Intelligencers

Abstract

The main problem experienced by the Abwehr in planning and executing covert operations in Persia during the Second World War was the growing assertiveness of the SD, initiated by Heydrich and, after his assassination,² continued by Kaltenbrunner and Schellenberg. Amt VI — an ideologically driven political intelligence service — seemed relatively impervious to the increasingly unfavourable military situation on the southern Russian front, while the Abwehr — a more realistic, more pragmatic military intelligence service — became ever more sensitive to military reality: to the inescapable fact that, after the retreat from the Caucasus (ordered on 1 January 1943), and the staggering defeats at Stalingrad a month later and Kursk (16 July 1943), Persian operations had been stripped of any potential strategic significance and could thenceforth be nothing more than diversionary tactical manoeuvres (side shows). Faced with such general adversity and inevitable defeat, compounded by such specific problems with operational infrastructure as shortage of suitable manpower, equipment, supplies, and transport, as well as the growing distance between German airbases in southern Russia and potential dropzones in Persia, there seems to have occurred an understandable sagging of the collective will among Abwehr planners to mount any more Ferneinsätze (long-range operations). The figures speak for themselves: of the 20 operations planned by the Abwehr between 1941 and 1945, only three were actually executed, and only one without intervention and takeover by the SD.

Forget your work, and instead collect around you men on whom you can depend at the time of the inevitable defeat. (Werner Eisenberg)¹