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The complete destruction of Israel had been a goal of many surrounding nations in the decades since the foundation of the state in 1948. The reasons are outside the scope of this video and are well known to most thinking people after over seven decades of conflicts in the Middle East. However, in the 1960s, one of Israel's enemies conceived a plan to harness the scientific and technological brilliance of the former Nazi Germany to ensure the eradication of Israel once and for all.
Following the end of World War II, Germans implicated in war crimes or membership of outlawed organizations like the SS and the Gestapo fled abroad in huge numbers to escape Allied justice. We all know about how tens of thousands of Nazis, including really notorious war criminals like Dr. Josef Mengele and the man who ran the Holocaust, SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann, ended up in South America, particularly in Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, escaping from Europe via so-called rat lines. Many were actively hunted by Israeli intelligence and in some cases were assassinated or in the case of Eichmann, kidnapped and brought to Jerusalem to stand trial before being executed. But most of the Nazis were not hunted or punished. And many indeed went on to work for right-wing dictatorships all over the world, such as the infamous Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo official known as the Butcher of Lyon, who ended up working closely with the Bolivian government.
SS old comrade organizations infiltrated SS officers into most parts of the new West German state, particularly its diplomatic corps and judiciary, ensuring that few prosecutions were made or extraditions demanded. Many war criminals and other tainted characters lived on in West Germany, never investigated by the authorities, considered to be either small fry or protected by shadowy friends.
Apart from South America, quite a number of Nazis fled to the Middle East. Syria in particular, most notoriously former SS Camp Commandant Alois Brunner, a mass murderer protected by the Al-Assad family until his death sometime in the late 1990s. Another location was Egypt. The dictatorship established there by army officer Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1952 following the overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy was very welcoming to many Nazis who were considered useful to Nasser's regime. For example, Nasser declared that he wanted Nazi propaganda minister Dr. Josef Goebbels' experts, saying, "We will use the services of those who know the mentality of our enemies." And by that he was referring directly to the Jews in Israel.
President Nasser gave sanctuary to some very unpleasant Nazi war criminals. Franz Bartel had been the assistant chief of the Gestapo in the Polish city of Katowice. By 1959 he was working for the Department of Jewish Affairs in the Egyptian Ministry of Information in Cairo and using the name El Hussein. His former boss SS Standartenführer or Colonel Rudolf Mildner was also in Cairo. Mildner had also been the head of the political department at Auschwitz where he interrogated prisoners. During his period in charge, he had over 2,000 Poles executed. Also working for the Egyptian government was former SS Untersturmführer or Second Lieutenant Wilhelm Boehler, who had played a prominent part in the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. In Cairo, he worked for the Israel department in the Ministry of Information.
Medical men were also well represented. Dr. Aribert Heim, a former SS doctor at Mauthausen concentration camp, wanted for war crimes, was in Cairo along with Dr. Hans Eisele, former chief doctor at Buchenwald concentration camp. He died in Cairo in 1965. Former SS Gruppenführer or General Alois Moser became an instructor of paramilitary youth groups in Cairo, and Eric Altmann, using the name Ali Bella, former regional SD chief in Galicia, was recruited as an instructor at Palestinian terrorist camps.
The anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli government that Colonel Nasser led in Egypt even embraced Nazi ideology. For example, in 1959, the Institute for the Study of Zionism was created in Cairo. It employed several former Goebbels' propaganda men, including Louis Heiden, who translated Hitler's book Mein Kampf into Arabic. The books were then distributed as free gifts to Egyptian army officers. It also maintained contacts with neo-Nazi groups abroad, including Britain's National Front.
Nasser, however, had his sights set higher than just mere propaganda against Israel. He wanted to plan a really big action against the nation based around a mysteriously labeled installation called Factory 333. The idea of domestically produced ballistic missiles was not Nasser's, but that would form the basis for this program. The first exploration of producing ballistic missiles by Egypt had occurred under the last king, Farouk, in 1952, when the first studies were conducted by two German scientists, doctors Paul Goercke and Rolf Engel, who had both been part of Wernher von Braun's V2 ballistic missile program during the war.
In 1956, Colonel Nasser had boldly nationalized the Suez Canal in order to help develop Egypt for the Egyptians. The British and French canal owners thought differently and, together with Israel, invaded Egypt. This became known as the Suez Crisis. The amphibious landing of French commandos at Port Fuad, east of the Suez Canal, proceeded as a jet bombing just about paralyzed the Egyptian defenses. Scenes reminiscent of many Allied invasions during World War II were enacted in strength for the first time since the end of that conflict. Hardly any Egyptian resistance was met, and the French were soon in the city rounding up the remnants of Colonel Nasser's army that had failed to escape. But sunken ships dotting the canal made the value of the action questionable, doubly so now that it halted here, France and Britain agreeing to a ceasefire at the request of the United Nations. Though the invasion was successful, US pressure forced the British, French, and Israelis to withdraw, and Nasser looked like a hero to the rest of the Arab world.
Nasser also swore that he would one day destroy Israel. He badgered the Soviet Union, which was supplying him with arms, to give him ballistic missiles, which Moscow refused to do. So instead, Nasser turned to his own resources and developed a very expensive program to use former Nazi scientists and technicians to design new Egyptian rockets to be secretly built at Factory 333. In late 1961, recruitment of scientists inside West Germany and Austria was begun. Starved of funds for rocket research in West Germany, several were happy to move to Egypt and work at Factory 333 or at a research institute in Cairo, being well paid and carefully protected. Another source of scientists were Germans who had gone to work postwar for the French missile program, including Professor Wolfgang Pilz, a member of von Braun's V2 program, and others such as the Austrian Dr. Eugen Sänger and Dr. Josef Isaac.
Nasser was to shock the world when, on the 23rd of July 1962, a huge military parade was held in Cairo at which two new missiles were unveiled to the public: the Kahir and the Zafir. The Al Zafir was a liquid-fueled short-range ballistic missile developed by Dr. Eugen Sänger, standing 6.1 m tall with a range of 376 km and a payload of half a ton. This particular missile program was cancelled in 1962 in favor of the Al Kahir missile. The first version, the Al Kahir 1, was a single-stage liquid-fueled unguided rocket based on the German-designed French Véronique rocket just after World War II. It had a simple wrapped sheet airframe with a conical nose, flared skirt, and four fins. It was about 9 m long and used as a power plant either the World War II-derived German Wasserfall anti-aircraft missile engine or that from the French Éole rocket. It was progressively improved and flight tested. In July 1962, the Al Kahir 2 appeared, 12 m long, and again a single-stage liquid-fueled unguided rocket with delta-shaped fins similar to the US Viking sounding rocket technology. The next version was the Al Kahir 3, slightly longer and probably using the V2 missile's engine, the missile being shorter than the German V2 that it was based upon.
All of the Egyptian missiles thus far had been unguided, but German scientists were working for the Egyptians on producing a guidance system that could make these rockets extremely accurate and therefore much more lethal. Israel was immediately on alert. These weapons could easily hit their territory. But then an even bigger threat emerged. An Austrian scientist working on the Egyptian project, Dr. Otto Yoch, had misgivings and secretly informed the Israelis of Nasser's plan to arm the missiles with chemical and biological weapons and, most importantly, radioactive waste. The latter in particular was greatly feared. Mossad, Israel's intelligence service, then learned that such a plan was indeed underway, for they had found out that Cairo had just purchased, via a firm in Zurich, Switzerland, a quantity of radioactive cobalt equivalent to 25 times their possible requirement for medical purposes.
The Controller of the Mossad, Isser Harel, went to see Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and urged that Mossad immediately begin a campaign against the German scientists who were working in Egypt or about to go there. The Egyptians could not perfect such rockets and their guidance systems and warheads without the help of these German and Austrian scientists, and they were the key to defeating Nasser's plan. The problem was that West Germany was supplying a lot of weapons to Israel, and particularly Israel was awaiting tanks from West Germany. Murdering German citizens might cause the West Germans to cut off the flow of arms. Harel and Foreign Minister Golda Meir pushed hard for actions against the German scientists, but Shimon Peres and the army were against such actions. In response, Prime Minister Ben-Gurion settled on a compromise. Harel was told to undertake a discreet campaign of intimidation to discourage German scientists from working on Nasser's rockets.
Harel, however, went way beyond his brief. Operation Damocles was conceived in September 1962. Heinz Krug, a 49-year-old German lawyer and arms dealer who in World War II had been part of von Braun's team at Peenemünde developing missiles, disappeared in Munich. Krug was director of an Egyptian dummy corporation operating in Munich that was helping to develop the missiles in Egypt. There are differing accounts concerning his fate. One is that he was executed near Munich by former SS Colonel Otto Skorzeny, Hitler's famed commando leader, who was by then working for the Mossad. Another is that he was kidnapped, taken to Israel, tortured for information on Nasser's missile program, then executed in Cairo.
Dr. Wolfgang Pilz's office was targeted. A parcel bomb detonated on the 27th of November 1962, blinding his German secretary. Another parcel was sent to the Helwan rocket factory, which killed five Egyptian technicians. Another was also sent to a German scientist, but this time failed to explode and was defused by the Egyptians. A German professor was shot at in the West German town of Lörrach, the gunman missing and speeding off in a car. This professor was working on the missile guidance electronics, which were of course of supreme importance to the missile program. In February 1963, another former V2 scientist, Hans Kleinwächter, was targeted for assassination, but the weapon used malfunctioned.
Next, Israeli agents targeted the daughter of Dr. Paul Görcke, who was then in Egypt, with the daughter living in Switzerland. Dr. Görcke was working on the all-important missile guidance systems as well. Two agents were arrested in Switzerland for coercion and illegal operations on behalf of a foreign state after Görcke's daughter called the police. It was revealed that these men had also been involved in the kidnapping of Heinz Krug. Operation Damocles was revealed to the world, causing major embarrassment for Israel. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion ordered the operation against the German scientists stopped. Harel resigned as Mossad director, but the intimidation program had the desired effect. By the end of 1963, most of the scientists had departed from the rocket program, and Nasser's ballistic missile program became stalled, never to recover.
In frustration, Nasser turned again to the USSR, and in 1967 they sent him Scud rockets. He was never to carry out his original plan of firing missiles loaded with plague or radioactive waste into Israel, but it probably remains one of the most dangerous secret operations uncovered by Israel against its sovereignty in the history of the state.
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