German "moles" in the Red Army in the final period of the Second World War. secret war
"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 Velikiye 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.
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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 some of the weapons intended for Russia, which the British were supposed to deliver through the port of Basra in the Persian Gulf, were 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 Marshal of the Soviet Union I. Kh. Bagramyan recalled,
“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, in the area of Upper and Lower Mamon, 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, the message about the planned offensive of the Soviet troops against the Italians just could have prompted precisely such a decision, which was 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.
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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
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.
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). Kestring 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.
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.
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, who 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.
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 emigrant 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.
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)
The tasks of German intelligence at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War
Just before the attack on the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht Supreme High Command held one of the last briefings with senior Abwehr officials. It was about the contribution of military intelligence to the fastest achievement of victory over the Soviets in an already prepared war. Arguing that everything was over and that the gigantic battle that was just ahead had been won, Colonel-General Jodl, the chief of staff for the operational leadership of the armed forces, Hitler's most senior military adviser, formulated new requirements for intelligence. At the present stage, he said, the General Staff is least of all in need of information about the doctrine, condition, and armaments of the Red Army as a whole. The task of the Abwehr is to closely monitor the changes taking place in the enemy troops to the depth of the border zone. On behalf of the high command, Yodl actually diverted the Abwehr from participating in strategic intelligence, limiting its actions to the narrow framework of collecting and analyzing specific, almost momentary operational-tactical information.
Having adjusted the program of his actions in accordance with this installation, Pickenbrock began organizing targeted espionage. The tasks of each division of the Abwehr were carefully worked out, and it was planned to involve the largest possible number of agents in reconnaissance operations. Special and combined-arms reconnaissance units of individual armies and army groups intensified the infiltration of agents across the demarcation line determined by the secret protocols of the 1939 pact. These were mostly scouts who had been trained in the Abwehr schools that existed in Stettin, Konigsberg, Berlin and Vienna even before the attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR. The total number of agents involved grew - it numbered in the hundreds. From time to time, entire groups of German soldiers, dressed in Red Army uniforms, under the guidance of intelligence officers, crossed the border for reconnaissance on the ground. As stated in Jodl's briefing, the penetration into Soviet territory was not deep, the task was only to collect information about the latest changes taking place in the deployment of Soviet troops and military installations. There was an unwritten rule: not to move into the hinterland of Russia, not to waste time and effort on collecting information about the total power of the Soviet country, in which the German high command, which already considered itself fully prepared for an attack, did not feel much need. Even such an unlikely case from the point of view of common sense was recorded. One agent sent what seemed to him an important report to Berlin: “When the Soviet state has to confront a strong enemy, the Communist Party will collapse with amazing speed, lose the ability to control the situation in the country, and the Soviet Union will fall apart, turning into a grouping of independent states” . The assessment of the content of this report in the central apparatus of the Abwehr was the best way to characterize the mood of the Wehrmacht. The Abwehr leadership recognized the agent's findings as "very accurate."
A researcher who, after almost half a century, analyzes the system of "total espionage" of Hitler's intelligence, is struck by the lack of logic in Jodl's installation, given to him on behalf of the Supreme High Command, and in how scrupulously the military carried it out, neglecting strategic goals. In fact, why, setting a specific task, to severely limit its borders and actually refuse to further replenish information about the power, weapons of the Red Army, the mood of the personnel, and finally, about the military-industrial potential of the country. Didn't they understand in Berlin that there was going to be a war not only of armies, but also of states, not only of weapons, but also of the economy? Now we know: we understood. But in advance they assessed their capabilities and the capabilities of the enemy as incomparable values. On the side of the attacker - mobilization and surprise, a feeling of invincibility after so many victories in Europe in 1939-1941, the economic and industrial potential of all the occupied states. What about the enemy? An army decapitated by Stalinist repressions, an unfinished reconstruction of the armed forces, an "unstable multinational state" capable (according to Hitler's calculations) of crumbling under the first blows. Add to this the psychological effect of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. It has long been known that the Nazis from the very beginning did not put a penny on this treaty, continuing the forced preparations for war.
So, the Abwehr concentrated its main efforts on reconnaissance support for combat operations of troops, bearing in mind the tasks of the first stage of the Barbarossa plan. The matter, of course, was not limited to the collection of espionage information. In an effort to contribute to the successful implementation of the initial offensive operations, the Abwehr launched terror against the commanders and political workers of the Red Army, destructive actions in transport and, finally, ideological sabotage aimed at undermining the morale of Soviet soldiers and the local population. But the territory on which all such operations were to be carried out was to be limited to the front-line zone. It is significant that Jodl's directive had long-term consequences, about which, shortly after the capitulation during interrogation on June 17, 1945, Field Marshal W. Keitel, who had been the chief of staff of the German High Command since 1938, had to state: “During the war, the data received from our agents concerned only the tactical zone. We have never received information that would have a serious impact on the development of military operations. For example, we never managed to get a picture of how the loss of Donbass affected the overall balance of the SSSL military economy. Of course, such a categorical statement by the Chief of Staff of the High Command of the German Armed Forces should also be seen as an attempt to shift the responsibility for failures at the front onto the Abwehr and other “total espionage” services.
Collection of information by Germany about the Soviet troops in 1941
All of the above does not allow Jodl to be attributed the authorship of the directive, by virtue of which, for an indefinite period, the Abwehr received an unprecedented freedom of action of any nature in a narrowed territory. The instruction of the chief of staff of the operational leadership of the high command of the armed forces only in the most concentrated, concise form reflected the prevailing mood in the political leadership of Germany - on June 22, 1941, it began a "blitzkrieg" that "unconditionally promised success."
As can be judged on the basis of archival documents, in the pre-war weeks and the first weeks of hostilities, the largest number of Abwehr and SD agents prepared in advance were sent across the demarcation line, and then beyond the front line. In 1941, compared with 1939, the volume of droppings increased 14 times. Some of the results of this work were summed up by Canaris in a memorandum to the Wehrmacht High Command dated July 4, 1941, that is, already two weeks after the start of the perfidious aggression: “Numerous groups of agents from the indigenous population were sent to the headquarters of the German armies - from Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Georgians, Finns, Estonians, etc. Each group consisted of 25 (or more) people. These groups were led by German officers. The groups used captured Soviet uniforms, military trucks and motorcycles. They were supposed to seep into our rear to a depth of 50-300 kilometers in front of the front of the advancing German armies in order to report the results of their observations by radio, paying special attention to collecting information about Russian reserves, about the state of railways and other roads, as well as about all activities carried out by the enemy.
Canaris's emphasis on the abandonment of undercover groups can be seen as evidence of the Hitlerite leadership's confidence in that. that with the first failures of the Soviet troops on the border and further to a rather large operational depth, the time will come for the "collapse of the state." Hence the “national composition of the abandoned agents and a large number of espionage and sabotage groups formed from the personnel of the specialized unit "Brandenburg-800", and armed gangs of bourgeois nationalists. But even in this period lone agents prevailed. Under the guise of refugees, soldiers of the Red Army emerging from the encirclement, Red Army soldiers who had lagged behind their units, they relatively easily infiltrated into the nearest rear of the Soviet troops. Naturally, large Abwehr agents sent to perform some particularly important task were also sent alone.
During the first half of 1941, the Abwehr agents managed to collect a lot of information about the composition of the Soviet troops in the zone of upcoming combat battles and in the immediate rear. Several sabotage groups and detachments operated successfully. Only in 14 days of August 1941 on the Kirov and October railways they committed seven acts of sabotage. The saboteurs repeatedly disrupted communication between the headquarters of units and formations of the Red Army. Objectively, the success of the Abwehr in fulfilling Jodl's directive was facilitated by the situation at the front, which unfavorably developed in the initial, tragic period of the war, not least because of the miscalculations of the Soviet political leadership. Undoubtedly, the circumstance that the state security organs of the USSR had not yet found experience in a wartime environment. Many special departments were filled with personnel already in the difficult conditions of the retreat, the Germans encircling entire formations and even armies. An analysis of the forms and methods of subversive activities of enemy agents was late, many operational measures hit the target.
Nevertheless, by the end of 1941, as a result of the crushing of Hitler's Operation Typhoon, the Nazi blitzkrieg strategy was seriously defeated. The Nazi leaders themselves became more and more convinced of this, for whom the resistance of the Soviet people and its Red Army turned out to be a shock after the “strange war” in Europe and especially after the fleeting conquest of France in 1940.
“According to the report of our intelligence agencies, as well as the general assessment of all the commanders and leaders of the General Staff,” Keitel pointed out at the interrogation mentioned above, “the position of the Red Army by October 1941 was as follows: in the battle on the borders of the Soviet Union, the main forces were defeated Red Army; in the main battles in Belarus and Ukraine, German troops defeated and destroyed the main reserves of the Red Army; The Red Army no longer has operational and strategic reserves that could offer serious resistance ... The Russian counteroffensive, which was completely unexpected for the High Command, showed that we had deeply miscalculated in assessing the reserves of the Red Army.
The role of German intelligence in a protracted war with the USSR
The defeat of the fascist German troops near Moscow confronted Germany with the prospect of a protracted war, in which the possibility and ability of the belligerents to constantly build up their forces acquired decisive importance.
The German generals, in parallel with conducting operations on the main and only front so far for themselves, carefully worked out plans for the continuation of anti-Soviet aggression, as before, a significant place was given to "total espionage", but they already tried to shift the center of gravity in this area to the deep Soviet rear, increasing " spatial scope of their operations. Representatives of the command and military intelligence prepared a document "Calculation of forces for an operation against an industrial region in the Urals." It said: “... hostilities, in general, will develop along railway and highway routes. Surprise is desirable for the operation, all four groups will act simultaneously in order to reach the industrial area as soon as possible, and then - judging by the situation - either hold the occupied lines or leave them, after destroying all vital objects.
In the reorientation of the "total espionage" services, a significant role was played by the results of the inspection trip of Canaris and his closest assistants to the Eastern Front, undertaken in September 1941 at the direction of Hitler. Getting acquainted with the work of the units subordinate to the Abwehr, Canaris then came to the conclusion that the resistance that the blitzkrieg stumbled upon, the support of world public opinion for the courageous struggle of the Soviet people against fascist aggression, required a serious revision of the intelligence strategy in general and many tactics in particular.
Returning to Berlin, Canaris issued an order obliging all Abwehr units to take measures to rapidly increase intelligence activity outside the front line, purposefully and stubbornly move into the hinterland of the Soviet Union. Heightened interest was shown in the Caucasus, the Volga region, the Urals and Central Asia. In the rear of the Red Army, it was supposed to intensify sabotage and terrorist activities. The implementation on Soviet territory of a series of widely conceived espionage and sabotage operations to weaken the rear was intended to help create a turning point in the armed conflict in favor of the aggressor, up to the Reich achieving "major military success".
The leaders of the secret services made no secret of the fact that the goals of the "colonization" of the Soviet Union, pursued by Hitler, were criminal in nature, involving the use of equally criminal methods and means. “For the conquest of Russia,” writes the prominent American historian W. Shearer, “there were no unlawful methods - all means were permissible.” The restrictions imposed by international law were deliberately thrown overboard. Thus, in the order of Field Marshal Keitel of July 23, 1941, it was indicated that any resistance would be punished not by the prosecution of those responsible, but by the creation of such a system of terror on the part of the armed forces that would be sufficient to eradicate from the population any intention to resist. From the respective commanders, the order required the use of draconian measures.
The Nazis deliberately violated international law, resolutely spreading violence, deceit and provocation, encouraging the massacres of civilians. And the secret services, which were entrusted with the organization of "total espionage" in its most monstrous manifestations, were not accidentally recognized as criminal five years later.
All four years of the war, German intelligence was trustingly "feeding" on the disinformation that the Lubyanka provided to it.
In the summer of 1941, Soviet intelligence officers launched an operation that is still considered "aerobatics" of covert combat and entered the textbooks on reconnaissance craft. It lasted almost the entire war and at different stages was called differently - "Monastery", "Couriers", and then "Berezino".
Her plan was originally to bring to the German intelligence center a deliberate "misinformation" about an anti-Soviet religious-monarchist organization allegedly existing in Moscow, to force enemy intelligence officers to believe in it as a real force. And thus penetrate the intelligence network of the Nazis in the Soviet Union.
The FSB declassified the materials of the operation only after 55 years of the Victory over fascism.
The Chekists recruited a representative of a noble noble family, Boris Sadovsky, to work. With the establishment of Soviet power, he lost his fortune and, naturally, was hostile to it.
He lived in a small house in the Novodevichy Convent. Being an invalid, he almost did not leave it. In July 1941, Sadovsky wrote a poem, which soon became the property of counterintelligence, in which he addressed the Nazi occupiers as "liberator brothers", urging Hitler to restore Russian autocracy.
They decided to use him as the head of the legendary Throne organization, especially since Sadovsky was really looking for an opportunity to somehow contact the Germans.
Alexander Petrovich Demyanov - "Heine" (right) during a radio communication session with a German In order to "help" him, Alexander Demyanov, a secret employee of the Lubyanka, who had the operational pseudonym "Heine", was included in the game.
His great-grandfather Anton Golovaty was the first chieftain of the Kuban Cossacks, his father was a Cossack captain who died in the First World War. Mother, however, 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 a pleasant appearance, "Heine" easily converged with film actors, writers, playwrights, poets, in whose circles he rotated with the blessing of the Chekists. Before the war, in order to suppress terrorist attacks, he specialized in developing relations between the nobles who remained in the USSR and foreign emigration. An experienced agent with such data quickly won the trust of the poet-monarchist Boris Sadovsky.
On February 17, 1942, Demyanov - "Heine" crossed the front line and surrendered to the Germans, declaring that he was a representative of the anti-Soviet underground. The intelligence officer told the Abwehr officer about the Throne organization and that it had been sent by its leaders to communicate with the German command. At first they did not believe him, they subjected him to a series of interrogations and thorough checks, including an imitation of execution, tossing a weapon from which he could shoot his tormentors and escape. However, his endurance, a clear line of conduct, the persuasiveness of the legend, backed up by real people and circumstances, eventually made the German counterintelligence believe.
It also played a role that even before the war, the Moscow Abwehr residency* took note of Demyanov as a possible candidate for recruitment and even gave him the nickname “Max”.
* Abwehr - military intelligence and counterintelligence agency of Germany in 1919-1944, was part of the Wehrmacht High Command.
Under it, he appeared in the card file of the Moscow agents in 1941, under it, after three weeks of learning the basics of espionage, on March 15, 1942, he was parachuted into the Soviet rear. Demyanov was to settle in the Rybinsk region with the task of conducting active military-political intelligence. From the Throne organization, the Abwehr expected the activation of pacifist propaganda among the population, the deployment of sabotage and sabotage.
For two weeks there was a pause in the Lubyanka, so as not to arouse suspicion among the Abwehrs at the ease with which their new agent was legalized.
Finally "Max" relayed his first misinformation. Soon, in order to strengthen Demyanov's position in German intelligence and to supply the Germans through him with false data of strategic importance, he was appointed a communications officer under the Chief of the General Staff, Marshal Shaposhnikov.
Admiral Canaris Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr (nicknamed Janus, the “Sly Fox”) considered it his great fortune that he had acquired a “source of information” in such high areas, and could not help but boast of this success in front of his rival, the head of the VI Directorate of the RSHA, SS Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg. In his memoirs written after the war in English captivity, he testified with envy that 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 transmitter in the organization was becoming unusable and needed to be replaced.
Soon, two Abwehr couriers came to the secret apartment of the NKVD 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 Chekists could check their appearances and find out if they had any connections with anyone else. Then the messengers were arrested, the walkie-talkie delivered by them was found. And the Germans "Max" radioed that the couriers had arrived, but the transmitted radio was damaged upon landing.
Two months later, two more messengers with two radio transmitters and various spy equipment appeared from behind the front line. They had the task not only to help “Max”, but also to settle in Moscow themselves, collect and transmit their intelligence information via the second radio. Both agents were recruited, and they reported to the headquarters of the "Valli" - the Abwehr center - that they had successfully arrived and started the task. From that moment on, the operation developed in two directions: on the one hand, on behalf of the monarchist organization Throne and the resident Max, on the other hand, on behalf of Abwehr agents Zyubin and Alaev, who allegedly relied on their own connections in Moscow. A new stage of the secret duel has begun - Operation Couriers.
In November 1942, in response to a request from the headquarters of "Valli" about the possibility of expanding the geography of the organization "Throne" 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 a cell was created, was better suited "Throne". The Germans agreed to this, and the counterintelligence officers took care of the "meeting" of the couriers. Satisfying the requests of the Abwehrites, the Chekists sent them extensive disinformation, which was being prepared at the General Staff of the Red Army, and more and more enemy intelligence agents were called to front 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, 1st Class, and Mikhail Kalinin signed a decree at the same time awarding Demyanov the Order of the Red Star. The result of the radio games "Monastery" 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, equipment.
In the summer of 1944, the operational game received a new continuation called Berezino. "Max" reported to the headquarters of "Valli" that he was "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 Nazi command not only to help them break through to their own, but also to use them to disorganize the enemy rear, the Chekists decided to play on this. Soon the People's Commissar of State Security Merkulov reported to Stalin, Molotov and Beria a plan for a new operation. "Good" was received.
On August 18, 1944, the Moscow radio station "Throne" informed the Germans that "Max" accidentally ran into a military unit of the Wehrmacht, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Gerhard Sherhorn, who was leaving the encirclement. "Encircled" are in great need of food, weapons, ammunition. Seven days in the Lubyanka they waited for an answer: the Abwehr, apparently, made inquiries about Sherhorn and his "army". And on the eighth, a radiogram came: “Please help us contact this German unit. We intend to drop various cargoes for them and send a radio operator.”
On the night of September 15-16, 1944, three Abwehr messengers landed by parachute in the area of Lake Pesochnoe in the Minsk region, where Sherhorn's regiment was allegedly "hiding". Soon two of them were recruited and included in the radio game.
Then the Abwehrs transferred two more officers with letters addressed to Sherhorn from the commander of the Army Group "Center" Colonel-General Reinhardt and the head of the "Abwehrkommando-103" Barfeld. The flow of cargo “breaking through from the encirclement” increased, with them more and more “auditors” arrived, who had the task, as they later admitted during interrogations, to find out if these were the people they pretended to be. But everything was done cleanly. So pure that in the last radiogram to Sherhorn, transmitted from the "Abwehrkommando-103" on May 5, 1945, after the surrender of Berlin, it was said:
“It is with a heavy heart that we have to stop helping you. Due to the current situation, we are also no longer able to 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 the operation "Berezino" was facilitated by the fact that it involved real German officers who went over to the side of the Red Army. They convincingly portrayed the surviving regiment, including recruited paratroopers and liaison officers.
From archival data: from September 1944 to May 1945, the German command flew 39 sorties to our rear and dropped 22 German intelligence officers (all of them were arrested by Soviet counterintelligence officers), 13 radio stations, 255 cargo places with weapons, uniforms, food, ammunition, medicines, and 1,777,000 rubles. Germany continued to supply "its" detachment until the very end of the war.
