In today’s social media saturated culture, it is easy to find comeback stories. Inspirational narratives of people, from all walks of life, who overcame crushing defeats to go on to glory and accomplishments are meant to motivate us. In this age of the cult of self-motivation, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and making something of yourself, is a mantra we can all abide by.

From the cranky uncle who loudly proclaims that young people today don’t know the value of hard work, to the self-appointed experts that populate talkback radio in Sydney, the self-made man is all around us – if we are to believe these stories. Hey, did not Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) American philosopher, environmentalist and self-help advocate, counsel his audience to build a self-sustaining community of individuals in Walden?

Yes, he did, and he built a paradise for himself and his cothinkers at Concord, Massachusetts. Nothing wrong with that, and reading Walden is all well and good. Except for one inconvenient fact; African Americans, formerly enslaved, were building their own Walden-type community long before Thoreau. Having the self-motivation to escape the violence of enslavement has not entered the Anglophone public consciousness in the same way as Thoreau’s social experiment.

Be that as it may, let’s get on with meeting the inspirational comeback character in our story – Uncle Otto. His full name was Otto Skorzeny, an Austrian-born German military officer. Achieving the rank of Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) in the Waffen SS, he made a name for himself as a daring, innovative commander, rescuing Mussolini from partisan captivity in 1943, removing Hungarian leader Admiral Miklos Horthy in 1944 when the latter’s pro-Axis sympathies wobbled, and was rewarded with high decorations from Hitler himself.

The Waffen SS, the military branch of the general SS, committed the most heinous atrocities in German-occupied territories, and were direct perpetrators of the Holocaust. A niche occupation and skill set, to be sure, but they did find gainful employment after the end of the Third Reich, as we shall see.

Before the war, Skorzeny had joined the Austrian equivalent of the Nazi party, and agitated for the installation of a pro-Nazi government in that nation. Growing to 6-foot 4 inches tall, a fencing enthusiast with a large scar on his face, he became a dashing, debonair achiever, and favourite commando of Hitler’s. The Waffen SS left burned out villages, piles of corpses, murdered POWs, and ethically cleansed territories in their wake.

Skorzeny’s rescue of Mussolini demonstrated his courage – he and his team used hang gliders to attack the Gran Sasso mountaintop where Mussolini was being held captive. Awarded the Iron Cross military decoration for his paratrooper mission, it seemed that Skorzeny’s career could only hit new and exciting heights.

However, his flourishing career as a licensed killer was coming to an end. Alas, Nazi Germany faced a crushing military defeat and combined Allied occupation. What was to become of our multinational murderer? Never fear, because our Uncle Otto found a new benefactor, who helped him repurpose his skill set for new outlets.

Captured by American forces, he was put on trial for war crimes in a military tribunal, and acquitted. In 1947, Uncle Otto escaped captivity, along with his fellow former SS officers – by dressing in American uniforms. It should have been within the intelligence capabilities of the American army to predict this tactic, after all, during the Battle of the Bulge, Skorzeny and his team penetrated enemy lines to wreak havoc, by disguising themselves as American soldiers.

Skorzeny’s commando tactics gained widespread popularity after the war, and were subsequently widely imitated by the imperialist powers.

Be that as it may, Skorzeny and his fellow ex-SS officers made their way to Franco’s Spain. General Franco, an Axis-allied commander, remained in power long after the end of the war. Spain became a sanctuary for Skorzeny, who reinvented himself as a businessman, with an eccentric habit of keeping Nazi memorabilia around.

It was a new world in the post-1945 Cold War. The new state of Israel, victorious over the displaced Palestinians, had a new worry. Egypt, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, posed a revolutionary and Arab nationalist challenge to the Zionist state. Allegedly, German rocket engineers were employed by Cairo to pass on their skills. Tel Aviv was concerned about the long range striking capabilities of Cairo.

Enter the Mossad, the Israeli secret service, with a plan. Assassinate the German scientists. And guess who they employed as their professional hit man? None other than Otto Skorzeny, former Waffen SS officer. Several German rocket engineers were quietly killed by the new Mossad employee.

In return, Mossad claimed that Skorzeny’s criminal record, and his wanted status as a fugitive on the run by the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal centre, was expunged.

Skorzeny got involved in numerous extreme right wing causes, helping to rehabilitate the reputations of Nazi collaborators and war criminals. His Mossad activities only came to light long after his death. Dying of lung cancer in Madrid in 1975, his funeral featured numerous ex-Nazis, giving the Roman salute and singing WW2-era German songs.

Ex-Nazi rocket scientists found long term employment in the United States after the end of WW2. For instance, Kurt Debus, former SS officer and rocket engineer, escaped from the chaos of war torn Europe, and found refuge in America, where he headed NASA’s Launch Operations Centre (later renamed the Kennedy Space Centre). A white immigrant had a good opportunity to restart their career in the racially segregated United States.

No, of course I am not seriously suggesting taking the example of a former Nazi officer as a basis for inspiration. I am suggesting that behind every story of a self-made person is an entire network of social and political relationships that provide an interconnecting basis for individual achievement.

When the United States (and Britain) rejected providing sanctuary for fleeing European Jewish refugees during the war, but went out of their way to covertly ensure sanctuary for Nazi collaborators and ex-SS personnel, such behaviour opens a window into the character of imperial powers.