Operation Salam

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Operation Salam was a 1942

Hungarian desert explorer László Almásy. The mission was conceived in order to assist Panzer Army Africa by delivering two German spies into British-held Egypt
.

Operation codename

While the name of the operation appears to derive from the

Arabic "Salaam" (peace, also used as a common greeting), which is usually transcribed in most languages using the Latin alphabet with two "a"-s, the codename of the operation (used interchangeably in wireless transmissions both for the operation, and its leader, Almásy) was consistently "Salam", with one "a", in all related historical documents – or rather "SALAM", in keeping with the convention to render code names in all caps. It has been suggested (but never proved) that the origin of the code name could be a partial anagram of Almásy. Hence the operation should be correctly referred to as "(Operation) Salam" (or "SALAM"). Once the two spies were delivered by SALAM in Egypt, they were referred to as Operation CONDOR.[2]

Background

In 1942, after

Desert war and the Axis commander Erwin Rommel had plans for capturing Egypt which would have put the Allies in a very precarious situation with the Suez Canal under enemy control. Although the Germans had intelligence coups such as the Black code/Bonner Fellers intercepts, they had few agents in Egypt. Operation SALAM was intended to provide them eyes and ears in Cairo where the British authorities and community were in crisis over the Axis advance, with a citywide curfew in the months before June and many Europeans fleeing to Palestine
. Two spies would be delivered via a route taken far south of the Qattara Depression where the enormous expanses of open desert would lessen the risks of being captured.

Hungary had entered the war on the side of the Axis, Almásy was recruited by the Abwehr (German military intelligence), initially to aid in the preparation of maps and the description of desert terrain. Subsequently, he was assigned to an Abwehr commando operating in Libya under the command of Major Nikolaus Ritter. After Ritter was injured in the first airborne attempt to deliver two spies to Egypt (the first Operation Condor), Almásy assumed command of the unit. Planning for what eventually became Operation SALAM started in earnest in the fall of 1941.[2]

The route

The initial plan was to enter Egypt by crossing the desert south of Siwa Oasis, starting from the Italian held Jalo Oasis using captured British CMP Ford trucks and patrol cars, delivering the two agents, Johannes Eppler and Hans Gerd Sandstede. Planning and preparations took several months, and the start was delayed several times due to the changing situation on the front. Finally Operation SALAM was ready to start from Tripoli on 29 April 1942.[2]

Reaching Jalo oasis in Libya they started out towards the east where Italian maps suggested a firm flat serir (a hard surfaced gravel desert) but they soon encountered an impassable range of low dunes unmarked on the map. After several members fell sick and one of the cars was abandoned in the dunes with a broken axle, the party returned to Jalo oasis to make an aerial reconnaissance of the route. Starting out a second time they encountered the same difficulties and Almásy devised a new plan: with fewer cars and members they would go south towards enemy occupied Kufra oasis and then across the Gilf Kebir along a route known to Almásy from his explorations there ten years earlier. From this point onwards the account of Operation SALAM is narrated by Almásy, in his diary of the operation.[2]

After crossing the Gilf Kebir they bluffed their way through Kharga Oasis and then dropped Eppler and Sandstede off at the edge of the desert escarpment near Asyut. Operation SALAM now became Operation CONDOR with the two spies on their way to Cairo, while Almásy and his convoy of vehicles returned into Axis-held Libya. He was awarded the Iron Cross (first class) and promoted to the rank of major by the commander of the Afrika Korps, Erwin Rommel.[2][3]

Intercepted Wireless messages

By early 1941 British code-breakers at

Panzerarmee Afrika had priority in deciphering and analysis, and there were several days delay in warning HQ Middle East in Cairo. By the time a search was organised, Almásy was safely back in Jalo.[2]

Operation CONDOR

In Egypt, Eppler went under the name of Hussein Gaffar. He had grown up in

Scandinavian American. After a rail journey to Cairo, the two spies rented a houseboat on the river Nile. Sandstede had installed their radio set in a gramophone cabinet in the living room on the boat. This device of furniture was built by Sandstede himself as a masterpiece of carpenter craftsmanship; the radio unit and the gramophone unit (record player) could still be operated while the radio operator was seated inside the cabinet veiled behind a wooden panel unseen and undetectable from the outside and send Morse radio messages while the device played music.[4]

Eppler in his book claims that they garnered information on British troop and vehicle movements with help from a nationalist-inclined

Anwar El Sadat (who much later would become President of Egypt
) was sent to help with Eppler and Sandstede's radio equipment.

The truth was quite different, as revealed by the interrogation protocols taken after their capture. Eppler and Stanstede never managed to collect any meaningful information, and they never made any contact with a German radio station after they parted with Almásy near Asyut. Unknown to them, communication was impossible as the designated SALAM wireless operators had been captured when Rommel's advance headquarters were overrun near Bir Hakeim on 29 May. Thus in part Rommel was responsible for the failure of CONDOR, as he personally ordered the SALAM operators to join his headquarters as there was a shortage of wireless operators during the battle. Fearful of reprisals in case of Rommel actually reaching Cairo, they started to create fake diaries detailing their supposed intelligence gathering and meeting of various sources.[2]

Apparently, all Eppler and Sandtede ever did in Cairo was to spend the considerable sums they had at their disposal on women and a lavish lifestyle. Sadat was extremely critical of them in his book Revolt on the Nile. Sadat's view was that the two Germans deliberately sabotaged their own radio, because they wanted to enjoy themselves and live with two Jewish

prostitutes.[5]
Reading the British interrogation reports, it is hard to argue with this view.

The spies' extravagant lifestyle (and the fact that unknown to them, most of the British pounds they had with them were forgeries), as well as the various other leads picked up by Allied intelligence, led to their hideout being discovered and the houseboat was boarded by British

execution (the usual fate of spies out of uniform during World War II). Hekmet Fakhmy only received a suspended sentence but later claimed that she provided valuable intelligence to Eppler and that she was imprisoned for two years.[2]

The SALAM diary

The diary of Almásy describing the events from 15 to 29 May 1942 surfaced in Austria in 1949 or 1950, found by Lt. Col. Count Peter de Salis, who was at the time working for the Intelligence Organization, Allied Commission for Austria. Seeing the name of Bagnold mentioned several times in the document, de Salis forwarded the diary to Brigadier

Ralph Alger Bagnold through intelligence channels. It is not known at what point was the original German text translated into English but two versions remain. One which was passed on by Bagnold to David Lloyd Owen and is kept in the Imperial War Museum. This copy was found by Michael Rolke when doing some unrelated research and formed the basis for the German re-translation that appeared in the re-publication of the German version of Almásy's "Unknown Sahara" in 1987 (Schwimmer in der Wüste, Haymon, Innsbruck). Another version was prepared by Jean Howard (née Alington), who received the English translation from Bagnold in 1978, together with the cover note of Count de Salis and other forwarders. She re-typed the documents, correcting a number of errors and mis-translations based on her superior knowledge of German and making some abbreviations to reduce the task of re-typing. This is also the source of the uncertainty regarding the finding date, as the note of de Salis (as copied by Jean Howard) dates 28 January 1950, while the later forwarding note dates 2 February 1949, obviously one having been copied in error. The original diary is probably still in the unreleased MI5 Personnel File of Almásy. There is no question as to the authenticity of the document, the contents of which are corroborated by many sources including intercepted wireless messages. As it surfaced during Almásy's life, it could have even been with his knowledge that it was passed to Count de Salis. The 2013 book on Operation SALAM contains a merged transcript of the IWM and the Howard copies.[2]

Other long-range operations in the region

Although Operation CONDOR ended in failure, Operation SALAM is notable as one of the few Axis operations that mirrored the important Long Range Desert Group activities in the Libyan Desert during the North African campaign. The Italian Auto-Saharan Companies (Compagnie Auto-Avio-Sahariane, a desert patrol group formed on three to five companies, with various vehicles customised for desert operations and integrated air support, and sometimes referred to as La Compagnia), was a long-lived unit that harassed SAS and LRDG operations up until Allied victory in Libya and Tunisia.

In popular culture

See also

References

  1. ^ https://codenames.info/operation/salam/
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Gross, Kuno, Michael Rolke and András Zboray, Operation SALAM - László Almásy's most daring mission in the Desert War, Belleville, München 2013
  3. ^ Kelly, Saul, The Hunt for Zerzura, John Murray, London, 2002.
  4. ^ Eppler, John W. (1959). Rommel ruft Kairo. Gütersloh: C.Bertelsmann Verlag. p. 156.
  5. Sadat, Anwar
    Revolt on the Nile.

Further reading

External links

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