Tourists and Businessmen

  • Adrian O’Sullivan
Chapter

Abstract

It was not as if the Allied invaders took the Persians or the Nazis whom Reza Shah Pahlavi was protecting entirely by surprise. For many months, or at least since June 1941, when Hitler had unleashed the full fury of Operation BARBAROSSA — his massive assault on the Soviet Union — everyone in Persia had acknowledged that things could not continue as they were forever. After all, the way in which the Germans had spread themselves around the country, infiltrating every level and aspect of economic activity, was clearly inimical to long-standing British and Soviet interests in the region. Not for long would the Nazi expatriates be tolerated by Churchill and Stalin, especially now that the two leaders had been thrust unexpectedly by the Führer’s act of naked aggression into an alliance that doubled their strength and compounded their military options. Here then was the ostensibly neutral imperial peacock, squeezed between the bulldog and the bear, yet reluctant to respond to diplomatic pressure from the (at that time) losing Allies to eject from Persia its Axis guests, who (at that time) represented the winning side — in a conflict that seemed certain to spill south across the Caucasus and the River Araxes and to engulf the entire region as far south as Bahrain and the deserts of Saudi Arabia.

Keywords

Foreign Policy Middle East National Socialist State Nazi Party German Policy 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. 2.
    In support of this assertion, see for example Mohamed-Kamal El-Dessouki, ‘Hitler und der Nahe Osten’ (Dr phil diss., Berlin, 1963), 140.Google Scholar
  2. 3.
    Andreas Hillgruber, ‘The Third Reich and the Near and Middle East, 1933–1939,’ in Uriel Dann, ed., The Great Powers in the Middle East 1919– 1939 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1988), 275.Google Scholar
  3. 4.
    Max Domarus, Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations 1932–1945, vol. 3: The Years 1939–1940 (Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 2004), 2096.Google Scholar
  4. For a com-monsensical overview of Hitler’s global ambitions, I recommend Dietrich Aigner, ‘Hitler’s Ultimate Aims: A Programme of World Dominion?’ in Aspects of the Third Reich, ed. H.W. Koch (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1985), 251–66;Google Scholar
  5. meanwhile, Hillgruber’s interpretation is concisely presented in Andreas Hillgruber, Germany and the Two World Wars, trans. William C. Kirby (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 49–51.Google Scholar
  6. 5.
    For a lucid discussion of German imperialist ideology and the Nazi concept of Lebensraum, see Woodruff D. Smith, The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 231–58.Google Scholar
  7. 6.
    There is of course an extensive literature of German Middle East strategy. I found the following works helpful in connection with German interest in Persia from the nineteenth century onwards: George Lenczowski, Russia and the West in Iran 1918–1948 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1949);Google Scholar
  8. Nancy Leila Sadka, ‘German Relations with Persia, 1921–1941’ (PhD diss., Stanford, 1972);Google Scholar
  9. Stefan R. Hauser, ‘German Research on the Ancient Near East and Its Relation to Political and Economic Interests from Kaiserreich to World War II,’ in Germany and the Middle East 1871–1945, ed. Wolfgang G. Schwanitz (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2004), 161–2, 170–1;Google Scholar
  10. Miron Rezun, ‘The German Threat to the U.S.S.R. in Iran and the Soviet Response,’ in The Soviet Union and Iran: Soviet Policy in Iran from the Beginnings of the Pahlavi Dynasty until the Soviet Invasion in 1941, Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales Collection de Relations Internationales 8 (Alphen aan de Rijn: Sijthoff & Noordhoff International, 1981).Google Scholar
  11. 10.
    Ibid., 26. Two good English-language sources on Wassmuss are Christopher Sykes, Wassmuss: The German Lawrence (London: Longmans Green, 1936)Google Scholar
  12. and Peter Hopkirk, On Secret Service East of Constantinople: The Plot to Bring Down the British Empire (London: John Murray, 2006).Google Scholar
  13. 11.
    See Lenczowski, Russia and the West, 156. Useful economic statistics are also to be found in Bernd Philipp Schröder, Deutschland und der Mittlere Osten im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1975), 232–6;Google Scholar
  14. Heinz Glaesner, ‘Das Dritte Reich und der Mittlere Osten: Politische und wirtschaftliche Beziehungen Deutschlands zur Türkei 1933–1939, zu Iran 1939–1941, und zu Afghanistan 1933–1941’ (Dr phil diss., Würzburg, 1976), 200 passim;Google Scholar
  15. Lukasz Hirszowicz, ‘The Course of German Foreign Policy in the Middle East between the World Wars,’ in Germany and the Middle East, 1835–1939: International Symposium, April 1975, ed. Jehuda L. Wallach (Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University, Faculty of Humanities, Aranne School of History, Institute of German History, 1975), 175–9.Google Scholar
  16. 16.
    See Robert L. Baker, Oil, Blood, and Sand (New York: Appleton-Century, 1942), 31.Google Scholar
  17. 17.
    See F. Dümke, ‘Die Balkan und Orientländer als Rohstoffquelle für die deutsche Industrie,’ Der neue Orient 7/8 (1936): 17.Google Scholar
  18. 19.
    See Heinz Höhne, Canaris (New York: Doubleday, 1979), 540.Google Scholar
  19. 20.
    See Sadka, ‘German Relations,’ 103–9, 113–14. For an overview of various competing agencies with Asian interests, see Milan Hauner, ‘The Professionals and the Amateurs in National Socialist Foreign Policy: Revolution and Subversion in the Islamic and Indian World,’ in Der ‘Führerstaat’: Mythos und Realität: Studien zur Struktur und Politik des Dritten Reiches, ed. Gerhard Hirschfeld and Lothar Kettenacker (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981), 316–25.Google Scholar
  20. 25.
    See Baldur von Schirach, Ich glaubte an Hitler (Hamburg: Mosaik, 1967), 227.Google Scholar
  21. 27.
    Iran (alphab.), 1941–1944, Handakten Ettel, R 27330, AA; Iran I 6 g, February 1943, WO 208/1588A, TNA. S. Djalal Madani, Iranische Politik und Drittes Reich (Frankfurt: Lang, 1986), 264–5, actually identifies and names several secret agents unknown to me among the German expatriates; however, Madani, who draws his information entirely from uncorroborated Soviet secondary literatureGoogle Scholar
  22. (S.L. Agaev, Germanskij imperializm v Irane [Moscow: Izd. Nauka, 1969]), cannot be seen in this instance as a reliable source.Google Scholar
  23. 29.
    In the literature estimates vary greatly, ranging between 2,000 and 6,500, with the highest figures based on Soviet sources. See, for example: William Slim, Unofficial History (London: Cassell, 1960), 181; Sadka, ‘German Relations,’ 163, 224;Google Scholar
  24. Reader Bullard, ‘Persia in the Two World Wars,’ Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 50, no. 1 (1963): 12;CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  25. Edwin M. Wright, ‘Iran as a Gateway to Russia,’ Foreign Affairs 20, no. 2 (January 1942): 367;CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  26. Clarmont Skrine, World War in Iran (London: Constable, 1962), 76; Lenczowski, Russia and the West, 162;Google Scholar
  27. T.H. Vail Motter, The Persian Corridor and Aid to Russia (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1952), 161;Google Scholar
  28. Donal O’Sullivan, Dealing with the Devil: Anglo-Soviet Intelligence Cooperation during the Second World War (New York: Lang, 2010), 196; Madani, Iranische Politik, 256. Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to Britain, convinced Stalin that there were at least 10,000 Germans in Persia. See Eden-Maisky interview, 10 July 1941, FO 371/27230, TNA,Google Scholar
  29. also cited in Martin Kitchen, British Policy towards the Soviet Union during the Second World War (London: Macmillan, 1986), 91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© Adrian O’Sullivan 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  • Adrian O’Sullivan

There are no affiliations available

Personalised recommendations