Woman in the Ranks: Viktor/Viktoria Savs, 2nd Innsbruck Landsturm Infantry Battalion

While putting together our recent article on the Tre Cime di Lavaredo (Drei Zinnen in German) I discovered the story of an interesting soldier who served in the sector. Viktoria Savs (1899–1979) fought in the Drei Zinnen area disguised as a man, although probably with the knowledge of her superiors. Known as the “Heroine of the Drei Zinnen,” she followed her father, Peter, into the war and fought alongside him under the name Viktor Savs in 1915 and would play a role on the front line under constant danger.

She first served for more than a year as an unarmed trainee. Anxious to serve in combat, Viktoria wrote to the Archduke Eugen of Austria to request a transfer to the Italian front to serve alongside her father, which was granted in December 1916.  On the front lines, she showed talent in guiding pack animals and as a messenger on skis. She was assigned as an orderly to a captain and soon after took part in combat operations at Drei Zinnen. During an attack against Italian positions in the Dolomites on 11 April 1917, she led a group of 20 captured Italians to safety behind the Austrian lines under enemy artillery fire. For her service, Victor/Viktoria would be awarded the Silver Medal for Bravery, First Class, the Bronze Medal for Bravery, and the Karl Troop Cross.

On 27 May 1917, her right leg was crushed in a rockfall and had to be amputated below the knee. It was only in the field hospital at Sillian that it became widely known the 16-year-old Viktor Savs was in fact Viktoria. Her combat service came to an end with the loss of her leg, but her war service was not over. She then served in the Austrian Red Cross during the rest of the war, where she was decorated with the Military Merit Cross (Austria-Hungary). She attracted attention and was hailed as a patriotic war heroine in the aftermath of the Armistice.

Savs at a Nazi Party Event in the 1930s

Her postwar life was eventful, although much written about Viktoria appears highly speculative.** During the 1920s, her war service was forgotten, and she found herself a disabled and homeless veteran in Salzburg sometimes working as a housekeeper. She fell into the Nazi orbit,  eventually joining the party hoping for a better veterans pension. In 1936, Savs moved to Berlin and won a grant for a new prosthetic leg. In 1938, she returned to Salzburg,  where she took up a position with the Wehrmacht's Intelligence Department 70 in Salzburg. From the beginning of 1942 she worked in a microbiology lab in Belgrade. Viktoria Savs died in Salzburg in 1979 at the age of 80.

**Editor's note: Such speculation seems to involve two matters, Savs's degree of dedication to the Nazi cause (e.g. Did she know about the Holocaust while working at that lab in Belgrade?) and her sexuality.

Sources: Habsburger.net; Michael Wachtler's "The First World War in the Alps"; Wikipedia