Why did the Germans want to kidnap Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill, and why they did not succeed

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The plan to kidnap the leaders of the "Big Three" states could have been called a gamble, if not for the punctuality and scale with which the Germans were preparing for the operation. One thing the German leaders did not take into account before the "Long Leap" - the activity and awareness of Soviet intelligence, the coherence and scale of their secret, but effective work. Thanks to the timely detention of SS saboteurs and the arrests of German agents, the USSR special services managed to disrupt the operation already at the first stage of its implementation.

Large fish swimming to Tehran: how and why the Long Jump mission was organized

In 1943, from November 28 to December 1, a conference was held in the Iranian capital Tehran with the participation of the leaders of the Big Three: Churchill (Prime Minister of Great Britain), Stalin (Secretary General of the USSR), Roosevelt (President of the USA). Despite the fact that the summit meeting was organized under conditions of increased secrecy, the Nazis received information about it even at the stage of preparation - somewhere in the middle of October.

The cipher with information about the "big fish swimming to Tehran" was handed over to the German leadership by the agent "Cicero", whose name in real life was Elias Bazna. A native of Albania, Bazna worked as a domestic servant for the British Ambassador to Turkey. After receiving intelligence, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the General Directorate of Security, hastily developed a plan to capture the leaders of the Big Three.

After the plan was approved by Hitler, the mission, which was codenamed "Long Jump", was entrusted to Otto Skorzeny, the head of SS units for reconnaissance and sabotage activities behind enemy lines. Ernst Kaltenbrunner was appointed head of the operation.

Demonstrate Stalin in a cage, feed Roosevelt to sharks, kill Churchill on the spot - Skorzeny's plans

According to the historian and Iranian translator Ahmad Saremi, full information about the details of the Tehran conference will appear in no less than 100 years. However, even now, using declassified archival documentation, one can guess that the primary task of the Nazis was not the murder, but the abduction of the heads of state of the Big Three.

Their elimination, according to Kaltenbrunner's reflections, could not stop the war - this option generally had many unpredictable consequences. But the capture of state leaders would certainly have caused a shock in the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition and caused confusion at the front.

According to the Iranian newspaper Khabar, an unenviable fate awaited the abducted rulers. So the Germans planned to deliver Joseph Stalin to Berlin and, having locked the politician in a cage, demonstrate him to the population. What to do after the abduction with Roosevelt, the representatives of the Reich Chancellery did not have a unanimous opinion: one part believed that the President of the United States should be forced to surrender, the other - publicly executed. Kaltenbrunner was ready to recommend an especially cruel execution - he offered to give Roosevelt to be torn apart by sharks, having recorded all the horrors of the process on film. The only one of the three who did not want to be taken prisoner was Winston Churchill - the British Prime Minister was planned to be killed on the spot.

Why was the attempt to assassinate the leaders of the "Big Three" doomed to failure?

The intelligence of the USSR worked no worse than the German: upon learning of the Nazi plans, three thousand people were sent to Tehran - the most experienced employees of the NKVD. Their task was to protect the places where the heads of state of the "Big Three" could appear. Later, American and British historians will start asking questions: why, with almost 7,000 of their own people in Iran, did the Germans never dare to perform Operation Long Jump?

Kaltenbrunner's plan failed for several reasons. Before the Tehran conference, at the beginning of November 1943, about 400 secret agents of the Abwehr were discovered and arrested by the Soviet special services. Then, in the period from November 22 to November 27, intelligence officers of the USSR identified and detained 14 groups of German saboteurs-paratroopers abandoned in the vicinity of the cities of Qazvin and Qom. A little later, on November 30, the British arrested 6 more saboteurs and their commanders - Vlasovist Vladimir Shkvarev and SS man Rudolf von Holten-Pflug.

That is, the main reasons for the failure of the SS plans were the excellent work of Soviet intelligence and, in particular, of its individual employees. So thanks to the 19-year-old resident in Iran Gevork Vartanyan, it was possible to secure more than one hundred fascist agents. But initially the Germans were confident of success: preparing for the operation, they recruited officials and the Iranian military from almost 50 civil and military ministries.

To some extent, the German bureaucracy also contributed to the failure of the "Long Jump": while in Germany numerous variants of the plan were being coordinated and approved, in Iran, Soviet intelligence officers were actively disclosing spy networks, arresting the participants.

What was the fate of those who were involved in Operation Long Jump in Tehran?

The fate of the participants in the failed operation developed in different ways, but each of them received in the end what he deserved. For example, the author of the idea of the kidnapping, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, was executed by hanging in 1946 by the verdict of the Nuremberg court. Agent "Cicero", who transmitted information to the Germans about the forthcoming Tehran conference, having received from them a fee in British pounds, found that all the bills were forged. He tried all his life to get real banknotes, suing the German government, however, without achieving success, he died in 1970 at the age of 66. Otto Skorzeny lived until 1975 and died in Spain, having managed to sit in an American prison after the war. and write a book about his mostly innocent adventures.

Former Iranian resident Gevorg Vartanyan continued to engage in intelligence work after the war, specializing in collecting information about NATO. His track record included countries such as the USA, France, Germany. In total, Gevork Andreevich spent 43 years in intelligence: having risen to the rank of colonel, he was never revealed and was never on the verge of being exposed. G. A. Vartanyan died and was buried in 2012 in Moscow.

One more thing went down in history attempt on Stalin, which also failed.