Encyclopedia of delusions. Third Reich Likhacheva Larisa Borisovna
Spies. What killed the German intelligence officers?
Something imperceptibly betrayed a German spy in him: either a parachute dragging behind his back, or a Schmeisser dangling around his neck ...
Thoughts aloud from an employee of SMERSH
John Lancaster is alone, mostly at night.
Clicked his nose - an infrared lens was hidden in it,
And then in normal light it appeared in black
What we value and love, what the team is proud of ...
Vladimir Vysotsky
There is an opinion that Nazi Germany trained almost the most invulnerable spies in the world. Say, with the notorious German pedantry, they could take care of all, even the seemingly insignificant little things. After all, according to the old spy adage, it is on them that the best agents always "burn".
In reality, however, the situation on the invisible German-Allied front developed somewhat differently. Sometimes the Nazi "knights of the cloak and dagger" were killed by their scrupulousness. A similar story in the book "Spy Hunter" is quoted by the famous British counterintelligence officer Colonel O. Pinto. At the beginning of World War II, British counterintelligence had a lot of work: refugees from the European countries conquered by the Reich flocked to the country in an endless stream. It is clear that under their guise German agents and collaborators recruited in the occupied territories strove to infiltrate the land of foggy Albion. With one such Belgian collaborator - Alphonse Timmermans - O. Pinto had a chance to deal with. By itself, Timmermans did not arouse suspicion in anyone: the former seaman of the merchant marine, in order to find himself in safe England, went through a lot of difficulties and dangers. In his simple belongings, too, there was nothing from the spy arsenal. However, Colonel O. Pinto's attention was attracted by 3 absolutely harmless, at first glance, things. However, let us give the floor to the counterintelligence officer himself: “The one who instructed him before the trip to England took into account every little detail and thus gave the newcomer over to the British counterintelligence. He provided Timmermans with three things necessary for "invisible" writing: pyramidon powder, which dissolves in a mixture of water and alcohol, orange sticks - a writing agent - and cotton for wrapping the tips of the sticks to avoid treacherous scratches on the paper. The trouble with Timmermans was that he could get all these things at any pharmacy in England, and no one would ever ask him why he was doing it. Now, because his mentor turned out to be too scrupulous person. he had to answer me some questions ... Timmermans - a victim of German scrupulousness - was hanged in Vandeworth prison ... "
Very often, German pedantry proved fatal for agents who were supposed to work under the guise of US Army soldiers. Perfectly owning the "great and mighty" english language, the fascist intelligence officers were completely unprepared for American slang. So, quite a few carefully conspiratorial and legendary spies came across the fact that at army gas stations, instead of the typical jargon "gas", they used the literary name of gasoline - "patrol". Naturally, no one expected to hear such a clever word from an ordinary American soldier.
But the possible troubles of the German spies did not end there. As it turned out, the Yankee soldiers even military ranks renamed in their own way. The sabotage group, supervised by the most venerable German spy, Otto Skorzeny, was convinced of this from its own sad experience. The Scar Man's subordinates arrived in captured American self-propelled guns at the location of the 7th Armored Division near the Belgian city of Potto. The commander of the spy group jumped out of the car and introduced himself, according to the regulations, introducing himself to the company. It never occurred to him that in the US Army such a name for a military rank had long become an anachronism, and various slang abbreviations were used instead. The Yankee soldiers immediately recognized the forgery and shot their pseudo-servants headed by their "company commander" on the spot ...
It was even more difficult for pedantic German agents to work in the USSR. Let's give an example. Nazi Germany prepared a group of spies to be sent to Soviet territory. All scouts were thoroughly trained and were fluent in Russian. Moreover, they were even introduced to the peculiarities of the Soviet mentality and the mysterious Russian soul. However, the mission of these almost ideal agents failed miserably at the very first document check. Passports turned out to be a traitorous trifle that gave away the fighters of the invisible front. No, the "red-skinned passports" themselves, made by the best German falsification masters, did not differ in any way from the real ones and were even shabby and battered accordingly. The only thing that made the “pro-fascist” documents different from their primordially Soviet counterparts was the metal staples with which they were sewn. Diligent and punctual Germans made fake "ksivs" conscientiously, as for themselves. Therefore, the pages of the passport were fastened with staples made of high-quality stainless wire, while in the Soviet Union they could not even imagine such a wasteful and inappropriate use of stainless steel - the most common iron was used for the main document of every citizen of the USSR. Naturally, over the long years of operation, such a wire oxidized, leaving characteristic red marks on the pages of the passport. It is not surprising that the valiant SMERSH was very interested, having found among the usual "rusted" passports of books with clean shiny stainless steel clips. According to unverified data, only at the beginning of the war, Soviet counterintelligence managed to identify and neutralize more than 150 such spies, "paper clips". Truly, there are no trifles in intelligence. Even if it is intelligence of the Third Reich.
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From the book I get to know the world. Aviation and aeronautics author Zigunenko Stanislav NikolaevichSpies in the stratosphere Another specialty of military aviation is intelligence. As already mentioned at the beginning of this book, the first thing that pilots began to do during military operations was to look out from a height where the headquarters of military units are located, where they are transferred
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From the book I get to know the world. Forensic science author Malashkina M.M.Scout School The screening of a potential employee is very strict, but 99 out of 100 people can pass it. Intelligence work is very diverse and everyone can show their talent and achieve success.
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Throughout the four years of the war, German intelligence trustingly "fed" the disinformation provided by the Lubyanka
In the summer of 1941, Soviet intelligence officers launched an operation that is still considered "aerobatics" of the secret struggle and was included in the textbooks on the intelligence craft. It lasted almost the entire war and was called differently at different stages - "Monastery", "Couriers", and then "Berezino".
Initially, her plan was to bring to the German intelligence center a deliberate "misinformation" about the allegedly existing anti-Soviet religious-monarchist organization in Moscow, to make enemy intelligence officers believe in it as a real force. And thus penetrate the Nazi intelligence network in the Soviet Union.
The FSB declassified the materials of the operation only after 55 years of victory over fascism.
The Chekists recruited a representative of a noble noble family, Boris Sadovsky, to work. With the establishment Soviet power he lost his fortune and, naturally, was hostile to her.
He lived in a small house in the Novodevichy Convent. Being disabled, he almost never got out of it. In July 1941, Sadovsky wrote a poem, which soon became the property of counterintelligence, in which he addressed the Hitlerite occupiers as "brothers-liberators" and called on Hitler to restore the Russian autocracy.
It was decided to use him as the head of the legendary Prestol organization, especially since Sadovsky was indeed looking for an opportunity to somehow contact the Germans.
Alexander Petrovich Demyanov - "Heine" (right) during a radio session with GermanTo "help" him, a secret employee of the Lubyanka, Alexander Demyanov, who had the operational pseudonym "Heine", was included in the game.
His great-grandfather Anton Golovaty was the first ataman of the Kuban Cossacks, his father was a Cossack Esaul who died in the First World War. His mother came from a princely family, graduated from the Bestuzhev courses at the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens and in the pre-revolutionary years was considered one of the brightest beauties in the aristocratic circles of Petrograd.
Until 1914 Demyanov lived and was brought up abroad. He was recruited by the OGPU in 1929. Possessing noble manners and good looks, "Heine" easily got along with film actors, writers, playwrights, poets, in whose circles he moved with the blessing of the Chekists. Before the war, in order to suppress terrorist attacks, he specialized in developing the ties of the nobles who remained in the USSR with foreign emigration. An experienced agent with such data quickly won the trust of the monarchist poet Boris Sadovsky.
February 17, 1942 Demyanov - "Heine" crossed the front line and surrendered to the Germans, claiming that he was a representative of the anti-Soviet underground. The scout told the Abwehr officer about the Throne organization and that he had been sent by its leaders to communicate with the German command. At first, they did not believe him, subjected him to a series of interrogations and thorough checks, including a mock execution, planting a weapon from which he could shoot his tormentors and escape. However, his self-control, clear line of conduct, convincing legend, supported by real persons and circumstances, ultimately made the German counterintelligence officers believe.
The fact that even before the war the Moscow residency of the Abwehr * took note of Demyanov as a possible candidate for recruitment and even gave him the nickname "Max" also played a role.
* Abwehr - a body of military intelligence and counterintelligence in Germany in 1919-1944, was part of the High Command of the Wehrmacht.
Under it, he appeared in the filing cabinet of the Moscow agents in 1941, and under it, after three weeks of training in the basics of espionage, on March 15, 1942, he was parachuted into the Soviet rear. Demyanov was to settle in the Rybinsk area with the task of conducting active military-political intelligence. The Abwehr expected from the Throne organization to activate pacifist propaganda among the population, deploy sabotage and sabotage.
There was a pause at Lubyanka for two weeks so as not to arouse suspicion among the Abwehr by the ease with which their new agent was legalized.
Finally "Max" relayed his first disinformation. Soon, in order to strengthen Demyanov's position in German intelligence and supply the Germans with false information of strategic importance through him, he was hired as a liaison officer under the Chief of the General Staff Marshal Shaposhnikov.
Admiral CanarisAdmiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr (nicknamed Janus, "Sly Fox") considered it a great success that he had acquired a "source of information" in such high spheres, and could not help but boast of this success in front of his rival, the head of the VI Directorate of the RSHA, SS Brigadefuehrer Walter Schellenberg. In his memoirs, written after the war in English captivity, he testified with envy that the military intelligence had "its own man" near Marshal Shaposhnikov, from whom a lot of "valuable information" was received. In early August 1942, Max informed the Germans that the organization's transmitter was deteriorating and needed to be replaced.
Soon, two Abwehr couriers appeared at the NKVD's secret apartment in Moscow, delivering 10 thousand rubles and food. They reported the location of the radio they had hidden.
The first group of German agents remained at large for ten days so that the KGB could check their appearance and find out if they had any connections with someone else. Then the couriers were arrested, and the radio they delivered was found. And to the Germans, "Max" radioed that the couriers had arrived, but the transmitted radio was damaged upon landing.
Two months later, two more messengers appeared from behind the front line with two radio transmitters and various spy equipment. They had the task not only to help "Max", but also to settle in Moscow themselves, to collect and transmit their intelligence information via the second radio. Both agents were recruited and reported to Valley Headquarters, the Abwehr Center, that they had successfully arrived and had begun their mission. From that moment on, the operation developed in two directions: on the one hand - on behalf of the monarchist organization "Prestol" and the resident of "Max", on the other - on behalf of the Abwehr agents "Zyubina" and "Alayev", allegedly relying on their own connections in Moscow. A new stage of the secret duel began - Operation Couriers.
In November 1942, in response to a request from the Valli headquarters about the possibility of expanding the geography of the Prestol organization at the expense of the cities of Yaroslavl, Murom and Ryazan and sending agents there for further work, Max conveyed that the city of Gorky, where the cell was created "Throne". The Germans agreed to this, and the counterintelligence officers took care of the "meeting" of the couriers. Satisfying the requests of the Abwehr, the Chekists sent them extensive misinformation, which was being prepared in the General Staff of the Red Army, and more and more agents of enemy intelligence were summoned to the dummy safe houses.
In Berlin, they were very pleased with the work of "Max" and the agents introduced with his help. On December 20, Admiral Canaris congratulated his Moscow resident on being awarded the Iron Cross of the 1st degree, and Mikhail Kalinin at the same time signed a decree on awarding Demyanov with the Order of the Red Star. The result of the radio games "Monastyr" and "Couriers" was the arrest of 23 German agents and their accomplices, who had more than 2 million rubles of Soviet money, several radio stations, a large number of documents, weapons, and equipment.
In the summer of 1944, the operational game received a new sequel called "Berezino". "Max" reported to the "Valley" headquarters that he had been "seconded" to Minsk, which had just been occupied by Soviet troops. Soon the Abwehr received a message from there that numerous groups of German soldiers and officers who had been surrounded as a result of the Soviet offensive were making their way to the west through the Belarusian forests. Since the radio interception data testified to the desire of the Hitlerite command not only to help them get through to their own, but also to use it to disorganize the enemy rear, the Chekists decided to play on this. Soon the People's Commissar for State Security Merkulov reported to Stalin, Molotov and Beria a plan for a new operation. The "good" was received.
On August 18, 1944, the Moscow radio station "Prestol" informed the Germans that "Max" accidentally ran into a Wehrmacht military unit leaving the encirclement, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Gerhard Scherhorn. The "entourage" are in great need of food, weapons, ammunition. Seven days at the Lubyanka they waited for an answer: the Abwehr, apparently, inquired about Sherhorn and his "army". And on the eighth a radio message came: “Please help us to contact this German unit. We intend to drop various loads for them and send a radio operator. "
On the night of September 15-16, 1944, three Abwehr envoys landed by parachute in the area of \u200b\u200bLake Pesochnoe in the Minsk region, where the Sherhorn regiment was allegedly hiding. Soon, two of them were recruited and played on the radio.
Then the Abwehr sent two more officers with letters from the commander of the Army Group Center, Colonel-General Reinhardt, and the chief of Abwehrkommando-103, Barfeld, addressed to Scherhorn. The flow of goods "breaking through from the encirclement" increased, along with them all new "inspectors" arrived, who had the task, as they later admitted during interrogations, to find out whether these were the people they claim to be. But everything worked out cleanly. So clear that the last radio message to Scherhorn, transmitted from Abwehrkommando-103 on May 5, 1945, after the surrender of Berlin, said:
“It is with a heavy heart that we have to stop helping you. Due to this situation, we can no longer maintain radio contact with you. Whatever the future brings us, our thoughts will always be with you. "
It was the end of the game. Soviet intelligence brilliantly outplayed the intelligence of Nazi Germany.
The success of Operation Berezino was facilitated by the fact that it involved real German officers who had gone over to the side of the Red Army. They convincingly portrayed the surviving regiment, including the recruited liaison paratroopers.
From archived data: From September 1944 to May 1945, the German command flew 39 sorties to our rear and threw out 22 German intelligence officers (all of them were arrested by Soviet counterintelligence officers), 13 radio stations, 255 cargo items with weapons, uniforms, food, ammunition, medicines, and 1,777,000 rubles. Germany continued to supply "its" detachment until the very end of the war.
"Tell me who your friend is and I will tell you who you are"
Euripides
To date, materials that would call the names of Soviet and German spies during the Second World War are mostly not available. But this does not mean that the names of the spies cannot be revealed.
If not with 100% accuracy, then at least approximately it can be done.
Now we can say that the German spy (s) in the USSR had the following signs
--they held high positions, from the front headquarters and probably up to the highest ranks of the NGO
- they had access to the strategic plans of the Red Army
- they had access to materials of secret negotiations with allied countries
Already these conclusions make it possible to narrow the range of search, the spies were from the highest command staff. Until now, the truth is there are two versions of who and what it was -- agent 438 is one spy or is it a group of spies in the red army
- Clarify opportunities for espionage
- Clarify which of the commanders of the Red Army fought badly
- clarify the names of all friends who were repressed for espionage in the 37-38 years of the military
Who were they?
# 1. Semyon Timoshenko, People's Commissar of Defense in 1940-41, Commander of the Polar Division, South-Western Front in 41-42.
In 1930-37. was a close friend of I. Yakir and I. Uborevich, convicted of espionage for Germany
# 2. Kliment Voroshilov, was a member of the Politburo, State Defense Committee
Voroshilov was a close friend of Y. Gamarnik, A. Egorov, who were convicted of spying for Germany and was a friend of V. Blucher, who was caught working for Japanese intelligence
3.N. Khrushchev, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian SSR, during the Second World War, a member of the Council of Military Fronts
Khrushchev was a Trotskyist, was close friends with I. Yakir, convicted of espionage, and then in 1956-57. exonerated all German - Japanese spies
Effectiveness of battles
As far as we know from the materials of the trials of 1937-38 over the high-ranking leaders of the Red Army, among the methods of undermining the defense capability was not only the transfer of specific military plans to the Red Army.
The traitors were supposed, among other things, by concrete actions to destroy the front defenses during the enemy's offensive and, on the contrary, to make the retaliatory offensive actions of the Red Army fail.
And now it is worth looking at what defeats of the Red Army and on whose command they fell.
- the first defeat of the ZF, teams. General Pavlov
- the second defeat of the Polar Division, teams. S. Timoshenko
--the defeat of the ZF near Smolensk, teams. S. Timoshenko
- the defeat of the SWF, teams. M.Kirponos, S. Timoshenko
- retreat of the NWF to the outskirts of Leningrad, teams. M. Popov, K. Voroshilov
- the defeat of the South-Western Front near Vyazma, teams. I. Konev, M. Lukin (betrayed)
- the defeat of the South-Western Front near Kharkov, teams. S. Tymoshenko
- retreat of the SWF to Stalingrad, teams. With Tymoshenko
In total, the Red Army suffered the most terrible defeats under the command of Timoshenko.
And here is another list of slightly less significant defeats:
- Mikhail Kirponos, contributed to the defeat of the Red Army in the battle for Kiev
- General I. Kuznetsov, commander of the PriboVO, lost the baltics in a few days
- Marshal Kulik, contributed to the loss of Kerch
- Admiral Oktyabrsky, contributed to the loss of Sevastopol
- Rodion Malinovsky, contributed to the loss of Rostov on the Don, opened the road to the Caucasus for the Wehrmacht
…………………..
Pure English warning
The Soviet military command and counterintelligence sensed the leakage of strategic information. And not only they felt.
As the legendary Soviet intelligence officer Yuri Ivanovich Modin recalls, this idea was suggested by our then allies in the anti-Hitler coalition - the British.
The fact is that during the war the British managed to seize the German Enigma encryption machine and decipher the secret codes used by the German military.
So, once they managed to intercept the negotiations of important Wehrmacht officials, from which it became clear that they had a reliable top secret agent in Moscow. After that, Modin writes, the British refused to share their military and political information with our side, believing that the Germans might have this information.
The British military command was afraid to transfer intelligence received from Enigma to the USSR, because they believed that there were German spies in the Red Army who would report this to Berlin
Yuri Ivanovich Modin, in his book "The Fates of the Scouts: My Cambridge Friends", claims that the British were afraid to supply The Soviet Union information obtained thanks to the decryption of German reports, precisely because of the fear that there are German agents in the Soviet headquarters:
“The Germans used the very good, light and fast Enigma encryption machine, invented immediately after the First World War ... Stuart Menzies, the head of British intelligence (MI6), recruited the talented mathematician Alan Thuring to study Enigma. Cooperation between England, France and Poland (in deciphering German codes) continued until the start of the war in Europe ... At the beginning of the war, the Poles managed to capture several heavily damaged Enigmas as trophies. But the Germans continued to improve their system.
In the summer of 1940, Touring and his colleagues at Bletchley Park (the government cipher school where the Soviet agent John Cairncross worked ..), using one of the earliest computers (Colossus), eventually unraveled the Enigma code. The importance of this success cannot be overemphasized, because it gave the Allies access to all broadcasts that aired on the radio between the German government and the High Command. hitler's army... All units of the German troops were equipped with the "Enigma".
During Stalingrad battle soviet troops captured at least twenty-six Enigmas, but all of them were damaged, for the German operators were given strict orders to destroy them in case of danger. After German prisoners of war issued the code used on these machines, Soviet specialists were able to decipher several excerpts from German telegrams, but they never found the master key to the Enigma system, which by that time had already been received by Bletchley Park experts. Among themselves, the British experts called the interception of encoded texts "ultraintelligence."
The British Secret Service, which also knew the codes of the German Navy and Air Force, allowed ultras to be dealt with only by a few absolutely trusted operators. The decrypted telegrams were sent to strictly limited addresses: chiefs of intelligence, the prime minister and some members of the government ...
To hide the fact that the Enigma code was deciphered, the British used to say that this kind of work was done for them by German agents in Germany or in Nazi-occupied countries. They made inscriptions on the documents: "received from X from Austria" or "from U from Ukraine"
Only a limited number of Bletchley Park employees knew of the actual origin of these materials. In addition to Touring and his assistants, Churchill, one or two chiefs of intelligence and - thanks to our British agents - the Soviet Union were also privy to secrecy.
The British refused to share their information with us not only for political reasons. They were sure that
"German spies infiltrated the highest echelons of the Red Army."
This confidence had some foundation. The NKVD had its own suspicions about this. During the war, two or three members of the Soviet General Staff were arrested and shot as German agents; others may have escaped punishment. "
1943-1944 years
After the defeat of Friedrich Paulus's 6th Army at Stalingrad and the failure of Operation Citadel, Agent 438 continued to send his reports.
In the book by John Erickson "The Road to Berlin", published in 1983, Gehlen presented to the General Staff on May 3, 1944, a report from an unknown agent that
“At the Soviet headquarters, under the chairmanship of Stalin, at the end of March, two options for the summer Soviet offensive were discussed.
The first included the main attack in the Lvov, Kovel region with a simultaneous attack on Warsaw and the Polish uprising in the German rear.
According to the second option, which was adopted, the main blow was delivered in the direction of the Baltic, and in the course of it it was planned to seize Warsaw and reckon on an armed attack by the Poles.
An auxiliary strike was planned to the south, in the direction of Lvov. "
Agent 438 reported to the German command about the details and approximate date of Operation Bagration, the preparation and conduct of which was no longer a secret for the Germans
It is easy to be convinced that this is exactly how the Soviet troops acted in the summer of 1944, when the main offensive - the famous Operation Bagration - led to the defeat of a group of enemy armies in Belarus and Lithuania and led the Red Army to the Vistula near Warsaw and to the Baltic coast, on the approaches to East Prussia.
An auxiliary attack on Lvov made it possible to occupy part of Eastern Galicia and capture the Sandomierz bridgehead beyond the Vistula.
Hitler could have tried to prevent the defeat of his forces in Belarus if, in May, believing the intelligence report, he had withdrawn the troops of Army Group Center from the so-called “Belarusian balcony” that protruded far to the East.
However, we would have had to retreat very far - at least to the Bug, and even to the Vistula.
Hitler did not accept this decision, realizing what it was fraught with.
And it is fraught with the fact that in this case the Red Army by June would be on the outskirts of the borders of Germany. But then Hitler was no longer fighting for victory, but only for gain in time, hoping either for a split in the opposing coalition, or for the invention of some "miracle weapon" that could radically change the course of the war in his favor.
With regard to gaining time, even the loss of significant German forces in Belarus was justified, since thereby the advance of the Red Army to the borders of the Reich was delayed by at least one and a half to two months.
Therefore, Hitler forbade the withdrawal of Army Group Center and, despite the risk of encirclement, decided to defend on the previous lines.
Adolf Hitler, knowing from agent 438 about the "Bagration" plan, did not withdraw the troops, thereby dooming them to defeat.
Hitler essentially sacrificed the armies of GA "Center" for the sake of saving precious time
There was another case when the German command, most likely, received reliable information from an agent, who was at least at the front headquarters, and based on it made a strategic decision.
Moreover, the actions of the German generals indicate its existence.
On August 8, Marshals G.K. Zhukov and K.K.Rokossovsky proposed a plan for the operation to liberate Warsaw, which could begin on 25 August.
However, Stalin soberly judged that it would not be possible to take it so easily, having so estimated the availability of forces and means and did not give an order to carry it out.
And almost certainly the German command found out about this in time.
Then the Germans concentrated five tank divisions against the bridgeheads beyond the Vistula.
But then, in the second decade of August, all these tank divisions were sent north to carry out an operation to restore land communications between Army Groups "Center" and "North", disrupted by the Soviet breakthrough to the Baltic Sea near Tukums.
The operation began on August 16, and by the end of the month the Germans had managed to contain Soviet troops from the Baltic coast and restore land communications with Army Group North.
This was very beneficial for the Germans, because if at this time the Red Army launched an offensive on the Vistula, the German counterstrike in the north would have lost all meaning.
In this case, the Wehrmacht would have practically no chance of keeping Warsaw. They would have to retreat at least until the Oder.
In August 1944, Hitler ordered 5 tank divisions to move against the Rokossovsky front, thereby exposing the Warsaw direction
But from agent 438, Hitler knew for sure that the Red Army would not attack Warsaw these days, and he safely transferred tanks to the north
The Germans had no chance of holding their positions from the Baltic to the mouth of the Oder; for such a vast front, they simply would not have enough troops. And the Oder line, which had not yet been prepared for defense by the fall of 1944, would have been very difficult for the German troops to hold, and the Red Army could already really threaten Berlin.
On such a risky maneuver as the transfer of tank divisions from near Warsaw to the north, the German command could decide only if it was firmly convinced that the Soviet troops on the Vistula would not budge in the coming weeks.
For such confidence, one TASS statement was, of course, not enough.
So a reliable German agent informed his own about the plans of the Red Army.
Stalin, on the other hand, struck the main blow in Romania in order to establish control over the long-desired Balkan Peninsula before the allies.
Last report from Agent 438
In December 1944 Gehlen managed to "predict" quite accurately that
"The Red Army will now strike the main blows in the direction of Berlin and East Prussia"
So what
The head of the FHO even suggested
"To evacuate troops from East Prussia in advance in order to concentrate maximum forces for the defense of the capital of the Reich"
So, but this time I did not meet with Hitler's understanding. Gehlen relied on a report from an agent from some Soviet headquarters no lower than the front.
Reinhard Gehlen received from agent 438 the most accurate directions of the Red Army strikes and even the exact date of the start of the operation in East Prussia and in the Berlin direction
The reports of agent 438 and Gehlen's conclusions that in January 1945 the main blow of the Red Army would fall on East Prussia were fully justified.
This created problems for the advancing troops of the Red Army.
The former commander of the 2nd Belorussian Front, Marshal K.K.Rokossovsky, noted in his memoirs:
“In my opinion, when East Prussia was finally isolated from the west, it would have been possible to postpone the liquidation of the grouping of German fascist troops surrounded there, and by strengthening the weakened 2nd Belorussian Front to speed up the denouement in the Berlin direction. The fall of Berlin would have happened much earlier.
But it turned out that at the decisive moment 10 armies were involved against the East Prussian grouping ... and the weakened troops of the 2nd Belorussian Front were not able to fulfill their task.
The use of such a mass of troops against the enemy, cut off from their main forces and remote from the place where the main events were decided, in the prevailing situation in the Berlin direction by that time was clearly inappropriate. "
Note that this initially seized fragment of the memoir was restored only in the 1997 edition.
Konstantin Rokossovsky wrote that his troops in East Prussia were in a very disadvantageous position, and the Wehrmacht, on the contrary, knowing about the deployment of the Red Army, concentrated significant forces there
All this was again explained by the fact that agent 438 told Hitler information about the actions of the fronts of the Red Army, but in this case there were other sources.
................
I will cite one more curious addition to those rather meager data on German agents that could supply information about the strategic plans of the Soviet command.
Walter Schellenberg in the American version of his memoirs, published posthumously in 1956 under the title "Labyrinth", wrote that through one of the centers for the collection and processing of information in Russia,
"The existence of which was known only to three persons in the Main Directorate, we were able to enter into direct contact with two officers from the headquarters of Marshal Rokossovsky."
Later, when the military intelligence department of Admiral Canaris came under my command (this happened after the resignation of the "land admiral" in February 1944), I added another very important intelligence center. His boss was a German Jew who used completely unusual methods of work.
His staff consisted of only two people; all work was mechanized. His network covered several countries and had an extensive agent network in all strata of society.
He contrived to obtain the most accurate information from sources working in the highest echelons of the Russian army, and the intelligence department of the headquarters of the German army (FHO. -.) Praised them. This man worked really well.
He could report both major strategic plans and the movements of troops, sometimes even individual divisions. His reports usually arrived two or three weeks before the predicted events, so our leaders had time to prepare appropriate countermeasures, or rather, they could have done this if Hitler had paid more serious attention to such reports.
I had to fight desperately to protect such a valuable employee from Müller (chief of the Gestapo. -.), And also to protect him from the envy and intrigue that existed in my office and in the headquarters of the Luftwaffe.
Behind Kaltenbrunner and Müller's backs was a clique that decided to eliminate the "Jew." He was accused not only of Jewish origin. His enemies resorted to the most insidious methods, trying to prove that he was secretly working for the Russian intelligence, which supposedly through him supplies us with reliable information so that at the decisive moment they can be misled. "
Walter Schellenberg wrote that in the Red Army he had his own residency (another for Gehlen) and his spies were also at the headquarters of Rokossovsky
In the German version of Schellenberg's memoirs, it is specified that
"Communication with two officers of the General Staff assigned to the headquarters of Marshal Rokossovsky" was maintained through one of the "particularly important informants" and that
“After the merger of the Canaris department with Schellenberg’s 6th directorate, another very Schellenberg, he had "another very valuable informant at his disposal, led by a German Jew." ............................
And in fact, it's hard to believe that the USSR managed to create an agent network in Germany and the areas occupied by it (the most famous is the "Red Chapel"), and the Germans did not. It doesn't happen ...
In the case of German spies in the USSR, the situation is complicated by the fact that the onion of the department "Foreign armies - East" (in the German abbreviation FHO, in fact, he was in charge of reconnaissance) Reinhard Galen prudently worried about preserving the most stately documentation, so that in the very coffin of war the Americans would fall captive and offer them a "product by face".
History is written by the winners, and therefore it is not customary for Soviet chroniclers to mention German spies who worked in the rear in the Red Army. And there were such scouts, and even in the General Staff of the Red Army, as well as the famous Max network. After the end of the war, the Americans transferred them to themselves, to share their experience with the CIA.
Indeed, it is difficult to believe that the USSR managed to create an agent network in Germany and the countries occupied by it (the most famous is the Red Chapel), but the Germans did not. And if German intelligence officers during the Second World War are not written about in Soviet-Russian stories, then the point is not only that it is not customary for the winner to admit his own miscalculations.
In the case of German spies in the USSR, the situation is complicated by the fact that the head of the Foreign Armies - East department (in the German abbreviation FHO, he was in charge of intelligence) Reinhard Galen prudently took care of preserving the most important documentation in order to surrender to the Americans at the very end of the war and offer them a "product by face".
His department dealt almost exclusively with the USSR, and in the conditions of the beginning of the Cold War, the Gelen papers were of great value to the United States.
Later, the general headed the intelligence of the FRG, and his archive remained in the United States (some copies were left to Gelena). Having already retired, the general published his memoirs “Service. 1942-1971 ", which were published in Germany and the USA in 1971-72. Almost simultaneously with Gehlen's book, his biography was published in America, as well as the book of British intelligence officer Edward Spiro "Gehlen - the Spy of the Century" (Spiro wrote under the pseudonym Edward Cookridge, he was a Greek by nationality, a representative of British intelligence in the Czech resistance during the war). Another book was written by the American journalist Charles Whiting, who was suspected of working for the CIA, and was called "Gehlen - German Master Spy." All of these books are based on the Gehlen archives, used with permission from the CIA and German intelligence BND. They have some information about German spies in the Soviet rear.
General Ernst Kestring, a Russian German born near Tula, was engaged in "field work" in Gehlen's German intelligence service. It was he who served as the prototype for the German major in Bulgakov's book "Days of the Turbins", who saved Hetman Skoropadsky from reprisals by the Red Army (in fact, the Petliurites). Kestring perfectly knew the Russian language and Russia, and it was he who personally selected agents and saboteurs from Soviet prisoners of war. It was he who found one of the most valuable, as it turned out later, German spies.
On October 13, 1941, 38-year-old captain Minishky was taken prisoner. It turned out that before the war he worked in the secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and earlier - in the Moscow City Party Committee. Since the outbreak of the war, he served as political instructor at the Western Front. He was captured along with the driver when he was driving around the forward units during the Vyazemsky battle.
Minishky immediately agreed to cooperate with the Germans, motivating him with some old grievances against the Soviet regime. Seeing what a valuable shot they got, they promised, as the time came, to take him and his family to the west with the granting of German citizenship. But first - the case.
Minishky spent 8 months studying in a special camp. And then the famous "Flamingo" operation began, which Gehlen conducted in cooperation with the scout Baun, who already had a network of agents in Moscow, among whom the most valuable was a radio operator with the pseudonym Alexander. Baun's men ferried Minishki across the front line, and he reported to the very first Soviet headquarters the story of his capture and daring escape, every detail of which had been invented by Gelenov's experts. He was taken to Moscow, where he was greeted as a hero. Almost immediately, mindful of his previous responsible work, he was appointed to work in the military-political secretariat of the State Defense Committee.
Through a chain of several German agents in Moscow, Minishky began to supply information. The first sensational message came from him on July 14, 1942. Gehlen and Guerre sat all night, compiling a report on its basis to Chief of Staff Halder. The report was made: “The military conference ended in Moscow on the evening of July 13th. Shaposhnikov, Voroshilov, Molotov and the heads of the British, American and Chinese military missions were present. Shaposhnikov said that their retreat would be up to the Volga in order to force the Germans to winter in the area. During the retreat, all-encompassing destruction of the abandoned territory must be carried out; the entire industry must be evacuated to the Urals and Siberia.
The British representative asked for Soviet help in Egypt, but received the answer that the Soviet resources of mobilized manpower were not as great as the Allies believed. In addition, they lack aircraft, tanks and guns, in particular because part of the supply of weapons destined for Russia, which the British were supposed to deliver through the port of Basra in the Persian Gulf, were re-targeted to protect Egypt. It was decided to hold offensive operations in two sectors of the front: north of Orel and north of Voronezh, using large tank forces and air cover. A distracting attack must be carried out at Kalinin. It is necessary that Stalingrad, Novorossiysk and the Caucasus be held back. "
And that's what happened. Halder later noted in his diary: “The FHO provided accurate information about the enemy forces redeployed starting June 28, and the estimated strength of these formations. He also gave a correct assessment of the energetic actions of the enemy to defend Stalingrad. "
The aforementioned authors made a number of inaccuracies, which is understandable: they received information several hands and 30 years after the events described. For example, the English historian David Ken gave a more correct version of the report: on July 14, the meeting was attended not by the heads of the American, British and Chinese missions, but by the military attachés of these countries.
There is no consensus about the real name of Minishki. According to another version, his surname was Mishinsky. But it may not be true either. The Germans had it under code numbers 438.
ABOUT further destiny Agent 438 Coleridge et al. report sparingly. The participants in Operation Flamingo were definitely working in Moscow until October 1942. In the same month, Gehlen recalled Minishkiya, arranging, with the help of Baun, a meeting with one of the advanced reconnaissance detachments of the Valley, which ferried him across the front line.
Later Minishkiya worked for Gehlen in the information analysis department, worked with German agents, who were then thrown across the front line.
Minishkia and Operation Flamingo are also named by other respected authors, such as the British military historian John Ericsson in his book The Road to Stalingrad by French historian Gabor Rittersporn. According to Rittersporn, Minishky really received German citizenship, after the end of the Second World War he taught at an American intelligence school in southern Germany, then moved to the United States, having received American citizenship. The German "Stirlitz" died in the 1980s at his home in Virginia.
Minishkiya was not the only super spy. The same British military historians mention that the Germans had many intercepted telegrams from Kuibyshev, where the Soviet authorities were based at that time. A German spy group worked in this city. There were several "moles" surrounded by Rokossovsky, and several military historians mentioned that the Germans considered him as one of the main negotiators in a possible separate peace at the end of 1942, and then in 1944 - if the assassination attempt on Hitler was successful. For reasons unknown today, Rokossovsky was viewed as a possible ruler of the USSR after the overthrow of Stalin as a result of the coup d'etat of the generals.
The British knew well about these German spies (it is clear that they know now). This is also recognized by Soviet military historians. For example, the former colonel of military intelligence Yuri Modin in his book "The Fates of the Intelligencers: My Cambridge Friends" asserts that the British were afraid to supply the USSR with information obtained thanks to the decryption of German reports, precisely because of the fear that there were agents in Soviet headquarters.
But they personally mention another German superintelligence officer, Fritz Cowders, who created the famous Max intelligence network in the USSR. His biography is presented by the aforementioned Englishman David Kahn.
Fritz Cowders was born in Vienna in 1903. His mother was Jewish and his father was German. In 1927 he moved to Zurich, where he began working as a sports journalist. Then he lived in Paris and Berlin, after Hitler came to power he left as a reporter for Budapest. There he found himself a lucrative job as an intermediary in the sale of Hungarian entry visas to Jews fleeing Germany. He made acquaintances with high-ranking Hungarian officials, and at the same time met the head of the Abwehr residency in Hungary, and began to work for German intelligence.
He makes acquaintance with the Russian émigré general A.V. Turkul, who had his own intelligence network in the USSR - later it served as the basis for the formation of a more extensive German spy network. The agents are thrown into the Union for a year and a half, starting in the fall of 1939. The annexation of Romanian Bessarabia to the USSR helped a lot here, when at the same time dozens of German spies, who had been abandoned in advance, were added there.
With the outbreak of war with the USSR, Cowders moved to the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia, where he headed the Abwehr radio post, which received radiograms from agents in the USSR. But who these agents were is still not clear. There are only scraps of information that there were at least 20-30 of them in various parts of the USSR. The Soviet super-saboteur Sudoplatov also mentions the Max intelligence network in his memoirs.
As mentioned above, not only the names of German spies, but also minimal information about their actions in the USSR is still closed. Did the Americans and the British convey information about them to the USSR after the victory over fascism? Hardly - they needed the surviving agents themselves. The most that was then declassified were secondary agents from the Russian émigré organization of the NTS.
(cited from B. Sokolov's book "The Hunt for Stalin, the Hunt for Hitler", publishing house "Veche", 2003, pp. 121-147)