Sturmbannführer Hax Anton Mansen (deceased).
‘A well trained horse isn’t necessarily less exciting than a wild one.’
Born in Munich on the 27th of November 1914 – The Day of Electrifying Excitement.
Height 184 cm Weight 84 kg – Expert in Alpine Skiing.
Hax grew up a studious though popular lad, always digging things up wherever he went, that’s if his nose wasn’t in some book or other. Hax was the type of guy who no matter what he turned his hand to, he excelled at. Matriculating far ahead of his class at only 16, Hax had completed his first degree (Fine Art – Berlin) before he was twenty.
Hax, after losing his Dad before becoming a teenager, had found the ideal father figure in the form of Count Helmuth von Schaft, an old friend of his father’s, the two having served in World War I together, later becoming dealers in fine art, a subject young Hax had taken to like a duck to water. He’d joined the SS at 19 as a wide eyed Untersturmführer, his degree and a few well placed words in Heinrich Himmler’s ear by Count Helmuth von Schaft had sealed the deal. His second degree, this one in Archaeology and Occultic studies from Heidelberg University, had seen him rise to Hauptsturmführer in late 1937.
Hax had earned The Iron Cross 2nd class in late 1939, he being one of the first to receive the medal, it having only just been re-introduced by Hitler (holder of both the 1st and 2nd class), saving the lives of a family of Volksdeutsche farmers from a burning house in the Sudetenland during an archaeological dig uncovering the Celtic Settlement near Hradec Králové in which the discovery of bags of gold and silver coins, along with his award, had resulted in his promotion to Major. Hax’s role in ‘Aktion Kolibri’ during the Night of the Long Knives in the summer of 1934, Hitler’s purge against Ernst Röhm and his Brownshirts, whereby Hax’s detailed inside knowledge of the Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee, where Röhm and his bum-chums had been caught literally with their pants down, had resulted in his promotion to first lieutenant (Obersturmführer) at Hitler’s personal behest.
Hax’s dedication to physical excellence and Alpine expertise had put him in the ideal position to head-up the SS’ program to bring the Austrian Ski Federation, long since 1905 having a certain anthropological club membership policy, under SS influence.
Along with gymnastics and mountaineering, he merely had to guide the decades long gradual process of receptiveness to SS ideology, directing the Innsbruck (Ostmark) branch of the SS-Sportgemeinschaft (SS-SG), part of a wider policy of bringing the former Bohemian, Moravian, Carpathian and Tyrolean Skiing Associations back into the fold.
One of his tools was using books on Alpine skiing, such as The Wonder in White and Alpine Skiing Technique, both books written before the Anschluss by the Amanshauser brothers based in Salzburg and members of the SS branch of the Alpenverein there.
Hax Anton Mansen was the bar Stallone would have to rise to, a tall order to say the least, except for the fact Hax’s chronic addiction to cocaine had weakened his heart.
