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Obi Wan Kenobi Took On the Third Reich and Other Lesser Known World War II Facts

Khalid Elhassan September 14, 2022 38 min

KRT ENTERTAINMENT STORY SLUGGED: OSCARS-COUNTDOWN KRT PHOTOGRAPH VIA ZAP2IT.COM (November 21) Alec Guinness, who played Colonel Nicholson in the 1957 Academy Award-winning war drama "The Bridge on the River Kwai," won the Oscar for Best Actor for his role in the film. (ZP) NC KD 2002 (Horiz B&W Only) (lde)

The Nazis Got Wind of the Big Three’s First Conference

WWII - Hitler, between Ernst Kaltenbrunner, left, and Otto Skorzeny — Hitler, between Ernst Kaltenbrunner, left, and Otto Skorzeny. Media Drum World

There was good cause for worry about the security of the planned Tehran Conference. The Germans’ intelligence presence in Iran had mushroomed after the country was occupied by the British and Soviets. It was reasonable to expect that they would do what they could to derail the conference if they got wind of it. The Germans got wind of it after their military intelligence, the Abwehr, cracked a US Navy code, and discovered that a major WWII conference was to be held in Tehran, tentatively scheduled for October, 1943.

The information was passed on to Hitler, along with recommendations to disrupt the planned Allied meeting with a commando attack. The result was Operation Long Jump, which aimed to assassinate the Big Three Allied leaders in order to definitively derail the Tehran Conference. Operational control was passed to SS general Ernst Kaltenbrunner, chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA – the German acronyms of the Reich Main Security Office). The RSHA was the Nazis’ intelligence arm, which combined the SS intelligence service and the interior ministry’s security police.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.