ABSTRACT
Let us recall at this point that the would-be military mission to Iraq, headed by General Helmuth Felmy, was not dissolved but transferred to Cape Sunion near Athens, as Sonderstab F. Its commander, General Felmy, had served under the Kaiser as an ensign in the 61st Infantry Regiment at Torun, and had been connected with the German air force since 1912. After uninterrupted military service under the Kaiser, the Republic and the Nazi dictatorship, he was made a general in 1939. It could have been expected that his military career would come to an end on January 12th, 1940, when he was held responsible for the forced landing in a neutral country of a paratroop liaison officer who carried secret documents on his person despite orders, but his period of inactivity did not last long. He was restored to active service on May 12th, 1941, because of his flying experience which had been acquired on the Sinai Peninsula in World War I. He was given command of a military mission which it was planned to send to Iraq. In mid-June 1941 H. Felmy became Commander-in-Chief of the German troops in Southern Greece. This was in principle an Italian occupation zone, but it had enclaves under German control. Crete, too, fell under his command. General Felmy’s activity brought him, after the war, before an American war court, as one of the accused in the so-called Balkan trial. 1
In July 1941 Sonderstab F created a small training group which it was planned to use later in the Syrian Desert. It was composed of
Arabs who had been studying in Germany and a small number of volunteers transported to Cape Sunion from Syria after the collapse of General Dentz’s army. About 300 of Fawzi el-Qawuqji’s and Aref Abd er-Razeq’s men, with the aid of Sonderstab F, escaped from Syria to Turkey, but they did not succeed in getting to Greece. By the end of 1941 Sonderstab F had trained twenty-five to thirty Arabs. 2 It seems that Berlin did not inform the Italians of that particular activity.
