ALMÁSY WAS ALSO IN BERLIN during the winter of 1941. He was clarifying his plan – Operation Salam – to infiltrate agents into Cairo by a 1700-mile land route, travelling via the Jalo Oasis to the Gilf Kebir plateau, bypassing the LRDG base at Kufra, east to the Kharga Oasis, then dropping the agents close to Assiut on the Nile. From there they would make their own way to Cairo where they would transmit information using the radios they brought with them to ‘Abteilung 1 attached to the headquarters of the Panzer Armee in Africa’.1 Once the agents were on their own in Cairo, the transmission of intelligence would come under the codename of Operation Kondor.
But which agents should be sent to Cairo? They would have to be resourceful men. Eppler was one. He claimed to have known Almásy before the war, even accompanying him on one of his trips into the desert.
The assurance of the man Almásy was truly enviable. He had not changed since the day in 1935, we had broken down with engine trouble near the great Mohariq Barkan Dune. We had been searching for the lost oasis and were resigned to awaiting the end, but he quite calmly repeated; ‘The last moment has not yet come. Someone will turn up and get us out of this.’ And right enough, someone did just about at curtain time. It was Robert Clayton, who took us back to the Nile Valley.2
Eppler indicates that he met Almásy again in May 1942; other sources say they met in Vienna in the autumn of 1941 to discuss the mission.3
Hans Gerd Sandstette was the other agent (known as Sandy by Eppler and Sandstette to British intelligence.)4 He was born in Oldenburg in 1913 and lived in Germany until 1930 when he immigrated to West Africa, going on to work in several parts of the continent. He was arrested and interned by the British in Dar-es-Salaam, but was repatriated to Germany in January 1940 in a British-German exchange of civilians. Like Eppler, he came under the wing of the Abwehr, and worked in the Army Topographical Department on maps. He was given a forged British passport in the name of Peter Muncaster – an American he had met in East Africa – to be used once in Cairo (Operation Kondor). Although Sandy became known as Eppler’s ‘expert radio operator’, both men underwent W/T training, first in Munich and then at the Abwehr wireless station at Berlin-Stansdorf.5
In December 1941 Almásy left for Africa. In mid-February 1942 the rest of the party followed, leaving Berlin by train. Comprising Eppler, Sandy and three wireless operators under Sergeant Major Hans Von Steffens, they took with them specialist equipment, sand ladders and radio sets modified for the desert.
The British were reading the Abwehr messages, albeit with a fairly low priority as far as the ‘Almásy Commando’ was concerned. On 20 February they knew Von Steffens’ party had ‘left for Rome on 18 February’, that they were cleared to use ‘the air route’ to Tripoli for ‘Max and Moritz’ and had been ordered to ‘inform Almásy of this’.6
Max and Moritz were Sandy and Eppler’s codenames. Both had left in such a hurry they had not paid bills left in their lodgings, and Almásy received a message from Abwehr HQ, asking him to deduct these costs from their wages, an unusual use of a supposedly secure radio link.7
Arriving in Naples they flew on to Tripoli in Luftwaffe JU 52 transport planes. In Tripoli they spent time overhauling their British trucks – 0.5-ton Ford V8s and 1.5-ton Bedford lorries – for the desert journey. They were fitted with light machine guns and the three Fords carried Ascania global compasses. The command vehicle also carried a sextant. All vehicles were marked with German crosses – in accordance with the Geneva Convention – but were sprayed with sand so these could only be seen at close quarters. From the air they would appear British. All personnel wore German uniforms to prevent them being shot if captured.
During this time, the spring of 1942, Almásy’s name came to the attention of Jean Howard, then Miss Jean Alington, a young linguist working at Bletchley Park’s Hut 3. This was the sorting hut for Hut 6 – a decoding hut – which passed messages to Hut 3 for translation, analysis and dispatch.8 Miss Alington noticed some Abwehr intercepts relating to the ‘Almásy Commando’, which seemed to have been overlooked. It is not surprising that a rather obscure Hungarian was considered of little importance given the volume of work; the Battle of the Atlantic was raging and other resources were concentrated on Rommel’s next offensive in the desert war. However, she noted that the codename Salam seemed to relate to an operation. ‘I had noticed this Almásy Commando was to go through a part of North Africa [near the Qattara Depression] where we had a false army, a signal unit, not tanks etc., but signals being sent out to look as though it was an entire army.’ She sought and was given permission from her superiors to keep an eye on Almásy, providing she did it in her own time.
Jean felt that ‘this man must be caught.’ She later revealed in an interview her anxiety:
It would be terrible if we didn’t send someone to catch him before he discovered the truth about our phantom army. So I got permission to send a message to Cairo that aircraft should fly from Kufra Oasis to look for him and alternatively that we should send people up from the south to do what they could, but to pick them up alive. It seemed to me very important not to kill them but to pick them up alive.
Her rather precautionary tone here reflects the need above all to protect Ultra.9
The situation in Africa when Eppler and his companions arrived in Tripoli in February 1942 had been shaped by the military events during and following Operation Crusader. Auchinleck’s winter offensive – launched in November 1941 – had caught Rommel unprepared; the General had to hurry back from Rome, where he had been on leave. On the 17th the British had launched a preparatory commando raid against what they thought to be Rommel’s headquarters at Beda Littoria, hoping to kill or capture him. By that time it was HQ of the Quartermaster-General Major Schleusener. Rommel had not used it for months, a fact which British intelligence had failed to pick up. Even though the attacking commandos pressed home the attack with great courage, it was a fruitless undertaking. Even Schleusener was not in the HQ; he was in hospital at Apollonia having gone down with dysentery. Only a few staff officers and other ranks were present.10
In the six weeks of confused fighting that followed, the British relieved Tobruk and pushed the Axis forces back 400 miles. Rommel’s leadership and superior armour were unable to save the situation, for he was hamstrung by his supply lines. Thanks partly to Ultra, the Royal Navy and RAF operating largely from Malta were able to sink fourteen of the 22 ships sent to Africa over this period. Rommel was defeated, not by superior force or superior generalship but by lack of materiel.
The Eighth Army hardly looked like a victorious force; hundreds of its burnt-out tanks and vehicles littered the desert. Auchinleck even had to relieve its leader, Lieutenant-General Cunningham, of his command during the battle, as the man was exhausted and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Major-General Neil Ritchie, Deputy Chief of Staff at GHQ, took over. He was extremely reluctant to do so believing he was only qualified to command a Corps but Auchinleck felt that Ritchie had the drive and boldness Cunningham lacked. He was right in this, but so was Ritchie in saying that he lacked the experience to handle such a large force and complex battle. He failed to raise confidence in his officers or morale in his men; the latter had an unbounded admiration for Rommel.
The pendulum of the desert war was already swinging back toward the Axis. Japan’s entry into the war in December meant reinforcements for the desert were diverted to India and Malaya. However unlike during the Greek fiasco of 1941, the Eighth Army was not stripped of men or equipment.
Eventually Rommel’s supply situation improved; ships started to get through in larger numbers as Malta was pounded by the Luftwaffe, and the Royal Navy suffered one of its worst periods of the war. Repulse and Prince of Wales were lost off Malaya, Ark Royal and Barham were sunk by U-boats in the Mediterranean and Valiant and Queen Elizabeth were sunk by Italian ‘human torpedoes’ in Alexandria harbour (although both would be salvaged and return to the fight). In Egypt King Farouk was said to have celebrated the sinking of the aircraft carrier Ark Royal with a glass of champagne.11
‘On 21 January’ Auchinleck reported ‘the improbable occurred, and without warning the Axis forces began to advance.’ Taken by surprise by the re-supplied and regrouped Afrika Korps, the battle raced back eastward. Benghazi and Derna were reoccupied.
Rommel’s drive came to a halt on 7 February on a line running south from Gazala, 100 miles east along the Via Balbia from Derna. A three-month lull descended on the desert war.12
The Almásy Commando remained in Tripoli, having no direct role to perform, awaiting personnel and equipment. But Operation Salam was very much a go.
See here for a list of abbreviations used in the below notes
1 KV 3/5 MI5 Memo
2 Eppler, p.199
3 Kelly, p.200
4 KV 3/5 MI5
5 Eppler, p.209
6 GCCS 19/94 No 26386 Berlin-Tripoli 20/2/1942
7 GCCS 19/28 No 25064 Berlin-Tripoli 16/4/1942
8 Bletchley Park National Codes Centre
9 Bierman, p.169
10 Carell, p 48
11 Cooper, p.146
12 Lewin, R., Rommel as Military Commander p.96