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"One spy in right place 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 command staff 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 enemy plan: to defeat the Central Front and, having reached the Chernigov, Konotop, Priluki region, defeat the armies of the Southwestern 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 general situation, the enemy has his 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 General Staff ground forces Germany, 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 " 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 supplies of weapons destined 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 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 general position at the front in the last few days they have been forced to take the agent's message with full 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 from big amount tanks in the Voronezh region, as well as in the sector of the Army Group "Center" (in the period from July 10 to 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 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” (the Politburo?) and Supreme High Command it was decided to wrest the operational initiative from the Germans before they began 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, if they allow weather, start 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 ​​​​the 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 offensive 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 Soviet command 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.

.............................

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 about German scouts during the Second World War they do not write in Soviet-Russian stories, the point is not only that the winner is not accepted 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 department " foreign armies- East "(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 "goods in person".

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 cooperation 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 on real surname 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 actually 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, the former military intelligence colonel Yuri Modin, in his book The Fates of the Intelligence Officers: My Cambridge Friends, claims that the British were afraid to supply the USSR with information obtained through the decoding of 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)

One of them critical factors that led the Soviet people to victory in the Great Patriotic War was the predominance of secret warfare. The unprecedented courage of Soviet intelligence officers, faith in the ideals of justice and love for the Motherland worked wonders. What was the system of special services of the Soviet state in the difficult years of 1941-1945?
I must say that it is quite simple and effective ...

GRU

In 1939, the intelligence department of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army was transformed into the Fifth Directorate of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR. In 1940, it was reassigned to the General Staff and, accordingly, received the name of the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army. And on February 16, 1942, the world-famous abbreviation "GRU" was born. As part of the GRU, two departments were created: the first - undercover (departments: German, European, Far East, Middle East, sabotage, operational equipment, radio intelligence), the second - information (departments: German, European, Far East, Middle East, editorial and publishing, military information , deciphering). And besides, a number of independent departments that were not part of the First and Second Directorates.

Given the fact that "he who owns the information owns the world," Joseph Stalin drew the appropriate conclusions and further raised the status of military intelligence. In October 1942, an order was issued according to which the GRU was exclusively subordinate to the People's Commissar of Defense. The functional duties of the Main Directorate included the organization of undercover and reconnaissance and sabotage work, both on the territory of other countries and in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union.

Scouts of the 27th Guards Division

A group of scouts of the divisional reconnaissance of the 27th Guards Rifle Division.
Standing from left to right: Merkulov - died due to a wound; Vasily Zakamaldin; senior lieutenant Zhuravlev - went to study; -?; Leonid Kazachenko - died due to a wound;
sitting from left to right: Alexey Solodovnikov; Vorobyov - medical officer of the company, left due to a wound; Nikolai Pluzhnikov - died in Poland while repelling an attack on the division headquarters; ? - dead ;)
The photo was taken in Poland in the summer of 1944. From the personal archive of Vladimir Fedorovich Bukhenko, who also served as a scout in this unit.

Source: personal archive of V.F. Bukhenko.

In wars and armed conflicts, servicemen of the internal troops not only performed special tasks, but also directly participated in hostilities. One of the heroic pages of their service and combat activities was the contribution of the NKVD troops to the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. They fought against Nazi German invaders, provided protection for the rear of the active Red Army, guarded communications and industrial facilities, escorted prisoners of war, fought against saboteurs and spies, desertion and banditry, and solved a number of other tasks, including those that were not characteristic of them.

Garrisons of the 9th and 10th divisions of the NKVD troops for the protection of railway structures, guarding transport communications on the territory of Ukraine, even surrounded, in the rear German troops for a long time they continued to defend the objects until the last soldier. More than 70 percent soldiers and officers of these formations, who died in battle, remained missing. They fulfilled their military duty to the end.

Units of the 14th and 15th Red Banner motorized rifle regiments of the NKVD took part in the fighting against the German-Finnish troops in Karelia.

In the battle of the 15th Red Banner Motorized Rifle Regiment near Lake Märet on July 25, 1941, junior lieutenant A.A. Divochkin "took command of the battery, put out the fire at the ammunition depot with danger to his life and personally fired alternately from two guns at the enemy from an open position, repelled the attack, destroyed one gun, several machine guns and up to an enemy infantry platoon."

On defense locality Hiitola showed exceptional courage, the regiment's propaganda instructor, senior political instructor N.M. Rudenko. He “personally destroyed 15 white Finns-“ cuckoos ”, being wounded, killed a German machine gunner, captured an easel machine gun and continued to smash the enemy with fire from it. Having received a second wound, he did not leave the battlefield, and at the third wound, bleeding, he lost consciousness. In the same battle ... the medical officer Kokorin appeared among the most fierce fights, assisting the wounded and personally taking part in the attacks. Being himself wounded, he made his way to the front lines to assist the senior political officer Rudenko. While fighting, the wounded Kokorin was surrounded, and the White Finnish officer tried to take him prisoner. Kokorin blew himself up and five White Finns, led by an officer, with a grenade.

By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of August 26, 1941, junior lieutenant Alexander Andreevich Divochkin, senior political officer Nikolai Mikhailovich Rudenko and Red Army soldier Anatoly Alexandrovich Kokorin were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Scout Heroes

With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War the main foreign intelligence forces were sent to work against Nazi Germany. The intelligence leadership took steps to establish contact with the existing agents in the Axis countries, acquire new agents, and select operatives to be deployed behind enemy lines.

Due to the unpreparedness of foreign intelligence to work in a war caused by mass repression against the scouts initial stage contact with agents was lost. It was not possible to organize intelligence work against Germany and its satellites from the territory of neutral countries, with the exception of Switzerland, where the illegal military intelligence officer S. Rado (“Dora”) acted effectively.

In this regard, it was decided to create special reconnaissance detachments to conduct reconnaissance activities in the rear of the German troops. Active intelligence work, in particular, was conducted by the "Winners" detachment of Colonel D.N. Medvedev. It included the famous intelligence officer N.I. Kuznetsov.

After careful preparation in the 1st Directorate of the NKGB, especially in improving German language(it was planned to use it through illegal intelligence in Germany itself) N.I. Kuznetsov in 1942 was abandoned behind enemy lines in the region of Rovno. With documents addressed to Paul Siebert, he was a member of various circles of the Nazi occupiers and used this circumstance to collect information of interest to Moscow.

During his stay in the rear of the Germans, N.I. Kuznetsov received and transmitted to Moscow information about the impending attempt by the German special services on the participants in the Tehran Conference, about the plans of the Wehrmacht command on the Kursk Bulge, and other information that was of great interest.

They destroyed the chief Nazi judge in Ukraine, Funk, the deputy Gauleiter of Ukraine, General Knut, and the vice-governor of Galicia, Bauer. With the help of other reconnaissance partisans, he kidnapped the commander of the German special forces, General Ilgen.

In 1944 he was killed by Ukrainian nationalists. For courage and heroism shown in the fight against fascist invaders, N.I. Kuznetsov was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Another reconnaissance and sabotage detachment "Fort", headed by V.A. Molodtsov, acted in Odessa and its environs. Molodtsov's scouts, based in the Odessa catacombs, obtained important information about the German and Romanian troops and the plans of the command of these countries. He was captured as a result of betrayal. He was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

On the eve of the occupation of Kyiv by the Nazi troops, foreign intelligence created an illegal residency in it, headed by intelligence officer I.D. Curly. This residency managed to infiltrate the Nazi intelligence center, which was headed by a seasoned Nazi spy, Major Miller, aka Anton Milchevsky. Information was obtained about 87 Abwehr agents, as well as a number of traitors. I.D. Curly was betrayed by a Gestapo agent and executed. He was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

"SMERSH"

In 1943, in the People's Commissariats of Defense and Internal Affairs, as well as in the navy, SMERSH military counterintelligence units were created, recognized by historians and experts in the field of special services, as the best counterintelligence units of World War II. The main task of this unit was not only to counteract the German Abwehr, but also the need to introduce Soviet counterintelligence officers into the highest echelons of power in Nazi Germany and intelligence schools, destroy sabotage groups, conduct radio games, and also in the fight against traitors to the Motherland.

It should be noted that I. Stalin himself gave the name to this special service. At first, there was a proposal to call the unit SMERNESH (that is, “death to German spies”), to which Stalin stated that Soviet territory was full of spies from other states, and it was also necessary to fight them, so it’s better to call the new body simply SMERSH. His official name became - the department of counterintelligence SMERSH NKVD of the USSR. By the time the counterintelligence was created, the battle of Stalingrad was left behind, and the initiative in the conduct of hostilities began to gradually pass to the troops of the Union. At this time, the territories that were under occupation began to be liberated, with German captivity fled a large number of Soviet soldiers and officers. Some of them were sent by the Nazis as spies. The special departments of the Red Army and the Navy needed to be reorganized, so they were replaced by SMERSH. And although the unit lasted only three years, people talk about it to this day.

"Berezina"

“... Our radio picked up the answer. First, a tuning signal passed, then a special signal, which meant that our people got in touch without interference (not an extra precaution: the absence of a signal would mean that the radio operator was captured and was forced to get in touch by force). And more great news: Sherhorn's detachment exists...” Otto Skorzeny. Memoirs.

On August 18, 1944, an Abwehr liaison, conspired on the territory of Belarus, radioed: a large detachment of the Wehrmacht survived in the Berezina region, miraculously escaping defeat and hiding in a swampy area. The delighted command parachuted ammunition, food and radio operators in the indicated coordinates. They immediately reported: indeed, the German unit, numbering up to two thousand, led by Colonel Heinrich Sherhorn, was in dire need of weapons, provisions and demolition specialists to continue the partisan struggle. In fact, it was a grandiose operation of our intelligence, code-named "Berezina", with the participation of real German officers who went over to the side of the Red Army and pretended to be a surviving regiment, and paratroopers-liaisons were immediately recruited by SMERSH, included in the radio game. Germany continued air supply of "its" detachment until May 45th.

Risky game on the Bandura

According to the NKGB of the USSR, an underground organization of the Polish government in exile in London, the Delegation of Zhondu, operates on the territory of Southern Lithuania and Western Belarus, which has one of the main tasks of conducting operational intelligence in the rear of the Red Army and on front-line communications. To transmit information, the "Delagatura" has short-wave radio transmitters and complex digital ciphers.

In June 1944, near the city of Andreapol, SMERSH caught four just abandoned German saboteurs. The head and radio operator of the enemy detachment agreed to work for our intelligence and informed the Center that the penetration into enemy territory had been successful. Reinforcements and ammunition needed!

The radio game of the counterintelligence officers of the 2nd Baltic Front against Army Group North continued for several months, during which the enemy repeatedly threw weapons and new agents near Andreapol, who immediately fell into the hands of SMERSH.

The Great Patriotic War became a serious test for foreign intelligence. In incredibly difficult conditions, sometimes under bombs, scouts risked their lives in order to obtain important intelligence information. Intelligence informed Stalin about the plans of the German command near Stalingrad, on the Kursk Bulge, and about other plans of the German Wehrmacht. Thus, she contributed to the victory of our people over the most dangerous aggressor in the history of mankind.

An important place in its activities during the war years was occupied by clarifying the true plans of the allies of the USSR for anti-Hitler coalition regarding the timing of the opening of the "second front", their positions at the meetings of the "Big Three".

All four years of the war, German intelligence was trustingly "feeding" on the disinformation that the Lubyanka provided to it.

Summer 1941 Soviet intelligence officers launched an operation that is still considered "aerobatics" of a secret struggle 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 targeted "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 Soviet power he had lost his fortune and was naturally hostile towards her.

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 "brother liberators", called on 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.

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 Kuban Cossacks, father - Cossack Yesaul, 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, finally made the German counterintelligence believe.

It also played a role that even before the war, the Moscow Abwehr station * 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 disinformation. 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, head of the Abwehr (nicknamed Janus), " Cunning fox”) considered it his great luck that he got a “source of information” in such high spheres, and could not help boasting of this success to 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, 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 of the 1st degree, and Mikhail Kalinin signed the Decree on awarding Demyanov with 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 with them 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 the "Valli" that he was "seconded" to a newly occupied Soviet troops Minsk. Soon the Abwehr received a message from there that numerous groups were making their way to the west through the Belarusian forests. German soldiers and officers who were surrounded as a result of the Soviet offensive. 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 Wehrmacht, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Gerhard Sherhorn. "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 envoys 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 Abwehrkommando-103, Barfeld. The flow of cargo "breaking out of the encirclement" increased, with them all the new "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 Scherhorn, 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 made 39 sorties in 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.