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Triple jeopardy: the Nazi plan to kill WWII leaders in Tehran

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  • Triple jeopardy: the Nazi plan to kill WWII leaders in Tehran

    Triple jeopardy: the Nazi plan to kill WWII leaders in Tehran


    18:03 | 04/ 01/ 2008



    The attempt by Nazi Germany to assassinate the "Big Three" - Stalin,
    Roosevelt and Churchill - was foiled thanks to Soviet intelligence

    MOSCOW. (Nikolai Dolgopolov) - The British Big Ape Media TV company and
    the Moscow TV Center are making a documentary series about
    Russian-British relations over four centuries. The Lion and the Bear,
    for release in 2008, will mix documentary history, travelogue and
    personal accounts and will be presented by author, and Winston
    Churchill's granddaughter, Celia Sandys.

    One of the best sections in the film is devoted to the Tehran meeting
    of the three leaders in 1943, when Hitler's agents planned to destroy
    the Big Three in one fell swoop. The attempt was foiled by Soviet
    intelligence.

    The "Long Jump" operation to assassinate the Big Three was masterminded
    on Hitler's orders by Otto Scorzeny, an SS thug and daredevil saboteur.

    The first tip-off about the planned attempt came from Soviet
    intelligence agent Nikolai Kuznetsov, aka Wermacht Oberleutnant Paul
    Siebert, from Nazi-occupied Ukraine. Kuznetsov, a famed Soviet spy, got
    an SS man named Ulrich von Ortel to spill the secret over a bottle of
    good brandy. Von Ortel not only told his "friend" Paul about the
    operation, but invited him to accompany him on a trip to Tehran to buy
    cheap Persian rugs.

    "Light cavalry" had no mercy for the Germans

    In the autumn of 1943, fate thrust 19-year-old Gevork Vartanian into
    the center of the operation. Vartanian was an intelligence agent as
    well as the son of a Soviet intelligence agent who worked in Iran under
    the cover of a wealthy merchant. He received his first assignment and
    the cover name Amir from the resident in 1940.

    He formed a group of seven like-minded people. All were of about the
    same age - Armenians, a Lezghin and an Assyrian - and they communicated
    in Russian and Farsi. Their parents had been exiled or fled from the
    USSR to escape Stalin's gulag. They were outcasts and refugees, but
    they put their lives at risk for the sake of the Motherland that had
    rejected them.

    They were new to the intelligence profession and people from Soviet
    intelligence had to teach them as they went along. The resident called
    the group "light cavalry" because of their agility and speed. They
    shadowed Germans and identified Iranian agents. Gevork Vartanian/Amir
    today claims that the "light cavalry" had been instrumental in bringing
    about the arrest of several hundred people who posed a great danger to
    the USSR and Britain, who both had troops stationed in Iran as early as
    the autumn of 1941.

    On the eve of the Tehran Conference, the Soviet and British field
    stations were working under tremendous strain. The "light cavalry"
    received orders to prevent the assassination attempt at all costs.
    These young men handled the job. I asked Gevork Vartanian whether it
    was true that on the eve of the Tehran Conference the Soviet and
    British intelligences moved ruthlessly to detain all the suspects.

    "What did you expect?" Gevork Vartanian replied. "To let the Germans
    take out the three leaders with one stroke? People were placed under
    temporary arrest on the slightest suspicion.

    If suspicions were not confirmed, they were released after the
    conference. On one occasion we had to arrest an Iranian Nazi agent at a
    wedding party. We got a tip that he was complicit in the assassination
    plot. As it turned out, it was not the first terrorist attack he had
    been a part of."

    And no "Long Jumps"

    During the filming at the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service press
    office, Celia Sandys tried to find out from Gevork Vartanian how they
    had managed to foil the plot. The slender man in a well-fitting dark
    suit with the top Russian military decoration - the Golden Star of the
    Hero - answered in good English and then, at Ms. Sandys's request,
    repeated the answers in Russian.

    "Six German radio operators had been dropped by parachute into the holy
    Muslim city of Qum and made it to Tehran. That was the start of
    Operation Long Jump. The Germans established communication with Berlin.
    The `light cavalry' was given the mission to locate the intruders'
    radio station in the huge city of Tehran. Day and night, 14 to 16 hours
    a day we scoured the streets. Eventually we found the place where the
    group was hiding.

    "From then on the Germans were transmitting messages to Berlin that
    were intercepted by the Soviet and British intelligence. But the Nazi
    radio operators were nobody's fools. One of them managed to send a
    coded message, `we are under surveillance.'

    "The principals in Germany realized that the operation was getting off
    to a disastrous start. The Nazis decided against sending the main group
    led by Scorenzy to certain death. The Germans failed to make their Long
    Jump.

    "Your grandfather," Vartanian went on, "was staying at the British
    Embassy, where he was provided with security guards. But the U.S.
    Embassy was on the city's outskirts and staying there was too risky. In
    a departure from the rules of protocol, Roosevelt, after much urging,
    stayed at the Soviet Embassy, where, of course, Stalin was also
    staying."

    Churchill's granddaughter was naturally curious to know what security
    precautions had been taken to guard the Prime Minister.

    "The street between the Soviet and British Embassies, which were
    located close to each other, had been sealed off. They stretched a
    six-meter tarpaulin sheet to make something like a passage guarded by
    Soviet and British machine-gunners.

    "All the participants in the Tehran Conference were able to go back and
    forth safely.

    "According to some information, the Nazis planned to get into the
    British Embassy through a water supply channel and assassinate
    Churchill on his birthday, November 30. But these plans were foiled.

    "In those days I was also there, in Tehran. I was close enough to see
    your grandfather, Stalin and Roosevelt. What struck me was their
    confidence and calmness."

    "You must have had a certain amount of luck," noted Ms. Sandys.

    "Yes, of course," Vartanian agreed. "Luck is important for many
    professions, and all the more so for that of an intelligence agent."

    The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not
    necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

    Source: Rossiiskaya Gazeta
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