Hitler's peace

Schellenberg glanced around, wondering how many of his fellow SS troop leaders were still possessed of the faith that could win victories. Since Stalingrad, there had been precious little reason for optimism; and with an Allied landing in Europe expected sometime in the next year, it seemed more likely that many of the generals in the Golden Hall were less concerned with victory than with avoiding the retribution of Allied military tribunals after the war was over. And yet Schellenberg couldn’t help thinking that there was still a way that victory might yet be won. If Germany could strike decisively at the Allies with the same surprise and effect that had been achieved by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, they might still turn the tide of the war. Hadn’t he been presented with just such an opportunity in agent Cicero’s information? Didn’t he already know that as of Sunday, November 21, Roosevelt and Churchill would be in Cairo for almost a week? And then in Teheran with Stalin until Saturday, December 4?

Schellenberg shook his head, puzzled. What on earth could have possessed them to pick Teheran for a conference in the first place? It seemed likely that Stalin must have insisted on the two other leaders coming to him. Doubtless he would have given them some excuse about the necessity of his being near his soldiers at the front; but all the same, Schellenberg wondered if either Churchill or Roosevelt was aware of the real reason behind Stalin’s insistence that they meet in Teheran. According to Schellenberg’s sources in the NKVD, Stalin had a morbid fear of flying and could no more have countenanced a long-distance flight to Newfoundland (which was the location favored by Churchill and Roosevelt) or even Cairo, than he could have bought himself a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. The chances were that Stalin had chosen Teheran because he could spend a large part of the journey on his armored train, making only a short flight at the end of it.

He imagined that the Big Three would never have picked Teheran if Operation Franz had ever gone into action. A joint operation of the Luftwaffe’s elite 200 Squadron and the Friedenthal Section of Amt VI, the plan had been to fly a Junkers 290 carrying one hundred men from an airfield in the Crimea and drop them by parachute near a large salt lake southeast of Teheran. With the help of local tribesmen, F Section-many of whom spoke Persian-would then have interrupted American supplies for Russia that were being carried on the Iran-Iraq railway. The plan had been delayed following damage to the Junkers and the arrest of several of those pro-German Iranian tribesmen. By the time they were ready to go again, the best of the men in F Section, commanded by Otto Skorzeny, had been ordered to try to rescue Mussolini from his Italian mountaintop prison, and Operation Franz had been scrubbed. But the more Schellenberg thought about the situation now, the more it looked like a plan. F Section, with its Persian-speaking officers and special equipment, was, as far as he was aware, still intact; and there were the Big Three, heading for the very country in which F Section had been trained to operate. And there was no reason why such a plan should be restricted to a ground attack force. Schellenberg thought a commando team in Teheran might operate in tandem with a very specialized form of attack from the air. And he resolved to speak to a man he knew was coming to Posen that evening for the Reichsfuhrer’s speech the following day: Air Inspector General Erhard Milch.

Himmler’s speech finally ended, but Schellenberg was too excited to have lunch. Using a borrowed office in the castle, he telephoned his deputy in Berlin, Martin Sandberger. “It’s me-Schellenberg.”

“Hello, boss. How’s Posen?”

“Never mind that now, just listen. I want you to drive over to Friedenthal and find out what state F Section is in. Specifically, whether they’re up for another shot at Operation Franz. And, Martin, if he’s there, I want you to bring that baron fellow back to Berlin.”

“Von Holten-Pflug?”

“That’s him. Then I want you to set up a department meeting for first thing on Wednesday morning. Reichert, Buchman, Janssen, Weisinger, and whoever’s running the Turkish and Iranian desk these days.”

“That would be Major Schubach. He reports to Colonel Tschierschky. Shall I ask him, too?”

“Yes.”