The best rips from jumo aka end. "Important and necessary work": what role did Smersh play in the victory over fascism German intelligence agents in the USSR
History is rolled by the victors, and therefore the Soviet chroniclers are not met with mentioning German spies who worked hard 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 threw them to themselves, to share the experiment with the CIA.
Indeed, it is 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 - pipes. And if German agents during the Second World War are not rolled around in Soviet-Russian stories, then the point is not only that the winner is not met with confessing his own miscalculations. In the case of German spies in the USSR, the situation is complicated by the fact that the onion of the “Foreign armies - East” department (in the German abbreviation FHO, in fact, he was in charge of reconnaissance) Reinhard Galen prudently worried about preserving the most majestic documentation in order to fall into captivity to the Americans in the very coffin of the war and offer them a "goods face".
(Reinhard Gehlen - initial, in focus - with cadets of the intelligence school)
His department was engaged in almost remarkable USSR, and in the circumstances of the beginning " cold war» Gehlen's papers saw great value for the United States.
Later, the general led the reconnaissance of the FRG, and his archive remained in the United States (the share of the picture was thrown to Gehlen). Having already retired, the general published his memoirs “Service. 1942-1971", which saw the light in Germany and the USA in 1971-72. Read all of a sudden with Gehlen’s book in America, his biography was published, as well as the book of the British reconnaissance officer Edward Spiro “Ghelen - the spy of the century” (Spiro skated under the pseudonym Edward Cookridge, he was a Greek by nationality, a representative of the British reconnaissance in the Czech resistance during the war). Another book was written by the American journalist Charles Whiting, who was thought to be working for the CIA, and was called "Gehlen - German Spy Master". All these books are based on the archives of Gehlen, used with the permission of the CIA and the German reconnaissance of the BND. Some information about German spies in the Soviet rear in them to eat.
(Individual Gehlen card)
"Field work" in the German reconnaissance of Gehlen was carried out by General Ernst Kestring, a Russian German born near Tula. In fact, he served as the prototype of the German major in Bulgakov's book Days of the Turbins, who saved Hetman Skoropadsky from reprisals by the Red Army (in fact, the Petliurists). Koestring perfectly informed the Russian language and Russia, and in fact he individually took away agents and saboteurs from Soviet prisoners of war. In fact, he found one of the most valuable, as if later turned out to be, German spies.
On October 13, 1941, 38-year-old Captain Minishkiy was taken prisoner. It turned out that before the war he worked hard in the secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and earlier in the Moscow City Party Committee. From the moment of the ABC of the war, he occupied the post of political instructor at the Western Front. He was taken along with the driver when he traveled around the avant-garde units during the battle of Vyazemsky.
Minishkiy in one gulp agreed to cooperate with the Germans, motivating them with some old grievances against the Soviet order. Seeing what a valuable shot they got into, they promised, as if the time would come, to take him and his name to the West with the provision of German citizenship. However, before that, it happened.
Minishki spent 8 months studying in a special camp. And then there was the famous operation "Flamingo", which Gehlen whiled away in collaboration with agent Bown, who already owned a network of agents in Moscow, among which the radio operator with the pseudonym Alexander was the most valuable. People of Bauna transferred Minishkiy across the front line, and he reported to the very first Soviet headquarters the story of his capture and the defiant offspring, every detail of which was invented by Gelen's experts. He was taken to Moscow, where he was greeted like a hero. Read in one gulp, mindful of his old responsible work, he was appointed to work in the military-political secretariat of the State Defense Committee.
(Real German agents; other German spies could look like this)
Through a chain of several German agents in Moscow, Minishkiy undertook to supply information. The first sensational notice came to his senses from him on July 14, 1942. Gehlen and Guerre sat all night, drawing up a report on the basis of it to the patron of the General 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 announced that their retreat would be to the Volga in order to snatch the Germans to spend the winter in the area. During the retreat, comprehensive destruction should be carried out in the territory being abandoned; the entire industry should be evacuated to the Urals and Siberia.
The British representative asked for Soviet assistance in Egypt, but was told that the Soviet manpower resources were not as great as the Allies believed. In addition, they lack aircraft, tanks and guns, in part because a proportion of the Russian-assigned weapons that the British were supposed to drop through the port of Basra in the Persian Gulf were diverted to protect Egypt. It was decided to conduct offensive operations in two sectors of the front: north of Orel and north of Voronezh, using huge tank forces and air cover. A diversionary assault should be laid at Kalinin. It is necessary that Stalingrad, Novorossiysk and the Caucasus be kept.”
It all happened that way. Halder later noted in his diary: “The FCO provided accurate information about the enemy forces newly deployed starting on June 28, and about the supposed power of these formations. He also gave a true assessment of the enemy's energetic actions in the defense of Stalingrad.
The above authors have drawn a line of inaccuracies, which is understandable: they received information through several right hands and 30 years after the events described. For example, the English historian David Kahn presented a more correct version of the report: on July 14, not the heads of the American, British and Chinese missions were present at that meeting, but the military attaches of these areas.
(Confidential Intelligence School OKW Amt Ausland/Abwehr)
The pipes of a monolithic view are also about the true name of Minishkia. According to another version, his surname was Mishinsky. However, it is probably not true either. For the Germans, it ran under the code numbers 438.
About the further fate of agent 438, Coolridge and other authors report eagerly. The participants in Operation Flamingo carefully worked hard in Moscow until October 1942. In the same month, Gehlen recalled Minishkiy, having managed with the support of Bown to meet with one of the vanguard intelligence detachments of the "Valli", which transferred him through the front line.
In the future, Minishkia worked hard for Gehlen in the information analysis department, worked with German agents, who were later transferred through the front line.
Minishkia and the Flamingo operation are also called by other highly respected authors, such as the British military historian John Eriksson in his book The Road to Stalingrad, by the French historian Gabor Rittersporn. According to Rittersporn, Minishkiy really received German citizenship, after the end of the Second World War he taught at the American intelligence school in Half Day Germany, then moved to the United States, having received American citizenship. The German "Stirlitz" was bent in the 1980s in his home in Virginia.
Minishkia was not the only super spy. The same British military historians mention that the Germans owned an abyss of intercepted dispatches from Kuibyshev, where the Soviet authorities were based at that time. A German spy group worked hard in this city. There were several "moles" in Rokossovsky's entourage, and several military historians mentioned that the Germans themselves considered him as one of the main negotiators in a possible separate peace in the coffin of 1942, and later in 1944 - if the assassination attempt on Hitler would be successful. For reasons now unknown, Rokossovsky was considered as the likely ruler of the USSR after the overthrow of Stalin as a result of a coup of the generals.
(This is how the unit of German saboteurs from Brandenburg looked like. One of the most famous
his operations - the capture of the oil fields of Maykop in the summer of 1942 and the city itself)
The British were well informed about these German spies (it is understandable that they still know). This is also recognized by Soviet military historians. So much so, former colonel of military reconnaissance Yuri Modin, in his book The Fates of Scouts: My Cambridge Friends, claims that the British were afraid to supply the USSR with information obtained through the decoding of German reports, in fact because of the fear that agents would eat in the Soviet headquarters.
However, another German superintelligence officer is personally mentioned - Fritz Kauders, who created the famous Max intelligence network in the USSR. His biography is given by the aforementioned Briton David Kahn.
Fritz Kauders was born in Vienna in 1903. His mother was Jewish and his father was German. In 1927 he moved to Zurich, where he began to work hard as a sports journalist. Then he lived in Paris and Berlin, after Hitler came to power, he left as a reporter in Budapest. There he found a profitable business for himself - 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 station in Hungary, and began to work hard on German reconnaissance. He makes acquaintance with the Russian emigre general A.V. Turkul, who owned his own intelligence network in the USSR - later it served as the basis for the formation of a more extensive German spy network. Agents are thrown into the Alliance for a year and a half, starting with the dawn of 1939. The accession of Romanian Bessarabia to the USSR was greatly supported here, when dozens of German spies, forgotten in advance, were suddenly “attached” there.
(General Turkul - in focus, with a mustache - with fellow White Guards in Sofia)
With the outbreak of war with the USSR, Kauders moved to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, where he headed the Abwehr radio post, which received radiograms from agents in the USSR. But who these agents were has not been clarified so far. Eat only scraps of information that there were at least 20-30 of them in different parts of the USSR. The Soviet super-saboteur Sudoplatov also mentions the Max agent network in his memoirs.
As if it had already been said more sublimely, not only the names of German spies, but even the minimum information about their deeds in the USSR is still closed. Did the Americans and the British transfer information about them to the USSR after the victory over fascism? It is unlikely - they themselves needed the surviving agents. A lot of what was then declassified were secondary agents from the Russian émigré organization NTS.
"One spy in the right place is worth twenty thousand soldiers on the battlefield."
Napoleon Bonaparte
Today, if not well, then quite clearly we know about the work of Soviet intelligence in Germany and other occupied countries.
Another thing is German intelligence in the USSR and its sources in the command staff of the Red Army during the Second World War. To date, almost nothing is known about this.
The purges in the Red Army in 1937-38 could not completely cleanse the army of treason, it was too deeply rotten, and even in 1941 traitors could and did occupy high posts.
German agents in the USSR are divided into two parts:
- Fake agents (Max-Heine, Sherhorn)
- Real agents, about which almost nothing is known (agent 438)
The fact that Hitler had his own agents in the Red Army was known both before the start of the war and after.
“The enemy, having convinced himself of the concentration of large forces of our troops on the roads to Moscow, having on his flanks the Central Front and the Velikie Luki grouping of our troops, temporarily abandoned the attack on Moscow and, going over to active defense against the Western and Reserve Fronts, all his shock mobile and tank units threw against the Central, South-Western and Southern fronts.
A possible plan of the enemy: to defeat the Central Front and, having reached the Chernigov, Konotop, Priluki region, defeat the armies of the South-Western Front with a blow from the rear, after which [deliver] the main blow to Moscow, bypassing the Bryansk forests and a blow to the Donbass.
I believe that the enemy knows very well the entire system of our defense, the entire operational-strategic grouping of our forces, and knows our immediate possibilities.
Apparently, among our very large workers, who are in close contact with the general situation, the enemy has his own people.
Army General Georgy Zhukov wrote directly to Stalin in August 1941 that there were German spies among high-ranking military men.
…………..
Considering that to this day the materials of the Soviet and German special services on this topic are not available, the material has to be collected from the most disparate sources.
But one of the most important testimonies is the words of the head of the intelligence service of the General Staff of the German Ground Forces, General Reinhard Gehlen
He 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, as they say, goods in person.
His department dealt almost exclusively with the Soviet Union, and in the conditions of the beginning of the Cold War, Gehlen's papers were of great value to the United States.
Later, the general headed the intelligence of the FRG, and copies of his archive remained at the disposal of the CIA. Having already retired, the general published his memoirs “Service. 1942 - 1971", which were published in Germany and the USA in 1971-1972. Almost simultaneously with Gehlen's book, his biographies were published in America.
Most of all interest was generated by one message relating to July 1942 and attributed to an agent who worked in the command staff of the Red Army. It was published by the respected military historian Cookridge.
July 14, 1942. Gehlen received the message, which Gehlen enclosed and personally presented to the Chief of the General Staff, General Halder, the next morning. It said:
“The military conference (or meeting of the Military Council) 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 declared that their retreat would be as far as the Volga, in order to force the Germans to spend the winter in the area.
During the retreat, comprehensive destruction should be carried out in the territory being abandoned; all industry must be evacuated to the Urals and Siberia.
The British representative asked for Soviet assistance in Egypt, but was told that the Soviet manpower resources were not as great as the Allies believed. In addition, they lack aircraft, tanks and artillery pieces, in part 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, was diverted to the defense of Egypt.
It was decided to conduct offensive operations in two sectors of the front: north of Orel and north of Voronezh, using large tank forces and air cover.
A distraction attack must be carried out at Kalinin. It is necessary that Stalingrad, Novorossiysk and the Caucasus be kept.”
“Changes in the general situation at the front in the last few days make it necessary to take the agent's message with complete confidence.
This is confirmed by the movements of the enemy on the front of our army groups "A" and "B" (advancing respectively to the Caucasus and Stalingrad.), His evasive actions on the front of the Don River and his retreat to the Volga at the same time as holding defensive lines in the North Caucasus and on the Stalingrad bridgehead. ; on the front of our Army Group Center, his withdrawal to the line of Tula, Moscow, Kalinin is another confirmation.
Whether the enemy is planning a further large-scale retreat in the event of the offensive of our Army Groups North and Center cannot be determined with certainty at the present time.
Two Soviet attacks, at Orel and Voronezh, were carried out as predicted in July, using large numbers of tanks.
Conducted military reconnaissance from the air soon confirmed this information. Later, Halder noted in his diary:
“Lieutenant Colonel Gehlen of the FHO has provided accurate information on enemy forces redeployed since June 28, and on the estimated strength of these formations. He also gave a correct assessment of the enemy's vigorous actions to defend Stalingrad.
This entry was made by the chief of the General Staff of the ground forces on July 15, 1942, on the day when the chief of the FHO announced the report of "agent 438".
Franz Halder was convinced that Gehlen's information from agent 438 is objective and paints a picture of the situation of the Red Army
All reports of the mysterious agent 438 are true.
Entries in Halder's diary for the second half of July 1942 record massive Soviet attacks with a large number of tanks in the Voronezh region, as well as in the sector of Army Group Center (between July 10 and 17) in the Orel region. As the marshal recalled Soviet Union I. X. Bagramyan,
“On July 16, the Headquarters instructed the command of the Western and Kalinin fronts to prepare and conduct the Rzhev-Sychevsk offensive operation in order to divert German forces from the south.”
However, the operation ended in failure, and for the reason that the enemy was aware of it in advance. The Germans immediately strengthened the defense in that area and prevented the breakthrough of the armored units of the Red Army there.
Agent 438 provided other important information as well.
Just in July 1942, the Soviet Union agreed to redirect Lend-Lease from Basra to Egypt in order to help the British army repel the new offensive of Rommel's army. On July 10, Stalin received a message from Churchill, where the British Prime Minister thanked for "the agreement to send 40 Boston bombers to our armed forces in Egypt, which arrived in Basra on their way to you."
The statement about the possible depletion of Soviet manpower resources is also true in the report. It was in July 1942 that the Red Army, for the only time in the entire war, faced a replenishment crisis caused by huge losses in killed and prisoners in the first year of the war.
British diplomatic documents now published in 1984 testify that it was on July 14, the day when the report from "Agent 438" was received, that the USSR Ambassador to the United States in an interview with the Secretary of State emphasized that " Soviet manpower resources are not inexhaustible”, and the same thing was repeated in London by another Soviet ambassador accredited to the emigre governments located in the British capital.
By the way, back then, in 1942, German intelligence managed to find indirect confirmation of this information.
As Gehlen writes in his memoirs, the Germans
“we were able to read several telegrams from the American embassy in Kuibyshev (the diplomatic corps was evacuated there from Moscow) to Washington, which spoke of Soviet difficulties with the labor force in industry.”
Data about the redirection of Lend-Lease from Basra instead of the USSR to Egypt and about the crisis of replenishment in the Red Army, of course, were of strategic importance.
Kuibyshev became the center of meetings between Soviet and foreign diplomats, but the Germans immediately learned about the meeting, the subject of discussion and the names of the participants
This means that the German spy or spies were most likely there too.
The likelihood that the German intelligence services would be able to obtain information about this from any other sources was close to zero.
The historian Whiting also writes about another scout, without naming him. He reports that
“One of the most trusted agents of Major Herman Baun, who settled in Moscow, was a radio operator named Alexander, with the rank of captain, who served in the communications battalion stationed in the capital and transmitted to the Germans “top secret directives of the Red Army.”
Whiting also mentions the already known report of July 13, 1942, received, in his words, "from one of Bawn's spies."
Finally, the well-known British military historian John Erickson also talks about agent 438 in his book The Road to Stalingrad, published in 1975.
There were other messages as well. In his memoirs, Gehlen mentions that he received a report from an unknown Abwehr agent dated April 13, 1942 from Major Baun. It said that in Kuibyshev, a member of the Central Committee of the party I. I. Nosenko, who after the war became the Minister of the shipbuilding industry, told the editor of the Pravda newspaper that
“At the last joint meeting of the “Presidium of the Central Committee” (Politburo?) and the Supreme High Command, it was decided to wrest the operational initiative from the Germans before they start their offensive, and the Red Army should go on the offensive at the first opportunity after the May holidays.”
The attack of the troops of the South-Western direction on Kharkov, which followed on May 12, which ended in failure and the capture of the shock group, was considered by Gehlen to be confirmation of the correctness of the information received from Kuibyshev.
Gehlen quotes another important intelligence message from Moscow received in the first ten days of November 1942. It said that
“On November 4, Stalin held the Main Military Council with the participation of 12 marshals and generals. The council decided, weather permitting, to begin all planned offensive operations no later than 15 November. These operations were planned in the North Caucasus in the direction of Mozdok, on the Middle Don against the Italian 8th and Romanian 3rd armies, in the area of \u200b\u200bthe Rzhev ledge, and also near Leningrad.
On November 7, Kurt Zeitzler, who replaced Halder as Chief of the General Staff, informed Hitler
"the essence of this report, indicating that the Russians had decided before the end of 1942 to go on the offensive on the Don and against the Rzhev-Vyazma bridgehead."
However, the Fuhrer refused to withdraw troops in the area of Stalingrad.
Kurt Zeitler, Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces, based on the report of Agent 438, urged Hitler to withdraw the 6th Army from Stalingrad
But Hitler refused to do this, thereby dooming Paulus' army to defeat.
According to Gehlen, subsequent events proved the truth of the information about the meeting with Stalin on November 4, 1942. The head of the FHO suggested that the main blow of the Red Army would be inflicted on the Romanian 3rd Army, which covered the Stalingrad grouping from the flank. And on November 18, the day before the start of the Soviet offensive, Gehlen made the right conclusion,
"that the Soviet strike would follow not only from the north, because of the Don, but also from the south, from the Beketovka region."
But it was already too late.
Richard Gehlen, based on the reports of agent 438, relatively correctly understood the main directions of attacks, which later led to the encirclement of Paulus's army
But this information could no longer help the Germans, they had less and less time and effort.
The command of the Red Army in November 1942 really planned two main attacks: on the Rzhev-Vyazma direction and on the flanks of the German 6th Army in Stalingrad, covered by less combat-ready Romanian troops, and believed that there would be enough forces for both attacks.
Stalin's anti-spy strategy
Joseph Stalin, realizing that Hitler was receiving important espionage information about the plans of the Red Army, took measures to reduce the harm from information leakage.
Two factors played a key role here.
Firstly, in the report of agent 438 in the Stalingrad direction, several possible directions of Soviet attacks, both main and purely auxiliary, were listed at once, such as the area south of Lake Ilmen, without specifying where the main efforts of the Red Army would be concentrated.
Such a disposition could induce the German command to disperse its reserves and make it easier for the Soviet troops to advance in the directions of the main attacks.
Secondly, the direction of the Soviet offensive on the Don in the agent's message was indicated to the west of what was actually chosen on November 19 - to the right wing of the Southwestern Front, to the Upper and Lower Mamon area, against the Italian 8th Army.
In reality, the main blow was delivered by the left wing of this front - against the Romanians.
Stalin, knowing that the Germans in the Red Army had their own spies, began to concentrate the same forces on different sectors of the front, until the last moment not indicating to the headquarters where the attack would take place and me the direction of the strikes
Thus, information from spies in the command staff of the Red Army became less useful for the Germans.
Nevertheless, the information from agent 438 was very useful for the Germans, as it still showed the intention of the Soviet command to surround the Stalingrad group of Germans. Here the difference was only in the depth of coverage, especially since such a plan for a deeper coverage of the Germans between the Volga and the Don actually existed in the Soviet General Staff.
The German command in this case could also make an attempt to withdraw its 6th Army from the threat of encirclement.
In the current situation, a message about the planned offensive Soviet troops against the Italians could just push for just such a decision, clearly unfavorable for the offensive of the Red Army.
Initially, the date for the transition to the offensive of the South-Western and Don fronts was set for November 15.
Marshal A. M. Vasilevsky, who coordinated the actions of the fronts, notes in his memoirs:
"The concentration of the last military formations and everything necessary to start the operation, according to our most firm calculations, should have ended no later than November 15."
Zhukov, in his Memoirs and Reflections, quotes his Bodo message to Stalin on November 11:
“Things are going badly with supplies and with the supply of ammunition. There are very few shells for "Uranus" in the troops. The operation will not be prepared by the due date. Ordered to cook on 11/15/1942.
Probably, the original date was even earlier: November 12 or 13. However, by the 15th it was not possible to bring all the required supplies. Therefore, the start of the offensive was postponed to November 19 for the Southwestern and Don fronts and to the 20th for Stalingrad.
It is also likely that the original offensive plan of the Southwestern Front differed from what was actually carried out. Zhukov, in particular, writes that
Georgy Zhukov directly wrote that before the Uranus, the previously approved plans of the South-Western Front were revised
In this case, the adjustment just consisted in changing the direction of the main blow. The Germans, who were expecting a blow in one place, received it in another.
We list a few more plausible reports by German agents, possibly coming from the highest Soviet headquarters. About two weeks before the start of the Soviet offensive on the Kursk Bulge, Gehlen predicted its timing:
“mid-July - and direction; Eagle."
Richard Gehlen, based on spy reports, revealed the strike and even the exact time of the strike in the Oryol direction
As N. S. Khrushchev, who was then a member of the Military Council of the Voronezh Front, testifies in his memoirs, even before the German attack on Kursk, which began on July 5, 1943, the Headquarters decided to launch an offensive first on Orel, and then on Kharkov:
“Now I don’t remember why our offensive (on Kharkov) was scheduled for July 20th. This, apparently, was determined by the fact that we could get everything we needed only by the named date. Stalin told us that Rokossovsky's central front would conduct an offensive operation (on Orel) six days before us, and then we would begin our operation.
Some of the German agents informed their people in advance about the planned attack on Orel, which the Wehrmacht (German armed forces), in turn, forestalled with an attack on the Kursk salient.
.............................
The Germans still had a fairly strong agency in the Red Army, it thinned out after the purges of 37-38, but remained a significant force
(Reinhard Gehlen - the first, in the center - with cadets of the intelligence school)
History is written by the victors, and therefore it is not customary for Soviet chroniclers to mention German spies who worked behind the lines 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 their place, to share their experience with the CIA.
Indeed, it is hard 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 in Soviet-Russian histories, then the point is not only that it is not customary for the winner to confess 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, it was he who 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 "goods face".
His department dealt almost exclusively with the USSR, and in the conditions of the beginning of the Cold War, Gehlen's 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 Gehlen). 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 "Ghelen - 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 the permission of the CIA and the German intelligence BND. They contain some information about German spies in the Soviet rear.
(Gelena's personal card)
General Ernst Kestring, a Russian German born near Tula, was engaged in "field work" in Gehlen's German intelligence. It was he who served as the prototype of 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). Koestring was fluent in 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 Minishkiy 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 of Bolsheviks, and earlier in the Moscow City Party Committee. From the moment the war began, he served as a political instructor at the Western Front. He was captured along with the driver when he was driving around the advanced units during the battle of Vyazemsky.
Minishky immediately agreed to cooperate with the Germans, citing some old grievances against the Soviet regime. Seeing what a valuable shot they got, they promised, when the time came, to take him and his family to the west with the provision of German citizenship. But first, business.
Minishki spent 8 months studying in a special camp. And then the famous operation "Flamingo" began, which Gehlen carried out in collaboration with the intelligence officer Bown, who already had a network of agents in Moscow, among which the radio operator with the pseudonym Alexander was the most valuable. Baun's men ferried Minishkiy 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 was invented by Gelen's experts. He was taken to Moscow, where he was hailed as a hero. Almost immediately, mindful of his previous responsible work, he was appointed to work in the military-political secretariat of the GKO.
(Real German agents; other German spies could look something like this)
Through a chain through several German agents in Moscow, Minishki began to supply information. The first sensational message came from him on July 14, 1942. Gehlen and Gerre sat all night, drawing up a report based on it to the Chief of the General 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 declared that their retreat would be as far as the Volga, in order to force the Germans to spend the winter in the area. During the retreat, comprehensive destruction should be carried out in the territory being abandoned; all industry must be evacuated to the Urals and Siberia.
The British representative asked for Soviet assistance in Egypt, but was told that the Soviet manpower resources were not as great as the Allies believed. In addition, they lack aircraft, tanks and guns, in part 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, was diverted to protect Egypt. It was decided to conduct offensive operations in two sectors of the front: north of Orel and north of Voronezh, using large tank forces and air cover. A distraction attack must be carried out at Kalinin. It is necessary that Stalingrad, Novorossiysk and the Caucasus be kept.”
It all happened. Halder later noted in his diary: “The FCO has provided accurate information on the enemy forces newly deployed since June 28, and on the estimated strength of these formations. He also gave a correct assessment of the energetic actions of the enemy in the defense of Stalingrad.
The above authors made a number of inaccuracies, which is understandable: they received information through several hands and 30 years after the events described. For example, the English historian David Kahn 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 attaches of these countries.
(Secret intelligence school OKW Amt Ausland/Abwehr)
There is no consensus about the real name of Minishkia. According to another version, his surname was Mishinsky. But perhaps it is not true either. For the Germans, it passed under the code numbers 438.
Coolridge and other authors report sparingly on the further fate of agent 438. The participants in Operation Flamingo definitely worked in Moscow until October 1942. In the same month, Gehlen recalled Minishkiy, arranging, with the help of Bown, a meeting with one of the leading reconnaissance detachments of the Wally, which ferried him across the front line.
In the future, Minishkia worked for Gehlen in the information analysis department, worked with German agents, who were then transferred across the front line.
Minishkia and Operation Flamingo are also named by other respected authors, such as the British military historian John Eriksson in his book The Road to Stalingrad, by the French historian Gabor Rittersporn. According to Rittersporn, Minishkiy 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.
Minishkia 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 for a possible separate peace at the end of 1942, and then in 1944 - if the assassination attempt on Hitler would be successful. For reasons unknown today, Rokossovsky was seen as a possible ruler of the USSR after the overthrow of Stalin in a coup of the generals.
(This is how the unit of German saboteurs from Brandenburg looked like. One of its most famous operations was the capture of Maykop oil fields in the summer of 1942 and the city itself)
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, former military intelligence colonel Yuri Modin, in his book The Fates of Scouts: My Cambridge Friends, claims that the British were afraid to supply the USSR with information obtained by decoding German reports, precisely because of the fear that there were agents in the Soviet headquarters.
But they personally mention another German superintelligence officer - Fritz Kauders, who created the famous Max intelligence network in the USSR. His biography is given by the aforementioned Englishman David Kahn.
Fritz Kauders 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 in Budapest. There he found himself a profitable occupation - 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 station in Hungary, and began working for German intelligence. He makes acquaintance with the Russian emigre 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. Agents are thrown into the Union for a year and a half, starting in the autumn of 1939. The annexation of Romanian Bessarabia to the USSR helped a lot here, when at the same time they “attached” dozens of German spies, abandoned there in advance.
(General Turkul - in the center, with a mustache - with fellow White Guards in Sofia)
With the outbreak of war with the USSR, Kauders moved to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, where he headed the Abwehr radio post, which received radiograms from agents in the USSR. But who these agents were has not been clarified so far. There are only fragments 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 the minimum information about their actions in the USSR is still closed. Did the Americans and the British pass information about them to the USSR after the victory over fascism? Hardly - they needed the surviving agents themselves. The maximum that was then declassified was secondary agents from the Russian émigré organization NTS.
(quoted from the book by B. Sokolov "Hunting for Stalin, hunting for Hitler", publishing house "Veche", 2003, pp. 121-147)
Even in the Interpreter's Blog about the accomplices of the Germans during the Second World War.
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