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THE DAY AMERICANS AND GERMANS FOUGHT SIDE BY SIDE AGAINST THE SS
By May 5, 1945, Adolf Hitler had been dead for five days. Germany would sign its unconditional surrender two days later.
But up in the Austrian Alps, one more fight was gathering around an old castle, and almost everybody seemed to be standing on the wrong side.
Captain John C. Lee Jr. was an American tank officer.
Major Josef Gangl wore the uniform of the German Wehrmacht.
For nearly six years, those uniforms had told men what to do when they met.
This time, Lee and Gangl were heading in the same direction.
The reason was Castle Itter.
The Nazis had seized the place and turned it into a satellite prison of Dachau for captives considered especially valuable. By the spring of 1945, some remarkable names were living behind those walls.
Former French prime ministers Paul Reynaud and Édouard Daladier were there. So were generals Maurice Gamelin and Maxime Weygand. Jean Borotra, one of the finest tennis players France ever produced, was there too.
Putting that much French politics and military history under one roof did not produce harmony.
