Newsgroup: it.cultura.storia.militare
Titolo: Tehran-43: Wrecking the plan to kill Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill

interessante articolo tratto dal sito della Novosti sullo sventato piano
tedesco di assassinare Stalin, Roosevelt e Churchill durante il loro
incontro a Teheran nel 1943.
saluti
Sergio
Tehran-43: Wrecking the plan to kill Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill 
13:28 | 16/ 10/ 2007 
 
 
Interview with Russian intelligence veteran Gevork Vartanyan. 
The historic significance of the Big Three conference in Tehran, Iran, was
enormous - at stake were the destinies of millions of people and the
future of the world. The deadline for the opening of the second front was
the main issue on the agenda. 
Fully aware of this, the Nazi government instructed the German
intelligence service, the Abwehr, to assassinate Joseph Stalin, Theodore
Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. The number one Nazi saboteur, Otto
Skorzeny, planned an operation code-named Long Jump. 
The security of the Soviet, American and British leaders was mostly the
responsibility of Soviet troops and security agencies. Acting under the
Russian-Persian Treaty of Friendship of 1921, the Soviet Union sent troops
into Iran's northern regions in August 1941 to curb the operations of
German agents. Britain deployed troops in the south of the country to
guarantee the flow of British-American land-lease supplies to the U.S.S.R.
from the Persian Gulf. 
The conference itself was held in the Soviet Embassy. It was the perfect
site for secret talks - a big mansion surrounded by a stone wall, with
buildings of light-colored brick scattered across the park. One of these
was converted into the U.S. president's residence. 
For security reasons, Roosevelt accepted Stalin's invitation to stay
there. The U.S. diplomatic mission in Tehran was located on the city's
outskirts, while the Soviet and British embassies were (and still are)
located across the street from one another. Soviet soldiers broke down the
walls, blockaded the street with six-meter shields and built a temporary
passage between the two diplomatic missions, guarded by anti-aircraft- and
machine-gunners. Four rings of security surrounded the embassies. Nobody
could break in. 
If Roosevelt had stayed at the U.S. diplomatic mission, either he, or
Stalin and Churchill, would have had to travel to the talks through
Tehran's narrow streets, where Nazi agents could easily have concealed
themselves in a crowd. 
On his return to Washington D.C., Roosevelt said that he had stayed in the
Soviet Embassy because Marshal Stalin told him about a German plot. 
Nazi intelligence learnt of the time and place of the conference in
mid-October in 1943, after cracking the American naval code. In 1966,
Skorzeny confirmed that he had been instructed to abduct or kill the three
leaders in Tehran. 
Moscow received a cable about the plot against the allied leaders from
Dmitry Medvedev's guerrillas operating in the Rovno forest [in Ukraine -
ed.]. Among them was the legendary Soviet intelligence officer Nikolai
Kuznetsov. Posing as a German Oberleutnant by the name of Paul Siebert,
Kuznetsov became friendly with SS Sturmbannfuehrer Ulrich von Ortel, who
even promised to introduce him to Skorzeny. Heavily inebriated, Ortel
boasted that he was going to Iran for the meeting of the Big Three: "We
will repeat the Abruzzi jump [a daring airborne operation in which
Skorzeny rescued Mussolini - ed.]! But it will be the Long Jump! We will
eliminate Stalin and Churchill and turn the tide of the war! We will
abduct Roosevelt to help our Fuehrer to come to terms with America. We are
flying in several groups. People are already being trained in a special
school in Copenhagen." 
Following this report the [intelligence] center made us responsible for
security at the conference. 
Tehran at that time was flooded with refugees from war-ravaged Europe. For
the most part, these were wealthy people trying to escape the risks of the
war. There were about 20,000 Germans in Iran, and Nazi agents were hiding
among them. They were aided by the pre-war patronage extended to the
Germans by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who openly sympathized with Hitler.
The German field station in Iran, headed by Franz Meyer, was very
powerful. 
Long before the conference - from February 1940 to August 1941 - our group
of seven intelligence officers had identified more than 400 Nazi agents.
When our troops entered Iran, we arrested them all. Meyer went deep
underground. It took us a long time to find him - he had grown a beard and
dyed it, and was working as a grave-digger at an Armenian cemetery. 
Our group was the first to locate the Nazi landing party - six radio
operators - near the town of Qum, 60 km from Tehran. We followed them to
Tehran, where the Nazi field station had readied a villa for their stay.
They were travelling by camel, and were loaded with weapons. 
While we were watching the group, we established that they had contacted
Berlin by radio and recorded their communication. When we decrypted these
radio messages, we learnt that the Germans were preparing to land a second
group of subversives for a terrorist act - the assassination or abduction
of the Big Three. The second group was supposed to be led by Skorzeny
himself, who had already visited Tehran to study the situation on the
spot. We had been following all his movements even then. 
We arrested all the members of the first group and made them make contact
with enemy intelligence under our supervision. It was tempting to seize
Skorzeny himself, but the Big Three had already arrived in Tehran and we
could not afford the risk. We deliberately gave a radio operator an
opportunity to report the failure of the mission, and the Germans decided
against sending the main group under Skorzeny to Tehran. In this way, the
success of our group in locating the Nazi advance party and our subsequent
actions thwarted an attempt to assassinate the Big Three. 
After the conference, Stalin went with Kliment Voroshilov and Vyacheslav
Molotov to the Shah's palace in order to thank Mohammad Reza Pahlavi for
his hospitality. This was a very smart and important step, which had a big
effect on Iranian society. It did not occur to either Roosevelt or
Churchill to do so. The Shah was moved by Stalin's attention. When the
Soviet leader entered the throne room, the Shah ran up to Stalin and tried
to kiss his hand. But Stalin did not let him and raised him to his feet. 
At that time, Stalin's authority in the world was absolute - everyone
understood that the outcome of the war was being decided on the
Soviet-German front. Both Roosevelt and Churchill admitted this. Churchill
recalled in his memoirs that everyone stood up when Stalin entered the
hall of the conference. He resolved not to do so again. Yet, when Stalin
entered the hall on another occasion, some unknown force again brought
Churchill to his feet. 
Gevork Vartanyan was not even 16 when he went into intelligence. His
farther was sent to Iran by Soviet intelligence in 1930 and worked there
for 23 years. 
Gevork was declassified only on December 20, 2000. He and his wife Goar, a
member of his group, immediately received five decorations: the orders of
the Great Patriotic War, Battle Red Banner and Red Star. The Gold Star
Medal of the Hero of the Soviet Union was conferred on Gevork in 1984 for
his performance during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) and the Cold
War. He received the Order for Services to the Fatherland when he turned
80. 
Vartanyan believes that his biggest achievement was his and his wife's 45
year-long record of successful service and safe return home. 
"We were lucky - we never met a single traitor. For us, underground
agents, betrayal is the worst evil. If an agent observes all the security
rules and behaves properly in society, no counter-intelligence will spot
him or her. Like sappers, underground agents err only once." 
Transcript by Yury Plutenko. 
-- 
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 Skorzeny rescued Mussolini - ed.]
Ma non si chiamava operazione Eiche (quercia) ?
Saluti,
Dott. Piergiorgio.