Operation Atlas

Operation Atlas (German: Unternehmen Atlas) was a failed Arab-Nazi commando mission carried out in British Mandatory Palestine in October 1944 during World War II. The operation was jointly organized by Nazi German intelligence and Palestinian Arab collaborators associated with Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini. Its objectives were to incite anti-British and anti-Jewish violence, organize sabotage operations, and encourage a broader Arab uprising against British rule in Palestine.

Nazi-Arab 'Operation Atlas'

The mission was approved by senior SS leadership, including Heinrich Himmler, and was coordinated through the Nazi Sicherheitsdienst (SD). The operation reflected the wartime collaboration between Nazi Germany and al-Husseini, who had aligned himself politically with the Axis powers during the war.

The commando unit consisted of five men: three German operatives and two Palestinian Arabs. The mission was led by Kurt Wieland, a German officer raised in Palestine’s German Templer community who later joined the SS security service. The Palestinian participants included Hassan Salameh, a veteran terror commander from the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine, and Thulkifl Abdul Latif, both supporters of al-Husseini.

According to historical accounts and British intelligence records, al-Husseini worked closely with Nazi planners, helped select personnel, approved equipment, and emphasized that the operation should focus on attacks against Jews. The team was supplied with weapons, explosives, radio equipment, forged documents, propaganda materials, poison, and large quantities of currency intended to fund insurgent activities.

Before deployment, members of the operation reportedly attended meetings in Berlin and at Wannsee with SS officials and al-Husseini, where speeches described a joint struggle against Jews and the British presence in Palestine. The mission’s intended targets included Jewish population centers, synagogues, infrastructure, and economic sites, while also attempting to provoke wider Arab unrest throughout Palestine and the broader Middle East.

Some historians, including Michael Bar-Zohar and Eitan Haber, have argued that cartons of arsenic carried by the team were intended for a plan to poison the drinking water system of Tel Aviv, specifically the pumping station at Rosh HaAyin.

After an initial failed departure from Greece due to aircraft problems, the team was successfully parachuted into the Jericho region near Wadi Qelt on 6 October 1944. The landing went badly: much of the equipment was lost or scattered, communications failed, and the operatives struggled to establish local contacts or operational capability.

British authorities quickly discovered evidence of the infiltration and launched a manhunt. The commandos wandered through Palestine for days without carrying out any significant attacks or sabotage operations. Three members of the group were eventually captured by British forces without resistance, while another was later detained. Hassan Ali Salameh escaped capture at the time.

British interrogations and intelligence investigations uncovered extensive details about the mission, including plans for sabotage, bombings, anti-Jewish attacks, and efforts to organize Arab militant networks in coordination with al-Husseini’s supporters. British intelligence also linked Operation Atlas to similar Nazi-backed efforts in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East aimed at mobilizing anti-Jewish and anti-British insurgencies.

Hasan Salama - reward poster - 1945

The German operatives were ultimately treated as prisoners of war and were not prosecuted after the war. Abdul Latif was later interned in the Seychelles. Hassan Ali Salameh later fought against Jewish forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and died from combat wounds in 1948.

Salameh’s son, Ali Hassan Salameh, later became a senior figure in the Palestinian militant organization Black September, which was responsible for the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.

Historian Marc Goldberg described Operation Atlas as one of the clearest examples of direct operational collaboration between Nazi Germany and Palestinian Arab nationalist forces aligned with Haj Amin al-Husseini during World War II. And that it "casts light on Nazi attempts to squelch the Jewish State"

See also

• Nazism among Arab Palestinians

Notes

• Marc Goldberg, Operation Atlas Casts Light on Nazi Attempts to Squelch the Jewish State. Tablet Magazine, April 15, 2021. The untold story of how a team of Nazi commandos teamed up with Palestinian Arab leader Haj Amin al-Husseini to kill Jews.

• Bergman, R. (2019). Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations. United States: Random House Publishing Group, p.641 n. 23

• Operation Atlas – Poisoning Tel-Aviv Residents. Isracast.

"The Mufti.. concocted a new kind of antisemitism that combined traditional Muslim antisemitism, like the anti-Jewish verses you find in the Koran, with the Nazi antisemitism that demonised Jews... His whole ideology was antisemitic and from the very beginning he targeted Jews, not Zionists."

The difference between lies and reality is sometimes just a color on a map

W. Ormsby-Gore as he was preparing the royal commission report, "Though I knew there was ill-feeling between Jews and Arabs, I had not realized the depth and intensity of the hatred with which the Jews are held by the Arabs..."

"It is not Israel's settlement blocks but rather the Palestinian ideological blockade that constitutes the biggest barrier to peaceful arrangements . The Jew-hatred in this region must no longer be played down as a kind of local custom ..."

The only tweet (July 2014) on the Twitter account of the late American Elan Ganeles - murdered by Arab-Islamist "Palestinian" on Feb 27, 2023 hy"d: "I think you're always going to have tension in the Middle East, when there's [are] people who want to kill Jews, and the Jews don't want to be killed, and neither side is willing to compromise."