Company François
The François operation was an attempt by the German Abwehr to use the Kashgai rebelling tribes living in Iran to sabotage British and American supplies for the Soviet Union .
The François company was headed by Otto Skorzeny , who parachuted selected members of the 502nd SS Jäger Battalion in Iran in the summer of 1943 . Skorzeny, who stayed behind to train more recruits, described the François company as a "failure", largely due to insufficient reinforcement and supplies needed for the company.
Michael Bar-Zohar reports in his biography of Paul Ernst Fackenheim that Fackenheim had heard of six or seven SS members also imprisoned there during his imprisonment in Latrun , where the British were also imprisoning the Nazi sympathizer General Fazlollah Zahedi . These are said to have been sold in southern Iran equipped with explosives and gold . With the help of the gold they are said to have tried to bribe the Qashqai in order to rebel against the British. However, the Qashqai were handed over to the British by the Germans after they could no longer offer any more gold.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/1900s/p/World-War-Ii-Lieutenant-Colonel-Otto-Skorzeny.htm
- ^ Indiana University Southeast http://homepages.ius.edu/rvest/skorzenydr2.htm
- ↑ "Koch, el espía Judío de Hitler" Editorial Juventud, Barcelona, 26.884-1971 - page 148
- ^ Skorzeny's Secret Missions (New York: EP Dutton and Company, Inc, 1950), page 16