The Soviet Union was fighting to the death with Germany, but in fact it was not only on the Western and Northern Fronts that the Red Army was forced to fight in the south and south of Transcaucasia at the end of last summer. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

The current situation in Iran is delicate - "the Red Army is in the north, the British army is in the south", and the reason for this situation lies with the original pro-German Pahlavi king of Iran, Reza Khan.

Iran is one of the Aryan countries in the world, so in both world wars it sided with Germany.

After the First World War, Iran also had a regime change, and the situation was chaotic. In 1925, Britain supported the Iranian officer Reza Khan (born in 1878, who joined the military camp at an early age, and in 1911 he led his troops to suppress the revolution and was promoted to the head of the Guards Regiment. On February 21, 1921, with the support of the British, he staged a coup d'état without blood, became the commander of the Cossack division, and seized real power. The next two years were followed by the suppression of popular uprisings in the Geelong Soviet Republic, Khorasan Province and Azerbaijan Province. From 1923 to 1925, he was Prime Minister of Iran. Overthrew the Qajar dynasty and proclaimed the Pahlavi dynasty by constitutional decree, becoming the first king of the Pahlavi dynasty.

However, after that, Reza Khan began to part ways with the British: after the Nazis came to power, Hitler enthusiastically declared that Germany and Iranians belonged to the Aryan nation and would unite against Britain and Russia.

Almost instantly, the relationship between Germany and Iran became very close: Germany sent a large number of engineers and technicians to work in Iran to support Iran's modernization with advanced German technology; The Iranian army is fully equipped with German-style equipment; Universities in Iran are run by German faculty; Germany, which did not have a strong navy itself, asked its ally Italy to help Iran build a navy; A large number of Iranian students have studied in Germany, and Germany accounts for the first place in Iran's foreign trade......

After the outbreak of World War II, Reza Khan declared Iran neutral.

By '41, a pro-German regime had been established in Iraq, next door to Iran, and at the same time, Germany had occupied Syria in Vichy France. Britain, which had dominated the Middle East for centuries, could not sit still, and its troops reacted quickly: they landed in Iraq and occupied Baghdad, overthrowing the pro-German government; At the same time, Britain and the Free French army occupied Syria in one fell swoop.

Then it was Iran's turn: Reza Khan was not a formal ally of Germany, but everyone knew that his pro-German tendencies would be a threat to both Britain and the Soviet Union.

In June, Germany attacked the Soviet Union: Britain and the Soviet Union reached a mutual agreement against Germany, and the two countries would give each other the necessary help in the war against Germany, and would never make peace alone without the consent of the other side. Britain also agreed to immediately provide the Soviet Union with the arms and medicines it urgently needed, and there was also a clause in the treaty to unite to force the Iranian Reza Khan to expel the Germans from Iran, because Iran could become an important channel for Britain to transport arms and medicines to the Soviet Union!

A careful look at the world map reveals the predicament of the Allies in choosing a route to aid the Soviet Union: the ports of the Soviet Far East were under the close surveillance of the Japanese Navy, and Japan had in fact entered into an alliance with Germany in September 1940, but it had not yet entered the war directly; Those ports were far from the western front of the Soviet Union, and the long Trans-Siberian Railway, which connected the two lines, had a shortage of capacity.

Sending aid to Murmansk through the Arctic Ocean was even more dangerous, since ships laden with supplies were vulnerable to German submarines and aircraft based in Norway; The port conditions of Murmansk itself are not enough to meet the requirements of large quantities of freight, railway transportation is inconvenient, and it is simply impossible to expand the port as soon as possible.

The passage of aid to Ukraine from the Mediterranean and Black Seas is equally dangerous, and with Turkey closing the Dardanelles, an Allied convoy would be met with fierce resistance from Turkey, which is likely to call on the intervention of Germany, which has already occupied Greece and Bulgaria.

Apparently, the only route that the Allies could immediately use to assist the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 was from the ports of the Persian Gulf to Baku and the Caspian Sea via the railroad through Iran. It was clear that Iran had become a strategic link between the Soviet Union and Britain, and the experience of Iraq in April of that year reminded both countries that they must not allow the Germans to exist near this strategic route.

Reza Khan underestimated the importance of the issue and the determination of the British and Soviets, and finally made a big mistake: the stubborn Reza Khan withstood pressure from both sides and rejected the demands of the British and the Soviet Union - the result was, of course, an attack by both the British army and the Soviet Red Army.

Lin Jun felt a little pitiful for the stubborn Reza Khan: he wanted to make the country strong, but he chose the wrong ally, and he did not know enough about the development of the world situation and the cruel war in Europe - in order to completely defeat the fascists, Britain and the Soviet Union could do anything.

Because of the fierce fighting on the Western Front, Iran's strength was not worth mentioning, and many residents in northern Iran were originally inclined to the Soviet Union, Lin Jun only had a slight understanding of the military plan against Iran at that time. All in accordance with the global strategy he proposed, and Iran became the first step towards "warm water".

On July 18 last year, the Soviet Union and Great Britain sent a joint note to the Iranian government demanding the expulsion of Germans working in Iran. In the reply, the Iranian government noted: Iran's industrial sector needs the guidance of German specialists, and it will be difficult to find a replacement for them in a short time. Moreover, the limited number of German experts, and the strict surveillance of the Iranian government, do not pose a threat.

This reply obviously did not satisfy Molotov, and the British on the other side were even more uneasy: the German Vasmus who caused great trouble for the British in southern Persia during World War I (in April 1915, the German consul in the city of Bushehr, Persia, known as the "Lawrence of Persia", won the nomadic tribes of southern Persia to his side, and with the help of the pro-German Persian gendarmerie, he established a guerrilla force and swept away the British army in the province of Fars). And this is just one of the proud works of this gentleman. His public identity is that of a "harmless" consular officer.

On August 16, the Soviet Union and Britain sent another note demanding that Iran expel all German nationals in order to put an end to the activities of the German agents. In the reply, the Iranian government said that the total number of German expatriates in Iran was only 470, far fewer than that of the allied nationals. Neutral Portugal did not expel the German nationals, nor did Switzerland, Sweden and the United States, and it would be a violation of the principle of strict neutrality for Iran to expel these German nationals.

On August 23, Reza Khan also asked the United States to intervene to stop the British and Soviet coercion of Iran. However, the U.S. minister to Tehran instead persuaded Iran to join the allies and declare war on Germany. Reza Khan felt that the allies were acting strangely, so he asked the minister in London to inquire about the true intentions and demands of the allies, but received no reply. The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was then able to inform the German Minister in Tehran that Iran had decided to repatriate the German nationals who had not yet been evacuated and that arrangements were in place for the repatriation of the German nationals via Turkey.

However, neither the USSR nor the British would have time to wait, and would not allow a pro-German Iran to exist behind them! Both sides decided to do it at the same time and solve this time bomb of Iran once and for all!

According to the war plan of the German High Command, if the German army crushes the Soviet army in Ukraine and then takes the Caucasus, then they will definitely take advantage of the victory and drive straight into Iran, seize the oil and refineries in the Persian Gulf, cut off the largest fuel supply source of the British army, and then attack India, and in the future have a victorious rendezvous with Japan, which is also eyeing the Indian Ocean.

The British knew this, and at the same time the British also saw that the establishment of so-called "peaceful and friendly relations" between Germany and Iran was a prelude to the conquest of Iran, because Germany had always adopted the successful experience of Europe, first infiltrating the countries economically and politically, then weakening them internally, and finally destroying them by blitzkrieg.

The Allies watched the hype of the German embassy and the "German Cultural Center" in Iran, believing that German spies could easily destroy the Trans-Iranian Railway: the railway passed through numerous tunnels and bridges along the way, and the destruction of a large bridge or an important tunnel would mean that the railway would be paralyzed for at least a few months!

Last summer, Iran's army was numbered about 120,000 men and consisted of two Royal Guards Divisions armed with 105-mm Skoda guns (both stationed in Tehran), nine ordinary divisions (each stationed in six military districts across the country, five in the north against the Soviet Union and four in the south against the British), five military police brigades, and one separate mechanized brigade.

The Royal Iranian Air Force has about 400 aircraft, organized into eight groups. The Iranian Navy has 2 gunboats, 5 torpedo boats, 1 armed tugboat, 1 armed yacht in the Caspian Sea, and 2 Italian-built gunboats, 4 gunboats, 3 torpedo boats and 1 tugboat in the Persian Gulf.

At first glance, the Iranian army is quite numerous, but the combat effectiveness is practically not worth mentioning for the Soviet Red Army and the British army!

On the offensive side, the British prepared forces included the 8th and 10th Indian Divisions, the 2nd Indian Armoured Brigade, the 9th Armoured Brigade and the 21st Indian Infantry Brigade. The Red Army, for its part, drew part of the offensive forces from the 44th, 47th and 53rd armies of the Transcaucasian and Central Asian Military District.

At midnight on August 25 last year, the Soviet Union launched its attack on Iran. A motorized unit of the Red Army, numbering about 2,000 people, crossed the Aras River, a boundary river, in the Nakhichwan region of southern Azerbaijan and entered the territory of Iran. Soon captured Maku and Hoy, and then marched east via Tabriz.

500 kilometers to the east, another 2,000-strong Red Army column marched eastward along the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, captured the port of Nzeri and Rasht, and approached the city of Qazvin, where it soon joined up with the First Route Army.

The 3rd Route Red Army landed 1,000 men at the port of Shah, captured the northern provinces of Golgan and Khorasan, and then advanced to the railway junction of the Semnan River Shahrud.

In order to make the Iranian army give up resistance, the Red Army planes also bombed Tabriz, Rasht, Qazvin and Rezaye on the day of the attack on Iran, and the suburbs of Tehran the next day, destroying the opponent from the will.

In the face of a sudden Soviet attack, most of the unprepared Iranian troops were disarmed in the barracks. As in the liberation of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, officers and intelligence officers of the Iranian army with the rank of lieutenant colonel were screened out by NKVD officers, and some were taken to Baku for interrogation; Some Iranian soldiers escaped from the barracks under cover of night and took refuge in nearby homes – the Iranian army in northern Iran collapsed almost overnight.

Some local tribes in Iran, dissatisfied with Tehran's rule, took advantage of the opportunity to rise up and take control of Iran's northern mountains with the cooperation and protection of the Red Army.

Britain on the other side also acted at the same time: the Soviet Union and Iran did not fight at sea in the Caspian region, and in the southern Persian Gulf, British warships shelled the Iranian fleet anchored there.

At the port of Shaphel near the mouth of the Karen River, which is also the starting point of the Trans-Iranian Railway, a combined Anglo-Australian fleet carrying a landing force quietly entered the port at 4:08 a.m. on 25 August.

This small flotilla consisted of the gunboat "Yarra", the frigate "Famouth", the auxiliary cruiser "Canimbra", 1 gunboat, 2 armed yachts and 2 armed river passenger boats.

The British saw that the Iranian warships in the harbor were defenseless, and the fleet commander, Brigadier General Harrington, ordered a sudden opening of fire.

The gunboat "Yala" hit the largest warship of the Iranian Navy, the gunboat "Tiger", which was purchased from Italy, and severely damaged it. The Yarra then entered the Karon River channel and fired at the rest of the Iranian gunboats with its 3-pounder guns and machine guns, and the opposing sailors jumped into the river to flee for their lives. By 5:30 a.m., all the Indian Army soldiers on board the Anglo-Australian fleet had landed and occupied the port of Shaphel.

There are also five German and three Italian cargo ships moored in the port of Schaphel. Although the ships were under constant surveillance by two Iranian warships, their presence always unnerved Britain, fearing that its crew would take advantage of the opportunity to sink the ship in the Shatt al-Arab in order to block the only entrance to the dockyard of the large Abadan refinery.

When the Allied fleet sailed into the port of Schapher, the crews of two German ships began to bomb the ship: one of them was controlled by Australian soldiers on board before the explosion, and the crew of the other German merchant ship, the Hohenfeld, succeeded in detonating the explosives in the ship, but the wrong location of the scuttling ship failed to block the river, and the rest of the Axis cargo ships in the port of Schaphel were all captured.

In the port of Babadam, the British Navy gunboat Shoalham sank the gunboat Leopard, the sister ship of the Tiger, and other Iranian warships in the harbor were either destroyed or captured. The Yarra and Kanimbra then went on patrol in the southeastern waters of Iran and destroyed and captured the Italian merchant ship Hilda in Bandar Abbas in the Strait of Hormuz.

During the day on 25 August, a group of British Royal Air Force "Blenheim" light bombers made a surprise attack on Ahvaz airfield, and the Iranian planes parked there were blown up on the ground before they could take off. More than 8,000 British and Indian soldiers then sailed north north of the Karen River for a day of fierce fighting (let's take it as a fierce battle, at least that's what the British say – compare the casualties to understand how fierce the "fierce fighting" often referred to by Western politicians and propaganda outlets was). After that, Ahvaz was captured. The other line of British troops departed from Hanagan, Iraq, and crossed the border at 4 a.m. on the 25th, where they met with resolute resistance from Iranian forces near Kermanshah (although it did not seem to inflict many casualties on the British). ), 4 days later to occupy the Kermanshah oil field.

Air bases in southern Iran were swept away by the British, officers and men were sent home, and Iranian Air Force planes were demolished by British soldiers. At Iran's largest Dushan-Thape airbase, where the British took over the Shahz aircraft assembly plant, 15 brand-new Curtiss "****" fighter jets, which had just arrived from the United States, were confiscated by the British and shipped to India.

In Tehran, Reza Khan learned of the invasion of British and Soviet troops from Prime Minister Mansour in the early hours of 25 August, and he immediately expressed his readiness to accede to the demands of the Soviet and British Ambassadors.

It's not too late! The reply of the British and Soviet envoys was: the armies of the two countries will continue to advance!

Although Reza Khan knew that it would be easy for the allies with their superior forces and weapons to attack Iran, he was naïve until the last minute that the Allies would not have done so much out of moral considerations and respect for international law and norms governing international relations.

morality, that is the truth that can only be said when there is no threat to oneself; The fire is burning in your own backyard, and the idiot is talking to you about morality!

International Law and International Relations? It's a world war, how many people will comply?

The rapid Allied strikes took the Iranian army by surprise, and throughout the course of the military operation ("Operation Y" as the British code name came out), the Soviet-British forces achieved military success with their surprise suddenness, and the oil fields of the Persian Gulf and the railway running through Iran had fallen into the hands of the Allies.

The small Iranian air force and navy no longer exist, and the army units have been shattered. On one side, the Anglo-Indian army paid the price of 22 killed and 42 wounded (which shows how "fierce" the battle was!). And the Red Army casualties combined were less than 30!

On August 27, Prime Minister Mansour was dismissed by Reza Khan, and the new prime minister ordered the Iranian armed forces to stop resisting.

On 30 August, the British and Soviet ambassadors demanded that the Iranian army cease its resistance completely, that all German nationals except diplomats be expelled, and that Iran facilitate the transportation of arms, weapons, and war materiel by the allies through their territory.

On August 31, Britain and the Soviet Union demanded that Iran transfer German nationals to Soviet and British forces.

By September 9, Iran's new prime minister had the consent of the parliament and agreed to the allies' terms. However, the Soviet Union and Britain could not wait for a slow delay: the next day Britain and the Soviet Union again issued an ultimatum to Iran, demanding that Iran must close the German, Italian, Romanian, and Hungarian embassies and hand over the German expatriates within 48 hours, otherwise the Allies would fully occupy Iran.

On September 16, British and Soviet forces pressed on Tehran, and the Iranian National Assembly was forced to declare Reza Khan's abdication. The next day, British and Soviet troops marched into Tehran.

All the Germans in Iran were arrested, and the able-bodied half of them were selected by the Soviets and sent to the labor camps in Kolyma, Siberia, where they were mined; The British did the same crisp as the USSR: the other half was exiled to Australia by the British.

After Reza Khan abdicated, he passed the throne to his 21-year-old ****, and then left Tehran. The deposed king and his party first passed through Isfahan to Bandar Abbas, where they boarded a Persian ship. Before boarding the ship, Rezahan ordered a piece of Persian soil to be dug up, put it in a small bag, and stuffed it into his own pocket - he would not return.

The ship was supposed to go to South America, but when it arrived in Mumbai, it was decided to go to the British island of Mauritius instead. Suffering from advanced arteriosclerosis, Reza Khan decided to go to South Africa for a check-up, and finally died of a heart attack in Johannesburg in 1944, the former king of Iran, who had no political foresight, lived to be 65 years old.

On September 17, 1941, the young Mohammad Reza Pahlavi began his difficult and tortuous ruling career when he was sworn in in the parliament building (the story ended in history, like his Lao Tzu, when the Shah of Iran went into exile and died abroad). But Lin Jun didn't want him to be ousted until 1979.

Finally, by the end of last year, Iran signed a Triple Alliance treaty with Britain and the Soviet Union.

In this treaty, Britain and the Soviet Union made it clear that the presence of troops in Iran "in no way implies military occupation" and pledged to respect Iran's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, and to fully withdraw from Iran within six months of the end of the war against Germany. In addition, Iran should hand over to the Allied administration all roads, railways, rivers, airports, ports, oil pipelines, telephones, telegraphs, and radio facilities throughout the territory, and the Allies should guarantee that Iran would not be divided between Britain and the Soviet Union in the future.

However, treaties are treaties, and it is estimated that there are many more treaties in human history that have not been implemented and do not count than have been implemented! The measures taken by Britain and the Soviet Union in their occupied areas, according to Lin Jun, were: "If I don't divide you, then I have a problem with my brain!" ”

In the British-occupied territories, the British purged German spies and pro-German chieftains, while supporting the separatist activities of the tribes against the central government in Tehran.

On the Red Army-controlled side, the Red Army drove out the Iranian governors of the northern provinces and replaced them with Iranians leaning towards their side, bringing these places completely under their own military, political and economic control, with a bit of a state within a state. Lin Jun and the Soviet High Command wanted this effect, and at the same time supported the Iranian People's Party, which had developed from the Communist Party of Iran, to develop its power in the northern region, expand its control area and influence, and create conditions for the seizure of power after the war and the eventual seizure of power.

As of the beginning of this year, the Red Army had the 402nd Infantry Division, the 1st Mountain Cavalry Division, the 23rd Cavalry Division and two motorized independent regiments in northern Iran. The Anglo-Indian forces in southern Iran and Iraq were organized into the 10th Army Corps and placed under the command of the Middle East Command.

For the Soviet Union, the operation was significant: the area was rich in oil, and the closest point on the border between the Soviet Union and Iran was less than 150 kilometers from the Baku oil fields - there was no room for snoring from a couch! Now it not only ensures an international supply line, but also makes the first substantive action for Lin Jun's Middle East strategy.

For political reasons, Reza Khan saved his life - for the sake of "warm water", the Soviet Union and Lin Junke could do anything, not to mention that the Soviet Union still had an old account of the "Persian Soviet Socialist Republic" (also known as the Geelong Republic) with him.

Since the past two years, according to Lin Jun's strategic plan, the Soviet Union has been sending weapons and ammunition to the tribal areas of northwestern Iran to train Soviet-leaning militants there. This would have been a fierce war in the western part of the Soviet Union, but the intelligence services had not relaxed their grip on and infiltrated Iran, where two Soviet republics were being formed in East Azerbaijan and the Kurdish region.

Those two Soviet republics would not be incorporated into the Soviet Union, but part of Iran, and Lin Jun's desire for territory was not so great; It is precisely because of this that it is only "planned and formed" rather than "established".

This will make the British actually control the entire southern region of Iran, and the Soviet Union will not even occupy the mouth of the Persian Gulf, Lin Jun is a little dissatisfied, but there is nothing to be done for the time being! After the war situation on the Western Front becomes clearer, Bandar Abbas, located on the northern shore of the Gulf of Hormuz, at the exit of the Persian Gulf, and Chakhbahar Port on the Arabian Sea are what Lin Jun is determined to get!

Although Bandar Abbas can only berth ships up to 40,000 tons, and Chakhbahar Port is even smaller, both of them are of extremely important military and economic value! And in the short term, it is much more realistic than wanting to get one or two leased ports in Pakistan to be used as military bases.

This would be a delicate game between the Soviet Union and the British in Iran, and this is politics. As for the Pahlavi dynasty, it's just an ornament.

As for how to successfully obtain the "warm water" outlet to the sea in the future, Lin Jun is not worried: Historically, the Red Army withdrew from Iran in 46 because of the threat of the United States - "When Lao Tzu has an atomic bomb, which guy dares to chirp crookedly in front of me?!" ”

"The fist is the political bodyguard, I want the right to use the two ports and the right to ensure the passage of goods by railway between Transcaucasia and the Arabian Sea coast, and I don't want to swallow Iran!"

Lin Jun's idea was "very kind and simple", but it was clear that Britain and the United States would block this, and it was clear who had the big fist at the time - and because of this, Lin Jun did not allow the Red Army troops to penetrate directly into the Persian Gulf coast last year: for Abadan and Muhamara, Khorramshahr, a city in southwestern Iran, the largest dry port. Lin Jun wasn't much interested for the time being, as they were all inland ports, and the farther Strait of Hormuz and the Arabian Sea coast were important targets.

Controlling the Strait of Hormuz, the throat of the Persian Gulf, is equivalent to controlling the economic lifeline of the entire Western world in the future, and Lin Jun's strategy is very clear. You can't tear your face with Yingmei now, but when it is right and necessary, Lin Jun will not hesitate to show the sword in his hand with Yingmei, and he will not hesitate to fight! In the end, of course, it is necessary to foster the establishment of a Soviet-leaning Iranian government, which requires the acquisition of Iranian power at the right time, and that will be done once and for all.

If you want to get oil from the Persian Gulf, you have to take complete control of Iran and put it on your side - a vast and long-term strategy that the Soviet youth delegation on the train did not yet know. (To be continued.) )