History is usually pretty predictable. You have two sides, they hate each other, and they fight until someone wins or everyone dies. But the story in The Last Battle by Stephen Harding flips that script so hard it sounds like a Hollywood fever dream. It’s the kind of story that makes you double-check the footnotes because it just doesn't seem possible that American GIs and German Wehrmacht soldiers stood side-by-side to defend a medieval castle against the SS.
It happened.
In the closing days of World War II, specifically May 1945, the world was a chaotic mess. The "thousand-year Reich" was crumbling into dust, but the violence hadn't stopped. While most people think the war ended the moment Hitler died in his bunker, the reality on the ground was way more complicated. There were pockets of fanaticism and pockets of common sense. The battle for Castle Itter was where those two things collided in the weirdest way imaginable.
Why The Last Battle Stephen Harding Wrote Still Resonates
Stephen Harding is a long-time military journalist, and he has this knack for finding the "weird" in warfare. When he published The Last Battle: When U.S. Cooks and French Politicians Fought Their Last Battle of World War II in the Austrian Alps, he wasn't just rehashing basic troop movements. He was looking at the human element of a situation where the lines of "friend" and "foe" got totally blurred.
Think about it.
You’ve spent years being told that the guy in the gray uniform is the personification of evil. Then, suddenly, you’re sharing ammunition with him because there’s a group of Waffen-SS soldiers coming up the hill who want to kill everyone inside the building—including their own countrymen. It’s a wild scenario. Harding’s work brought this to light for a mainstream audience, and honestly, it’s a miracle it took that long for the story to get the recognition it deserved.
The location was Castle Itter in Austria. High up. Picturesque. Totally out of a fairy tale, except it was being used as a high-profile prison.
The prisoners weren't your average soldiers. We’re talking about the "who’s who" of French society. Former prime ministers like Édouard Daladier and Paul Reynaud were there. High-ranking generals like Maurice Gamelin. Even a tennis star, Jean Borotra. They were kept there as leverage, but as the Nazi regime collapsed, the guards realized they were in trouble. Most of them fled.
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The Unlikely Alliance at Castle Itter
This is where the story gets really good. The prisoners weren't exactly safe just because the guards left. The surrounding woods were crawling with SS units who were essentially "dead-enders"—men who knew the war was lost and were determined to take as many people with them as possible.
The French prisoners reached out for help.
Enter Josef "Sepp" Gangl. He was a Major in the Wehrmacht. By this point, Gangl had realized the war was a moral and strategic disaster. Instead of following orders to "fight to the last man," he was working with the local Austrian resistance to protect people from the SS. He ended up teaming up with Captain Jack Lee of the American 12th Armored Division.
Imagine that first meeting.
An American tank commander and a German officer meeting under a flag of truce to discuss how to save a group of French politicians. They didn't trust each other—not really—but they had a shared enemy. Captain Lee took a skeleton crew and a single M4 Sherman tank named "Besotten Jenny" up the mountain.
They reached the castle. The defense consisted of:
- A handful of American soldiers.
- A dozen or so German soldiers who had defected with Gangl.
- One very old tank blocking the main gate.
- A group of French VIPs who refused to hide and insisted on picking up rifles.
The Fighting Breaks Out
On the morning of May 5, 1945, the SS launched their attack. It wasn't a skirmish; it was a full-on assault with about 100 to 150 troops. They had 88mm anti-tank guns.
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Harding describes the scene with intense detail. The Sherman tank, "Besotten Jenny," was eventually knocked out by an 88mm shell. The defenders were pinned down. Ammunition was running low. This wasn't some easy victory where the heroes strolled in and saved the day. It was a desperate, bloody slog.
Major Gangl was killed by a sniper’s bullet while trying to move the former French Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud, out of harm's way. Think about that for a second. A German officer died trying to save a French politician while fighting against his own former comrades, all while alongside American soldiers.
The complexity of that moment is why Harding’s book is so vital. It strips away the "Black and White" version of history we learn in school and shows the gray areas.
Jean Borotra, the tennis star, actually volunteered to vault the castle wall and run through the SS lines to guide the American reinforcements. He did it. He survived. Shortly after, the 142nd Infantry Regiment arrived and cleared the area. The battle ended just hours before the official surrender of Germany.
Realities Most People Get Wrong
People often assume this was an "official" joint operation. It wasn't. Captain Lee was a bit of a maverick, and Gangl was technically a traitor to the Reich at that point. If they had failed, they would have been erased from history as a weird footnote or executed as deserters.
Another misconception is that the French prisoners were passive victims. They weren't. Despite the Americans telling them to stay in the cellar, many of them were on the ramparts with rifles. They had spent years in captivity and were not about to die cowering in a basement.
Harding’s research involved diving into the National Archives and tracking down the few remaining people who had firsthand knowledge. He didn't rely on myths. He looked at the after-action reports which, interestingly, the U.S. Army didn't really play up at the time. It was an awkward story. "Hey, we teamed up with the Germans" didn't exactly fit the propaganda needs of May 1945.
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Actionable Lessons from the Castle Itter Story
If you're a history buff or just someone interested in human behavior, the story of The Last Battle offers some pretty heavy things to think about. It’s not just a "cool war story."
1. Context Is Everything
Labels like "enemy" are often dictated by the people at the top, but the people on the ground usually have more in common than they realize. When the goal shifted from "winning the war" to "surviving the madness," the American and German soldiers found a way to communicate.
2. Moral Courage is Rare
What Josef Gangl did was incredibly dangerous. He could have just melted away into the woods or surrendered to the first American unit he saw. Instead, he chose to risk his life to protect people he was technically supposed to be holding captive. That kind of moral pivot is worth studying.
3. Fact-Check the "Official" Narrative
History is written by the winners, but often the winners leave out the parts that don't look clean. The Battle for Castle Itter was "messy." It involved collaboration with the enemy. It involved politicians with guns. It involved a tennis player running through the woods. Always look for the stories that don't fit the standard mold.
To dive deeper into this specific event, you should look for the primary source documents from the 12th Armored Division. Their archives contain the specific accounts of Captain Jack Lee’s troop movements. If you ever find yourself in the Tyrol region of Austria, the castle still stands. It’s private property now, so you can’t exactly go inside and reenact the battle, but seeing the geography of the hill helps you understand why it was such a nightmare to defend.
Read Stephen Harding’s book for the granular detail, but also check out the work of historian Volker Ullrich for a broader look at the chaotic final weeks of the war. It helps place Itter in the wider context of a continent that was literally tearing itself apart.
The story reminds us that even in the absolute worst of times—the final gasps of the most destructive war in history—people can still make individual choices that defy the expectations of their uniform. It's a weird, wild, and ultimately human story that deserves to be remembered exactly as it happened: messy and brave.