Operation Zeppelin
Operation "Zeppelin" (German: Unternehmen „Zeppelin“ ) was a German military operation during World War II with the aim of liquidating Joseph Stalin.
History
Arado Ar 232 A-08
At the beginning of July 1944, the Arado Ar 232 A-08 (general purpose transport airplane), assigned to the special purpose and secretive "Ghost Wing" of the Luftwaffe Kampfgeschwader 200 (KG 200), with the pilot Corporal Bruno Davids and the commandant and observer Lieutenant Paul Goldstein, tried in vain to drop off two Russian defectors (they had defected to the German side in May 1942) near Moscow. The operation named after Ferdinand von Zeppelin was an independent plan of the Reich Security Main Office, Office Group VI C, with the short name “C/Z” (see RSHA business distribution plan from 1941) and therefore not a commando operation of the KG 200. In relation to the planned “Stalin assassination attempt” it came to an interaction between “C/Z” (which provided the agents) and the KG 200 (which provided the aircraft).
As early as March 1943, SS-Obersturmbannführer Georg Greife (brother of Dr. phil. Hermann Greife) had trained the two Russian agents, Red Army officer Pyotr Ivanovich Tavrin Shilo (code name Politov), who would assume the identity of a wounded Russian major, and his wife radio operator Lidia Jakovlevna Schilowa (Lidia Yakovlevna Shilova), at the SS special camp “Sandberge”. They were to be droped off at an abandoned former German field airfield near Moscow. The two, equipped with everything they needed, were supposed to get to Moscow on a Russian M-72 motorcycle with sidecar they had brought with them and carry out an attack on Stalin there, possibly on 25 October, an anniversary of the October Revolution. This carefully prepared undertaking had to be aborted due to numerous adversities. The plane, that was not able to land, had problems with one of the landing gear on the return flight, the cause of which even suggested sabotage.
Arado Ar 232 B-05
The operation should definitely be tried again. So the KG 200 requested from the 14th Squadron/Transportfliegergeschwader 4 another Arado, this time a four-engine one. The choice fell on the Ar 232 B-05. The crew consisted of the aircraft pilot Oberfeldwebel Helmut Emil Vierus (b. 1918), who was awarded the German Cross in Gold, with Feldwebel Gerhard Tiedt (b. 1920) as observer and navigator, NCO Gerhard Haberecht (b. 1923) as on-board radio operator, NCO Wilhelm Braun as on-board mechanic and NCO Gerhard Schneider (b. 1921) as on-board gunner. As a precautionary measure, the aircraft's first attendant (1. Wart), Lance Corporal (Obergefreiter) Eugen Hetterich (b. 1920), was also taken along.
The plane, which also took off from Riga in the night of 3–4 September 1944, reached its destination near Smolensk, Rzhev or Kuklow (Kuklovo), about 150 km west of Moscow, but landed in an area other than the intended area, a large forest clearing near the village of Karmanovo. In the darkness it apparently hit a tree, which damaged the Arado so badly that it was impossible to restart. The two Russians they brought with them, dressed in officers' uniforms and with the appropriate ID cards, set off for Moscow on their motorcycle, but were noticed by a little carelessness along the way and were arrested as they looked suspiciously dry on a rainy night. The German Arado crew, however, seems to have tried to make their way to the German front either individually or in groups. German command headquarters never received a sign of life from any of them. They were captured on 9 September 1944, except for Vierus.
Although Helmut Vierus managed to make his way to around 150 km from Riga on foot, he was captured there on 30 September 1944.[1] He was not a spy and in full uniform. After many torture interrogations, he was sentenced to death, but was not shot until 22 September 1945, as Russian files exposed in the 21st century. At his side Tiedt, Haberecht, Hetterich and Schneider.[2] The exact fate of Wilhelm Braun is not known. The execution was carried out by the 4th Directorate of the secret police "People's Commissariat for State Security" (NKGB).
The Russian officer and his wife, who had been kept alive in order to be able to use them against the Germans if necessary during the Nuremberg Show Trials, were executed in March and April 1952. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the five Germans of the Luftwaffe were rehabilitated by the Russian side by a decision of the Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Armed Forces on 7 October 1998.
