Washington -

A few days ago, the Flatiron Publishing House released a thrilling book that sheds light on Nazi Germany's plans to assassinate the "Big Three", the leaders of the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain, together during their meeting in Tehran in November 1943.

The title of the book is "The Nazi Conspiracy... The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill." It was co-written by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch, two writers with a long history of writing, media work, and historiography. Markets since January 10 only.

The book "The Nazi Plot: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill" was released January 10 (Al-Jazeera)

Long jump plan

Over the course of 400 pages, the two authors present Operation Long Jump, where the plan was supposed to be implemented, (Operation Rösselsprung in German) during the Tehran Conference, when the three met secretly in Iran in November of 1943 to discuss the details of the war.

Germany plotted to assassinate Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, allied leaders at one time, at the Tehran Conference of 1943 during World War II.

The location of the meeting was chosen primarily for its strategic advantages, as Iran was at the time occupied by both the Soviets and Britain.

The book deals with the problems of holding the conference, especially Stalin's insistence that it be held in Tehran, despite the three leaders' awareness of the existence of a network of spies and Nazi sympathizers in the city.

According to Soviet sources, German military intelligence discovered the US Navy's communications code and code, and learned of plans for a tripartite summit meeting to be held in Tehran in November 1943.

Based on this information, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler approved a plan to kill the three Allied leaders, and a team was formed with a number of German agents and officers from Berlin, Ankara and Tehran, to coordinate and plan how to carry out the triple assassination.

Germany planned to send a squad of commandos to the Soviet embassy, ​​where the meetings were taking place, through a network of underground tunnels.

A Soviet intelligence service revealed the plans and details of the plot days before its scheduled date, which allowed it to fail and not happen.

The Tehran Summit extended over 4 days between November 28 and December 1, 1943, when the three leaders coordinated their military strategy against Germany and Japan and made a number of important decisions related to the post-World War II era.

The book states, "No one denies the fragility of the alliance between nations that united to fight Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union differed greatly from the United States and Great Britain, yet the war effort to defeat Nazi Germany depended on the inevitability of those nations working together."

That is why when Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin agreed to meet in person for the first time in November 1943 — in the middle of the war — the Nazi leaders saw a rare opportunity to destroy the alliance in the most dramatic way possible.

The new book discusses Nazi Germany's plans to assassinate the leaders of the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain (Shutterstock)

Western skepticism

According to the NKVD, the Soviet intelligence service, the mission was aborted in mid-October 1943, and Berlin received a coded message from an agent inside Tehran indicating the discovery of the plan and the capture of several German agents.

When Stalin informed Churchill and Roosevelt of the plan, some members within the American and British delegations questioned the existence of the assassination plot, because all evidence of its existence came from Soviet intelligence only.

There was a historical debate about the validity of the Soviet hypothesis, and skeptics raised 3 arguments in this regard:

One: that the German spy network in Iran was destroyed in mid-1943, long before Tehran was chosen as a meeting place.

Second: More than 3,000 Soviet security forces secured and guarded the city and meeting venue for the duration of the conference without any incidents.

Third: Both Roosevelt and Churchill disembarked on foot and toured in open jeeps throughout their 4-day stay in Tehran, without any incidents.

In a press conference after the Tehran summit, President Roosevelt told reporters, "In a place like Tehran there are hundreds of German spies, probably, everywhere," and added, "I'm not going to go into details."

The authors believe that Western skepticism is due to the unwillingness of Washington and London to support what could be seen as a victory and good propaganda for the Soviet Union at the time.

An assassination plot that would have changed history

The book stresses the importance of personalizing some chapters of history, and cites that World War I began with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand - Crown Prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire - and his wife, Archduchess Sophie, in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914.

The book believes that the Nazi assassination plot was an attempt to change the interactions of World War II, as the result is not limited to the mere absence of some powerful leaders, but rather that the elimination of leaders can throw a country into crisis.

As in the case of the Tehran Conference, it could change the Allies' opposing policy against Germany, especially with the lack of much confidence between the three leaders.

In that case, the success of the assassination would have made discussions about the American and British march to liberate France in 1944 more difficult.

The authors have carefully combed through the archival records of the war, documenting the minutiae of the operation and piecing together the evidence in as interesting a way as they can.

The authors concluded their vision by saying, "In order to learn and write about our own vision, we had to comb through British and American intelligence files, search for relevant materials in German libraries, and search in obscure Russian-language sources."

In the end, as the authors add, "we felt that we had a good understanding of what happened and what did not happen, although some mysteries and questions certainly still remain, otherwise there was a plot to assassinate the three leaders."