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Mossad and the Nazi It Hired
The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Drive it with the arrow keys, space, or autoplay. Nothing is cut from the piece — long runs are split across frames. Read the full investigation or open the Israeli Influence on the United States hub.
Mossad and the Nazi It Hired
To stop ex-Nazi scientists from building missiles for Nasser's Egypt, Israel's Mossad recruited another ex-Nazi — SS commando Otto Skorzeny — as its own agent. Operation Damocles, 1962-63, graded against the record.
To stop ex-Nazis building missiles for Egypt, Israel recruited an ex-Nazi of its own — ruthless tradecraft, not ideology, and Israel's own press established it.
This is not a sympathy-for-Nazism story: the same decade produced the Eichmann trial. We assert the killing of Heinz Krug as fact but mark the manner as contested, and we call Bonn's leverage a mutual trade, not one-way blackmail.
From the Mussolini rescue to the record being written down.
Mossad recruited Otto Skorzeny, the former SS commando, as an intelligence asset against the German scientists in Egypt.
Established by the 2016 Forward/Haaretz investigation from former Mossad officers. Ra'anan managed the operation; Eitan and Ahituv ran Skorzeny directly; Shamir headed the killing unit above it. The paradox is documented, not rumored.
“Yes, I met and ran Skorzeny.”
The confirmation that keeps the recruitment out of the rumor column: a former Mossad handler stating it plainly, reported by Raviv & Melman. This is why the claim grades FACT, not smoke.
The documented spine
- Egypt hired ex-German (and Nazi-era) rocket scientists — Pilz, Sänger, Goercke leading ~35 experts — to build the Al-Zafir and Al-Kahira missiles at Factory 333. [FACT]
- Mossad ran Operation Damocles (1962-63) under Isser Harel: letter bombs, threats, and killings against the scientists. [FACT]
- Heinz Krug, head of the Munich front company Intra, was killed in a Mossad operation on September 11, 1962; his body was never recovered. [FACT]
Skorzeny personally lured Krug to a forest near Munich and shot him, after which Mossad disposed of the body with acid.
The vivid Raviv/Melman version, sourced to former officers. Bergman's account instead has Krug abducted to Israel and dying under interrogation. Two serious sources conflict, the body was never found, and dating the recruitment to 1963 sits awkwardly with a September 1962 forest killing. We record the killing as fact and the mechanism as unresolved.
Skorzeny's price for cooperating was removal from Simon Wiesenthal's list of wanted Nazi war criminals.
The demand is well-reported across accounts. But there is no evidence Wiesenthal ever issued him a clean bill — so we grade the demand, not a completed clearing. Held one notch below the FACT of the recruitment itself.
To shield ex-Nazi chancellery chief Hans Globke from exposure at the Eichmann trial, Bonn made secret aid conditional on Israel's handling of the trial, and Ben-Gurion soft-pedaled Globke.
Mutual leverage, not one-way blackmail: Adenauer conditioned loans and military aid on how Israel managed the trial; Ben-Gurion agreed not to finger Globke. The March 1960 Ben-Gurion–Adenauer meeting is the pivot.
What the record settles — and what it does not.
- Egypt's ex-Nazi scientists built missiles at Factory 333.
- Operation Damocles killed five Egyptians in the Nov 1962 bombs; Krug was killed Sept 11, 1962.
- Mossad recruited Skorzeny — Rafi Eitan confirmed it on the record.
- Bonn's leverage over Globke was a mutual trade with Jerusalem.
- The BND was the CIA's junior partner; it ran an informal Mossad liaison from ~1956.
- HOW Krug died — forest shooting (Raviv/Melman) vs interrogation death (Bergman).
- That Wiesenthal actually cleared Skorzeny (the demand is reported; the clearing isn't).
- 'Blackmail' of West Germany — the record shows mutual leverage.
- 'Nazi V-2 engineers' applied evenly — Pilz's Peenemünde pedigree is clear, Sänger's is looser.
- That the BND was Mossad's junior partner — this inverts the real hierarchy.
How Heinz Krug actually died — a Munich forest or a cell in Israel — is unresolved.
The primary record that would rank the two accounts: a recovered body or an operational file reconciling Raviv/Melman's forest shooting with Bergman's interrogation death — and squaring the usual 1963 dating of Skorzeny's recruitment with a September 1962 killing.
Help us fill it →Why it matters now.
Every Cold War state recruited Nazis — America (Paperclip), West Germany (the Gehlen Org), Egypt, and Israel, the state founded in the shadow of the genocide, when survival demanded it. Recording that Israel hired a Nazi to stop other Nazis is not an attack on Israel; the grade discipline — stating the spine, marking the one dispute, declining the cinematic embellishment — is what separates this from the propaganda around the same facts.
Help us fill these lines.
- OpenHow did Heinz Krug actually die — shot by Skorzeny in a forest (Raviv/Melman) or under interrogation in Israel (Bergman)? The body was never recovered and the two leading accounts conflict.
- OpenCan the dating of Skorzeny's recruitment (usually 1963) be reconciled with the September 1962 killing his forest account requires?