Company long jump

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An alleged German assassination plan on the Tehran Conference in 1943 is referred to as the company Weitsprung . The assassination plan was popularized by Russian media, as well as depictions in films and spy novels , after World War II to this day. Historians assume that such a plan never existed, but that the Soviet reports about it were part of a disinformation campaign by the NKVD and later the KGB .

History and propaganda representation

Historical background

Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill in Tehran

At the end of 1943, the heads of state of the three main allies of the anti-Hitler coalition in World War II, Great Britain , the USA and the Soviet Union wanted to meet in Tehran, Iran . Participants were the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt , the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill , the Soviet Head of State Josef Stalin and their military advisers.

The German network of agents in Iran had already been destroyed in mid-1943, well before Tehran was established as the meeting place for the Big Three . Tehran was secured by the NKVD during the conference , which had 3,000 security troops in the city. Roosevelt and Churchill felt so safe during the conference that they could walk around town or in an open jeep. The conference took place from November 28 to December 1, 1943 without incident.

Russian representation of the plan

In 2003, the Russian author Jurij Kuznets presented a Russian-language book with the title Tehran-43 to the press department of the Russian foreign intelligence service SWR . The former spy Geworg Vardanyan and SVR Lieutenant General Vadim Kirpichenko were present. In 2007, the Russian news agency Novosti distributed a report by the government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta about the production of a documentary with the working title "The Lion and the Bear". The film about Russian-British relations was to be presented by Churchill's granddaughter Celia Sandys. It is not known whether the film was ever completed and broadcast. Celia Sandys was not involved in such a program until 2012.

According to Russian accounts, Otto Skorzeny is said to have led the assassination operation on Hitler's orders. The Soviet agent Nikolai Kuznetsov , operating in Ukraine , disguised as First Lieutenant Paul Siebert, is said to have found out about this from SS-Sturmbannführer "Ulrich von Ortel" over a "bottle of good brandy". Not only did "Ulrich von Ortel" allegedly reveal the operation, but he is also said to have invited Kuznetsov to go shopping for carpets in Tehran.

In Tehran, the Soviets are said to have commissioned a group of agents around Geworg Vardanyan to prevent the attack. According to this description, a German advance command of six radio experts with parachutes landed in Qom , 60 km from Tehran. This alleged group is said to have been discovered and monitored. Allegedly they set up a radio link, the messages of which are said to have been deciphered by the Soviet agents. The German radio operators reportedly informed the German headquarters that the company was being monitored. Then it was stopped. The second group, led by Skorzeny, was therefore not sent to Iran.

Representation by Otto Skorzeny

According to Otto Skorzeny after the end of the war, there was never a German commando operation "long jump". At a meeting of Skorzeny with Hitler and Walter Schellenberg , at which they are said to have expressed thoughts about an assassination attempt, Skorzeny claims to have described the idea as impracticable. Hitler agreed with him. Skorzeny continues in his memoirs published in the 1950s: "The company Weitsprung really only existed in the imagination of little truth-loving scribes [...]". To the alleged informant still mentioned by Russian sources, Skorzeny wrote: “The boss of this hideous company is a young Sturmbannführer Paul von Oertel - who was neither with me nor at all”.

Artistic processing

The idea of ​​a German assassination attempt on Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin during their conference in Tehran has been used as dramatic material several times in novels and films. Not all of this processing follows the KGB version of the alleged plans with Skorzeny's participation.

Tehran 43 was established in 1980 . The film premiered in 1981. The cold-blooded German assassin Max Richard ( Armen Dschigarchanjan ) is on his way to kill the three statesmen. The lives of the three are saved by two young lovers. In 1980, Max hid with the young Parisian Françoise ( Claude Jade ) and entrusts her with his documents. A lawyer ( Curd Jürgens ) is to auction this off. When the former commissioner of the attack, Scherner (Albert Filosow), wants to eliminate all witnesses at the time, a Paris police inspector ( Alain Delon ) tries to stop him. The film received the gold award at the Moscow International Film Festival in 1981.

The English author Philip Kerr published the thriller Hitler's Peace (German: The Pact ) in 2006 , in which an SS general plans a bomb attack on Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill in Tehran.

literature

Scientific secondary literature
Publications by contemporary witnesses
  • Michael F. Reilly: Reilly of the White House . Simon & Schuster, New York 1947. ( Full text online. Reilly was responsible for Roosevelt's security at the Secret Service .)
  • Otto Skorzeny : My commandos: war without fronts . Winkelried, Dresden 2007, ISBN 978-3-938392-11-9 . (New edition by the right-wing extremist publisher Eric Kaden .)
Representations from a Soviet perspective
  • Laslo Havas: The Long Jump: Hitler's Plot to Kill the Big Three , translated from the Hungarian by Kathleen Szasz. Spearman, London 1967. (Gary Kern counts Havas' book as KGB literature, and calls it "thoroughly investigated but doubtful".)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Donal O'Sullivan: Dealing with the Devil . New York 2010, pp. 203-204.
  2. ↑ Юрий Львович Кузнец: Тегеран-43: Крах операции "Длин. Прыжок . ЭКСМО, Moscow 2003, ISBN 5-8153-0146-9 .
  3. ↑ Vyacheslav Laschkul: Why there was no “big jump” ( Memento from January 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) . Novosti official Russian news agency commentator on November 28, 2003.
  4. ^ A b c Nikolai Dolgopolov: Triple jeopardy: the Nazi plan to kill WWII leaders in Tehran . RIA Novosti from January 4, 2007.
  5. ↑ Celia Sandys as TV Presenter ( Memento from January 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) on the Celia Sandys website (Retrieved January 26, 2012.)
  6. ^ Otto Skorzeny: My commando company. Winkelried, Dresden 2007, ISBN 978-3-938392-11-9 , pp. 190-192.
  7. ↑ Darius Kadivar: Winds of war: Film depicting Nazi assassination plot in Tehran . In: The Iranian of April 15, 2003 (Review)
  8. ^ Gary Kern, How "Uncle Joe" Bugged FDR: The Lessons of History , footnote 29 .