Transport of concentration camp inmates to Tyrol
Ultimately, the SS/SD were faced with overwhelming firepower and stood down, whereupon the army unit "adopted" the Prominenten and escorted them to their final destination at the Hotel Pragser Wildsee some 12 km away.
The remainder included renegade Soviet generals, former collaborators from a number of Axis countries, a couple of Mussolini's Police Chiefs, some senior Nazi politicians and German Army officers who had simply fallen out with Hitler.
On 27 April the prisoners began the final leg of their journey to a large lake-side hotel at Pragser Wildsee in the Italian Tyrol 12.5 km south west of Niederdorf, then still occupied by three German Luftwaffe generals and their staff.
On Sunday 29 April, Colonel Bogislaw von Bonin, who had been imprisoned for disobeying Hitler by authorising Army Group A to retreat from Warsaw in January 1945, approached the local Wehrmacht liaison office in Niederdorf and asked them to contact his old friend, Colonel General Heinrich von Vietinghoff, the commander of Army Group C with headquarters in Bolzano, Italy, on the phone.
He wasn't available but von Bonin was able to speak to another friend, General Hans Röttiger, Vietinghoff's Chief of Staff, and explain the highly dangerous situation and the need for assistance.
Stiller explained that he had relinquished his authority over the prisoners to one of the British officers but expressed great concern over what might happen when his second in command, an unpredictable SD Obersturmführer, learned of his decision.
Forty-five minutes later fifteen Wehrmacht NCOs armed with machine pistols arrived and positioned themselves in front of the Town Hall where the SS detachments were headquartered.
Two hours later, 150 men from an infantry training battalion arrived and positioned two heavy machine guns in the square opposite the SS headquarters in the Town Hall.
By a stroke of luck SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, the Supreme Commander of all SS forces in Italy, was standing next to General Röttiger when von Alvensleben's call came through.
Taking the phone from Röttiger, Wolff volunteered to von Alvensleben that the SS and SD detachments should stand down on his authority[4] – no matter that he lacked it over either of their officers.
With the SS and SD corralled in the village square by the Wehrmacht force, it remained an extremely tense situation and a firefight between them was still a real possibility.
When one of the British contingent among the prisoners drew the SD troopers’ attention to the firepower they were facing, they finally conceded and began laying down their weapons.
Contemporary rumours suggested that the SS and SD men were ambushed by partisans and subsequently captured and strung up from roadside telegraph poles.
Great Escape Wing Commander Harry Day and the Italian resistance leader who had arranged the hostage accommodation at Niederdorf, left the hotel on 1 May to make their way to the US front line in order to persuade US forces to mount a final rescue mission.
