Hitler's peace

“It’s not stores we lack,” said von Holten-Pflug. “It’s men. Skorzeny left us very shorthanded. Fortunately, those men who remain in the section are Farsi-speakers. I myself also speak a little Gilaki, which is the language of the northern Persian tribesmen. Of course, most of their leaders have some German. But given that we’ll very likely be up against Russian troops, I’d like to make a recommendation that we use a team of Ukrainians, and base the operation at Vinnica.”

“How many men do you think you would need?” asked Schellenberg.

“About eighty to a hundred Ukrainians, and another ten or fifteen German officers and NCOs, commanded by myself.”

“And then?”

Von Holten-Pflug unfolded a map of Iran and spread it out on the table in front of him.

“I recommend that we stick to the plan from Operation Franz and fly from Vinnica. Six groups of ten men wearing Russian uniforms to parachute into the country near the holy city of Qom, and another four groups near Qazvin. Once there, we’ll rendezvous with our agents in Iran and head for the safe houses in Teheran. We can then reconnoiter the embassy areas and radio precise coordinates back to Berlin for the air strikes. After the bombing, the ground force will move in and deal with any survivors. Then we’ll make our way to Turkey, assuming that it remains a neutral country.”

Schellenberg smiled. Von Holten-Pflug made the whole operation sound as straightforward as a stroll around the Tiergarten. “Tell me more about these Ukrainians,” he said.

“They’re Zeppelin volunteers. Naturally I’ll need to go to Vinnica to sort things out. There’s a local intelligence officer I’d like to use. Fellow named Oster.”

“No relation, I hope,” said Schellenberg.

Von Holten-Pflug adjusted the monocle in his eye and regarded Schellenberg blankly.

“There was an Oster in the Abwehr,” explained Sandberger. “Until a month or two ago. A lieutenant colonel. He was dismissed and transferred to the Wehrmacht on the Russian front.”

“This Oster is a captain in the Waffen-SS.”

“I’m very glad to hear it.”

Von Holten-Pflug smiled uncertainly, and to Schellenberg it was plain to see that the major had no idea of the intense rivalry that existed between Amt VI of the SD and the Abwehr. Indeed, Schellenberg thought “rivalry” hardly strong enough to describe his relations with German military intelligence and the man who was its chief, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. For it was Schellenberg’s greatest ambition that Amt VI should absorb the largely ineffective Abwehr; and yet, for some reason Schellenberg was unable to fathom, Himmler-and perhaps also Hitler-hesitated to give Schellenberg what he wanted. In Schellenberg’s view, there were obvious economies of scale a merger of the two agencies would bring. As things now stood, resources ended up being duplicated, and sometimes operational initiatives as well. Schellenberg understood Canaris wanting to hang on to power. He would have felt the same way. But it was quite futile for Canaris to resist a change that everyone-even Himmler-saw as inevitable. It was just a question of time.

“Captain Oster speaks Ukrainian and some Russian,” said von Holten-Pflug. “He used to work for the Wannsee Institute. And he seems to know how to handle the Popovs.”

“I think we have to be careful here,” said Schellenberg. “After the Vlasov affair, the Fuhrer is not at all keen on using so-called subhuman military resources.”

Captured by the Germans in the spring of 1942, Andrei Vlasov was a Soviet general who had been “persuaded” to create an army of Russian POWs to fight for Hitler. Schellenberg had worked hard to achieve the independence of Vlasov’s “Russian Liberation Movement”; but Hitler, infuriated by the very idea of a Slav army fighting for Germany, had ordered Vlasov returned to a POW camp and forbade any mention of the plan again.

“I haven’t given up on Vlasov and his army,” continued Schellenberg, “but at Posen, Himmler made a special mention of his being ostracized, and it would be unwise not to be mindful of that.”

The Zeppelin volunteers were not much different from Vlasov’s RLM; these were also Russian prisoners fighting for the German army, except that they had been organized into guerrilla partisan units and then parachuted deep into Soviet territory.

“I don’t think a team of Zeppelin volunteers is likely to meet with the Reichsfuhrer’s approval any more than a unit from Vlasov’s army.” Schellenberg turned to Captain Janssen. “No, we’d best try to make this an SS operation from top to bottom. Horst, you were in the Ukraine. What’s the name of the Ukrainian Waffen-SS division that’s fighting there?”

“The Galicia Division. Waffen-SS Fourteenth Grenadiers.”

“Who’s the commanding officer?”

“General Walther Schimana. I believe the enlistment of Ukrainian cadres is going on even as we speak.”