The spread ofOperation Long Jumptakes lecturer inside a meeting between Franklin Roosevelt , Joseph Stalin , and Winston Churchill , held at the British Embassy in Tehran in 1943 . The intent of the summit : how to disembarrass the world of Adolf Hitler . But before the triad of leaders and their fourth-year military advisors can come up with an agreeable architectural plan to win the warfare , Nazi assassins enter the room , draw submachine torpedo , and at the fiat of Hitler and Heinrich Himmler , murder the leaders of the three most powerful U. S. Army in the domain .
The character assassination did n’t happen , of course , but after learn when and where the meeting would take place , Hitler set a design in motion to kill everyone there in one fell slide . As author Bill Yenne write in his amazing work of nonfictional prose , the decapitation of the Allied Forces was narrowly ward off when a Swiss threefold agent stumbled onto the plot .
SPY GAMES
During World War II , heads of state were on high alarum for assassination attempts . Churchill believed ( correctly ) that Hitler wanted him dead . Hitler , of course , was in everyone ’s crosshairs . ( Even the pope wanted to vote out him . ) Stalin had deadly enemies at homeandabroad . With those threats in mind , Tehran was concur upon as a comparatively neutral meeting piazza . Stalin did n’t want to travel far from the Soviet Union , and , what ’s more , was scared of flying . Though Churchill and Roosevelt were n’t keen on the localisation , after long negotiations it became obvious that it was Tehran or nowhere .
And yet , Tehran ’s complicated chronicle left it riddled with spy from every corner of the world . American intelligence was still in its infancy in 1943 , the Office of Strategic Services having only been established the year before . The British Secret Intelligence Service , however , was robust and complemented by the Special Operations Executive ( the “ Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare , ” as rival table service called them ) , whose mission was not only to snoop but also to undermine and assassinate . The Soviet Union , write Yenne , “ maintain an entirely different sort of intelligence setup , whose persona was bullying more than tidings gathering ; beating up suspect rather than opening their mail . ” Germany ’s intelligence web rival Russia ’s “ for brutality and the British services for complexity . ”
One local spy in demand was Ernst Merser , a Swiss socialite and businessman who specialized in international trade . Here was a spymaster ’s dream : a citizen of a indifferent power who mouth several languages and could journey without arousing suspiciousness . The British enter him straightaway . The Germans did n’t realize this , and soon seek to recruit him as well . Merser accepted both offers , and became a threefold broker working for the British .
THE PLOT
Operation Long Jump was conceived by the Germans after a 1943 merging between Churchill and Roosevelt in Casablanca . If only the leaders meet again , German spies felt , they could be uproot . Also on their order of business was killing Stalin , whose army was lease in brutal fight on the Eastern Front . When the “ Big Three ” leadership met , Germany break up , assassins would be waiting .
The chance at last come when German intelligence learn that Roosevelt , Churchill , and Stalin would receive somewhere in the Middle East . They eventually pinpoint Tehran , and the wheels for the secret plan were fructify in motion . They placed one Otto Skorzeny in heraldic bearing of the operation , who had previously ( and spectacularly ) precede a squad of paratroopers to deliver Benito Mussolini from internment after the Italian dictator ’s arrest . The plan go like this : “ hit team ” under Skorzeny ’s command would parachute into Iran and slip surreptitiously into Tehran , where they would remain at German dependable houses . Among the undercover agent airdropped would be Soviet defectors wearing Red Army uniform . They would slip into the security department contingent on the ground , leave word and an opening for German commandos to do the mussy deed .
A valet at the British embassy in Ankara , Turkey , even provide Germany with copies of the initial correspondence between London , Washington , and Moscow . German tidings thus knew the viands of the summit in Tehran as clearly as if they had been included in the preparations all along . The stolen correspondence was , according to Yenne , “ the master key key with which to plan the precise method acting and timing for the blackwash cabal of the C . ”
WHAT IF?
As the top date approached , the plan began to unpick . First : German supplies airdropped into Iran would necessitate to be transported into Tehran . Hitler ’s spy turned to their valet de chambre on the undercoat , forked agentive role Ernst Merser , to make the rescue . Clued into the blackwash plot of land , Merser pass intelligence to his coach . As the mission supply man , he was also able to spread out the crate and see on the button what weapons were to be used . Second , a member of Otto Skorzeny ’s assault squad — thrilled to be part of the missionary work and perhaps hoping to impress — told a certain cleaning woman that when he return from his secret assignment he would “ fetch her a Persian rug . ” The womanhood , Lydiya Lissovskaya , was the girlfriend of Nikolai Kuznetsov — who just so happened to be a forked agentive role working for the Russians .
Lastly , Russian agents had infiltrated the team of Soviet defectors who were themselves charge with infiltrate certificate . The agent report back to their spymasters . With the plot thus uncovered in feeler , it never had a fortune to proceed past that first radical of German operatives and Russian defectors . ( As for that group : Soviet spies , in their customary way of barbarity , killed the parachutists and left them in a ditch . )
But what if ithadhappened ? The meeting was , in Churchill ’s words , the “ greatest concentration of business leader that the earth had ever discover ” with the leaders of the bulk of the public ’s military military force in one elbow room . Had the plan been a succeeder , Yenne writes that neither the British nor the Soviets had a mechanism of succession in place . The result would have been chaos , and more so for the USSR , which had been under the bounder of Stalin for 20 years , and whose efforts in the war against Germany were so critical . Meanwhile , the deaths of both Churchill and Roosevelt would have think of the possible end of the ism requiring Germany ’s “ unconditional capitulation . ” Had Germany negotiated their room to peace , “ the state of war might have end much earlier than May 1945 , though , of course , with Germany undefeated and still in dominance of much of Europe . ” AsOperation Long Jumpmakes clear , but for loose lip and a little moment of destiny , that terrible parallel history might have become reality .
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