Sunday, November 28, 2010

Tehran 1943: The Rostov Youth Who Saved the Big Three

On this date in 1943, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt came together at the Tehran Conference to plan strategy in the war against Nazi Germany. Hitler had learned about their plans for a secret meeting and plotted to have them killed or kidnapped. His efforts were thwarted thanks in part to Gevork Vartanyan, a Russian lad born here in Rostov-on-Don, who moved to Iran with his parents.



Just happen to have a photo of The Big Three taken two years after Tehran, during their Yalta Conference in 1945. This, their final meeting together, was at Livadia Palace, the Crimean Republic of Ukraine.




Okay, back to Tehran in 1943. . .

Russia Today (RT) interviewed our hero, Gevork Vartanyan, the legendary spy, now retired. History buffs will enjoy this interview in English. He's quite loyal and diplomatic too as shown when the interviewer asked for his candid opinion about Stalin and his leadership in the war.



This interview is in Russian and conducted at a Moscow university. Here Vartanyan is shown together with his wife. As I understand it, Vartanyan says 75% of his intelligence efforts were thanks to his wife.


1 comment:

Andrey said...

Thanks for very interesting topic.
Unfortunately there are a lot of invisible and unknown heroes.