There is one final point: the operation initiated by Harel to eliminate the German scientists was codenamed Damocles and had been supervised by Yitzhak Shamir, the future prime minister and leader of the Likud party.44 He received unexpected support from Otto Skorzeny, one of Hitler's SS leaders and the man who helped liberate Mussolini. The Israelis had somehow managed to get him to work for them. But how? This still remains a mystery and of course, Skorzeny himself has never told. However, contact with the Israelis had to be strengthened at the end of the 1950s during which time Mossad was engaged in the hunt for Adolf Eichmann. Had Skorzeny been paid, or was he blackmailed? Was he physically threatened? Whatever the case, he definitely collaborated with Israeli intelligence and provided them with very valuable information about the German scientists who had been working in Egypt for so long.
Chapter 9
Lotz: saved by a little piece of skin...
Wolfgang Lotz was one of the greatest spies of the twentieth century. He was the man who allowed the Israelis to identify, locate and punish the Nazi scientists who were working on Egypt's missile construction programme.45
Immediately after the Second World War, many Third Reich zealots found refuge in Arab countries where Nazi propaganda had been particularly effective both before and during the war. This was not an entirely innocent decision, insofar as the leaders of the Arab countries would soon rise against the fledgling Jewish state.
Among the many German exiles, who had mainly gathered in Egypt, were a group of scientists: men who had taken part in the work ofVon Braun, the man behind the V1 and V2 rockets that had caused such terrible damage in England. As the Allies had forbidden Germany from building any more missiles after the war, these men were now without employment and so agreed to go to Egypt, where Colonel Nasser intended to equip his country with more modern weapons of warfare. By 1962 the Egyptian leader was able to launch four rockets. These weapons had enough range to reach Israeli territory, even if their guidance system was not yet properly developed. Tel Aviv was in panic. Even more so when one of the scientists defected and informed Israeli intelligence that the Egyptians planned to equip the warheads with radioactive waste.
The Israeli leaders were anxious and embarrassed: their current relationship with Germany was very good and any anti-German sentiment would be unwelcome. Yet Israel's security was at stake and the head of Mossad took it upon himself to launch Operation Damocles. This involved a series of top-secret targeted attacks, killings, letter-bombings and threats against the German scientists working for Nasser. It is here that Wolfgang Lotz comes into play...
What must first be acknowledged is that in Nasser's Egypt, anything relating to the existence of the German scientists was taboo. These men, many of whom had been zealous supporters of the Hitler regime, were never spoken of and both lived and worked north of Cairo in a top-secret complex, known only by its codename: 333. It was virtually impossible to gain access without undertaking something extraordinarily daring, which is just what Lotz had to do.
This Israeli, who rendered great service to his country, was born in Germany in 1920. His mother was a Jewish actress and his father, a pure ‘Aryan', was a theatre director. One very important fact was that Lotz was not circumcised - something that would later save his life.
Lotz's parents divorced a few years after the birth of their son. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Wolfgang's mother was conscious of the danger posed to Jews and so emigrated to Palestine with her son. Young Wolfgang attended a Zionist school and changed his name to Ze'ev (meaning ‘wolf' in Hebrew) Gur-Aire. As a young man he enrolled in the Haganah, a Zionist paramilitary movement. Apart from his underground activities with Haganah, Lot's other great passion was horse riding, not to mention being a bon vivant and womaniser: he was twice married before the age of twenty!
After high school he joined the Army and fought alongside the British in Egypt, where he was responsible for interviewing German prisoners of war from the Afrika Korps. At the time, Egypt was a British protectorate, and Lotz's knowledge of German (his mother tongue) meant that he was able to be of great service. He was a great linguist and also spoke English, Hebrew and Arabic: a talent that would prove very useful in years to come.
Physically, Lotz was a big, burly blonde with blue eyes. Naturally reckless, he was not afraid to take risks and after the war he worked as a lieutenant trafficking arms for Haganah, during the first Arab-Israeli conflict in 1948. It was then that he decided to make the army his career. During the Suez Crisis in 1956, he commanded an elite infantry brigade and soon after was approached by Aman, the Israeli military intelligence service. No doubt his physicality and language skills had attracted the recruiters.
Israeli services had already learned that Nasser, humiliated by the defeat of the Suez campaign, intended to start manufacturing modern weapons with the help of German scientists. They therefore wanted to know more about what Nasser was planning. Hence the idea to send Lotz to Egypt; a country he already knew well. Thanks to his Aryan looks, there was a chance that he could pass himself off as a Wehrmacht or even SS officer, one of many similar former Nazi soldiers who had found refuge in Egypt.
First he had to construct a back story, or legend, as they say in the Secret Service, as well as undergo intensive training to learn espionage techniques to help him construct his new life. He went back to using his original name, Lotz, and posed as a former officer in the Afrika Korps, having fought with Rommel's army in North Africa and Libya. He claimed to have had sympathised with the Nazis, without being a ‘card-carrying member'. He planned to pose
