Unternehmen Zeppelin
The Unternehmen (operation) Zeppelin was initiated in 1942 by SS-Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg, who became in the middle of May 1943 the Chief of Section E of Amt IV of the RSHA, the foreign intelligence service of the SS. The Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Georg Greife was responsible for this operation.
As soon as the German troops had entered the territory of the North Caucasus members of the different Caucasus National Committees, started to set up the core of a State administration and other organizations for the eventuality that Wehrmacht would force the passage in Transcaucasia.
In the summer of 1942, the Reich ministries for Finances, Interior, Foreign Affairs as well as the RSHA created a special group, “Sonderstab Kaukasus”. The “Sonderstab” (special staff) was under the aegis of “Unternehmen Zeppelin”. The members of the “Sonderstab” were to organize units of police forces to maintain order in the territory of the North Caucasus, and would constitute the organization apparatus of State.
The Unternehmen Zeppelin had many purposes: creation of intelligence groups for the collection and transmission of information from the USSR; advocacy groups for the distribution of social, national, and religious propaganda; rebel groups to organize and conduct a rebellion; and sabotage groups for political sabotage and terror.
From wireless reports of these commandos behind the Russian lines it is possible to determine what actions were taken. It was envisaged to recruit the future civil servants among the prisoners of war of Caucasian nationality, who were in large numbers in the German camps of the North Caucasus. The Azerbaijani group was directed by Abbas Bey Atamalibekov. (There is not much informations about Atamalibekov. In 1919 he was a member of the Azeri Delegation led by Alimardan Topchubashev which participated at the Paris Peace Conference in Versailles. He actively participated in the formation of national legions from the Soviet prisoners of war in 1942, together with Abdurahman Fatalibeyli-Dudanginsky and Fuad Amirjan in Berlin. He representated Azeri SS in the Azerbaijan National committee from 1943 to 1945 and then fled to Chile) Unternehmen Zeppelin was “partially successful”. Most of the Sonderstab members were captured and executed by KGB agents. In his personal archives, member of the Ostministerium, Gerhard Von Mende gives the number of 348 people from Azerbaijanese origin who participated in those operations. It is not known if anyone of them were SS.
Read more about this topic: Azeri SS Volunteer Formations