During their training, a rumor broke out among the commandos that their mission would include the assassination of US General Dwight Eisenhower. Despite Skorzeny’s attempt to quash rumors, this one refused to die. Soon, American intelligence officers had also heard this rumor. Ironically, this led to what was arguably the mission’s greatest success. When the counteroffensive began on December 16, 1944, reports surfaced quickly of German soldiers disguised as Americans, operating behind friendly lines. These reports spread, leading to significant overestimates of the number of commandos involved in the operation, but enough were captured to make the threat seem real and significant. Many of the captured commandos told their captors that assassination squads were hunting senior Allied officers, leading Generals Eisenhower and Bradley to avoid exposure by remaining in their headquarters. This significantly hindered their ability to respond to the German assault.
While the threat to the American generals was never as serious as believed, the commandos of Einheit Stielau were successful in their attempts to sow chaos in the Allied lines. One team portraying themselves as traffic control at a road intersection sent an entire regiment in the wrong direction. Another cut communications between General Bradley’s headquarters and the First US Army command post. While there were far too few commandos to conduct all the actions that were later attributed to them, their acts of sabotage, whether real or imagined, disrupted the Americans’ response to the counteroffensive and weighed heavily on their morale.
