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The Battle for Castle Itter in the Austrian North Tyrol village of Itter was fought on 5 May 1945 in the last days of the European Theater of World War II. Troops of the 23rd Tank Battalion of the 12th Armored Division of the US XXI Corps led by Captain John C. "Jack" Lee, Jr., anti-Nazi German Army soldiers, and recently freed French VIPs defended Castle Itter against an attacking force from the 17th ''Waffen-SS Panzer Grenadier'' Division until relief from the American 142nd Infantry Regiment of the 36th Division of XXI Corps arrived. The French prisoners included former prime ministers, generals and a tennis star. It may have been the only battle in the war in which Americans and Germans fought side-by-side. Popular accounts of the battle have called it the "strangest" battle of World War II. == Background == Itter Castle (in German, ''Schloss Itter'') is a small castle situated on a hill near the village of Itter in Austria. After the Anschluss, the German annexation of Austria, the German government officially leased the castle in late 1940 from its owner, Franz Grüner. The castle was seized from Grüner by SS Lieutenant General Oswald Pohl under the orders of Heinrich Himmler on 7 February 1943. The transformation of the castle into a prison camp was completed by 25 April 1943, and the facility was placed under the administration of the Dachau concentration camp. The prison was established to contain high-profile prisoners valuable to the ''Reich''. Notable prisoners included tennis player Jean Borotra, former prime ministers Édouard Daladier and Paul Reynaud, former commanders-in-chief Maxime Weygand, and Maurice Gamelin, Charles de Gaulle's elder sister Marie-Agnès Cailliau, right-wing leader and closet French resistance member François de La Rocque, and trade union leader Léon Jouhaux. Besides the French VIP prisoners, the castle held a number of Eastern European prisoners detached from Dachau, who were used for maintenance and other menial work. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Battle for Castle Itter」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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