Operation François
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Operation François
Operation François was an attempt made by the German Army's Abwehr to use the dissident Qashqai people in Iran to sabotage British and American supplies bound for the Soviet Union. Operation François was led by Otto Skorzeny, who sent the 502nd SS Jäger Battalion to parachute into Iran during the summer of 1943, the first mission carried out by the unit. Skorzeny, who remained behind to train more recruits, characterized Operation François as "a failure" due mainly to inadequate reinforcements and supplies needed for the mission. Michael Bar-Zohar, in his biography of Paul Ernst Fackenheim Paul Ernst Fackenheim (born 1892) was a German Jewish Army lieutenant who fought in World War I and received the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class. In 1939 he was detained and transferred to Dachau concentration camp; he was prisoner number 26336. In ..., states that during Fackenheim's captivity in Latrun, where the British also kept Nazi-sympathizer General Fazlollah Zahedi, he saw "six ...
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Abwehr
The ''Abwehr'' (German for ''resistance'' or ''defence'', but the word usually means ''counterintelligence'' in a military context; ) was the German military-intelligence service for the ''Reichswehr'' and the ''Wehrmacht'' from 1920 to 1944. Although the 1919 Treaty of Versailles prohibited the Weimar Republic from establishing an intelligence organization of their own, they formed an espionage group in 1920 within the Ministry of Defence, calling it the ''Abwehr''. The initial purpose of the ''Abwehr'' was defence against foreign espionage: an organizational role which later evolved considerably. Under General Kurt von Schleicher (prominent in running the ''Reichswehr'' from 1926 onwards) the individual military services' intelligence units were combined and, in 1929, centralized under Schleicher's ''Ministeramt'' within the Ministry of Defence, forming the foundation for the more commonly understood manifestation of the ''Abwehr''. Each ''Abwehr'' station throughout German ...
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Qashqai People
Qashqai people (pronounced ; fa, قشقایی) are a tribal confederation in Iran mostly of Turkic origin. They are also believed to have incorporated Lurs, Kurds, and Arabs. Almost all of them speak a Western Turkic (Oghuz) language known as the Qashqai language, which they call "Turki", as well as Persian (the national language of Iran) in formal use. The Qashqai mainly live in the provinces of Fars, Khuzestan, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Bushehr and Southern Isfahan, especially around the cities of Shiraz and Firuzabad in Fars. The majority of Qashqai people were originally nomadic pastoralists and some remain so today. The traditional nomadic Qashqai traveled with their flocks twice yearly between the summer highland pastures north of Shiraz roughly 480 km or 300 miles south and the winter pastures on lower (and warmer) lands near the Persian Gulf, to the southwest of Shiraz. The majority, however, have now become partially or wholly s ...
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Otto Skorzeny
Otto Johann Anton Skorzeny (12 June 1908 – 5 July 1975) was an Austrian-born German SS-''Obersturmbannführer'' (lieutenant colonel) in the Waffen-SS during World War II. During the war, he was involved in a number of operations, including the removal from power of Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy and the Gran Sasso raid which rescued Benito Mussolini from captivity. Skorzeny led Operation Greif in which German soldiers infiltrated Allied lines wearing their opponents' uniforms. As a result, he was charged in 1947 at the Dachau Military Tribunal with breaching the 1907 Hague Convention, but was acquitted. Skorzeny escaped from an internment camp in 1948, hiding out on a Bavarian farm as well as in Salzburg and Paris before eventually settling in Francoist Spain. In 1953, he served as a military advisor to Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. He was allegedly an advisor to Argentinian president Juan Perón. In 1963, Skorzeny was allegedly recruited by the Mossad and conducte ...
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502nd SS Jäger Battalion
SS-Jäger-Bataillon 502 (502nd SS Light Infantry Battalion) was a special forces unit of Nazi Germany from 1943-1944. Formed in June 1943, the unit was commanded by Otto Skorzeny and was based at Schloß (chateau) Friedenthal just north of Berlin in Sachsenhausen by Oranienburg, consisting originally of the three hundred members of the former (Provisional Special Unit Friedenthal) SS-Sonderverband z.b.V. Friedenthal (this was their official name until April 1944, then it was ''SS-Jäger-Bataillon 502'' ) and Sonderlehrgang z.b.V. Oranienburg. After an unsuccessful attempt to train members of an SS penal facility, Skorzeny obtained permission to recruit volunteers from the Wehrmacht, and 100 SS personnel, 50 Luftwaffe and 150 Army personnel were admitted, allowing the formation of a headquarters company and two line companies. An intensive training programme was instituted. In September 1943, sixteen members of this unit took part in the Gran Sasso raid, which resulted in the r ...
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Michael Bar-Zohar
Michael Bar-Zohar ( he, מיכאל בר-זהר, born 30 January 1938) is an Israeli historian, novelist and politician. He was a member of the Knesset on behalf of the Alignment and Labor Party in the 1980s and early 1990s. Biography Born in Bulgaria, Bar-Zohar immigrated to Israel in 1948. He attended High School Heh in Tel Aviv and went on to study economics and international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He also studied at the Institute of Political Science in the University of Paris, where he earned a PhD. He became science editor for ''Davar'', a weekly newspaper in 1958, but left the job the following year. Between 1960 and 1964 he wrote for ''LaMerhav'', an Israeli newspaper in Paris. In 1967 he became a spokesman for the Israeli Ministry of Defense, and later lectured at the University of Haifa between 1970 and 1973. Political career Bar-Zohar became involved in politics in the 1960s, and joined Rafi upon its foundation in 1965. Rafi merged into the ...
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Paul Ernst Fackenheim
Paul Ernst Fackenheim (born 1892) was a German Jewish Army lieutenant who fought in World War I and received the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class. In 1939 he was detained and transferred to Dachau concentration camp; he was prisoner number 26336. In 1941 Fackenheim was recruited by the Abwehr to serve as a spy; the German Military Intelligence Service appealed to his officer's sense of honour to serve his country once again as a spy in Palestine. His job as a spy in the Middle East lasted only a few days; he was detained and interrogated by the British, who kept him in captivity until 1946. He survived the war as one of the few Jews to be freed from an extermination camp by the German authorities and returned to Germany, settling in Henstedt-Ulzburg Michael Bar-Zohar wrote his biography, titled in English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective f ...
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Latrun
Latrun ( he, לטרון, ''Latrun''; ar, اللطرون, ''al-Latrun'') is a strategic hilltop in the Latrun salient in the Ayalon Valley, and a depopulated Palestinian village. It overlooks the road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, 25 kilometers west of Jerusalem and 14 kilometers southeast of Ramla. It was the site of fierce fighting during the 1948 war. During the 1948–1967 period, it was occupied by Jordan at the edge of a no man's land between the armistice lines. In the 1967 war, it was occupied by Israel. The hilltop includes the Latrun Abbey, Mini Israel (a park with scale models of historic buildings around Israel), The International Center for the Study of Bird Migration (ICSBM), and the Yad La-Shiryon Memorial and Museum. Neve Shalom (Oasis of Peace) is a joint Jewish-Arab community on a hilltop south of Latrun. Canada Park is nearby to the east. Etymology The name Latrun is ultimately derived from the ruins of a medieval Crusader castle. There are two theories re ...
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Fazlollah Zahedi
Fazlollah Zahedi ( fa, فضل‌الله زاهدی, Fazlollāh Zāhedi, pronounced ; 17 May 1892 – 2 September 1963) was an Iranian lieutenant general and statesman who replaced the Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh through a coup d'état supported by the United States and the United Kingdom. Early life Early years Born in Hamedan on 17 May 1892, Fazlollah Zahedi was the son of Abol Hassan "Bassir Diwan" Zahedi, a wealthy landowner at the city of Hamedan. He was a descendant of the Sufi mystics Sheikh Zahed Gilani and Sheikh Safi-ad-din Ardabili, the eponym of the Safavid dynasty, and through his mother, Djavaher Khanom, he traced his descent to the dynastic ruler Karim Khan Zand. Through him, Zahedi was a distant relative of Mohammad Mossadegh. During his service at the Imperial Russian-trained Iranian Cossack Brigade, one of his military superiors was Reza Khan, who later became the Iranian monarch. Zahedi was among the officers dispatched to Gilan to put an end ...
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Military Operations Of World War II Involving Germany
A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct military uniform. It may consist of one or more military branches such as an army, navy, air force, space force, marines, or coast guard. The main task of the military is usually defined as defence of the state and its interests against external armed threats. In broad usage, the terms ''armed forces'' and ''military'' are often treated as synonymous, although in technical usage a distinction is sometimes made in which a country's armed forces may include both its military and other paramilitary forces. There are various forms of irregular military forces, not belonging to a recognized state; though they share many attributes with regular military forces, they are less often referred to as simply ''military''. A nation's military may f ...
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Iran In World War II
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmenistan to the north, by Afghanistan and Pakistan to the east, and by the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. It covers an area of , making it the 17th-largest country. Iran has a population of 86 million, making it the 17th-most populous country in the world, and the second-largest in the Middle East. Its largest cities, in descending order, are the capital Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Karaj, Shiraz, and Tabriz. The country is home to one of the world's oldest civilizations, beginning with the formation of the Elamite kingdoms in the fourth millennium BC. It was first unified by the Medes, an ancient Iranian people, in the seventh century BC, and reached its territorial height in the sixth century BC, when Cyrus the Great founded ...
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Military History Of Iran During World War II
A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct military uniform. It may consist of one or more military branches such as an army, navy, air force, space force, marines, or coast guard. The main task of the military is usually defined as defence of the state and its interests against external armed threats. In broad usage, the terms ''armed forces'' and ''military'' are often treated as synonymous, although in technical usage a distinction is sometimes made in which a country's armed forces may include both its military and other paramilitary forces. There are various forms of irregular military forces, not belonging to a recognized state; though they share many attributes with regular military forces, they are less often referred to as simply ''military''. A nation's military may ...
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Middle East Theatre Of World War II
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