In exile & in the army: a transatlantic comparison

The wartime biographies of Austrians in the British and U.S. armed forces are naturally similar, but there are also differences. Perhaps the most important was the fact that, unlike the Americans, the British did not naturalise their enemy aliens before sending them into combat. As early as 1940, all naturalisation procedures had been suspended for the duration of the war. The name change, which was not only carried out by the commandos, but also by the majority of other German and Austrian soldiers in the British armed forces from 1943 onwards, therefore had no legal dimension; it was not an expression of their new identity in their new home country, but purely a security measure to protect them from execution if they were taken prisoner – not to forget that the Austrians and Germans sent overseas had to sign a declaration stating that they were aware of the risks to themselves and their families. The members of No. 3 Troop were also only granted British citizenship from 1946 onwards and after strong backing by their direct superiors at No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando and Combined Operations Headquarters, who outlined the daring nature of the missions the men had carried out for the sake of the United Kingdom.

As far as the parallels and differences in detail are concerned, two groups within the U.S. Army are particularly suitable for comparison: the soldiers of Austrian origin in the 10^th Mountain Division, the only major alpine unit in the United States during the Second World War, and those Austrians-in-exile who were trained as interrogators of prisoner of war at the Military Intelligence Training Centre (MITC) in the mountains of Maryland from 1942 onwards. With regard to the 10^th Mountain Division, the aspect of mountain combat naturally stands out. Skiers and mountaineers who had fled Austria played a significant role in making the U.S. Army, which was inexperienced in this field, fit for winter warfare. This was no different for the British. The mountain-loving Hilton-Jones, with his preference for endurance marches in the mountainous regions of Wales, probably found like-minded people in many of his men, who also had experience as mountaineers or winter sports enthusiasts, and it was no coincidence that Austrian-born ski instructors were considered as reinforcements for the troop in the summer of 1944. But even before that, in the winter of 1941/42, 50 members of the Pioneer Corps, including the Viennese ski school operator Ralph George Anderson (Rudolf Adler), had volunteered as instructors for two Scottish regiments, which were to be deployed as mountain troops modelled on the French Chasseurs Alpins and the Italian Alpini. This training had been organised by a Sergeant Pick, also from Austria – in fact a number of Austrians with this name were naturalised after the war – who had been an instructor in the Austrian Army before his emigration and is said to have designed the winter equipment for its mountain units. The majority of the instructors then returned to the Pioneer Corps, but some of them are said to have been placed in the Mountain Warfare Training Centre of the Middle Eastern Forces in Lebanon.

However, there is another reason why it is interesting to compare the 10^th Mountain Division with No. 3 Troop. At around 40 soldiers, the group of its Austrians who actually went into combat is twice as large as in No. 3 Troop with 22 people, but still of a similar size. And here, too, it is clear that, as with the commandos, the Alpine warriors’ blood toll was significantly higher than that of other units, due to their deployment on the front line as the athletic spearhead of the Allied attempts to break the German cordon in Italy.

The situation was different with the interrogators of prisoner of war from the MITC. Their casualties were low, as they generally interviewed their “customers” at a safe distance from enemy lines and, with a few exceptions, did not take part in the actual fighting. This was because the U.S. Army’s Military Intelligence Service had little interest in carelessly losing its specialists for the German enemy, in whose training it had invested a great deal of time and effort. In terms of knowledge about the enemy army, the training was very similar to that of No. 3 Troop, although the general basic course at the MITC only lasted six weeks, which was due to the fact that around 12,000 soldiers completed it from mid-1942 until the end of the war. And even if subjects such as hand-to-hand combat were on the timetable, the focus was clearly on less martial content – not least because MITC graduates were criticised for their unsoldierly behaviour, especially at the beginning. In this respect, it seems entirely appropriate to see No. 3 Troop as a mixture of the 10^th Mountain Division and the interrogation specialists from the MITC in terms of its physically and intellectually demanding training. The United States, the budding, but at the beginning of the Second World War still “half-baked” intelligence superpower, certainly benefited from the expertise of the British school master, which is demonstrated not least by the fact that the U.S. Army sent a fact-finding mission to England before the MITC was set up and that the commando training centre in Achnacarry, Scotland, was also used by U.S. Rangers.

Finally – and again considering the situation in the United States – the general post-war history of the members of No. 3 Troop should be mentioned in a few words. Thanks to the GI Bill – a federal law that enabled veterans, among other things, to attend college – and the formative experience of escaping the Nazis, which acted as a catalyst for their economic and social integration, many MITC graduates went on to enjoy impressive careers in the private sector, diplomacy or academia. The number of “remigrants”, i.e. people who returned to their former home country after the end of the war, was negligible, as was the case with the winter warriors of the 10^th Mountain Division. Again, this is also true for the members of No. 3 Toop of No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando, who, like their American colleagues from the MITC, stayed in Germany or Austria only for a while to hunt down war criminals or for the duration of the war crime trials. The vast majority settled in Great Britain, and many climbed the social ladder after their initial stigmatisation as enemy aliens that had often been accompanied by internment. A very illuminating example is once again Geoff Broadman, who, as an official at the Forest of Dean Grammar School in Lydbrook, Gloucestershire, is said to have become so popular that his funeral in 1997 was one of the largest in the area. Others were drawn further afield, to Commonwealth countries such as Australia or New Zealand, or even to the United States. However, no one returned to Austria apart from Richard Tennant, who kept residing in London while running an antiques business and a golf club in Klagenfurt.

Only decades later, if at all, did the men of No. 3 Troop talk about their experiences as members of one of the most secretive and spectacular units in the British Army – and what joining it had meant to them. For most of them, the transfer from the Pioneer Corps to the commandos had been an act of self-empowerment, albeit a bizarre one: at the beginning, they had only just entrusted with little more than a spade for fear of a fifth column, and from one day to the next they had been trained as specialists in explosives and close combat. Incidentally, they shared this feeling of self-empowerment with those refugees from Austria on the other side of the Atlantic who joined the armed forces there to fight the Nazi regime. Like the interrogation specialists from the MITC and the mountain warriors of the 10^th Mountain Division, the soldiers of No. 3 Troop, No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando are an impressive and memorable example of courage and illustrate how much agency even destitute refugees have if state actors create the respective framework for them.