Parachutes over Persia

Abstract

The history of Germany’s wartime interest in Persia may be divided into four phases.² During the first period, which lasted from the outbreak of the war until the end of the French campaign, Germany was no more engaged in Persia than in any other country in which it had political, economic, and cultural interests. Nor, however, was it deterred in any way by the outbreak of war in Europe from continuing to pursue its expansionist policies and interests in Persia along the same lines as before the war. In fact, interest in the orient in general was no doubt stimulated by the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on 24 August 1939, and by the earlier acquisition by the Nazis of the significant Persian assets of the giant Czechoslovakian industrial conglomerate Škoda when they annexed Bohemia and Moravia in 1938.

It is as if the combination of orientalism, rebellion, and sabotage in Lawrence of Arabia had caught the German imagination. (MI6 appreciation of German strategy).¹