The Nazi’s Plot to Assassinate the Big Three

By November of 1943, German war leaders understood that victory against the Allies was a near impossibility, yet the longer they continued to wage war, most German leaders felt that their continued belligerence would lead to greater bargaining power at an eventual peace table.

Foreknowledge of Big Three Meeting

Thanks to intercepted communications among Allied personnel, German officials were well aware of plans for a highly-secretive meeting between the Allies’ Big Three leaders—President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States, Winston Churchill of Great Britain and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union—and after SS Captain Otto Skorzeny led a commando team that freed Italian fascist Benito Mussolini from his imprisonment at a well-guarded hotel, Hitler appointed Skorzeny to head Operation Long Jump, with the sole objective of eliminating the Big Three.

Nazi Insertions into Tehran

Thanks to declassified documents from Russian intelligence known as the NKVD, British intelligence and Wehrmacht archives, German officials intercepted a communique between the British Embassy in Ankara and the Foreign Office in London, indicating that the meeting between the Big Three was set to take place in Tehran on November 28th, 1943, leading to a clandestine Nazi insertion of 44 commandos in multiple air drops in and around Tehran.

Nazi Commandos Slaughtered

36 were killed by waiting Russian troops before the commandos hit the ground, while two captured commandos confessed that six more were unaccounted for. Housed in three separate locations around Tehran, when Mike Reilly, FDR’s head of security learned about the still at large commandos, together with Russian intelligence agents, all involved agreed that the Big Three should be moved to the safety of the Russian embassy, at the same time issuing a $20,000 reward—some $350,000 in today’s currency—for information leading to the arrest of the Nazi commandos.

Easy Money Moves Lips

On November 30th, the third day of the conference, Reilly and others responsible for the Big Three’s security knew that Churchill’s planned 69th birthday dinner at the British embassy that night was ready made for a Nazi attack, yet before the party was set to go off, an Iranian informant came forward to claim the reward money, informing Russian agents that the commandos were holed up at a Tehran safe house. Under Russian orders, the Iranian informant returned to the safe house and offered an ultimatum to the commandos—either surrender with your hands up, or prepare to be slaughtered like pigs. Moments later, a massive explosion leveled the building in an act of mass suicide by all six Nazi commandos, ending one of the most dramatic, if not surreal moments in World War Two history.