But Lee was more than excited to command a rescue mission behind enemy lines, the nature of the task matching his aggressive personality.

First, though, Lee had to test Gangl’s good faith and veracity. He and a corporal he had “volunteered” would scout the castle before launching a full-blown rescue mission. They joined Gangl in the bucket-car and headed into “Indian territory.” Lee and the corporal placed their M1 helmets on the floor of the Kübelwagen so as not to attract unnecessary attention as the Germans drove them the seven miles back to the castle. Fortunately, most of the soldiers they passed were under Gangl’s command. At one point they had to take a different, longer route drive to avoid SS units. When Lee and Gangl arrived at the entrance of the castle, they were greeted by two armed French VIPs and Schrader.

His curiosity satisfied, Lee returned to American lines. Despite bureaucratic red tape regarding the territory in which different American divisions were allowed to operate, he soon had a force of tanks with infantry riding on their tops. Led by Lee’s own tank, the Besotten Jenny, the column moved out. With six Shermans, carrying American soldiers, Gangl’s Kübelwagen and Mercedes trucks carrying German troops, it was probably the strangest column led by an American officer during World War II.

Problems quickly arose as the column made its way through the mountains. The first obstacle was a small, old bridge across the Inn River. After four tanks passed over, it began to collapse when the fifth tank in the column tried to cross. Lee had to order the last three tanks and their load of infantry to turn around. Then Lee left two tanks and their infantry passengers in a village to protect resistance fighters. Next, he left another tank, the Boche Buster, to guard a bridge across the Brixentaler Ache. Lee was left with only the Besotten Jenny and four men from the 142nd Infantry Regiment: Alex Petruckovich, William Sutton, Alfred Worsham, and Arthur Pollock. Lee then had to plow through SS troops before they could finish setting up a roadblock.

Once the Besotten Jenny reached the castle, Lee had to find a good firing position for the tank’s guns. Among his challenges was finding a place where the tank’s underbelly and other vulnerable areas would not be exposed to enemy fire. Then he had to find a place that gave his barrel the best field of fire. He achieved this by slowly backing Jenny up the bridge leading to the castle. His rearview mirrors having been destroyed in a previous firefight, he had to rely on the vocal direction of another American. He had to take it slow. If the old bridge could not hold the weight of the tank, both vehicle and driver would fall twenty-five feet into the ravine below. Despite the metal girders that supported the bridge bending and chunks of stone falling into the ravine, and the roadway narrowing at a fifteen-degree angle as its width shrank from twelve to ten feet, Lee was able to park Jenny in the castle’s entrance.

Despite Lee’s feat, the French, being French, were unimpressed with the small size of the relief column. More disconcerting were the German soldiers included in the column. Fortunately, they did not hear Schrader report to Lee that Wehrmacht soldiers had been seen posting two Pak 40 antitank guns east and southwest of the castle.

After surveying the castle, Lee decided that staying put was the best course of action. The battlements, towers, and terrain made an ideal defense for his command, which consisted of ten Americans, one Waffen-SS man, and fourteen Wehrmacht soldiers. Lee would command and the two German officers, Schrader and Gangl, would act as his lieutenants. The German soldiers tied strips of black around their left arms to designate them as friendlies. If the Nazis outside the castle were able to overrun the outer defenses, Lee would order everyone into the keep, a tactic straight from the Middle Ages.

At four AM on May 5^th, 1945, the die-hard Nazis attacked with M1 Garands, Kar-98s, a .30 caliber machine gun, and an MG-42. Lee was able to silence the MG-42 with a burst from the Besotten Jenny. Nazis approaching the outer walls with grappling hooks and ropes were sent scurrying for cover before they could mount an attack.

On top of the Nazi attack, Lee had to deal with the stubborn VIPs. He had told them to stay in the basement for their safety. Yet right after the first attack, he found them in the Great Hall, standing in front of a roaring fire. The basement was too cold, they explained. Lee agreed to let them stay in the hall if they stayed away from the windows. Above all, they were not to go back to their rooms upstairs since the Germans positioned on the upper floor were likely to draw enemy fire.

The second attack occurred at six AM. One German under Gangl’s command was wounded. But the worst casualty was a Wehrmacht soldier who lowed himself with a rope from the veranda and deserted toward the tree lines. None of the “good” Germans had opened fire on their fleeing comrade. The Americans had but failed to hit the moving target. Gangl told Lee that the soldier’s desertion had more to do with fear of being executed if the castle was overrun and less to do with political convictions. That was little solace to Lee who realized that the diehard Nazis now knew the number of the castle garrison, its positions, and ammunition supply. But he had no choice but to trust Gangl’s assurance that the rest of the troops were loyal to him. Gangl repaid this trust by going around and reminding the German troops that their best chance of surviving the war and seeing their families again was siding with the Americans for the next few hours.

Meanwhile, a relief column of American tanks and troops head left its base. Its route took it between the curves of a river on one side and steep hills on the other. Almost immediately it encountered an SS roadblock. After fifty minutes of eliminating and clearing the roadblock, the column encountered a blown bridge just half a mile down the road. It then had to wait ninety minutes as engineers came forward to make repairs. Next, the column encountered a large crater in the road where there were no available bypasses. It took an hour to set up a perimeter in case of an ambush and then fill in the crater. Then after all that the column was ordered to turn back because it had “trespassed” the map coordinates marking the boundaries of the areas of operations for two different divisions. Because of intractable red tape, red blood would flow freely.

From the heights of the castle, Lee could see that the Nazis had a 20mm anti-aircraft cannon, a 88mm gun, and truckloads of Waffen-SS troops heading toward the castle. Since the heavy guns could knock out tanks, Lee ran to Besotten Jenny to warn the relief column, but the radio was inoperable. Gangl said he could use the castle’s phone to call the Austrian resistance. Lee trusted him. Because of Gangl’s call, three resistance fighters, the only men that could be spared, arrived at the castle after forty-five minutes of dodging SS roadblocks and patrols. It would be thirty-six men versus between one hundred filthy and two hundred Nazis.

On top of the deteriorating military situation, Lee had to deal with the French VIPs who had ignored his order to stay in the Great Hall or return to the basement. Instead, they were out taking their daily walks. Daladier and Jouhaux were strolling around the perimeter. Reynaud and Mabire, were in the rear courtyard with the Cailliaus and Schrader families, taking pictures of themselves near the central fountain. Clemenceau, Gamelin, and Borotra were in discussion near the main door. August Bruchlen was walking out of the Great Hall when the Battle for Castle Itter began in earnest.

The first casualty was the Besotten Jenny, struck by antitank rounds. Pollak and Worsham, infantrymen providing cover for Jenny, only survived by jumping from the bridge into the ravine below as the tank blew up. Inside the courtyard, Mabire noticed that Shrader’s wife was bleeding. When the tank exploded, she had thrown herself over her children and had been struck by a shower of stones blown off the parapet by the force of the blast. Mabire and Bruchlen, who had also been struck by fragments, gathered up the other VIPs. Each VIP retrieved the weapons they had captured the day before and joined the Germans and Americans on the castle walls. For a moment these political enemies were able to put aside their animosities and come together to fight a common enemy. Many were veterans of World War I and therefore able to remain calm under fire.

Reynaud headed toward the gatehouse to take up a firing position. Lee saw that the politician would be exposed to enemy fire at that location and was about to motion for Sutton to pull him back. But then Gangl made a dash across the courtyard. He was running in a fully erect poster halfway across the courtyard when he collapsed. Blood began to seep from his head. Gangl, a German soldier served his nation faithfully for an entire war only to be failed in its final hours by a bullet from a sniper rifle fired by his own countryman.

Lee and the other defenders had no time to mourn. More Germans were wounded. Ammunition was running low. Shells were slamming into the walls with increasing frequency and accuracy, sending chunks of mortar flying. Lee contacted possible American reinforcements using the castle phone but then the line went dead.

A second American relief column headed out at one PM. At first, it encountered members of the Hitler Youth, Wehrmacht reserve troops, and elderly civilian militiamen willing to surrender in mass, with claims of having never fired on Americans. But then it soon encountered stiff resistance from Waffen-SS. This resistance included MG-42s hidden in log-and-sandbag bunkers. The winding road along the Brixentaler Ache did not help the American column as it was forced to crawl at a snail’s pace in single file.

Then the commander of the column looked up to see an athletic figure running toward him. It was Borotra, the Bounding Basque. With the situation at the castle worsening, the former tennis star came up with a plan. Disguised as a refugee, he would slip over the wall, find the American column, and lead it back to the castle.

With opinions running out, Lee approved Borotra’s plan. The Bounding Basque slipped over the parapet and made his way undetected passed the Nazis surrounding the castle. He then made his way through the forest, down a hillside, and over a stream. He encounters Nazis who dismissed him as a harmless refuge. As Borotra passed them, he made note of their positions.

As Borotra led the American column toward the castle, he pointed out the enemy positions. The Americans made their way up the steep hillsides, taking out an MG-42 and killing and capturing SS men without a single US casualty.

At the castle, Lee gave orders to Weygand and Gamelin to shepherd the rest of the VIPs into the keep. The two Frenchmen obeyed the captain’s command despite holding rankers much higher than him in the French Army. Lee pulled the four US infantrymen and German defenders off the walls and positioned them at the windows and staircase of the keep. The garrison of Castle Itter was now in the Alamo position.

At four PM, SS men were preparing to fire a panzerfaust at the castle’s front gate. Then suddenly fire came from the village below the castle. One defender cried out that a Panzer was coming. But wasn’t a Panzer. It was the Sherman tank Lee had left behind to guard a bridge, the Boche Buster! Just like in a Western, the cavalry had arrived in the nick of time. And the hundred to two hundred Nazis standing in for the Native Americans either high-tailed it into the woods or surrendered in mass. The Americans and Germans had succeeded in their mission to keep the French VIPs alive.

The Battle of Castle Itter is tailor-made for a movie. It has an exciting plot with an exotic location. The story of a desperate last stand in which our heroes are almost massacred before help arrives at the very last moment is a template for the successful hree-act structure of a screenplay. At the end of Act Two, our hero is down, nearly defeated. Then the climax of Act Three, the euphoria of rescue arriving just in time.

Audiences would like to see the movie because of the adventure and excitement of a last stand against evil Nazis.  Who doesn’t like killing Nazis after all? The story element of former enemies coming together to fight a common enemy is unusual and adds an extra layer of human interest. The story also contains the themes of honor, trust, devotion, courage, and, for Gangl and Schrader, redemption. Their part in the Battle of Castle Itter is a reminder that heroes are not faceless, nameless members of the crowd on “the right side of history,” but living, breathing human beings who make the right choice to do the right thing at the right time.

A personal reason I think the Battle of Castle should be a movie is that of the four soldiers from the 142^nd Infantry Regiment, Alex Petrukovich, William Sutton, Alfred Worsham, and Arthur Pollock. They were told that they would be put in for declarations for their actions during the battle. They never received any medals. As of the writing of The Last Battle, only Pollock was still living. Like those soldiers, I have experienced being denied my just deserts by the powers that be. With a mention of the injustice down to the four infantrymen in the closing credits, the film could raise awareness of the broken promise, resulting in the Petruckovich, Sutton, Worsham, and Pollock families receiving the medals promised to their relatives.

Because it is a riveting story about former enemies putting aside their differences to take a final last stand against the evils of Nazism is why I think The Last Battle by Stephen Harding should be a movie.

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