"Brandenburgers" - saboteurs of the Abwehr
The history of the use of military units to perform special tasks behind enemy lines has been known since ancient times: “The actions of commando-type units, or special units, are as old as the history of the Earth itself. In the annals of the Egyptian pharaohs, even before the Ramses dynasty, it is recorded, for example, that during the conquest of Syria, the chief commander of Pharaoh Thutmosis III, commander Tutu, using his connections, managed to sew 200 heavily armed soldiers into bags of flour and load them onto the ship. He managed to unload them in Jaffa, already besieged by the Egyptians. Once in the city, these 200 warriors got out of their bags, killed all the guards of the city and secured a large port as a stronghold. Or take the well-known episode of the Trojan War, with the use of the legendary wooden horse during the capture of Asia Minor Troy. What is not an example of the successful actions of the ancient Greek "special forces"!
The first attempts to use special-purpose units by German intelligence date back to 1938 during the period of preparation for the occupation of the Sudetenland. The idea to create small, well-trained units of reconnaissance saboteurs, which, if necessary, could be thrown behind enemy lines, belongs to one of the officers of the Abwehr, Theodor von Hippel. He came to this conclusion based on his experience of serving in the German expeditionary force of General Lettov-Vorbeck in Africa in 1914-1918. According to his plan, a battle group of skillful and decisive "daredevils" was supposed to "leak" through the front line in civilian clothes or in military uniform of the enemy and, acting in front of their advancing troops, capture strategically important objects (bridges, tunnels, power plants), carry out sabotage actions , arrange a panic among the population, etc.
Historians describe the birth of the German special forces as follows: “In 1938, the Ebbinghaus plan was born in the bowels of the Abwehr. Military counterintelligence intended to form special units for operations behind the enemy's front line. The saboteurs were taught the methods of guerrilla warfare, the use of all types of edged and firearms, defense and attack techniques. Strict requirements: discreet appearance, intelligence above average, ability to speak languages, absolute physical readiness, developed memory, ability to adapt to rapidly changing conditions - all this allowed the Abwehr to create one of the most combat-ready units of the Second World War.
A day or two before the start of the main operation, a combat “four” was thrown behind enemy lines: a group commander, a signalman, a sniper and a “narrow” specialist (depending on the combat mission: engineer, sapper, scuba diver, etc.). Acts of sabotage or sabotage, mining or clearing strategic facilities, capturing and holding bridges or crossings, spreading panic rumors and collecting intelligence information - this is what the Ebbinghaus special forces soldiers were doing. ... sophisticated cruelty, violation of all written and unwritten norms international law were the hallmarks of all "Brandenburgers". “Do not expect mercy from anyone, give no mercy to anyone” - these words were the motto of the Abwehr 2 thugs.
In 1939, during the German-Polish campaign, German military intelligence in Slovakia formed a special forces company from the Ebbinghaus fighters who survived the battles in the resort town of Sliyach (Slovakia), which operated at that time against Poland, whose task was to prevent the destruction railway lines, crossings, bridges, factories and other structures by the retreating Polish troops. Later, the unit was relocated to the city of Brandenburg near the Havel River, so the soldiers of this unit began to be called "Brandenburgers".
In 1939–1940, as the number of landing companies grew, the "Special Purpose Battalion 800" was formed on their basis. The success of his actions on the territory of Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Northern France contributed to the decision to create a separate regiment on its base in October 1940 - "Special Purpose Regiment Brandenburg".
The regiment consisted of five battalions of four companies, a headquarters company, a communications company, a special forces team and a separate, so-called "vasser company" ("water company"]. In battalions, companies and platoons there were special units of agents, "trusted persons", paratroopers , saboteurs and skiers. "Brandenburg-800 "is at the disposal of the Abwehr II of the German military intelligence. The headquarters of the regiment was stationed in Berlin, there were also a headquarters company, a communications company and a special forces team. The headquarters of the 1st battalion and its 1st the company was stationed in Freiberg, the headquarters of the 3rd battalion - in Düren, the headquarters of the 4th battalion - in Hamburg, the headquarters of the 5th special battalion and its 3rd company - in Brandenburg, 6th a company of the 2nd battalion - in France, the 15th company of the 4th battalion - in Africa.
The soldiers of the Brandenburg-800 regiment took part in the operations of German troops against Yugoslavia and Greece. Some of its units were also in Romania (protection of oil fields in Ploiesti) and Bulgaria. During the actions of the units of the regiment in Bulgaria and Romania, groups of saboteurs penetrated into these countries under the guise of athletes and in civilian clothes.
Initially, the Brandenburg-800 units were recruited mainly from Germans who spoke foreign languages or who previously lived in countries occupied by Germany. A prerequisite for admission was loyalty to the Nazi regime, as well as good physical development, courage, and the ability to quickly navigate the situation. After the German attack on the USSR, the personnel of the division began to be replenished with persons hostile to the Soviet system, former criminals.
All the Brandenburg-800 servicemen were Abwehr agents and were trained in sabotage and reconnaissance. Each of them had two soldier's books: one with a fictitious surname, for use in a front-line situation, and the other, with a real surname, for the German command.
During the Second World War, special forces units, units and formations were commanded by: Captain Theodor von Hippel(November 1939–1942), colonel Paul Haeling von Lanzenauer(October 1942 - April 1943], major general Alexander von Pfulstein(April 1943 - April 1944), lieutenant general Fritz Kühlwein(April - October 1944), major general Herman Schulte Hoythaus(October 1944 - May 1945).
With the outbreak of war against the Soviet Union, the main units of the Brandenburg-800 regiment were transferred to the Soviet-German front. The 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 8th, 10th, 11th, 14th companies of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th battalions, as well as the headquarters of the 2nd battalion were located in the North Caucasus. 12th company of the 3rd battalion - on the Kalinin front. 2nd company of the 5th special battalion - on the Leningrad front. The 16th company of the 4th battalion and the 1st company of the 5th special battalion acted against the Karelian front. "Vasser company" had at its disposal 20 speedboats and conducted operations in the Black Sea.
During the offensive of the German troops, the tasks of the regiment included: conducting military and undercover intelligence, capturing bridges, crossings, factories and other important objects and holding them until the German troops approached, organizing gangs and uprisings in the rear of the Red Army, creating panic in our units. During the retreat of the German army, the units of the regiment destroyed communications and military facilities, organized robberies of the civilian population in the front line and fought against the partisans.
To fulfill the tasks of the command on the Eastern Front, the detachments of the Brandenburg-800 regiment dressed in the uniform of the Red Army, armed with Soviet weapons, supplied with fictitious documents and acted under the guise of units of the Red Army. In a number of cases, detachments of the Brandenburg-800 regiment penetrated the location of the Soviet troops under the guise of wounded Red Army soldiers marching from the front line of defense to the rear, and also changed into civilian clothes.
For example, during the offensive of German troops in the North Caucasus, a group of saboteurs in the amount of 30 people from the Brandenburg-800 regiment, who penetrated our side in the form of Red Army soldiers, blew up a bridge near the town of Mineralnye Vody in order to prevent the organized withdrawal of units Red Army. Another group of saboteurs captured the bridge near the city of Pyatigorsk and held it until the approach of the German tank units. The third group of the Brandenburg-800 regiment, dressed in the uniform of the Red Army, equipped with fictitious documents and Russian weapons, entered the city of Maykop, where they created a traffic jam on the bridge, thereby disrupting the withdrawal of our troops.
During the offensive of the German units on the city of Ordzhonikidze, the 2nd battalion of the Brandenburg-800 regiment was tasked with capturing the railway and wooden bridges across the river in the Ardon area. Terek. To this end, one of the groups under the leadership of Lieutenant of the German Army Stadel, dressed in a Red Army uniform, penetrated our side and, approaching the guards of the bridge, declared that they were “Red Army soldiers who had fallen behind the unit” and should cross the bridge. During the negotiations, part of the group was supposed to penetrate the bridge and cut the mining wires, and then cross the bridge and gain a foothold on the opposite bank. The second group was to follow the first and also gain a foothold on the opposite bank. The remaining units of the battalion followed the first two groups. However, the operation carried out by the battalion was disrupted, since the first two groups, although they penetrated the bridge, did not have time to gain a foothold and were completely destroyed by units of the Red Army. Similar actions were carried out by units of the Brandenburg-800 regiment during the capture of bridges across the river. Western Dvina.
During the interrogations of the Soviet counterintelligence officers, former leaders and employees of the German special services spoke in detail about the special unit "Brandenburg-800" and the special operations it carried out during the Second World War on the Western and Eastern fronts.
During an interrogation in Moscow on March 17, 1949, the former head of intelligence of the Abwehr, Lieutenant-General G. Pickenbrock, spoke about the operations of the Brandenburg-800 special unit known to him:
«[…] Question: Do you know the specific facts of the activities of the Brandenburg-800 unit?
Answer: Yes, some are famous.
Question: Show about them.
Answer: As I have already shown, the Brandenburg-800 unit was created in 1938 to carry out special tasks along the Abwehr II line. The headquarters of this unit was in Berlin, and the unit itself was attached by separate groups to army units in those sectors of the front or in those areas where it was planned to carry out one or another sabotage event. The task of carrying out acts of sabotage with the help of the Brandenburg-800 was received by the leadership of the Abwehr II department directly from the General Staff of the OKH through Canaris or directly from the OKH. In accordance with the assignment received, the head of the Abwehr II coordinated in the OKH to which military unit the Brandenburg-800 group should be sent and the size of this group, after which he gave appropriate instructions on the preparation and conduct of the event to the Brandenburg-800 commander.
Of such events carried out by the Brandenburg 800, I know the following:
During the war with France, when German troops approached the Albert Canal, the OKH tasked the Abwehr with keeping the canal bridges intact from being destroyed by the Belgians. This task was entrusted to the Brandenburg 800 company, which, having crossed to the other side of the canal and creating a panic in the rear of the retreating Belgian troops, was supposed to occupy the bridges across the canal and hold them until the German troops approached. Exactly the same measure was carried out in relation to the bridge over the Meuse River near the city of Maastricht (Holland), as a result of which the bridge was to fall into the hands of the Germans in complete safety, which, in turn, would hasten the capture of Belgium and Holland by the Germans.
During the war with Poland, it was necessary to prevent the destruction of large industrial enterprises in the mountains by the Poles. Katowice. This measure was also carried out by units of Brandenburg-800, which, having penetrated into the Katowice area even before the German troops approached the city, occupied these enterprises and held them until the Germans occupied the city.
When the German troops attacked Greece, the avant-garde troops were assigned to small Brandenburg-800 groups, which, at the direction of the command of the advancing German troops, captured separate fortified points on the Greek defensive line, the so-called Metaxas Line.
At the beginning of the war with the USSR, a special Arab Legion was formed under Brandenburg-800 from the Arabs taken prisoner during the war with France. According to the plan of the German command, this legion, when the German troops approached the Caucasus, was to be transferred to the Caucasus, and from there to the area of the Suez Canal to make it easier for Rommel to occupy this canal. The Arab Legion, after its formation, was transferred to Greece, where, in the Cap Sounion region, it was waiting to be sent to the Caucasus. After the defeat of the German troops near Stalingrad, when the hope of a quick capture of the Caucasus disappeared, the legion was attached as an ordinary military unit to Rommel, where it remained until the expulsion of the German troops from Africa.
I also know that Abwehr II was given the task of keeping intact the oil fields in Maikop and Baku when these areas were occupied by German troops. For this purpose, "Brandenburg-800" allocated several groups, with a total number of up to a regiment, which were attached to the corresponding army groups that were advancing in this direction. The main part of the personnel of these groups consisted of residents of the Caucasus, taken prisoner by German troops on the Soviet-German front and who agreed to serve in the German army.
These are all the activities carried out by the Brandenburg-800 unit that I know about […]”.
Hauptmann [captain] German Kirchner, one of the experienced saboteurs of the Abwehr, as can be seen from his track record, had a wealth of experience in sabotage and subversive activities.
From the interrogation protocol of G. Kirchner dated May 17, 1949: “ Question:[…] Under what circumstances did you enter the service in the Brandenburg-800 formation?
Answer: In December 1939, I received a letter from an acquaintance of mine, an employee of the Abwehr 2 of the Main Staff of the German Armed Forces (OKW) Josef Gofen, who suggested that I join one military unit engaged in special tasks. In a reply letter, I wrote to Hoffmann that on this issue we needed to meet with him personally. On January 1, 1940, at a meeting with Gofen, he explained to me that the battalion in which he proposed me to join was one of the parts of Abwehr 2 and that this unit, by order of the General Staff of the German Armed Forces, was performing special tasks behind enemy lines. I voluntarily agreed to join the Brandenburg-800 battalion and on January 20, 1940, I was sent to the disposal of this battalion. Upon arrival at the battalion, on January 23, 1940, I gave the battalion commander, Captain Hippel, a non-disclosure agreement about my service in the Brandenburg-800 formation, which was conditionally called the Construction and Training Battalion. While serving in this battalion during February-March 1940, I twice went to reconnaissance and sabotage courses at the Brandenburg-800 in the Quenz estate, near Brandenburg, where each time I studied for 15 days. At these courses, I received training as a saboteur, and also learned the methods of intelligence and counterintelligence work in the context of the work of the Abwehr 2.
…Question: Tell us in detail about the Abwehr school in the Quenz estate.
Answer: The Abwehr School of the Brandenburg-800 Battalion was located on the Quenz estate, two kilometers from the mountains. Brandenburg on the shores of Lake Plauersee and was located on the estate of a large landowner. In 1940, this school trained reconnaissance saboteurs from persons of German nationality who served in the Brandenburg-800 battalion. Since the summer of 1940, agents-saboteurs from among the Ukrainian nationalists who previously lived in the Lviv region were trained in the Quents estate. During the German war against the USSR, the school trained Abwehr agents from among foreigners, including Russians. Whether the agents were thrown behind enemy lines after graduation, I don’t know.
In preparation for the invasion of the territories of Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, the Abwehr Abroad Administration was instructed to prepare measures that made it possible to preserve the most important bridges across the Meuse River near Maastricht (two highways and one railway) and at Gennep (highway and railway). Only under this condition could the German troops quickly reach the fortified Peel line in Holland, and later release their parachute landings dropped near Rotterdam. But then difficulties arose in acquiring samples of Belgian uniforms, and the vigilance of the Belgian authorities in this matter almost jeopardized the whole undertaking. Therefore, the operation to capture the bridges at Maastricht failed. The Dutch managed to destroy all three bridges across the Meuse.
But the action near Gennep was a success. By the force of one reconnaissance patrol from the 1st company of the Brandenburg-800 battalion, the bridge over the Meuse was captured even before X-hour, and while the stunned Dutch came to their senses, German tanks were already moving across the bridge. The trick was that the patrol included several “German prisoners of war”, whom the patrol “escorted” to the headquarters, and each “prisoner” had machine guns and grenades under their clothes. As for the "escorts", they were represented by Abwehr agents who worked in Holland. They were wearing the uniform of the Dutch border guards. Thus, it was here, at Gennep, that tactical cooperation between soldiers and intelligence agents was first achieved. In other words, a purely military operation and a secret action of the secret service were connected here.
This was told at Lubyanka by a direct participant in that operation, the commander of the West Zug platoon, Hauptmann G. Kirchner: “ Question: What did you do after completing the courses of scouts-saboteurs in the village of Kventse?
Answer: At the end of the courses at the Quenz estate, I was entrusted by the battalion commander, Captain Hippele, with the formation of the shock platoon "West-Zug" from among the soldiers of the German army who knew the Dutch language, for an operation in Holland. During February - March 1940, I was engaged in the formation of this platoon and its training in reconnaissance and sabotage. At the end of March 1940, I was called to the German OKW in the mountains. Berlin to Colonel Stolze, who introduced me to the Unternemen Tante plan, whose task was to capture the bridges on the Julian Canal on the Dutch-Belgian border, and ordered me, together with the personnel of the West Zug platoon, to carry it out. At the beginning of April 1940, with the West-Zug platoon, I went to the mountains. Erkelenz is 40 kilometers from the Dutch-German border. Upon arrival in Mt. Erlenekts, I contacted the head of the 1-C department of the 6th Army, Major Paltso, and the head of the 1-A department of the 7th division, Lieutenant Colonel Reicheldt, from whom I received photographs of the area where the operation was to take place, intelligence information about the protection of bridges and their condition and got acquainted with the operational plan of this operation.
To double-check the materials of the department "1-C" and "1-A", together with Lieutenant Kleins, I crossed the Dutch-German border three times to clarify the information of these departments and study the area where I and my platoon were to conduct the operation "Unternemen Tante". On the night of May 10, 1940, with the West-Zug platoon in the uniform of soldiers of the Dutch army and the Dutch gendarmerie, I illegally crossed the border and on the morning of May 10, 1940 captured four bridges on the Dutch-Belgian border and provided the Nazi-German troops with the passage of Belgian territory . In this operation, the Dutch garrison guarding these strategic facilities were killed and wounded, and about 180 soldiers and officers were taken prisoner. For the successful conduct of this operation, I was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class by the commander of the 7th division, General Freiger von Gablenz, and Admiral Canaris, the Iron Cross 1st class.
In 1941-1942, the "Brandenburgers" were actively used on the Eastern Front. One of the documents testifying to the subversive work of the Abwehr II on the territory of the USSR was provided to the International Military Tribunal - a secret order on the preparation of an uprising in Georgia dated June 20, 1941: “In order to fulfill the instructions received from the 1st operational department of the military field headquarters about In order to ensure the disintegration of Soviet Russia in order to use the oil regions, the workers' headquarters "Romania" is instructed to create the organization "Tamara", which is entrusted with the following tasks: 1. To prepare the organization of an uprising on the territory of Georgia with the help of Georgians. 2. The leadership of the organization is entrusted to Lieutenant Dr. Kramer (counterintelligence department 2). Sergeant major Dr. Haufe (counterintelligence II) is appointed as a deputy. 3. The organization is divided into two groups: a) "Tamara I" - it consists of 16 Georgians trained for sabotage (C) and united in cells (K). It is led by non-commissioned officer Herman (training regiment "Brandenburg". TsBF 800, 5th company); b) "Tamara II" is a task force consisting of 80 Georgians united in cells. Chief Lieutenant Dr. Kramer is appointed the head of this group. 4. Both operational groups "Tamara I" and "Tamara II" are placed at the disposal of the 1C OK (Army High Command). 5. As the assembly point of the operational group "Tamara I", the outskirts of the city of Iasi were chosen, the assembly point of the operational group "Tamara II" - the Brailov-Calarsa-Bucharest triangle. 6. The arming of the Tamara organizations is carried out by the counterintelligence department II. Lahousen".
All the same Hauptmann G. Kirchner told the Soviet counterintelligence officers about the special operations of the Abwehr II saboteurs, in which he himself and his "colleagues" participated in the aggression against the Soviet Union. During one of the interrogations, Hauptmann Kirchner spoke about his participation in the German attack on the USSR on June 22, 1941. Before the invasion of the Soviet Union, from February to May 1941, the 4th company of the 1st battalion conducted combat training in the cities of Düren (Germany) and Baden (Austria). After completing the training, the company secretly advanced to the Soviet-Polish border in the Przemysl region. During interrogation on July 1, 1949, Kirchner told the investigation about the participation of German saboteurs in hostilities on the Soviet-German front:
« Question: Tell us, what kind of military operations have you carried out on the territory of the Soviet Union since June 21, 1941?
Answer: On the night of June 21-22, 1941, 10 kilometers from the mountains. Przemysl in the area of the Polish village of Valawa, I - Kirchner - the commander of the Brandenburg-800 battalion, Major Heinz, was asked, together with the 228th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Division, to force the San River, gain a foothold and prepare for a further offensive. Upon completion of this operation, I, together with the company, spent 5–6 days in this area and took part in small military operations with units of the Soviet army ... Around June 30, 1941, I was transferred with the company to the mountains. Lvov, where he received a task from Major Heinz during the offensive of the German army on the mountains. Lvov capture the power plant, barracks and ammunition depot in the city. On July 1, 1941, together with the troops of the German army, I entered the mountains. Lvov and captured the indicated objects, which were guarded by the 4th company for one week ... On August 1, 1941, the 2nd and 4th companies were sent to the mountains. Brandenburg and until July 1942 were engaged in combined arms training […].
Question: Where were you sent in July 1942?
Answer: At the beginning of August 1942, with a company, I went through the mountains. Yasinovitaya arrived in the mountains. Rovenki, Voroshilovgrad region. In the mountains Rovenka, the commander of the Brandenburg-800 regiment Gelin von Lanzenauer, according to Hitler’s personal order, I was entrusted with developing a plan to capture a bridge across the Kuban River in the area of the village of Varenikovskaya.
Question: Tell me more about this plan.
Answer: In August 1942, the High Command of the German Army planned an offensive in the area of \u200b\u200bthe station of Varenikovskaya with the crossing of the Kuban River. For this military operation, it was necessary to capture the bridge across the Kuban and prevent its destruction during the offensive of the Soviet army. I developed a plan to capture this bridge, which consisted of the following: the 1st platoon under the command of Lieutenant Hurl in the form of Red Army soldiers was thrown out of the planes in the rear of the Soviet army in the area of the village of Varenikovskaya, which was tasked with reconnaissance in the area bridge and, if there are sufficient forces, to capture it, thereby bringing disorganization in the rear of the Soviet army during the offensive of the Germans. At the same time, after the 1st platoon had completed the assigned task, I, together with the rest of the 4th company, had to throw themselves into the bridge area, consolidate and provide the fascist troops with free passage through the bridge during their offensive, and also prevent the Soviet troops from retreating through it and ensure them the defeat by the Germans on the southern coast of the Kuban and the encirclement from the northern coast.
Question: Did your plan come true?
Answer: The operation I developed to capture the bridge in the rear of the Soviet army on the Kuban River was approved by Colonel Gelin von Lanzenauer and the head of the 1-A department of the Brandenburg-800 regiment, Captain Wulbers, but due to the fact that the pilots could not accurately throw troops into the intended area, the operation was not carried out.
Question: What other operations did you develop in the rear of the Soviet army?
Answer: In September 1942, the year with the alleged offensive of the German army in the Caucasus, I developed an operation to capture the so-called in the rear of the Soviet army. "Cross Lane" on the section of the Georgian Military Highway in the area of the Devil's Bridge, which consisted of the following.
Before the advance of the German army on the mountains. Dzaudzhikau of the 4th company was to be trooped out to the rear of the Soviet army in the area of \u200b\u200bKrestovoy Lane, one of the most strategic places on the Georgian Military Highway, where to destroy the garrison of the Soviet army stationed there and capture the Devil's Bridge. After the capture of this section of the road, the Soviet army [would] have been cut off the retreat to the mountains. Tbilisi and its supply. The execution of this operation by the 4th company provided the German army with a quick defeat of the Soviet troops on the Georgian Military Highway and unhindered advance to the mountains. Tbilisi. Due to the fact that the offensive was canceled, this operation was not carried out.
The Brandenburg units were most actively used in the North Caucasus (Chechnya, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia), where subversive and sabotage and terrorist work was carried out in the rear of the Red Army in order to organize a national insurrectionary movement by the time the Wehrmacht units approached.
During the investigation, Hauptmann Kirchner told the details of one operation that Abwehr II tried to carry out in 1942 in the North Caucasus:
« …Question: What do you want to tell the investigation?
Answer: At present, I remembered that Georgard, who studied with me at the courses at the estate of Quenz Lange, in 1942, on behalf of the Abwehr-2 of the OKW of Germany, developed the Shamil operation in the North Caucasus and then carried it out.
Question: Tell me in detail what kind of operation is this?
Answer: Operation Shamil was designed to raise the insurrectionary movement in the Caucasus in the rear of the Soviet army and thereby [should] facilitate the advance of parts of the German army deep into Soviet territory. For this operation, Lange formed a special detachment of Germans, as well as prisoners of war of the Soviet army - traitors to the Motherland in the amount of 36 people and in the fall of 1942 was transferred to the territory of the Grozny region. The personnel consisted of persons trained in the Brandenburg-800 division. Operation Shamil was not carried out by Lange on the territory of the Grozny region, due to the fact that a number of people from this group voluntarily went over to the side of the Soviet army and a large number of group members were killed. Three months later, Lange returned to the location of parts of the German army, and eight Germans returned with him. Lange made a report about this operation to the officers of the Brandenburg-800 division in the officers' club in the mountains. Brandenburg in the spring of 1943.
In November 1942, the Brandenburg division was created for special operations, which became part of the strategic reserve of the Wehrmacht's Supreme High Command. The division headquarters was located in Berlin. On the instructions of the Abwehr and the German military command, units of the Brandenburg-800 division carried out sabotage and terrorist acts and conducted reconnaissance work in the rear of the Soviet troops and other countries that fought against Germany. They seized strategic facilities and held them until the approach of the main forces of the Wehrmacht, organized gangs, conducted military reconnaissance at the forefront in order to capture the “language” and undermine defensive structures, and also committed terrorist acts. During the retreat of the German army, parts of the division destroyed communications and military facilities, burned settlements, and stole civilians. Separate regiments participated in the fight against the partisan movement on the territory of the USSR, Yugoslavia, Greece and France.
Historian of domestic special services Yu.A. Nepodaev cites, with reference to the work of the German historian X. Buchgait, excerpts from a curious document. “Even before Brandenburg became a division, on October 17, 1942, Hitler issued an order “On sabotage operations”, by which all “Brandenburgers” undertook to destroy any person suspected of having links with the enemy during these operations. "Even so," said the secret order, "if these subjects ask to be surrendered, they should not be spared." And further: “When it is necessary to interrogate the detainees, it is allowed to select one or two of them, but immediately shoot them after the end of the interrogation.”
In the Soviet Union, however, a diametrically opposed doctrine was professed. Even in relation to prisoners of war, other, more humane measures were taken. This, for example, is evidenced by state acts adopted after the German invasion of Russia: “The Regulation on Prisoners of War No. coercive measures, threats in order to obtain from them information of a military or other nature, to take away uniforms, shoes, everyday items, as well as personal documents and insignia. Once again, the visionary words of Prince Alexander Nevsky came true: “Whoever comes to us with a sword will die by the sword ...”
When getting acquainted with the biographical information on the soldiers and officers of the special forces Abwehr II - Brandenburg-800, it is clear that special emphasis was placed on the intellectual level of future saboteurs in its staffing. In general, among the "Brandenburgers" of the first sets, it was not uncommon to meet commanders who had a doctoral degree, and among soldiers and non-commissioned officers - students of prestigious German universities. So, for example, the first commander of a special forces company - von Hippel - had a degree of "Doctor of Philology".
When performing a task in the rear of the Soviet troops, the saboteurs changed into the uniform of the Red Army, armed with Soviet weapons, and were supplied with cover documents. Groups of saboteurs acted under the guise of units of the Red Army. In a number of cases, agents penetrated the Soviet rear under the guise of wounded soldiers of the Red Army coming from the front line, as well as in civilian clothes.
In the spring of 1943, in Brandenburg, the Abwehr Abroad Directorate, on the basis of the 805th regiment of the Brandenburg-800 division, created a new military unit - the training regiment Elector (Prince), which became one of the central sabotage and reconnaissance schools of the Abwehr II. It trained official Abwehr employees and agents scheduled for transfer to the territory of the countries at war with Germany.
The personnel for the Elector Regiment were selected by Abwehr employees in German military units. As a rule, private and non-commissioned officers were taken to the regiment, and only Germans. Candidates had to speak one of the foreign languages - Russian, English, French, etc. Some of them had previously lived in Russia, France, the USA and other countries. At the end of their studies, agents who spoke Russian were sent to Abwehrkommando-203 to receive a task and then be transferred to the rear of the Red Army.
As it turned out, Hauptmann Kirchner was undergoing sabotage and reconnaissance training on the basis of the Elector Regiment. During interrogation on July 4, 1949, he gave interesting details about the creation and combat mission of this unit of the Brandenburg division: Question: Where were you sent after your recovery in January 1943?
Answer: From January to April 1943, I served as commander of the 14th company of the 4th Brandenburg-800 regiment in the village. Crane near the mountains. Brandenburg and until May 1943 - in the mountains. Shtendal and all this period was engaged in understaffing and training of personnel. From May to July 1943, the command of the division was sent to various cities to recruit German volunteers for the Brandenburg-800 division. In total, during this period of time, I recruited 150 people. In August 1943, from the Brandenburg-800 division, I was transferred to work in Abwehr 2 and the head of the 2-A department, Major Abshagen, was sent to the Abwehr school at the Elector Regiment in the city. Brandenburg. Until the end of August 1943, I was at school, studying reconnaissance, counterintelligence and sabotage activities behind enemy lines in the South-East group.
Question: Tell us about the structure of the Elector Regiment.
Answer: The Elector Regiment was formed at the end of 1942 under the Brandenburg division and was directly subordinate to it; from the beginning of 1943, it became subordinate only to Abwehr-2 and had the following two units: 1. The Abwehr School, which trained the official employees of Abwehr-2. 2. A battalion of trusted persons, tentatively referred to as "F-Abteilung", which prepared candidates for officers. At the end of the courses at this battalion, the cadets were sent to normal military schools, then they were used at work in the Abwehr-2.
Question: Where were you sent after graduating from the Abwehr-2 school?
Answer: After graduating from school, at the end of September 1943, I was sent by the head of the Abwehr department to the mountains. Estov on the Albanian-Yugoslav border with the task of organizing the fight against the partisan movement on the territory of Albania. Upon arrival in Mt. Yestov, I establish contact with the Albanian nationalist gangs in Albania, supply them with weapons, food and fight the partisan movement with their forces, and also select candidates for recruitment from Albanians. At the end of October 1943 I was wounded and until September 1944 I was treated in Germany.
In addition to the Elector Regiment, Brandenburg also included a special battalion Bergman (Highlander), which began to be formed by the Abwehr II department in early November 1941 in Neugamer (Germany). The battalion was staffed with Soviet prisoners of war, people from the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia, as well as volunteers from the Germans who served in the mountain rifle divisions of the Wehrmacht, and was intended to conduct subversive work in the Caucasus.
The personnel of the battalion consisted of 1500 people and was subdivided into five companies. Directly at the headquarters of the battalion was a platoon of demolition and special forces. In August 1942, the battalion arrived in Pyatigorsk and was included in the 44th Army Corps. In September 1942, two additional cavalry squadrons were created.
Units of the Bergman battalion were transferred to the rear of the Soviet troops to destroy communications, create panic, capture "languages", and distribute leaflets. The commanders of all companies also recruited agents from among the anti-Soviet-minded local residents of the occupied regions of the North Caucasus. Later, the Bergman battalion was renamed the Alpinist regiment, relocated first to the Crimea, and then to Bulgaria, Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia, where its personnel participated in the protection of communications and combat operations against partisans.
The commander of the 1st company, Sh. Okropidze, spoke about the activities of "Bergman" during interrogation. From the transcript of the protocol of interrogation of Sh. Okropidze dated August 11, 1948: “Immediately after the arrival of the Bergman battalion in the Mozdok region (in August 1942 - Note. ed.) as a company commander, I took part in the battles against the Soviet troops, and then, after the battalion had losses in personnel as a result of the fighting, I, on behalf of Oberlander, was engaged in replenishing the personnel of the Bergman battalion from among the Caucasian prisoners of war in Georgievsky, Prokhladnensky and Pyatigorsk camps. In these camps, I managed to recruit 400 volunteers, and the total strength of the battalion was increased to 4 thousand people, and it was transformed into the Bergman regiment. In addition, at the direction of the headquarters of the von Kleist army group, to which the Bergman regiment was directly subordinate, I was seconded to the headquarters of the 52nd Corps, which carried out topographic surveys of the Georgian Military Highway.
It should be added that the German Navy also had its own unit of "combat swimmers", in addition to the "Brandenburg". We are talking about the so-called. connection "K" ( German Klienkampfverband, Lit. - “Small battle formation”) - a sabotage and assault formation of the German Navy, consisting of detachments of human-controlled torpedoes, exploding boats, lone combat swimmers and baby submarines.
For the first time in World War II, Italian combat swimmers from the 10th IAS Flotilla ( it. La "Decima Flottiglia MAS") under the command of Prince V. Borghese on December 18, 1941 made a successful attack on the British battleships Queen Elizabeth and Valiant, who were in the port of Alexandria. According to foreign sources, a total of 238 saboteurs of the naval forces (Navy) of Italy participated in the hostilities during the Second World War. They sank or seriously damaged six warships with a total displacement of 80,335 tons and 22 merchant ships with a total displacement of 122,427 tons. This is, respectively, 38 and 15% of the total tonnage of enemy ships and ships sunk by the Italian Navy. On September 22, 1943, British commandos damaged the German battleship Tirpitz with magnetic mines.
In Germany, naval assault units ( German"Marine Einsatz Kommando", MEK), or compound "K" ( German Kleinkampfverband - “Small Combat Unit”), were created in March 1944, their first combat use took place on the night of April 20-21, 1944 on the Italian coast in the Anzio region. In the summer of 1944, human torpedoes managed to destroy a British cruiser and several other ships in the Seine Bay. Due to too high losses and technical flaws, such torpedoes were no longer used.
Collection by Germany of reconnaissance against the USSR
To implement the strategic plans for an armed attack on neighboring countries, Hitler told his entourage about them as early as November 5, 1937 - fascist Germany, naturally, needed extensive and reliable information that would reveal all aspects of the life of future victims of aggression, and especially information on the basis of which it would be to draw a conclusion about their defense potential. By supplying government bodies and the high command of the Wehrmacht with such information, the "total espionage" services actively contributed to the preparation of the country for war. Intelligence information was obtained in different ways, using a variety of methods and means.
The Second World War, unleashed by Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939, began with the invasion of German troops into Poland. But Hitler considered the defeat of the Soviet Union, the conquest of a new "living space" in the East up to the Urals, to the achievement of which all state bodies of the country, and primarily the Wehrmacht and intelligence, were oriented. The Soviet-German non-aggression treaty signed on August 23, 1939, as well as the Friendship and Border Treaty concluded on September 28 of the same year, were supposed to serve as camouflage. Moreover, the opportunities opened up as a result of this were used to increase activity in the intelligence work against the USSR that was carried out throughout the entire pre-war period. Hitler constantly demanded from Canaris and Heydrich new information about the measures taken by the Soviet authorities to organize a rebuff to armed aggression.
As already noted, in the first years after the establishment of the fascist dictatorship in Germany, the Soviet Union was viewed primarily as a political enemy. Therefore, everything that related to him was within the competence of the security service. But this arrangement did not last long. Soon, in accordance with the criminal plans of the Nazi elite and the German military command, all the services of "total espionage" were involved in a secret war against the world's first country of socialism. Speaking about the direction of the espionage and sabotage activities of Nazi Germany at that time, Schellenberg wrote in his memoirs: “The decisive and decisive actions of all secret services against Russia were considered the primary and most important task.”
The intensity of these actions increased markedly from the autumn of 1939, especially after the victory over France, when the Abwehr and SD were able to release their significant forces occupied in this region and use them in the eastern direction. The secret services, as is clear from archival documents, were then given a specific task: to clarify and supplement the available information about the economic and political situation of the Soviet Union, to ensure the regular flow of information about its defense capability and future theaters of military operations. They were also instructed to develop a detailed plan for organizing sabotage and terrorist actions on the territory of the USSR, timed to coincide with the time of the first offensive operations of the Nazi troops. In addition, they were called upon, as has already been said in detail, to guarantee the secrecy of the invasion and to launch a wide campaign of misinformation of world public opinion. This was how the program of actions of Hitler's intelligence against the USSR was determined, in which the leading place, for obvious reasons, was given to espionage.
Archival materials and other quite reliable sources contain a lot of evidence that an intense secret war against the Soviet Union began long before June 1941.
Zally Headquarters
By the time of the attack on the USSR, the activity of the Abwehr - this leader among the Nazi secret services in the field of espionage and sabotage - had reached its climax. In June 1941, the "Zalli Headquarters" was created, designed to provide leadership in all types of espionage and sabotage directed against the Soviet Union. The Valley Headquarters directly coordinated the actions of teams and groups attached to army groups for conducting reconnaissance and sabotage operations. It was then stationed near Warsaw, in the town of Sulejuwek, and was led by an experienced intelligence officer, Schmalschleger.
Here is some evidence of how events unfolded.
One of the prominent employees of German military intelligence, Stolze, during interrogation on December 25, 1945, testified that the head of the Abwehr II, Colonel Lahousen, having informed him in April 1941 of the date of the German attack on the USSR, demanded to urgently study all the materials at the disposal of the Abwehr regarding Soviet Union. It was necessary to find out the possibility of inflicting a powerful blow on the most important Soviet military-industrial facilities in order to completely or partially disable them. At the same time, a top-secret division was created within the framework of the Abwehr II, headed by Stolze. For reasons of secrecy, it had the running name "Group A". His duties included the planning and preparation of large-scale sabotage operations. They were undertaken, as Lahousen emphasized, in the hope that they would be able to disorganize the rear of the Red Army, sow panic among the local population, and thereby facilitate the advance of the Nazi troops.
Lahousen acquainted Stolze with the order of the headquarters of the operational leadership, signed by Field Marshal Keitel, which outlined in general terms the directive of the Wehrmacht Supreme High Command to deploy sabotage activities on Soviet territory after the start of the Barbarossa plan. The Abwehr was supposed to start carrying out actions aimed at inciting national hatred between the peoples of the USSR, to which the Nazi elite attached particular importance. Guided by the directive of the supreme command, Stolze conspired with the leaders of the Ukrainian nationalists Melnik and Bendera that they would immediately begin organizing in Ukraine the actions of nationalist elements hostile to Soviet power, timing them to coincide with the moment of the invasion of the Nazi troops. At the same time, the Abwehr II began to send its agents from among the Ukrainian nationalists to the territory of Ukraine, some of whom had the task of compiling or clarifying lists of local party and Soviet assets to be destroyed. Subversive actions involving nationalists of all stripes were also carried out in other regions of the USSR.
Actions of ABWER against the USSR
Abwehr II, according to Stolze's testimony, formed and armed "special detachments" for operations (in violation of international rules of warfare) in the Soviet Baltic states, tested back in the initial period of World War II. One of these detachments, whose soldiers and officers were dressed in Soviet military uniforms, had the task of seizing the railway tunnel and bridges near Vilnius. Until May 1941, 75 Abwehr and SD intelligence groups were neutralized on the territory of Lithuania, which, as documented, launched active espionage and sabotage activities here on the eve of Nazi Germany's attack on the USSR.
How great was the attention of the high command of the Wehrmacht to the deployment of sabotage operations in the rear of the Soviet troops, shows the fact that the "special detachments" and "special teams" of the Abwehr were in all army groups and armies concentrated on the eastern borders of Germany.
According to Stolze's testimony, the Abwehr branches in Koenigsberg, Warsaw and Krakow had a directive from Canaris in connection with the preparation of an attack on the USSR to intensify espionage and sabotage activities to the maximum. The task was to provide the Supreme High Command of the Wehrmacht with detailed and most accurate data on the system of targets on the territory of the USSR, primarily on roads and railways, bridges, power plants and other objects, the destruction of which could lead to a serious disorganization of the Soviet rear and in in the end would have paralyzed his forces and broken the resistance of the Red Army. The Abwehr was supposed to extend its tentacles to the most important communications, military-industrial facilities, as well as large administrative and political centers of the USSR - in any case, it was planned.
Summing up some of the work carried out by the Abwehr by the time the German invasion of the USSR began, Canaris wrote in a memorandum that numerous groups of agents from the indigenous population, that is, from Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Balts, Finns, etc., were sent to the headquarters of the German armies. n. Each group consisted of 25 (or more) people. These groups were led by German officers. They were supposed to penetrate the Soviet rear to a depth of 50,300 kilometers behind the front line in order to report by radio the results of their observations, paying special attention to collecting information about Soviet reserves, the state of railways and other roads, as well as about all activities carried out by the enemy. .
In the prewar years, the German embassy in Moscow and the German consulates in Leningrad, Kharkov, Tbilisi, Kyiv, Odessa, Novosibirsk and Vladivostok served as the center for organizing espionage, the main base for the strongholds of Hitler's intelligence. In the diplomatic field in the USSR in those years, she labored large group professional German intelligence officers, the most experienced professionals, representing all parts of the Nazi "total espionage" system, and especially widely - the Abwehr and the SD. Despite the obstacles put up by the Chekist authorities, they, shamelessly using their diplomatic immunity, developed a high activity here, striving, first of all, as archival materials of those years indicate, to test the defense power of our country.
Erich Köstring
The Abwehr residency in Moscow at that time was headed by General Erich Köstring, who until 1941 was known in German intelligence circles as "the most knowledgeable specialist on the Soviet Union." He was born and lived for some time in Moscow, so he was fluent in Russian and was familiar with the way of life in Russia. During the First World War, he fought against the tsarist army, then in the 1920s he worked in a special center that studied the Red Army. From 1931 to 1933, in the final period of Soviet-German military cooperation, he acted as an observer from the Reichswehr in the USSR. He again ended up in Moscow in October 1935 as a military and aviation attache in Germany and stayed until 1941. He had a wide circle of acquaintances in the Soviet Union, whom he sought to use to obtain information of interest to him.
However, of the many questions that Köstring received from Germany six months after his arrival in Moscow, he was able to answer only a few. In his letter to the head of the intelligence department for the armies of the East, he explained this as follows: “The experience of several months of work here has shown that there can be no question of the possibility of obtaining military intelligence information, even remotely related to the military industry, even on the most harmless issues. . visits military units terminated. One gets the impression that the Russians are supplying all attachés with a set of false information.” The letter ended with an assurance that he nevertheless hoped that he would be able to draw up "a mosaic picture reflecting the further development and organizational structure of the Red Army."
After the German consulates were closed in 1938, the military attaches of other countries were deprived of the opportunity to attend military parades for two years, and, in addition, restrictions were placed on foreigners establishing contacts with Soviet citizens. Köstring, in his words, was forced to return to using three "meager sources of information": traveling around the territory of the USSR and traveling by car to various regions of the Moscow region, using the open Soviet press, and, finally, exchanging information with military attaches of other countries.
In one of his reports, he draws the following conclusion about the state of affairs in the Red Army: “As a result of the liquidation of the main part of the senior officer corps, who mastered the military art quite well in the process of ten years of practical training and theoretical training, the operational capabilities of the Red Army have decreased. The lack of military order and the lack of experienced commanders will have a negative effect for some time on the training and education of troops. The irresponsibility that is already manifesting itself in military affairs will lead to even more serious negative consequences in the future. The army is deprived of commanders of the highest qualification. Nevertheless, there are no grounds for concluding that the offensive capabilities of the mass of soldiers have declined to such an extent as not to recognize the Red Army as a very important factor in the event of a military conflict.
In a message to Berlin by Lieutenant Colonel Hans Krebs, who replaced the ill Köstring, dated April 22, 1941, it was said: “The Soviet ground forces, of course, have not yet reached the maximum number according to the combat schedule for wartime, determined by us at 200 infantry rifle divisions. This information was recently confirmed by the military attachés of Finland and Japan in a conversation with me.
A few weeks later, Köstring and Krebs made a special trip to Berlin to personally inform Hitler that there were no significant changes for the better in the Red Army.
The employees of the Abwehr and SD, who used diplomatic and other official cover in the USSR, were tasked, along with strictly oriented information, to collect information on a wide range of military-economic problems. This information had a very specific purpose - it was supposed to enable the strategic planning bodies of the Wehrmacht to get an idea of the conditions in which the Nazi troops would have to operate on the territory of the USSR, and in particular during the capture of Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv and other large cities. The coordinates of the objects of future bombardments were clarified. Even then, a network of underground radio stations was being created to transmit the collected information, caches were set up in public and other suitable places where instructions from Nazi intelligence centers and items of sabotage equipment could be stored so that agents sent and located on the territory of the USSR could use them at the right time.
Using trade relations between Germany and the USSR for intelligence
For the purpose of espionage, cadres, secret agents and proxies of the Abwehr and the SD were systematically sent to the Soviet Union, for the penetration of which into our country the intensively developing economic, trade, economic and cultural ties between the USSR and Germany in those years were used. With their help, such important tasks were solved as collecting information about the military and economic potential of the USSR, in particular about the defense industry (capacity, zoning, bottlenecks), about the industry as a whole, its individual large centers, energy systems, communication routes, sources of industrial raw materials, etc. Representatives of business circles were especially active, who often, along with the collection of intelligence information, carried out instructions to establish communications on Soviet territory with agents whom German intelligence managed to recruit during the period of active functioning of German concerns and firms in our country.
Attaching great importance to the use of legal opportunities in intelligence work against the USSR and in every possible way seeking to expand them, both the Abwehr and the SD, at the same time, proceeded from the fact that the information obtained in this way, in its predominant part, is not capable of serving as a sufficient basis for the development of specific plans, the adoption of correct decisions in the military-political field. And besides, based only on such information, they believed, it is difficult to form a reliable and somewhat complete picture of tomorrow's military enemy, his forces and reserves. To fill the gap, the Abwehr and the SD, as confirmed by many documents, are making attempts to intensify work against our country by illegal means, seeking to acquire secret sources within the country or send secret agents from beyond the cordon, counting on their settling in the USSR. This, in particular, is evidenced by the following fact: the head of the Abwehr intelligence group in the United States, officer G. Rumrich, at the beginning of 1938, had instructions from his center to obtain blank forms of American passports for agents thrown into Russia.
“Can you get at least fifty of them?” Rumrich was asked in a cipher telegram from Berlin. Abwehr was ready to pay a thousand dollars for each blank American passport - they were so necessary.
Long before the start of the war against the USSR, documentary specialists from the secret services of Nazi Germany scrupulously followed all the changes in the procedure for issuing and issuing personal documents of Soviet citizens. They showed an increased interest in clarifying the system for protecting military documents from forgery, trying to establish the procedure for the use of conditional secret signs.
In addition to agents illegally sent to the Soviet Union, the Abwehr and the SD used their official employees, embedded in the commission to determine the line of the German-Soviet border and the resettlement of Germans living in the western regions of Ukraine, Belarus, as well as the Baltic states, to obtain information of interest to them. territory of Germany.
Already at the end of 1939, Hitler's intelligence began to systematically send agents to the USSR from the territory of occupied Poland to conduct military espionage. They were usually professionals. It is known, for example, that one of these agents, who underwent 15 months of training in the Berlin Abwehr school in 1938-1939, managed to illegally enter the USSR three times in 1940. Having made several long one-and-a-half to two-month trips to the regions of the Central Urals, Moscow and the North Caucasus, the agent returned safely to Germany.
Starting around April 1941, the Abwehr shifted mainly to dropping agents in groups led by experienced officers. All of them had the necessary espionage and sabotage equipment, including radio stations for receiving direct radio broadcasts from Berlin. They had to send response messages to a fictitious address in cryptography.
In the Minsk, Leningrad and Kiev directions, the depth of undercover intelligence reached 300-400 kilometers or more. Part of the agents, having reached certain points, had to settle there for some time and immediately begin to carry out the task received. Most of the agents (usually they did not have radio stations) had to return to the intelligence center no later than June 15-18, 1941, so that the information they obtained could be quickly used by the command.
What primarily interested the Abwehr and SD? The tasks for either group of agents, as a rule, differed little and boiled down to finding out the concentration of Soviet troops in the border areas, the deployment of headquarters, formations and units of the Red Army, points and areas where radio stations were located, the presence of ground and underground airfields, the number and types of aircraft based on them, the location of ammunition depots, explosives, fuel.
Some agents sent to the USSR were instructed by the intelligence center to refrain from specific practical actions until the start of the war. The goal is clear - the leaders of the Abwehr hoped in this way to keep their agent cells until the moment when the need for them would be especially great.
Sending German agents to the USSR in 1941
The activity of preparing agents for being sent to the Soviet Union is evidenced by such data, gleaned from the archives of the Abwehr. In mid-May 1941, about 100 people destined for deportation to the USSR were trained in the intelligence school of the department of Admiral Kanarys near Koenigsberg (in the town of Grossmichel).
Who was betting on? They come from the families of Russian emigrants who settled in Berlin after the October Revolution, the sons of former officers of the tsarist army who fought against Soviet Russia, and after the defeat they fled abroad, members of the nationalist organizations of Western Ukraine, the Baltic states, Poland, the Balkan countries, as a rule, who spoke Russian language.
Among the means used by Hitler's intelligence in violation of the generally accepted norms of international law was also aerial espionage, which was put at the service of the latest technical achievements. In the system of the Ministry of the Air Force of fascist Germany, there was even a special unit - a special-purpose squadron, which, together with the secret service of this department, carried out reconnaissance work against the countries that were of interest to the Abwehr. During the flights, all structures important for the conduct of the war were photographed: ports, bridges, airfields, military facilities, industrial enterprises, etc. Thus, the Wehrmacht military cartographic service received in advance from the Abwehr the information necessary for compiling good cards. Everything related to these flights was kept in the strictest confidence, and only the direct executors and those from a very limited circle of employees of the Abwehr I air group, whose duties included processing and analyzing data obtained through aerial reconnaissance, knew about them. Aerial photography materials were presented in the form of photographs, as a rule, to Canaris himself, in rare cases - to one of his deputies, and then transferred to the destination. It is known that the command of the special squadron of the Rovel Air Force, stationed in Staaken, already in 1937 began reconnaissance of the territory of the USSR using Hein-Kel-111 disguised as transport aircraft.
Air reconnaissance of Germany before the start of the war
An idea of the intensity of aerial reconnaissance is given by the following generalized data: from October 1939 to June 22, 1941, German aircraft invaded the airspace of the Soviet Union more than 500 times. Many cases are known when civil aviation aircraft flying along the Berlin-Moscow route on the basis of agreements between Aeroflot and Lufthansa often deliberately strayed off course and ended up over military installations. Two weeks before the start of the war, the Germans also flew around the areas where the Soviet troops were located. Every day they photographed the location of our divisions, corps, armies, pinpointed the location of military radio transmitters that were not camouflaged.
A few months before the attack of fascist Germany on the USSR, aerial photographs of the Soviet territory were carried out at full speed. According to information received by our intelligence through agents from the referent of the German aviation headquarters, German aircraft flew to the Soviet side from airfields in Bucharest, Koenigsberg and Kirkenes (Northern Norway) and photographed from a height of 6 thousand meters. Only for the period from April 1 to April 19, 1941, German aircraft 43 times violated state border, making reconnaissance flights over our territory to a depth of 200 kilometers.
As established by the Nuremberg trials of the main war criminals, the materials obtained with the help of aerial photographic reconnaissance, carried out in 1939, even before the start of the invasion of Nazi troops into Poland, were used as a guide in the subsequent planning of military and sabotage operations against the USSR. Reconnaissance flights, which were carried out first over the territory of Poland, then the Soviet Union (to Chernigov) and the countries of South-Eastern Europe, some time later were transferred to Leningrad, to which, as an object of air espionage, the main attention was riveted. It is known from archival documents that on February 13, 1940, Canaris' report “On new results of aerial reconnaissance against the SSSL received by the Rovel special squadron” was heard from General Jodl at the headquarters of the operational leadership of the Wehrmacht Supreme High Command. Since that time, the scale of air espionage has increased dramatically. His main task was to obtain information necessary for compiling geographical maps of the USSR. At the same time, special attention was paid to naval military bases and other strategically important objects (for example, the Shostka gunpowder plant) and, especially, oil production centers, oil refineries, and oil pipelines. Future objects for bombing were also determined.
An important channel for obtaining espionage information about the USSR and its armed forces was the regular exchange of information with the intelligence agencies of the allied countries of Nazi Germany - Japan, Italy, Finland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. In addition, the Abwehr maintained working contacts with the military intelligence services of the countries neighboring the Soviet Union - Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Schellenberg even set himself the task of developing the secret services of countries friendly to Germany and rallying them into a kind of “intelligence community” that would work for one common center and supply the countries included in it with the necessary information (a goal that was generally achieved after war in NATO in the form of informal cooperation of various secret services under the auspices of the CIA).
Denmark, for example, in whose secret service Schellenberg, with the support of the leadership of the local National Socialist Party, managed to take a leading position and where there was already a good “operational reserve”, was “used as a“ base ”in intelligence work against England and Russia. According to Schellenberg, he managed to infiltrate the Soviet intelligence network. As a result, he writes, after some time a well-established connection with Russia was established, and we began to receive important information of a political nature.
The wider the preparations for the invasion of the USSR, the more vigorously Canaris tried to include his allies and satellites of Nazi Germany in intelligence activities, to put their agents into action. Through the Abwehr, the centers of Nazi military intelligence in the countries of South-Eastern Europe were ordered to intensify their work against the Soviet Union. The Abwehr has long maintained the closest contacts with the intelligence service of Horthy Hungary. According to P. Leverkün, the results of the actions of the Hungarian intelligence service in the Balkans were a valuable addition to the work of the Abwehr. An Abwehr liaison officer was constantly in Budapest, who exchanged obtained information. There was also a representative office of the SD, consisting of six people, headed by Hoettl. Their duty was to maintain contact with the Hungarian secret service and the German national minority, which served as a source of recruiting agents. The representative office had practically unlimited funds in stamps to pay for the services of agents. At first it was focused on solving political problems, but with the outbreak of war, its activities increasingly acquired a military orientation. In January 1940, Canaris set about organizing a powerful Abwehr center in Sofia in order to turn Bulgaria into one of the strongholds of his agent network. Contacts with Romanian intelligence were just as close. With the consent of the chief of Romanian intelligence, Morutsov, and with the assistance of oil firms that were dependent on German capital, Abwehr people were sent to the territory of Romania in the oil regions. The scouts acted under the guise of employees of firms - "mountain masters", and the soldiers of the sabotage regiment "Brandenburg" - local guards. Thus, the Abwehr managed to establish itself in the oil heart of Romania, and from here it began to spread its spy networks further to the east.
The Nazi services of "total espionage" in the struggle against the USSR even in the years preceding the war, had an ally in the face of the intelligence of militaristic Japan, whose ruling circles also made far-reaching plans for our country, the practical implementation of which they associated with the capture of Moscow by the Germans. And although there were never joint military plans between Germany and Japan, each of them pursued its own policy of aggression, sometimes trying to benefit at the expense of the other, nevertheless, both countries were interested in partnership and cooperation between themselves and therefore acted as a united front in the intelligence field . This, in particular, is eloquently evidenced by the activities in those years of the Japanese military attaché in Berlin, General Oshima. It is known that he coordinated the actions of the Japanese intelligence residencies in European countries, where he established fairly close ties in political and business circles and maintained contacts with the leaders of the SD and the Abwehr. Through it, a regular exchange of intelligence data about the USSR was carried out. Oshima kept his ally informed about the concrete measures of Japanese intelligence in relation to our country and, in turn, was aware of the covert operations launched against it by fascist Germany. If necessary, he provided the undercover and other operational capabilities at his disposal and, on a mutual basis, willingly supplied intelligence information. Another key figure in Japanese intelligence in Europe was the Japanese envoy in Stockholm, Onodera.
In the plans of the Abwehr and the SD directed against the Soviet Union, an important place, for obvious reasons, was assigned to its neighboring states - the Baltic States, Finland, Poland.
The Nazis showed particular interest in Estonia, considering it as a purely "neutral" country, the territory of which could serve as a convenient springboard for the deployment of intelligence operations against the USSR. This was decisively facilitated by the fact that already in the second half of 1935, after a group of pro-fascist officers led by Colonel Maazing, head of the intelligence department of the General Staff, gained the upper hand at the headquarters of the Estonian army, there was a complete reorientation of the country's military command to Nazi Germany . In the spring of 1936, Maasing, and after him the chief of staff of the army, General Reek, willingly accepted the invitation of the leaders of the Wehrmacht to visit Berlin. During their stay there they tied up business relationship with Canaris and his closest assistants. An agreement was reached on mutual information on the intelligence line. The Germans undertook to equip Estonian intelligence with operational and technical means. As it turned out later, it was then that the Abwehr secured the official consent of Reek and Maazing to use the territory of Estonia to work against the USSR. The Estonian intelligence was provided with photographic equipment for taking pictures of warships from the lighthouses in the Gulf of Finland, as well as radio interception devices, which were then installed along the entire Soviet-Estonian border. To provide technical assistance, specialists from the decryption department of the Wehrmacht high command were sent to Tallinn.
The results of these negotiations, the commander-in-chief of the Estonian bourgeois army, General Laidoner, assessed as follows: “We were mainly interested in information about the deployment of Soviet military forces in the area of our border and about the movements taking place there. All this information, insofar as they had it, the Germans willingly communicated to us. As for our intelligence department, it supplied the Germans with all the data we had on the Soviet rear and the internal situation in the SSSL.
General Pickenbrock, one of Canaris's closest aides, during interrogation on February 25, 1946, in particular, testified: “Estonian intelligence maintained very close ties with us. We constantly provided her with financial and technical support. Its activities were directed exclusively against the Soviet Union. The head of intelligence, Colonel Maazing, visited Berlin every year, and our representatives, as necessary, traveled to Estonia themselves. Captain Cellarius often visited there, who was entrusted with the task of monitoring the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, its position and maneuvers. An employee of Estonian intelligence, Captain Pigert, constantly cooperated with him. Before the Soviet troops entered Estonia, we left numerous agents there in advance, with whom we maintained regular contact and through which we received information of interest to us. When Soviet power arose there, our agents intensified their activities and, until the very moment of the occupation of the country, supplied us with the necessary information, thereby contributing to a significant extent to the success of the German troops. For some time, Estonia and Finland were the main sources of intelligence information about the Soviet armed forces.
In April 1939, General Reek was again invited to Germany, which was widely celebrating Hitler's birthday, whose visit, as expected in Berlin, was supposed to deepen interaction between the German and Estonian military intelligence services. With the assistance of the latter, the Abwehr managed to carry out in 1939 and 1940 the transfer of several groups of spies and saboteurs to the USSR. All this time, four radio stations were functioning along the Soviet-Estonian border, intercepting radiograms, and simultaneously monitoring the work of radio stations on the territory of the USSR was carried out from different points. The information obtained in this way was passed on to the Abwehr, from which the Estonian intelligence had no secrets, especially with regard to the Soviet Union.
The Baltic countries in intelligence against the USSR
Abwehr leaders regularly traveled to Estonia once a year to exchange information. The heads of the intelligence services of these countries, in turn, visited Berlin every year. Thus, the exchange of accumulated secret information took place every six months. In addition, special couriers were periodically sent from both sides when it was necessary to urgently deliver the necessary information to the center; sometimes military attachés at the Estonian and German embassies were authorized for this purpose. The information transmitted by Estonian intelligence mainly contained data on the state of the armed forces and the military-industrial potential of the Soviet Union.
The Abwehr archives contain materials about the stay of Canaris and Pikenbrock in Estonia in 1937, 1938 and June 1939. In all cases, these trips were caused by the need to improve the coordination of actions against the USSR and the exchange of intelligence information. Here is what General Laidoner, already mentioned above, writes: “The head of German intelligence, Kanaris, visited Estonia for the first time in 1936. After that, he visited here twice or thrice. I took it personally. Negotiations on issues of intelligence work were conducted with him by the head of the army headquarters and the head of the 2nd department. Then it was established more specifically what information was required for both countries and what we could give each other. The last time Canaris visited Estonia was in June 1939. It was mainly about intelligence activities. I spoke with Canaris at some length about our position in the event of a clash between Germany and England and between Germany and the USSR. He was interested in the question of how long it would take the Soviet Union to fully mobilize its armed forces and what was the condition of its means of transport (railway, road and road). On this visit, together with Canaris and Pikenbrock, there was the head of the Abwehr III department, Frans Bentivegni, whose trip was connected with checking the work of a group subordinate to him, which carried out extra-cordon counterintelligence activities in Tallinn. In order to avoid the “inept interference” of the Gestapo in the affairs of the counterintelligence of the Abwehr, at the insistence of Canaris, an agreement was reached between him and Heydrich that in all cases when the security police would carry out any activities on Estonian territory, the Abwehr must first be informed . For his part, Heydrich put forward a demand - the SD should have an independent residency in Estonia. Realizing that in the event of an open quarrel with the influential chief of the imperial security service, it would be difficult for the Abwehr to count on Hitler's support, Canaris agreed to "make room" and accepted Heydrich's demand. At the same time, they agreed that all the activities of the SD in the field of recruiting agents in Estonia and transferring them to the Soviet Union would be coordinated with the Abwehr. The Abwehr retained the right to concentrate in their hands and evaluate all intelligence information regarding the Red Army and Navy, which the Nazis received through Estonia, as well as through other Baltic countries and Finland. Canaris strongly objected to the attempts of the SD employees to act together with the Estonian fascists, bypassing the Abwehr and sending unverified information to Berlin, which often came to Hitler through Himmler.
According to Laidoner's report to Estonian President Päts, the last time Canaris was in Tallinn was in the autumn of 1939 under a false name. In this regard, his meeting with Laidoner and Päts was arranged according to all the rules of conspiracy.
In the report of the Schellenberg department, preserved in the archives of the RSHA, it was reported that the operational situation for intelligence work through the SD in the pre-war period in both Estonia and Latvia was similar. At the head of the residency in each of these countries was an official employee of the SD, who was in an illegal position. All the information collected by the residency flowed to him, which he forwarded to the center by mail using cryptography, through couriers on German ships or through embassy channels. The practical activities of the SD intelligence residencies in the Baltic states were assessed positively by Berlin, especially in terms of acquiring sources of information in political circles. The SD was greatly assisted by immigrants from Germany who lived here. But, as noted in the above-mentioned report of the VI Department of the RSHA, “after the entry of the Russians, the operational capabilities of the SD underwent serious changes. The leading figures of the country left the political arena, and maintaining contact with them became more difficult. There was an urgent need to find new channels for transmitting intelligence information to the center. It became impossible to send it on ships, since the ships were carefully searched by the authorities, and the members of the crews who went ashore were constantly monitored. I also had to refuse to send information through the free port of Memel (now Klaipeda, Lithuanian SSR. - Ed.) via overland communication. It was also risky to use sympathetic ink. I had to resolutely take up the laying of new communication channels, as well as the search for fresh sources of information. The SD resident in Estonia, who spoke in official correspondence under the code number 6513, nevertheless managed to make contact with newly recruited agents and use old sources of information. Maintaining regular contact with his agents was a very dangerous business, requiring exceptional caution and dexterity. Resident 6513, however, was able to very quickly understand the situation and, despite all the difficulties, obtain the necessary information. In January 1940, he received a diplomatic passport and began working under the guise of an assistant at the German embassy in Tallinn.
As for Finland, according to the archival materials of the Wehrmacht, a “Military Organization” was actively operating on its territory, conditionally called the “Cellarius Bureau” (after its leader, the German military intelligence officer Cellarius). It was created by the Abwehr with the consent of the Finnish military authorities in mid-1939. Since 1936, Canaris and his closest assistants Pikenbrock and Bentivegni have repeatedly met in Finland and Germany with the head of Finnish intelligence, Colonel Swenson, and then with Colonel Melander, who replaced him. At these meetings, they exchanged intelligence information and worked out plans for joint action against the Soviet Union. The Cellarius Bureau constantly kept in view the Baltic Fleet, the troops of the Leningrad Military District, as well as units stationed in Estonia. His active assistants in Helsinki were Dobrovolsky, a former general of the tsarist army, and former tsarist officers Pushkarev, Alekseev, Sokolov, Batuev, Baltic Germans Meisner, Mansdorf, Estonian bourgeois nationalists Weller, Kurg, Horn, Kristyan and others. On the territory of Finland, Cellarius had a fairly wide network of agents among various segments of the country's population, recruited spies and saboteurs among the Russian White émigrés who had settled there, the nationalists who had fled from Estonia, and the Baltic Germans.
Pickenbrock, during interrogation on February 25, 1946, gave detailed testimony about the activities of the Cellarius Bureau, saying that Captain First Rank Cellarius carried out intelligence work against the Soviet Union under the cover of the German embassy in Finland. “We have had close cooperation with Finnish intelligence for a long time, even before I joined the Abwehr in 1936. In order to exchange intelligence data, we systematically received information from the Finns about the deployment and strength of the Red Army.
As follows from Pickenbrock's testimony, he first visited Helsinki with Canaris and Major Stolz, head of the Abwehr department I of the Ost ground forces headquarters, in June 1937. Together with representatives of Finnish intelligence, they compared and exchanged intelligence information about the Soviet Union. At the same time, a questionnaire was handed over to the Finns, which they were to be guided in the future when collecting intelligence information. The Abwehr was primarily interested in the deployment of Red Army units, military industry facilities, especially in the Leningrad region. During this visit, they had business meetings and conversations with the German ambassador to Finland, von Blucher, and the military attaché, Major General Rossing. In June 1938, Canaris and Pickenbrock again visited Finland. On this visit, they were received by the Finnish Minister of War, who expressed satisfaction with the way Canaris's cooperation with the head of Finnish intelligence, Colonel Swenson, was developing. The third time they were in Finland was in June 1939. The head of Finnish intelligence at that time was Melander. The negotiations proceeded within the same framework as the previous ones. Informed in advance by the leaders of the Abwehr about the upcoming attack on the Soviet Union, Finnish military intelligence in early June 1941 put at their disposal the information it had in relation to the Soviet Union. At the same time, with the knowledge of the local authorities, the Abwehr began to carry out Operation Erna, which involved the transfer of Estonian counter-revolutionaries from Finland to the Baltic region as spies, radio agents and saboteurs.
The last time Canaris and Pickenbrock visited Finland was in the winter of 1941/42. Together with them was the chief of counterintelligence (Abwehr III) Bentivegni, who traveled to inspect and provide practical assistance to the "military organization", as well as to resolve issues of cooperation between this organization and Finnish intelligence. Together with Melander, they determined the boundaries of Cellarius' activities: he received the right to independently recruit agents on Finnish territory and transfer them across the front line. After the negotiations, Canaris and Pikenbrock, accompanied by Melander, went to the city of Mikkeli, to the headquarters of Marshal Mannerheim, who expressed a desire to personally meet with the chief of the German Abwehr. They were joined by the head of the German military mission in Finland, General Erfurt.
Cooperation with the intelligence services of the allied and occupied countries in the fight against the USSR undoubtedly brought certain results, but the Nazis expected more from him.
The results of the activities of German intelligence on the eve of the Great Patriotic War
“On the eve of the war, the Abwehr,” writes O. Reile, “was unable to cover the Soviet Union with a well-functioning intelligence network from well-located secret strongholds in other countries - Turkey, Afghanistan, Japan or Finland.” Established in peacetime strongholds in neutral countries - "military organizations" were either disguised as economic firms or included in German missions abroad. When the war began, Germany was cut off from many sources of information, and the importance of "military organizations" greatly increased. Until the middle of 1941, the Abwehr carried out systematic work on the border with the USSR in order to create its own strongholds and plant agents. Along the German-Soviet border, a wide network of technical reconnaissance equipment was deployed, with the help of which interception of radio communications was carried out.
In connection with Hitler's installation on the all-out deployment of the activities of all German secret services against the Soviet Union, the question of coordination became acute, especially after an agreement was concluded between the RSHA and the General Staff of the German Ground Forces to assign to each army special detachments of the SD, called "Einsatzgruppen" and "Einsatzkommando".
In the first half of June 1941, Heydrich and Canaris convened a meeting of Abwehr officers and commanders of police and SD units (Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommando). In addition to separate special reports, reports were made at it that covered in general terms the operational plans for the upcoming invasion of the USSR. The ground forces were represented at this meeting by the quartermaster general, who, regarding the technical side of cooperation between the secret services, relied on a draft order worked out in agreement with the chief of the SD. Canaris and Heydrich, in their speeches, touched upon the issues of interaction, "feeling of the elbow" between parts of the security police, the SD and the Abwehr. A few days after this meeting, both of them were received by the Reichsführer SS Himmler to discuss their proposed plan of action to counter Soviet intelligence.
Evidence of the scope that the activities of the "total espionage" services against the USSR on the eve of the war can serve as such generalizing data: only in 1940 and the first quarter of 1941 in the western regions of our country were discovered 66 residencies of Nazi intelligence and neutralized more than 1300 of its agents .
As a result of the activation of the “total espionage” services, the volume of information they collected about the Soviet Union, which required analysis and appropriate processing, constantly increased, and intelligence, as the Nazis wanted, became more and more comprehensive. There was a need to involve relevant research organizations in the process of studying and evaluating intelligence materials. One of these institutes, widely used by intelligence, located in Wanjie, was the largest collection of various Soviet literature, including reference books. The special value of this unique collection was that it contained an extensive selection of specialized literature on all branches of science and economics, published in the original language. The staff, which included well-known scientists from various universities, including immigrants from Russia, was headed by one professor-Sovietologist, Georgian by origin. The impersonal secret information obtained by intelligence was transferred to the Institute, which he had to subject to careful study and generalization using the available reference literature, and return to Schellenberg's apparatus with his own expert assessment and comments.
Another research organization that also worked closely with intelligence was the Institute of Geopolitics. He carefully analyzed the collected information and, together with the Abwehr and the Department of Economics and Armaments of the Headquarters of the Wehrmacht High Command, compiled various reviews and reference materials on their basis. The nature of his interests can be judged at least from such documents prepared by him before the attack on the Soviet Union: “Military-geographical data on the European part of Russia”, “Geographical and ethnographic information about Belarus”, “Industry of Soviet Russia”, “Railway transport of the SSSL, "Baltic countries (with city plans)".
In the Reich, in total, there were about 400 research organizations dealing with socio-political, economic, scientific, technical, geographical and other problems of foreign states; all of them, as a rule, were staffed by highly qualified specialists who knew all aspects of the relevant problems, and were subsidized by the state according to a free budget. There was a procedure according to which all requests from Hitler - when he, for example, demanded information on any particular issue - were sent to several different organizations for execution. However, the reports and certificates prepared by them often did not satisfy the Fuhrer due to their academic nature. In response to the task received, the institutions issued "a set of general provisions, perhaps correct, but untimely and not clear enough."
In order to eliminate fragmentation and inconsistency in the work of research organizations, to increase their competence, and most importantly, their return, and also to ensure proper control over the quality of their conclusions and expert assessments based on intelligence materials, Schellenberg would later come to the conclusion that it was necessary to create an autonomous groups of specialists with higher education. Based on the materials placed at their disposal, in particular on the Soviet Union, and with the involvement of relevant research organizations, this group will organize the study of complex problems and, on this basis, develop in-depth recommendations and forecasts for the political and military leadership of the country.
The "Department of Foreign Armies of the East" of the General Staff of the Ground Forces was engaged in similar work. He concentrated materials coming from all intelligence and other sources and periodically compiled “reviews” for the highest military authorities, in which special attention was paid to the strength of the Red Army, the morale of the troops, the level of command personnel, the nature of combat training, etc.
Such is the place of the Nazi secret services as a whole in the military machine of Nazi Germany and the scope of their participation in the preparation of aggression against the USSR, in intelligence support for future offensive operations.
1943 On the morning of September 1, an unusual visitor came to the Timsky district branch of the USSR NKGB Directorate for the Kursk region - 15-year-old teenager Kolya Guchkov with a German parachute in his hands. The boy told the astonished operatives that last night he and nine other people were dropped from an enemy plane to commit sabotage on the railway ... Landing near the village council of the Timsky district of the Kursk region, Kolya Guchkov spent the night in the field and in the morning went to surrender to the NKVD. On the same day, another parachutist, fourteen-year-old Kolya Ryabov, was brought to the Oboyansky district branch of the UNKGB, who came to a military unit that was not far from the city of Oboyan. And on September 6, 1943, the third saboteur Gennady Sokolov came to the Directorate of the NKGB of the USSR for the Kursk region, in the city of Kursk ... Head of the 2nd Directorate of the NKGB of the USSR, Commissar of State Security of the 3rd rank Comrade Fedotov. The city of Moscow: “On September 6, 1943, Sokolov Gennady Semenovich, born in 1929, turned himself in to the Directorate of the NKGB in the Kursk region. A native of the town of Krasnoe, the collective farm "Red October" of the Krasnensky district of the Smolensk region. He lived in the state farm "Milovidovo" 2 kilometers from the city of Smolensk. The detained Sokolov testified that he was thrown out among the 2nd group of paratroopers-saboteurs on the night of August 31 to September 1, 1943. After being thrown from the plane, he landed about 30 kilometers from the city of Voronezh. Sokolov does not know the exact place of landing ... After landing, he spent the night in the field. In the morning I buried my parachute, and not far from it there were two pieces of tola in the form of coal, and with one piece of tola I went to the city, with the goal of coming to the NKVD with a confession, but changed my mind along the way, fearing responsibility. On the way, he explained to the locals that he was a refugee. Having reached the city of Voronezh, he buried the third piece of tola in a broken house near the market. After that, he decided to go to Kursk, with the goal of meeting with other paratroopers-saboteurs thrown out, but, having not met anyone, he turned himself in to the UNKGB of the USSR in the Kursk region with a confession. During the search, he presented a password, the size of a grain on light yellow paper, measuring 7 by 8 millimeters with a printed text in German: "special assignment." Head of the NKGB Directorate for the Kursk Region, State Security Lieutenant Colonel Alenuev. So, all the teenage saboteurs who came to the district offices of the UNKGB, the departments of military counterintelligence "SMERSH" did not hide their task: to disable trains or factories. Tol, disguised as coal, they had to throw into a common heap, where they collected fuel for steam locomotives, as well as factories. After completing the task, the children were required to cross the front line and, after presenting the password to the first German soldier or officer, ask them to deliver them to the headquarters of the German army ... Abwehr and the SD had to spend several years, as well as huge amounts of money, to make a saboteur out of a "true Aryan", which would not be immediately declassified on the territory of the enemy, and so that the locals would not suspect anything when they met. The easiest way was to recruit them from prisoners of war and orphanages, and after a short period of training they were sent to carry out the task ... The story of Nikolai Guchkov, with which we began our story, is in a sense typical. During interrogation, Kolya said that his family was in poverty, and his mother was forced to send the boy to an orphanage in the neighboring town of Dukhovshchina. And at the end of August 1941, the city was occupied by the Germans. They did not have time to evacuate the children from the orphanage... The teachers recommended that the children, if they have parents or acquaintances, go to them. The boy's family was evacuated, so after long wanderings he returned to the orphanage. Here he met fifteen other guys. German soldiers were stationed in the orphanage. The guys every day went around the city and the nearest villages, where they asked for bread, and in the evening they returned to spend the night. Five days later, the Germans rounded up the remaining eight teenagers and sent them to another orphanage in the town of Volkovo. Here, teenagers worked on the economic side: they sawed firewood, removed manure, went to the forest for firewood. For their work, they received daily 300 grams of bread, and sometimes a hot boil without fat. The director of the orphanage and the teachers treated the boys rudely, often reaching the point of assault.
A German soldier with children in an occupied Soviet village Long before the events described, Abwehr officers came up with the idea of using teenagers and children in the occupied territory for undercover and sabotage work. This was due to a number of objective reasons. Children and teenagers least of all attracted the attention of Soviet counterintelligence agencies and patrols. And any Soviet soldier was not only imbued with compassion for a minor, but also gave his last to feed an emaciated, starving child. A difficult moral question: how justified is the participation of children in the war ... After all, their childhood was stolen from them. And it's not even that they had to work on a par with adults. These children survived the death of loved ones, hunger, cold, fear. Fear of loneliness, fear of death. They had to leave school and go to work to somehow feed themselves. Since all the men went to the front, they worked together with women on collective farms, in factories and factories. Due to the lack of labor, children began to work from the age of 12, and even earlier. Quite childish duties fell on their fragile shoulders. Hard physical labor, endless suffering undoubtedly undermined the psyche of the children of that time. Small, defenseless, they had to fight not only for their lives, but also for the lives of their sisters and brothers. The older children tried to put the younger ones on their feet, to run the household while their mother got bread. We know quite a lot about children's exploits in the war. The effectiveness of the use of the "age" factor in military operations, or rather, in reconnaissance and sabotage work, was recognized back in Ancient Rome. Children and women, being non-military categories, did not arouse particular suspicion among the neighboring side. And therefore they could move relatively freely through the territory of the enemy, which, in fact, was necessary. In addition, as already mentioned, children are hardly noticeable, a lot of them roam the rear - orphaned and restless, they are beyond suspicion. And, importantly, the psychology of a teenager is such that he is drawn to travel, adventure, to imitate the military, which means having a weapon, experiencing danger ... And also such features as attention, the ability to act outside the box (after all, unlike adults, the psyche of a child not littered with stereotypes) and, to be honest, an underestimated threshold of danger, less than in adults, a developed sense of self-preservation.
Russian "SS students" take the oath in Torgau (Germany). Photo from the Berlin newspaper Novoye Slovo. July 26, 1944 ... As experience shows, recruiting an adult is often more difficult than a child. Children, like no other, are in a vulnerable position in the face of military recruitment and involvement in hostilities, because they are innocent and impressionable. Through intimidation, children are often forced into obedience, and they are forced to constantly fear for their lives and well-being. They quickly realize that complete obedience is the only way to survive. Perhaps the first information that the Abwehr began to use children and adolescents for intelligence purposes was a special message from the NKVD department for the Smolensk region to a special department of the Western Front about child saboteurs dated September 4, 1941. This special report said that German intelligence, in order to obtain information about the deployment of Soviet units, subdivisions, headquarters in the front line, was sending teenagers to Soviet territory to carry out intelligence work. Accordingly, our counterintelligence was tasked with identifying these recruited teenagers, finding out which intelligence center the child belonged to, where this intelligence center is located, its area of responsibility, i.e. where, in what districts, spy children are sent and with what tasks. Orientation of the Office of Special Departments of the NKVD of the USSR No. 43079 dated August 30, 1941 “On the transfer of German intelligence agents across the front line to carry out espionage and sabotage work in the rear of the Red Army: “On July 16 of this year, the Special Department of the NKVD of the 15th Rifle Corps (South-West front) was detained by 14-year-old Tadeusz Kapchinsky, who testified that he was sent to our side for espionage work by an officer of the German army. Kapchinsky was given the task to get into the location of the units of the 15th Rifle Corps and establish their strength and weapons. On August 5 of this year, 12-year-old Petr Doroshchev and 15-year-old Avdeev Roman were detained in the area where our troops were gathering while throwing rockets. and then they indicated the place of transition to the territory of the Red Army. Doroshev and Avdreev stated that the Germans promised to give them money upon their return, treat them with sweets, wine and ride in a car, and if they did not fulfill their orders, they would arrest their parents. On August 7 of this year, in the area where our troops were located near Yartsevo, two 13-year-old teenagers, natives of Yartsevo, were detained at the moment they were throwing 5 rockets. When interviewing the detainees, it was found that both of them were mentally underdeveloped. Reported for orientation in the work. Deputy Head of the Directorate of Special Departments of the NKVD of the USSR, Commissar of State Security 3rd rank Milshtein. The overwhelming number of spies and saboteurs did not pose a great danger to units and formations of the Red Army for decisive battles, for the fate of the war as a whole. Children came with a confession as soon as they got to Soviet territory. And there were enough of them. From the reports of the head of the Smolensk department of the NKVD for July 1943: “Sixteen-year-old Alyosha Rozanov from the Oleninsky district of the Kalinin region became a saboteur by the will of circumstances. Forcibly driven to the German rear, yesterday's schoolboy was enrolled in the Serebryansk intelligence school near Smolensk. In it, 150 boys and girls aged 13 to 16 were preparing to carry out sabotage on the railways. The training lasted a month and a half and included the theory and practice of subversion, skydiving, and card reading. On the night of June 10, 1943, Tsvetkov, as part of a sabotage group, landed near the village of Shizderevo, Belsky district. For ten days, the group waited at the appointed place for a messenger - an old man in a black suit and a brown vest. This man, who knew their password - "wedge", was supposed to supply the agents with explosives and food. But since the meeting did not take place, they decided to disperse in different directions. In search of work, Tsvetkov showed up in the village of Kholm-Zhirkovsky, posing as an orphan. There he was detained by the NKVD. At the preliminary investigation, the failed saboteur reported that another 15 intelligence girls would be thrown from the Serebryanskaya school to our rear. The operatives handed over all the detainees to the SMERSH counterintelligence departments, where further investigation was carried out ... But long before that, the Germans began to actively use children and adolescents for intelligence purposes. Suffice it to say that at the Abverstell, located in Ukraine, in particular in the city of Zhitomir, which was taken by the Germans on July 9, 1941, there were already three teenage agents who repeatedly threw themselves behind the front line and carried out the reconnaissance mission of the Abwehr. It should be said that by 1942, these child spies made more than a hundred walkers for the front line! And, returning, they reported to the Abwehr employees the necessary data that were of interest to German intelligence.
Russian boy among German soldiers Orientation GUKR "Smersh" NPO USSR No. 51179 about work against German agents from teenagers. September 20, 1943. “According to the testimonies of the teenage saboteurs arrested by the Smersh authorities, it was established that on June 25, 1943, by order of the German command, all males aged 14-16 years old, who lived on the territory of the Kozinsky volost of the Smolensk region, had to come to the volost administration for registration. The teenagers who came for registration were sent by the Germans to a camp located 4 kilometers from Smolensk, in the building of the former MTS, where personnel were trained for the so-called Russian Liberation Army (ROA). July 14 this year 30 teenagers aged 14 to 16 were selected from this camp by German intelligence and sent under the guise of sightseers to the town of Waldeck near Kassel (Germany). Upon arrival in Waldeck, subscriptions were taken from the teenagers, obliging them to fight against the communists, commissars and political leaders. Within a month they were trained in special courses of German intelligence, where they underwent topography, drill and parachuting. August 25 this year after completing the course, all the teenagers were taken to the city of Orsha, BSSR, where they were told that they would be transferred to the side of the Red Army to perform sabotage missions. The teenagers were instructed that after landing on the Soviet side they should go to the areas of railway stations, look for warehouses supplying fuel to the locomotives, and plant pieces of explosives in the piles of coal. To complete this task, the Germans gave each teenager 2-3 pieces of explosives weighing 500 g each, similar in shape and color to pieces of coal. The explosive seized from the detainees was twitched by the examination, which established: a piece of explosive is an irregularly shaped mass of black, resembling coal, quite strong and consisting of cemented coal powder. This sheath is applied to a mesh of twine and copper wire. Inside the shell is a dough-like mass, in which a compressed white substance is placed, reminiscent of the shape of a cylinder, wrapped in red-yellow parchment paper. A detonator cap is attached to one end of this substance. In the detonator cap, a piece of Fickford cord is clamped with the end extending into the black mass. The pasty substance is a gelatinized explosive consisting of 64% RDX, 28% TNT oil and 8% pyroxylin. Thus, the examination established that this explosive belongs to the class of powerful explosives known as hexanit, which are sabotage weapons operating in various types of furnaces. After completing the assignment, the teenagers were obliged to return to the Germans, collecting information on the transportation of troops and cargo along the way to the front line. The saboteurs were dressed in various worn civilian and military clothing, each of them was given 400-600 rubles, Soviet newspapers and passes for the return passage through the front line to the Germans. These passes were printed on a narrow strip of thin paper wrapped in rubber and sewn into the folds of clothing. On the pass, the following text was written in German: "Special task, immediately deliver to 1c." Teenage saboteurs were instructed by the Germans that if they were detained on our side, they, as having no documents, should explain that they were evacuees or homeless. August 29 and 31 this year saboteurs in the amount of 29 people in 3 groups from the airfield in the city of Orsha flew to our side on airplanes and were dropped by parachute in the areas of the town. Rzhev, Gzhatsk and Sychevka, as well as in the regions of Tula, the southern part of the Moscow, Voronezh and Kursk regions. Focusing on the foregoing and taking into account that German intelligence in the future may use teenagers to carry out similar sabotage tasks in our rear, I suggest: passes issued by German intelligence, by interrogation to find out the reasons and purposes of their appearance at this point in order to identify German saboteurs among them. 2. To instruct the employees of the operational-search groups and agents used to search for enemy intelligence officers, as well as to orient the command of the Red Army units, checkpoints and posts of the VNOS service about the possible transfer of German intelligence to our side of teenagers with sabotage missions for strengthening their search. 3. When detaining adolescent saboteurs and receiving a statement from them that the explosives received from the Germans were hidden or thrown away by them, immediately take measures to search for the latter, involving saboteurs themselves for this purpose, if necessary. 4. All cases of detention of teenage saboteurs should be immediately reported to the Smersh Main Directorate. Head of the Main Directorate of Counterintelligence "Smersh" Abakumov From the protocol of additional interrogation of the detainee Nikolai Guchkov (1943, September 3, the city of Kursk): “About July 1943, a German non-commissioned officer and senior lieutenant of the Red Army, who was captured by the Germans. They gathered all of us from the orphanage and began to select those who were older and older. They recruited 12-13 people. After the selection, they announced that we would work for MTS. Arriving there, they went to work: weeding potatoes and other garden crops. In this MTS there were Germans, as well as prisoners of war who worked in the same way as we did. I don’t remember the date and month when 30 teenagers gathered us, and the non-commissioned officer announced that we would all go to Germany on an excursion, we would see how German peasants live, and explore the mountains. We, 30 teenagers, were placed in the city of Kassel in a house where specially trained Hitler youth. We lived there for four days, after which we were taken forty kilometers outside the city, to a separate two-story house on the lake. We, together with the prisoners of war, two brothers Boyko and Tabalin, were placed on the first floor. On the second lived a German soldier, non-commissioned officer and prisoner of war Frolov. As it turned out, this "excursion" for 30 teenagers from the Smolensk orphanage ended. After two days of staying at the new place, the non-commissioned officer announced the daily routine, but did not say for what purpose the guys were brought. The order looked like this. Rise at seven in the morning, half an hour was allotted for the toilet and exercise. From 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. - breakfast. Then four hours of classes. From 13 to 14 hours 15 minutes - lunch. Evening classes continued until half past ten in the evening, with dinner at 6 pm, and on the weekend dinner was postponed an hour later. At 21.30 - lights out. An integral system of training adolescent saboteurs and adolescent spies has developed. Intelligence schools and courses also existed in Belarus - in Orsha and Bobruisk. They existed on the territory of Ukraine in the Donetsk region, in the city of Slavyansk and in the village of Raygorodok. In the Kharkov region, in the village of Protopopovo. On the territory of Russia, intelligence schools and intelligence courses existed in Smolensk, in Mtsensk, Belgorod.
Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler talks to a local boy during an inspection tour of Belarus. In 1942, after the victory of the Soviet troops near Moscow, the leadership of the Abwehr decided to relocate part of the intelligence schools to Germany. That is how the intelligence school for the education of Soviet children and adolescents appeared in Gemfurt and Aldeck, not far from Kassel. More famous was the school in Gemfurt. Intelligence schools and intelligence courses prepared real professional intelligence officers and saboteurs from children and adolescents. They gave the basics of operational work, taught children how to handle explosives, camouflage, and command of the military. topographic maps. The children knew how to locate the headquarters of the Red Army, they understood how it was possible to damage wired communications ... In fact, the children were taught everything that adult spies and saboteurs were taught. From the protocol of the additional interrogation of the detainee Nikolai Guchkov (1943, September 3, the city of Kursk): “Having studied at this school for some time, the German non-commissioned officer announced to all of us that we were preparing to be transferred to the rear of the Russians to complete a task in favor of the Germans, and at the same time declared that the task would be easy and there was nothing to be afraid of. At school, we were taught topography, where we studied the location of forests, swamps, lakes, rivers, clearings, fields, villages, cities, the front and other symbols on the map with topographic signs on the map of the Smolensk region. They also studied the compass and walking in azimuth practically on the ground. There was also military training. Tactical training included the study of defense, the actions of a group against a group in offensive operations, reconnaissance of the terrain, fields, and forests. Some were hiding, others were looking for them. We practically did not study the subversive business. We were only informed that there was a tol in the form of coal, in the middle of which a primer-fuse was embedded. In circulation, it is not dangerous, it explodes in fire. But they didn't show us that." Also, the teenagers were once taken out of the city of Kassel, where they all made one parachute jump from a transport aircraft. During this landing, one of the teenagers received a head injury and was hospitalized by the Germans. He never returned to a special school...
Russian child saboteurs Misha Kruglikov and Petya Marenkov. 1943 Most often, the task of a teenage spy was to determine the location of Soviet units and formations in a certain sector of the front, to find out the names of the commanding staff, the location and number of firing positions. In the event of a child being detained, the Abwehr officers obliged him to tell a certain legend ... As a rule, it was a simple story about how the Germans shot a communist father and mother along with him. The teenager, in order to take revenge on the invaders, crossed the front line and wished to be a pupil of one of the military units. Such a legend was created for the so-called "spies for growth." those. those whom the Abwehr planned for a long and active work against the Soviet Union. These children received longer and more thorough training. ... Training near the city of Kassel, where they brought Kolya Guchkov and his peers, lasted 25 days. Every day, teenagers received 300 grams of bread, like the rest of the German population. For breakfast they were given unsweetened coffee and 10-15 grams of butter without bread, for lunch - soup without a second course. Dinner was the same as breakfast. True, sometimes jam also got into the diet. Almost every day, future “saboteurs” were beaten by a German soldier Herman, as well as Soviet prisoners of war: brothers Boyko, Ivan Tabalin and starley Frolov ... If pupils entered the Gemfurt school, as already mentioned, from orphanages, then the guys got to Aldek in a completely different way . Most often, these were those teenagers whom the German command mobilized in the so-called. Russian Liberation Army (ROA or, as it is also called, Vlasovskaya). They were driven to the recruiting station, where they were ordered to undergo military training in the camp, which was located in the German city of Aldek. In Aldek, instead of a camp, the guys ended up in a spy school, where they were explained that from now on they would not serve in the ROA ... Now their task is to learn reconnaissance and sabotage work on the territory of the Soviet Union ... Children got into the espionage and sabotage path in another way - from concentration camps where many children were either with their mothers or in separate blocks. Suffice it to recall the film "Shield and Sword", the age category of children with whom the Nazis worked. True, the film shows the Gestapo. They also worked in the line of attracting children to reconnaissance purposes, but the Abwehr approached these tasks in a more systematic and sophisticated way, and at the initial stage of their stay in a concentration camp, when these frightened, emaciated creatures had not yet had time to adapt to existence behind barbed wire under the continuous barking of shepherd dogs ... Surviving the horrors concentration camp, the children agreed to such “cooperation” ... Special cynicism also consisted in the fact that the former juvenile prisoner of the concentration camp already had a very convincing legend: they say, he fled from the camp and here is confirmation - a tattooed number on a thin arm! .. Of course - such a child is able to arouse great sympathy in any Soviet counterintelligence officer!
... Training for Kolya Guchkov ended on August 24, 1943. On the third day at night, the teenagers arrived at the airfield, where a senior lieutenant of the Red Army showed them a tol disguised as coal. On the evening of the next day, the first group of ten boys was formed, which was equipped right in the barracks, passwords and parachutes were issued at the plane just before the start of loading. The first group was dropped in the area of the cities of Kalinin, Rzhev and Sychevka. The rest of the saboteurs were divided into two more groups of ten people. On August 31, 1943, each saboteur was given a bag with tol and food, as for the first time they put parachutes on them near the plane. These groups were dropped in the Kursk and Voronezh regions. The interval between the release of each of the paratroopers was 20-30 minutes. According to the plan of the German command, they were supposed to land 15-20 kilometers from the railway stations. Then it only remained to reach the checkpoint and throw explosives into the coal. However, the ideas of the Wehrmacht and German intelligence did not come true. By September 12, 1943, 27 teenage saboteurs who were studying at the Avbwehr intelligence school in Kassel were detained in the rear of the Red Army. All of them voluntarily surrendered to the counterintelligence agencies ... One cannot but worry about the question: how did the further fates of the little spies and saboteurs develop? The reaction of our special services to their actions was unprecedentedly soft. For those who did not blow up and did not kill, a special meeting at the NKVD of the USSR decided: "To count the term of pre-trial detention as a punishment and release from custody." Some teenagers were sent to children's labor camps until they came of age. And only a few, those who really blew up and killed, received sentences from 10 to 25 years. And one more important question: what was the situation with us? After all, everyone knows the pioneer heroes of the Great Patriotic War, many books and films dedicated to the exploits of children ... According to archival documents, it can be stated with the categorical imperative: the Soviet side did not create any teenage sabotage schools. And our children found a place in the war only on their own initiative and as an exception ... It's no secret that many underage teenagers rushed to the front, besieged military registration and enlistment offices with statements, forged birth dates ... In 43-44, already when the war turned to West, members of the Soviet secret services studied such statements. By that time, many of the guys who wrote them were evacuated with their parents from the European part deep into the territory of the Soviet Union. Due to the fact that they knew the area where the hostilities were to unfold, they could be recalled to Moscow from evacuation, say, from Altai. At the base of the Losinoostrovskaya OMSBON, and in the place where the Dynamo sports shooting range is now located in Mytishchi, prepare within 2-3 months, and already, together with a group of adult comrades, send them behind the front line to a well-known area. There, behind the front line, the Soviet Gavroches accomplished countless feats. For military merit, thousands of children, pioneers and Komsomol members were awarded orders and medals. However, we recall that all this happened exclusively voluntarily. (After the collapse of the USSR, this story was "mirrored" and the "Bastards" were removed, indirectly justifying the Nazi practice of using children from the occupied territories against the USSR. Such are the "creators" with their own "author's vision", from the editor.) If the baptism of fire in home area was successful, there were many cases when the second or third transfer was already to Czechoslovakia, Poland, even Germany. It was believed that the totality of the fighting qualities of a teenager, plus personal combat experience, made him, as they say, a universal soldier by the standards of that, of course, terrible, of course bloody, but certainly a great era and the Great War. In 1943, when two bloody years remained before the victory, a network of Suvorov and Nakhimov schools was created in the country, in which the children of the fallen at the front were selected first of all. Researchers know this, but the general public is unlikely to know that the Suvorov Schools of the NKVD were created at the same time in the system of the Suvorov Schools. Moreover, as in ordinary Suvorov schools, priority for admission there was given to children who had lost their parents on the fronts, as well as to adolescents who already had combat experience themselves. The Suvorov schools of the NKVD began preparations for entering the military, mainly in the border schools. The cadets of these schools were trained in military units, and sometimes ended up in combat areas. One of the examples. In 1945, two graduates from the Tashkent Suvorov Military School ended up at the frontier post on the Far Eastern border, where hostilities had just begun ... Moreover, their fathers-commanders let them go there, not knowing that the war with Japan would begin so quickly. Our border units were faced with a combat mission - to capture, break through the Japanese border fortifications. And these guys distinguished themselves so much that the commander of the border detachment, not having the right to award them with military awards, since they were seconded, at his own peril and risk picked up unique Japanese samurai swords and awarded them to the guys ... The department of the Soviet counterintelligence SMERSH learned about the children's intelligence school in Gemfurt from those guys who did not carry out the task of the German command and surrendered to the NKVD. In February 44, the school was transferred from Gemfurt to the Bischofsfelden castle, 6 km from the city of Konin, where it continued to train agents. In the same year, one of the teachers of the school, Alexei Skorobogatov, was recruited. Skorobogatov completed the task of SMERSH and brought all the students of the school and their leader Yuri Yevtukhovich behind the front line, to ours. At the beginning of 1945, the remnants of the school moved to Luckenwald and merged with the Abwehr-2 Sondercamp. The operation to liquidate the Gemfurt school was supervised by Abakumov. He reported the results personally to Stalin. This is how the intelligence school for the education of Soviet children and adolescents in Gemfurt ended its existence ... Politika magazine. 2013. No. 98 Authors of the study: S. Yu. Unigovskaya, TV journalist, screenwriter of the documentary television series “Lubyanka: Secret Materials” (“Secret War”), laureate of the Russian Federal Security Service Prize in the field of cinematography. D. N. Filippov, Captain First Rank, Academician of the Academy of Military Sciences, Deputy Chairman of the Department of Military History of the Academy of Military Sciences, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor. PS. I will add on the fate of many teenagers, which were discussed above. By personal order of Stalin, if these juvenile saboteurs did not stain their hands with blood, and even more so if they voluntarily came over to our side, no punitive measures were applied to them. They were sent to boarding schools for orphans, for further education and socialization in the country. Many were also sent to the Suvorov Schools.
The work of German intelligence during the Great Patriotic War today is surrounded by many myths. One by one, series are released on TV screens telling how the Germans allegedly almost blew up the Kremlin, which was saved only by a miracle, how enemy spies managed to infiltrate almost the very top of our military and political leadership ... The film can serve as an apotheosis "Spy", according to which the German super-spy is almost blackmailing Stalin... with a gun in his hand?! And the cowardly Stalin succumbs to blackmail ...
In general, the legendary agent 007 - through the efforts of our domestic film dreamers - definitely cannot compete with the ubiquitous and omnipotent German Abwehr!
In fact, everything was much more prosaic. German intelligence was undoubtedly a very professional structure, but in the end it lost to the Soviet counterintelligence. Mainly because she was too arrogant about her opponent and definitely underestimated neither his potential nor his capabilities.
For example, here is an excerpt from my book "On the Trail of the Werewolf", telling about the work of the Soviet special services in wartime. The book was written on archival materials of the Nizhny Novgorod (Gorky) region...
If tomorrow is war
The secret war between our and German secret services in the 20th century, one might say, did not stop for a moment. Even during the relatively peaceful coexistence of the 1920s and early 1930s, the intelligence services of both states closely watched each other. And they also collected political, technical, economic and other information about the opposite side no less carefully.
For such objects as the city of Gorky, espionage surveillance was mainly carried out by German firms and concerns, which during the NEP period were actively working on various economic agreements with the Soviet side. Judging by the reports of the OGPU-NKVD of the early 30s, almost every German engineer and specialist who arrived in our country could be suspected in one way or another of intelligence activities. And such suspicions were by no means unfounded! Russia already had the sad experience of the intelligence activities of German firms - during the First World War, when Berlin, through its industrialists and bankers, received a lot of valuable information from the Russian Empire. This "tradition" continued in the Soviet years.
Already during the Great Patriotic War, engineer Richard Fox was arrested in Gorky. As it turned out, in 1931 he was recruited by German intelligence, and the following year, Fox went to the Soviet Union as a foreign specialist. Almost immediately, he began to supply his spy bosses with information about the enterprises in which he had to work. When Hitler came to power in Germany, Fox asked for political asylum and received Soviet citizenship. But "political asylum" was only a cover for the continuation of intelligence activities.
I must say that Fox not only spied, but also recruited our engineers. So, in 1935, he managed to recruit the design engineer of the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry of the USSR Samoylovich, who soon went to work at the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant. And soon important information of defensive importance flowed from there to the German embassy.
Before the war, Fox himself got a job as a mechanical engineer for the Gorky trust "Melstroy". There, in the autumn of 1941, he was arrested by the Gorky security officers, who by that time had collected exhaustive data on the true appearance of the German "anti-fascist" ...
As you know, Hitler harbored a pathological hatred of Soviet power. Therefore, after he seized power, relations between the USSR and Germany changed radically. Economic cooperation was actually interrupted, and German firms curtailed their work. From that moment on, the Germans lost the opportunity to conduct intelligence activities from legal positions, especially in the industrial centers of the Soviet Union. And this means that Germany no longer had the opportunity to correctly assess the military-industrial potential of our country.
However, Hitler did not need this. He treated Russia and the peoples who inhabited it with deep contempt. He called our country none other than a colossus standing on feet of clay. In his opinion, the Soviet Union would collapse at the very first blows of the German troops, and therefore one should not pay close attention to the potential of our country. “Russia is only at the stage of forming its military-industrial base,” Hitler confidently declared in 1940.
Hence the new tasks that were assigned to German intelligence - to conduct espionage mainly in the tactical zone of the future offensive of the German troops. This is no more than 300-500 kilometers inland from the Soviet western border. The rest, according to Hitler, will fall into his hands like a "ripe apple" plucked by the quick victories of German weapons.
In these plans, the city of Gorky was considered only as one of the points of the advance of the German army to the east. According to the Barbarossa plan, our city was the final stage of the victorious march of Army Group Center, after which the immediate surrender of the Soviet Union was to follow.
Therefore, the Germans began to focus on the reconnaissance and sabotage training of their agents, who were called upon to paralyze the rear of the Red Army after the start of the war. One of the secret documents prepared by the NKGB Directorate in the spring of 1941 stated:
“German intelligence from the second half of 1940 sharply intensified its work on the territory of the USSR. All the work of the Germans took on the character of preparation for military operations and was carried out in the direction of creating sabotage groups and gangs for operations in the rear of the Red Army; establishing landmarks for the bombardment of objects of defense and state importance; training signalmen to facilitate German aviation bombing at night of their targets; preparation of terrorist acts against the highest command staff of the Red Army; creating a network of radio stations in the Soviet rear for wartime communications ... German agents are conducting extensive recruiting work in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR, the BSSR and the Baltic states.
As you can see, the enemy either did not set tasks for deep rear intelligence of our country, or assigned them secondary importance ...
However, this can be explained not only by the complacency of Hitler, who firmly believed in the victorious power of German weapons. Under Stalin in the Soviet Union, for various reasons, there was a strong counterintelligence regime. Especially in industrial and military facilities. Therefore, it was extremely difficult for an enemy scout to penetrate there, if not impossible. “Complaints” about such a counter-intelligence regime can be found in the post-war memoirs of surviving German intelligence chiefs.
In 1938, by decision of the Soviet leadership, German consulates were closed in all major cities of the country (except Moscow) - Leningrad, Kharkov, Kyiv, Odessa, Tbilisi, Novosibirsk and Vladivostok. The reason for the closure is that these consulates were centers of German espionage. It was through them that the German agents in the Russian province kept in touch with Germany. With the closure of the consulates, communication with the agents was largely lost. And a spy without communication posed practically no threat to the Soviet side. This immediately affected the effectiveness of Germany's deep intelligence ...
When the chief German resident in the Soviet Union, the military attache of the German embassy, Erich Köstring, was sent numerous questions from Berlin that were supposed to highlight the general military-economic situation in our country, Köstring could not answer anything intelligible. In his letter to his superiors, he explained it this way:
“The experience of several months of work here has shown that there can be no question of the possibility of obtaining military intelligence information, even remotely related to the military industry, even on the most harmless issues. Visits to military units have been suspended. One gets the impression that the Russians are supplying all foreign attachés with a set of false information.”
Köstring was forced to draw the necessary information from very scarce and very unreliable sources - to use materials from the open Soviet press and exchange opinions with military attachés of other countries.
The attempts to send illegal agents across the Soviet border did not help the Germans either. If you believe the testimony of eyewitnesses, then here the enemy failed. On the eve of the war, German intelligence, with all its diligence, failed to penetrate deep into the USSR, because its agents in the vast majority of cases were intercepted at the border. In 1945, during interrogation, the chief of staff of the Supreme Commander of Germany, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, admitted:
“Before the war and during it, 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 USSR military economy.”
Draftsmen and saboteurs
The Germans had to make up for lost time after the start of the war. In September 1941, Admiral Canaris made a trip to the Eastern Front, after which he concluded for himself that the lightning war that Hitler counted on had failed. And it failed mainly due to underestimation of the power of the Red Army, the patriotism of the Soviet people and the level of development of the Russian defense industry.
Returning to Berlin, Canaris issued an order obliging all Abwehr units to take active measures to rapidly build up intelligence activity deep outside the front line. The increased interest for the Germans was now represented by the regions of the Caucasus, the Volga region and the Urals, all the military and economic facilities located here.
Gorky again began to interest the Germans as an important industrial facility in Russia ...
History reference. The leading espionage role in Nazi Germany was assigned to military intelligence - the Abwehr, led by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. Thanks to his personal efforts, the small department of the German War Ministry, the Abwehr (in translation - rebuff, protection) turned into a powerful intelligence agency by the beginning of World War II - as one historian rightly noted, "protection" turned into a very aggressive tool of attack. The Central Directorate of Military Intelligence, called "Abwehr-Abroad" was divided into Abwehr-1, Abwehr-2 and Abwehr-3. Abwehr-1 was in charge of organizing the collection of intelligence information, Abwehr-2 carried out sabotage and terrorist acts, Abwehr-3 was engaged in counterintelligence activities and the fight against the anti-fascist underground and partisan movement in the occupied territory.
In June 1941, Canaris created the Wally Operational Headquarters, located in Warsaw, in the town of Sulejuwek, to direct the field bodies of the Abwehr attached to the invading armies. The structure of this headquarters as a whole repeated the organizational structure of the entire service. "Valli" was subordinated to the numerous Abwehrkommandos and Abwehrgroups operating on the Soviet-German front. Almost each of these groups had its own schools for the training of intelligence officers and saboteurs. At the headquarters of the "Valli" there was its own central intelligence school, which was considered exemplary.
By the way, it was the graduates of this school who were mainly aimed at Gorky and other rear areas of our country, which were important industrially and strategically.
Also, at the initiative of Canaris, a special police force was created in the German army - the secret field police of the HFP, which the Germans themselves referred to as the “front-line Gestapo”. The HFP was formally subordinate to the army command, but in fact received leadership from the Abwehr. In close cooperation with the department of Canaris, the intelligence departments of the 1st "C" of the army headquarters, analogues of our front-line intelligence, who carried out espionage work in the front-line zone, also worked ...
The second major intelligence organization of the Third Reich was the General Directorate of Imperial Security (RSHA) of the German Ministry of the Interior. The department operated under the leadership of one of Hitler's closest associates, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler. As part of this department was the secret political police - the well-known Gestapo, as well as the Security Service (SD), which directly worked against the Soviet Union and other external opponents of the Reich. Under the SD, special punitive units were formed, the so-called Einsatzkommandos and Einsatzgruppen, which carried out mass terror against Jews, communists, partisans, underground fighters and other "undesirable elements".
And the espionage activities of the SD were carried out as part of Operation Zeppelin, which began in the spring of 1942. The main task of the Zeppelin was sabotage in the rear of the Soviet troops and subversive ideological work aimed at creating mass dissatisfaction with Soviet power among the population of our country.
Gorky Chekists had to deal with representatives of almost all of these Nazi secret services. And not only during the war itself, but also years after its end.
Who was the main source of information for the Germans? Of course, not cinematic "James Bonds", but first of all our prisoners, who before the war did not occupy the last positions in the system of Soviet political and industrial production. Special attention the Germans paid engineers and other technical specialists.
After interrogations and interrogations, the extracted materials were sent to the economic intelligence department of the Wally-1 / 1Vi headquarters (“Vi” from the German word “virtshaft” - economy). The department summarized this information and compiled surveys, diagrams, plans and maps of Soviet industrial enterprises. After that, these documents went straight to Hitler's headquarters and to the Luftwaffe's German military aviation department for bombing.
However, the Germans not only identified and interrogated captured engineers, but also sought to involve them in cooperation as draftsmen, technical analysts, and even as designers in the development of new weapons systems. For example, the Abwehr “Sonderkommando-665” or “Working Team-600” were engaged in such things - it is known that Russian specialists from this team were even involved in the development of individual parts of the famous German rocket weapon FAU-2.
The team was led by Sonderführer Wilhelm Metzner, a native of Russia - until 1931 he lived and worked in Leningrad. After the war, he was captured by the Soviet counterintelligence, where he spoke frankly about the history of his unit:
“In June 1942, with the Stalag “3D” and the Stalag “3C”(stalag - prisoner of war camp) Sonder camps were organized, where Russian prisoners of war of officers with a special technical education were gathered. Since then, work on the development of weapons for the German army and the use of existing weapons by the Soviet troops began to be carried out through Russian prisoners of war collected in these Sondercamps ...
I was directly involved in the organization of the Sondercamp, that is, the selection of persons in these camps was carried out by me and the director of our military-technical bureau Shtakenburg ... At the direction of higher authorities, Shtakenburg and I left Berlin for a camp where Russian prisoners of war were kept and from among the officers , kept there separately, began to select people suitable for themselves ...
We took the selected 80-89 people to Berlin to the Zehlendorf camp, where a special team was organized from these people, which entered the 3D Stalag, receiving the number 600. The 600 team stayed in Zehlendorf until January 1943, then was transferred to the Berlin area - Wannsee, while changing the number to 665.
According to Metzner, the employees studied and made drawings from captured types of Soviet weapons - small arms, artillery systems, guidance systems, tank and other armored vehicles. Especially, Metzner emphasized, the Germans were interested in the technical characteristics and components of the T-34 tank.
And our engineers, who agreed to cooperate, according to the testimony of the same Metzner, very actively helped the enemy in this matter!
It is interesting that the most valuable Soviet engineering personnel did not immediately get into the Sonderkommando-665 from the camps, but first passed the interrogation sieve in another Sonderkommando, number 806. That was a special unit commanded by an experienced German counterintelligence major Hempel, an expert on the Soviet military industry. His employees carefully, knowingly interrogated the captured engineers, extracting from them all the information known to them. After that, the prisoners were offered to consolidate what was said on the technical drawings and plans.
Thus, after that, the interviewed person had no way back - the drawing he made or the technical documentation drawn up, in fact, was a kind of receipt for the consent of cooperation with the secret services of the Third Reich ...
Gorky specialists also "worked" in Sonderkommande-665. One of them, a certain Alexander Kosun, a 36-year-old design engineer. It is not known for certain which enterprise he worked at before the war. According to the testimonies of the captured employees of the Sonderkommando, Kosun was repressed in 1937, and since then he has harbored a grudge against the Soviet government. He went over to the Germans voluntarily. In the Sonderkommando, Gorky Kosun led a group for the study of Soviet machine-gun weapons. Then he joined the "Russian Liberation Army" of General Vlasov. Nothing is known about his post-war fate either - perhaps, under a false name, he took refuge in the American occupation zone of Germany.
Much less fortunate was another employee of the Sonderkommando, former lieutenant of the Red Army Fyodor Grigoryevich Zamyatin, a native of the Varnavinsky district of the Gorky region. After the defeat of Germany, Zamyatin returned home and even entered the Gorky Art School to study. But in 1949 he was arrested, just in the case of the Sonderkommando-665.
From the materials of the preliminary investigation:
“Zamiatin, participating in battles with the Nazi invaders in October 1941 on the territory of the Bryansk region, was captured by the enemy. During interrogation after being captured by a German officer, Zamyatin gave out a military secret, telling the Germans the data he knew about his military unit and the location of minefields, thereby committing treason.
While in a prisoner of war camp, in the spring of 1942, Zamyatin voluntarily entered the service of the Germans, in the so-called Sonderkommando-665, which was a branch of the military-technical bureau of the German armed forces, led by German economic intelligence, which was engaged in collecting information about the industry of the USSR, developing new types of weapons of the German army and the execution of drawing work.
In this team, Zamyatin was a full-time employee in the position of a draftsman-copymaker, whom he worked from 1942 to 1945. Being in this team, Zamyatin was dressed in a German uniform and received remuneration as a soldier of the German army ... ".
Apparently, the damage to the defense capability of the Soviet Union by Sonderkommando-665 was such that its draftsman Zamyatin received, as they say, to the fullest - 25 years in the camps (although in 1954 the term was reduced to 10 years) ...
I must say that immediately after the war in Gorky, several closed trials were held over those who, while in captivity, agreed to cooperate with the economic intelligence of Germany. Here are just a few of those episodes.
From the indictment of Shlemov Vasily Dmitrievich, the former dispatcher of the Gorky pier, the Moscow-Oka River Shipping Company (arrested in 1946):
“Shlemov, being part of the 194th Marine Regiment, in October 1942, during the battles with the Nazi invaders near the city of Mozdok, was captured by the Germans, from where, among other captured fighters, he was transferred to a camp in the city of Georgievsk.
In the St. George prisoner of war camp, Shlemov was identified and interrogated as a specialist in the operation of water transport by Lieutenant Brown (Doctor of Economics), who headed one of the economic intelligence groups of the German army, called Abwehrkommando-101, and later "Sonderkommando Shtelle". During this interrogation, Shlemov was preliminarily processed by Brown and gave the latter secret information about cargo transportation along the Moscow-Oka Shipping Company and the quantitative composition of the fleet on the Moscow-Ufa and Moscow-Gorky passenger lines, which were especially important strategic routes during World War II.
In November 1942, Shlemov from the St. George camp was transferred to a prisoner of war camp in Stavropol, where, at the direction of the same Dr. Brown, an employee of the above-mentioned German intelligence Kuroyedov contacted him - in the past he worked as a mechanical engineer of the Middle Volga River Shipping Company. At a meeting with Kuroyedov, Shlemov verbally agreed to cooperate with the German intelligence agency Sonderkommando Stelle, thus embarking on the path of direct treason.
Having agreed to cooperate with the German intelligence agencies, Shlemov began practical treacherous work, performing a number of drawing and copying work on the design of materials collected by economic intelligence from Russian prisoners containing state secrets, personally drew a diagram of telephone-selector communications and radio communications of Moscow-Oksky-Kama and Volga Shipping Company, and also deciphered an aerial photograph of the city of Molotovsk, putting on it the location of military facilities. In addition, identifying anti-Soviet individuals from among Russian prisoners of war capable of treacherous activities in favor of the Germans, and took away from them secret information known to them that was of interest to enemy intelligence. Shlemov carried out such work in prisoner-of-war camps in the cities of Dnepropetrovsk, Pavlograd, Poltava and Darnitsa ... Having proven himself with the Germans by practical treacherous work, Shlemov in the middle of 1943 was included in the "Sonderkommando Shtelle" as an official employee, having previously given out to German intelligence agencies signed a “non-disclosure agreement” and took an obligation “to be faithful to serve in the German army”, thus documenting the betrayal of his homeland ... ".
Approximately the same path of betrayal was taken by another techie who worked before the war as an engineer at the Krasnaya Etna plant - Grigory Vasilyevich Fedortsov. He served as an officer in the Black Sea Fleet, and was captured during the evacuation of Sevastopol:
“While in the Chestokhov officer camp (Poland), Fedortsov betrayed his homeland in June 1943, was recruited by German intelligence and sent to work in the “Special Group” of the German intelligence agency Zeppelin, which was engaged in economic espionage against the Soviet Union.
During the period of being in the "Special Group" Fedortsov worked in the drawing department, where he was engaged in copying the plans of the cities of the Soviet Union and various technical equipment ... ".
By the way, Zeppelin is no longer the Abwehr, but Himmler's department, that is, SD intelligence. A curious name Himmler's people gave to this very "Special Group" - "Institute of Russian Engineers", which in itself speaks of who this intelligence institution mainly consisted of. However, the methods of work of this office were the same as those of the Abwehr - interrogations of prisoners of war, identification of technical personnel, involvement of recruited people in compiling a card catalog for certain sectors of the USSR economy, widespread use of technical literature from captured Soviet libraries, etc. etc...
It can't be forgiven
A natural question arises - how did the Germans manage to get so many Soviet people to work for themselves? Moreover, people with higher education, can we say the elite of Soviet society?
The main reason for the transition to the enemy was, of course, the difficult conditions of German captivity. Hundreds of books have been written about the inhuman detention of our prisoners of war. Personally, I was most shocked by the memories of the former Vlasovite Leonid Samutin, in which he described his stay in a camp for captured Soviet commanders near the Polish town of Suwalki. They just stand on end when you read about how people were forced to sleep in the snow in winter, how dozens of them died from hunger and beatings by guards, how real cannibalism flourished among the prisoners ...
Today, among some historians, the theory is very popular that the Germans allegedly could not create normal living conditions for the prisoners due to the too large number of captured Soviet soldiers in the initial period of the war. They say that in Germany they did not count on such a number of prisoners, hence such a “forced” (!) brutal treatment. They also talk about the “guilt” of the Soviet leadership, which allegedly did not sign the Hague and Geneva international conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war - this, they say, (almost “legally” ?!) untied the hands of the executioners from the SS in the destruction of our soldiers.
I dare say that all these arguments are a complete lie, which would-be "researchers" repeat after the beaten Nazi generals: they, in turn, in their post-war memoirs, thus tried to justify themselves for the war crimes they had committed. In fact, the Soviet Union officially confirmed the recognition of both conventions - the Hague in 1941, and the Geneva one back in 1931! Therefore, all responsibility for the crimes against our prisoners lies entirely with the misanthropic policy of the leadership of Germany and its military elite. By the way, on September 8, 1941, this leadership issued a special secret "Decree on the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war", which contained the following words:
“Bolshevism is the mortal enemy of National Socialist Germany. For the first time, a German soldier faces an adversary trained not only in the military but also in the political sense, in the spirit of destructive Bolshevism... Therefore, the Bolshevik soldier lost all right to claim to be treated as an honest soldier, in accordance with the Geneva Convention.
Therefore, it is fully consistent with the point of view and dignity of the German armed forces that every German soldier draws a sharp line between himself and a Soviet prisoner of war ... All sympathy, and even more so support, should be avoided in the strictest way ... Disobedience, active and passive resistance should be immediately and completely eliminated with the help of weapons (bayonet, butt and firearms ... Prisoners of war escaping should be shot immediately, without a warning call. Warning shots should not be fired ...
Commanders should organize camp police from suitable Soviet prisoners of war, both in POW camps and in most work teams, with the task of maintaining order and discipline. To successfully carry out their tasks, the camp police inside the wire fence must be armed with sticks, whips, etc. ...".
From this document it directly follows that the Nazis, destroying and humiliating our prisoners, acted quite consciously and purposefully. One of the goals pursued by them was precisely the recruitment of spy agents.
“In order to expand intelligence work,- said during interrogation captured in 1945, the head of the sabotage department of the Abwehr Erwin Stolz, - I suggested to Canaris an idea: to launch recruiting activities among the prisoners of war of the Red Army. Putting forward such a proposal, I justified it by the fact that the Red Army soldiers were morally depressed by the successes of the German troops and the fact of their capture, and that among the prisoners of war there would be persons hostile to Soviet power. After that, an order was given to recruit agents in prisoner of war camps.
A combined plan for the processing of Soviet soldiers was developed and began to be implemented, an integral part of which was the creation of inhuman conditions of existence. As Nikolai Gubernatorov, a Russian specialist in the history of special services, writes about this:
“By blackmail, hunger, torture, hard work and executions, the Nazis methodically created unbearable conditions in the camps and put the prisoners of war before a choice: either die from a bullet, hunger and disease, or agree to work for Hitler's intelligence.”
It is clear that he was not far away, they all withstood such pressure and “broke”, going to treason to the Motherland and the military oath ...
However, the harsh conditions of captivity were by no means the only reason for the transition to the enemy. Regarding the problem of cooperation between our intelligentsia and the German occupiers, the author had to somehow communicate with a well-known specialist on this subject, a teacher at Yaroslav the Wise State University (Veliky Novgorod), Professor Boris Nikolaevich Kovalev. Here are the thoughts he shared with me:
- The topic of cooperation between our citizens and the Germans is not as simple as it was drawn in the Soviet years, when the subject of the study of the Great Patriotic War was more propaganda than scientific. Personally, I see three main reasons for this kind of agreement:
First, it is the shock of the first months of the war. Let's remember what Soviet propaganda was broadcasting about before the war - at least based on the film "If there is war tomorrow!". It said that we would fight only on foreign territory, and we would defeat the enemy very quickly - with little bloodshed and a mighty blow.
But what happened in reality, in the summer of 1941? We were defeated, and the Germans moved across our land literally by leaps and bounds. And a certain category of people who can be attributed to the intelligentsia had a feeling of confusion. The feeling that power is steadily and definitively changing. And these people are accustomed to serving the authorities, each in his place and no matter what. Without this, they simply could not imagine their future, because they were used to occupying a special, privileged position in society.
Secondly, the totalitarian Soviet regime, with a rigid party ideology, with the suppression of any dissent, also played its negative role, of course. And among the Russian intelligentsia, as you know, this state of affairs has always provoked protest. It seemed to these people that "civilized Europe" was about to come to the rescue. And Hitler's invasion was perceived by many of our intellectuals as providing such assistance. Moreover, the Germans wrote in their propaganda leaflets that they were going “on a crusade” against the yoke of Bolshevism, for the liberation of all European peoples, including the Russian. Here we must remember that in Russia, even from pre-revolutionary times, there was a deep respect for Germany - we loved its culture, the quality of its products, the hard work of the German people.
Thirdly, there were many among the intellectuals who were offended by the Soviet regime. By the way, the Germans made their main bet on just such a category. For example, in Veliky Novgorod, after the start of the occupation, upon admission to the newly created police, the Germans demanded from candidates evidence of "suffering from Soviet power." It was about certificates of release from the “NKVD camps” and other documents confirming the status of a victim of Stalinist repressions ...
In general, there were many reasons why Soviet engineers, commanders of the Red Army, went to the service of the enemy. But the result of such cooperation was always equally sad. The enemy had a good idea of the location of our factories, their products, their purpose and volumes. German intelligence brilliantly applied the analytical method of information processing, nicknamed "mosaic" - this is when the overall picture is literally formed bit by bit, from various fragments: testimonies of prisoners, collected rumors, intelligence reports from pre-war times and open Soviet publications. In any case, the enemy knew a great deal about Gorky's industry.
A particularly tragic role was played by those Soviet "draughtsmen" from German intelligence who helped the Germans put industrial objects on their military maps and plans, made mainly from aerial photographs. The terrible and ruthless bombing of our city during the first two war years, the destruction of production lines and residential buildings by German bombs, the death of hundreds of civilians is not only on the conscience of the German pilots, but also of their Russian "assistants".
It is still possible to some extent to understand the motives for the cooperation of these "assistants" with the enemy, but it cannot be justified. Even today!
Chronicles of the Moment of Truth
And yet, the Nazis clearly lacked operational information from the Soviet rear. That is, information about current events - about what is happening at the same plants and factories, about military units being formed, about the mood of the Soviet people. Only abandoned agents could give such information. That's why several units of the Abwehr aimed at Gorky at once, whose schools trained intelligence officers and saboteurs, who were also recruited from among the broken prisoners of war.
I must say that the enemy approached this matter with truly German thoroughness and pedantry. A special aviation squadron "Gartenfeld" was used to send agents across the front line. Spies were dropped in by parachute and supplied with topographic maps showing movement routes from the landing area. Some agents made their way to our rear, seeping through the battle formations of Soviet troops on the front line.
As a rule, agents were thrown in by several people, including a radio operator with a shortwave transceiver radio station, ciphers and a decryption pad. The walkie-talkies were most often placed in small suitcases so that it was easy to move around with it, changing the place of broadcasting as necessary. It was very difficult to locate such walkie-talkies, especially if the communication sessions were very short and were conducted from a forest or from a residential area in a large city. The Abwehr's advanced radio communication points, located near the front, steadily received intelligence messages at fixed hours.
Here is what is said about the training of radio operators in the book of the Soviet researcher F. Sergeev "Secret operations of Nazi intelligence":
“For the transfer of an agent-radio operator across the front line, his manner, the individual characteristics of the work on the key were recorded on film. "Radio handwriting" could then be recognized in the same way as the corresponding experts determined the handwriting from the manuscript or discovered the typewriter on which the document under study was written. Such control was provided so that the intelligence center during the radio communication session with the agent was absolutely sure that he was transmitting, and not a figurehead.
Particular attention should be paid to the forged documents with which the Germans supplied their agents. Each reconnaissance school had a highly classified structural subdivision, which was engaged in the production of various kinds of papers in full accordance with the legend under which the future scout was to come out behind the front line. We are talking about soldiers' books, officer certificates, travel orders, clothing and food certificates, certificates from hospitals, etc.
Usually these "documents" were executed flawlessly, sometimes even better than the originals! Such papers were capable of misleading even experienced people. Therefore, employees of the military commandant's offices and state security agencies needed a special professional skill and even a special flair to detect falsity in the documents being checked.
And yet our people came out victorious in this mortal battle with German intelligence. I will focus only on the most interesting moments.
April 1942. On the territory of the Krasnobakovsky district, immediately after landing from an airplane, certain A.E. Lukashev and Ya.A. Zhuikov were detained. Already after his arrest, Lukashev told counterintelligence officers about how he had been captured in the first months of the war, about how he, a native of the Gorky region, gave the Germans detailed testimony about all the military plants and locations of military units known to him in Gorky, how he was recruited by the German intelligence service. Together with another prisoner of war, Zhuikov, he studied at a reconnaissance school near the city of Smolensk, where they were trained to carry out sabotage and terrorist acts.
The Germans gave them the task to settle in the area of the Gorky-Kirov railway and begin sabotage to destroy the railway. The saboteurs were supplied with false documents, weapons, explosives and a large sum of money. Luckily, they weren't able to complete the task.
On the night of August 24-25, 1943, six spies landed from a German plane in the Sergach area at once: four of them turned themselves in to the NKVD with a confession, one fell into the hands of counterintelligence officers with a broken leg, another managed to escape. The dropped agents turned out to be B.M. Papushenko (nickname “Grigoriev”), S.M. Chechetin (nickname “Zapalov”), I.I. .L. Ershov (nickname "Maximov"). These people were graduates of the Warsaw Intelligence School. They were given the task of engaging in intelligence activities, mainly at defense enterprises, as well as collecting any information about military transportation on the railroad.
Ershov and his partners Akinshin and Zabolotny (this is the one who managed to escape) had to go to the Urals to settle in Sverdlovsk. They were instructed to find out how many and which tanks were produced by local factories. They also had to collect data on the Sverdlovsk Institute of Optical and Sound Devices, on enterprises that were evacuated to the Urals from Moscow and Leningrad. In addition, it was necessary to regularly report to the intelligence center information about military units, the location of airfields, the operation of transport, and the moral and political mood of the population.
Popov and Chechetin were given the task of collecting information about the enterprises of Sarapul. But Papushenko was entrusted with the duty to settle in Gorky in order to find out as much as possible about tank production at the Molotov Automobile Plant and Krasnoye Sormovo - the brand and number of tanks, whether there are foreign specialists from the allied countries at the enterprises, how many workers are involved in both enterprises.
All captured spies were tried by a military tribunal.
July 13, 1943 in the Bogorodsk region was detained reconnaissance paratrooper Alexander Kryzhanovsky. He graduated from the Warsaw Abwehr school, and on July 12 flew to the Gorky region from the Smolensk airfield with documents in the name of Tkachenko. As it turned out, this was already the second raid of the spy in our rear. The first time this happened in the Krasnodar region in 1941 - then Kryzhanovsky turned himself in to the NKGB authorities, and the Soviet counterintelligence tried to use him to misinform the Germans.
On the instructions of the Chekists of the Krasnodar Territory, Kryzhanovsky was sent back to the enemy, but he did not carry out any useful work for our side. And even something distinguished himself from the Germans. And in 1943 he was sent to study at the Warsaw intelligence school, from which he graduated with honors. And in the fall, this double agent was again thrown across the front line, only this time into the Gorky region. The spy was caught immediately after landing. According to the verdict of the tribunal, he was shot.
On the night of October 9-10, 1943, another parachuted spy group consisting of three people was detained in the area of \u200b\u200bthe city of Semyonov. Their task was standard - to collect data on transportation on the Gorky-Moscow road, on the output of defense enterprises, on defensive fortifications on the territory of our region.
One of the three enemy scouts was supposed to sneak into Kirov and settle there. But the Chekists thwarted all these plans.
And on November 6 of the same 1943, a very dangerous enemy agent V.V. Sidorenko (nickname “Deribasov”) fell into the hands of the Soviet counterintelligence.
From the verdict of the military tribunal of the Moscow Military District:
“The defendant Sidorenko, while at the front on July 3, 1941, was captured by the Germans and sent to the Berlin POW camp. While in a prisoner of war camp, on May 6, 1942, Sidorenko voluntarily transferred to the service of German intelligence, betraying his homeland.
Being recruited to carry out espionage work in the rear of the Red Army, Sidorenko was sent to the Berlin, and then to the Warsaw and Koenigsberg schools of German intelligence officers, where he received special training as a reconnaissance radio operator for industrial facilities.
In the early days of October 1943, Sidorenko completed his studies and received from the Germans a whole list of espionage assignments on the territory of Gorky, namely: what products does plant No. V.A.), whether the production of aircraft of American design has been established at this enterprise. A special task concerned the operation of the plant, located in the buildings of the Gorky mills (technical devices for the submarine fleet were manufactured here - V.A.). Another spy Sidorenko, having infiltrated the Soviet defense industry, had to establish which plants in the Soviet Union, except Gorky, produced T-34 tanks.
To complete the task received, Sidorenko was provided with a radio station, fictitious documents and money in the amount of 45,000 rubles. He was transferred to our rear on the night of October 19-20, 1943 (the plane took off from the Pskov airfield). A spy landed on the territory of the Gorohovets district of the Ivanovo region.
As you can see, the Germans prepared this spy for a long time and carefully. They didn’t even give him a partner - apparently to avoid failure in case of betrayal of the second person. The transfer went unnoticed, and the spy managed to safely get into our city. He failed thanks to the Soviet intelligence officers introduced into the Abwehr. It was these people who transmitted to the Center information about a valuable German agent sent to perform a special task in Gorky, and at the same time reported about his signs.
The entire apparatus of the regional NKVD was immediately involved in the capture. And after two weeks of careful searching, the spy was identified and detained.
The sentence to the enemy agent was severe, according to all the laws of wartime...
In general, the years 1942-1943 turned out to be the most intense in terms of the activation of German intelligence. The Germans struggled to collect as much information as possible about the Soviet rear during the battles in Stalingrad and near Kursk, which were crucial for the war. Therefore, enemy reconnaissance groups literally rolled into our region in waves - it happened that in one month several enemy landings were dropped on the Gorky region at once.
In some historical studies, information has appeared today about the large-scale operation "Volga Shaft", which was allegedly carried out by German intelligence in order to paralyze the Soviet rear during the Battle of Stalingrad and Kursk. As evidence, even the story of one of the leaders of the Zeppelin sabotage detachments, told after the war, is cited:
“The dropping of small groups of saboteurs did not give the desired effect. Therefore, the task was to organize large sabotage formations on Soviet territory. First of all, it was planned to strike at the Soviet communications connecting the Urals with the front, and at the defense industry. This was supposed to be done by organizing the simultaneous undermining of several bridges across the Volga, and communications were supposed to fail for a long time. The results of the sabotage would immediately affect the position of the Soviet front. In addition, such sabotage could convince the population that there were forces inside the state hostile to the Soviet system.
We expected that in order to eliminate large-scale sabotage groups, the help of the active units of the Red Army would be required - local authorities are not able to organize proper resistance to sabotage formations. Large, well-armed groups will be able to win over to their side the German prisoners of war they have liberated from the camps. Growing sabotage groups will stop gun trains and arm those who join them.”
Impressive, isn't it? Saboteurs tearing up bridges across the Volga, a powerful insurrectionary anti-Soviet movement operating together with captured Germans, Red Army forces diverted from the front ...
Do you know what it reminds you of? Violent fantasies divorced from the actual state of affairs. It must be said that such fantasies were regularly born in the minds of some leaders of the Nazi secret services, especially after the military defeats on the Eastern Front. The chief of German intelligence SD Walter Schellenberg, for example, wrote about many such projects in his memoirs. He listed several scenarios of assassination attempts on Stalin alone - and one scenario looked more stupid and adventurous than the other!
It seems that the "Volzhsky Val" was from the same opera of purely theoretical dreams. Yes, the Germans actually developed the Volga Wall plan. Its details are given by historians Dmitry Zhukov and Ivan Kovtun in the book “Russian SS Men”:
“The team prepared 4 special groups of over 100 people each for being thrown into the deep Soviet rear to conduct sabotage activities. Their release was planned to be carried out in the areas of the Volga and Kama rivers for the simultaneous undermining of bridges and interruption of railway communication between the European part of the USSR and the Urals.
The 1st group was headed by Georgy Kravets, a former pilot of the USSR Civil Air Fleet. In 1933, he flew by plane to Latvia and from the beginning of the war was used by German intelligence. His group was preparing to be thrown with the task of committing major acts of sabotage at industrial facilities in the city of Molotov.
The 2nd group (over 100 people) was headed by a certain “Kin”, from the Cossacks, who voluntarily went over to the side of the Germans and established himself in punitive actions against partisans and the underground. The group was intended to be dropped into the Volga and Kama regions.
The 3rd group (more than 100 people) was headed by NTS member Rutchenko (Rudchenko) Nikolai Nikolaevich. Before the war, Rutchenko taught history at one of the Leningrad universities, during the war near Leningrad he voluntarily went over to the side of the Germans and led the anti-partisan detachment.
The 4th group (more than 200 people) was headed by the former captain of the Red Army Martynovsky. After his capture, he actively cooperated with German intelligence agencies and participated in anti-partisan operations. His group was preparing to land in the Astrakhan region. Subsequently, part of the personnel of the group entered the structure of the reconnaissance and sabotage body "Waffen SS Jagdverband".
The leadership of all the listed groups after their landing was to be carried out by the former colonel of the Red Army Leman.
However, all this remained on paper. Because the Germans, before starting the operation, obviously took some practical steps to probe the situation - for example, during 1942-1943, the Zeppelin saboteurs sent to decompose the Soviet rear, the Chekists regularly recorded and successfully caught all over the Volga region . The enemy quickly became convinced of the hopelessness of the proposed operation, because they could not find any social basis for a broad insurrectionary movement against Soviet power in our rear. And the operation was curtailed, and did not have time to really begin.
By the way, plans to storm and blow up the Volga bridges by paratroopers looked like a waste of time and money! Such a suicidal action deep behind the front line was only possible for Japanese kamikazes, which were clearly not observed among German saboteurs. In addition, it would be much easier for the Germans to bomb the bridges from the air - until the end of 1943, all these objects were in the access zone of German bomber flights ...
Nevertheless, the myth about the implementation of the Volga Wall has survived to this day. And so, in some "works" there were stories that allegedly in the late autumn of 1942, near the bridge across the Volga near the city of Bor, there was a "heavy battle" for several days between the forces of the NKVD troops and German saboteurs. And allegedly this operation of the state security organs is still classified as classified.
Personally, I have not come across any data or even mention of this story in the archival materials of the Nizhny Novgorod region. Most likely there was no battle near the bridge at all.
It seems that the story of the “battle on the bridge” itself grew out of the legends of the wartime, especially its very beginning, when there were many different rumors about the intrigues of German saboteurs. Apparently the legend has come down to our time, and one of the historians liked it. And the legend very organically lay down already in the myth of the "Volzhsky Val". Since then, the bike has gone for a walk through various historical "works" ...
Judging by the real tasks of the detained German spies, the Germans set them mainly purely intelligence goals. Sabotage and wrecking were assumed, but only in the event of a successful introduction of an agent into a particular production or into any Soviet institution. Therefore, the mishandled agents, if they were not caught immediately, tried not to make too much noise and behaved extremely quietly.
During the war, Soviet state security agencies in the Gorky region identified and arrested 120 German intelligence agents, including 26 paratroopers. Of course, it cannot be ruled out that these were not all spies sent by the enemy. And some of them, perhaps, managed to avoid exposure and even, on the instructions of the Abwehr, managed to infiltrate where necessary. However, not a single case of sabotage was recorded on the territory of the region - neither at production facilities, nor at strategic facilities, nor on communication routes. This suggests that the sabotage component of the German intelligence plans completely failed.
Failed "fifth column"
By the way, despite the lack of a social base for a mass anti-Soviet movement in our rear, the Germans still made attempts to create it. Moreover, long before the start of the operation "Volga shaft" ...
This happened in the Perevozsky district of the Gorky region on the night of November 4-5, 1941. Enemy planes flying over the regional center dropped a lot of leaflets. It said that the goal of Germany is not a war with civilians, but a fight against Jews and communists. The local district committee of the party organized an urgent collection of these leaflets. However, it was not possible to collect all the leaflets, some of them dispersed without a trace among the local residents. The propaganda flights of the Germans then happened more than once.
These air sorties were an important component of the psychological warfare against the Soviet rear, which was actively carried out by the German special services. The purpose of such a war was to demoralize the population and undermine the morale of military units heading to the front.
Simultaneously with the planes, agitators penetrated our rear lines, sowing all sorts of panicky rumors and conjectures. They came to us either under the guise of refugees, or under the guise of Red Army soldiers, allegedly exempted from military service. One such figure was caught by the NKVD in 1942 on Bor.
From the archival certificate of the FSB in the Nizhny Novgorod region:
“A native of the Gorky region A.G. On October 15, 1941, Evstafiev, while in the ranks of the Red Army, went over to the side of the Germans with weapons in his hands, gave them information about the location and armament of his unit, spoke about the products manufactured by factories in the Gorky region.
Evstafyev was actively used by the Germans to identify anti-fascist POWs of the Red Army soldiers. He handed over to the Germans about 30 of our fighters who decided to escape from enemy captivity. During the retreat of the German troops, Evstafiev was released by the Germans from the camp, having received a fake certificate of unfitness for military service, which gave him the opportunity to return to the Gorky region. Living in the Bor district, Evstafiev carried out pro-fascist agitation among the population about the supposedly humane attitude of the Germans towards the population and prisoners of war.
The career of an unsuccessful agitator and spy ended in February 1942 - the traitor to the Motherland was arrested by the Chekists.
Other German agitators, as evidenced by archival documents, were more successful. Here is what the historian P.A. Rozanov in the documentary book "Not subject to oblivion":
“Individuals urged not to resist the Germans, they are not afraid of their arrival, since they allegedly do not fight with the civilian population, and Hitler will allegedly present Stalin with a demand for peace on the condition that the collective farms be dissolved and the Bolshevik Party liquidated ...
In the Lyakhovsky district, leaflets were found with the call “End the war, go home, commissars!”, leaflets with the slogans “Down with the collective farms, down with the communists!” were scattered near the building of the Vorotynsky district party committee, some people spread threats and called for crackdown on communists and Jews.
The defeat of the Red Army and the spread of panic rumors caused fear among a part of the population, a desire to hide their party affiliation from a number of communists. So, R., a member of the CPSU (b), who worked at the Balakhna paper mill, refused to carry out party orders, declaring, "if I do public work, I will be shot by the Germans." Schoolchildren of grades 5-7 of one of the schools in the Voznesensky district refused to join the pioneers, citing the fact that the Nazis would come and hang them.
The result of this kind of agitation was popular moods that sometimes took simply amazing forms. So, in 1943, in the Gaginsky district, there were recorded rumors that the de Soviet Union had declared war on ... the Anglo-American allies, together with Turkey?! And also, allegedly, Gagino ... will soon be occupied by the Germans.
Laughter with laughter, but such conversations among the people clearly played into the hands of the enemy!
Therefore, it is far from accidental that at the very beginning of the war the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on criminal liability for the dissemination of false rumors in wartime that aroused alarm among the population was issued. According to this Decree, the perpetrators were punished for a term of 2 to 5 years in prison, unless these actions, by their nature, entailed a more severe punishment under the law. Only from July to October 1941, under this Law, more than 40 people were convicted by the military tribunal of the NKVD troops in the Gorky region.
There were especially many spreaders of enemy rumors among the sectarians of the so-called "True Orthodox Church". This sect broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church back in the 20s - the sectarians did not like the recognition of Soviet power by the Russian Orthodox Church. The sect went deep underground and began to wait for an hour convenient for itself. This hour just struck with the onset of the war.
The sectarians, as the Nizhny Novgorod historian Vladimir Somov notes in his book “Because there was a war”, widely launched the most real anti-state propaganda. For example, the following statements were circulated: “Hitler walks with God and brings us happiness, and therefore there is no need to fight him, but wish to come soon”, “As soon as Soviet power is destroyed, it will be easier to live, the churches will be restored.”
In the village of Voskresenskoye, a former church elder, citizen Khlebnikova, was arrested, who organized mass prayers at night for the "Christ-loving German army." The sectarians not only prayed for Hitler, but also urged people not to pay taxes, not to send their children to schools, and to evade conscription into the Red Army.
“Arrested in September 1942 in the Semyonovsky district of the Gorky region, Khlyunev, selling crosses made by him from silver and copper coins of Soviet minting, among collective farmers and military personnel drafted into the active Red Army, carried out defeatist agitation in favor of Nazi Germany and called on the population to commit terrorist acts on party-Soviet activists.
Khlyunev declared: “Hitler will come soon, and those who will be without crosses will be shot, and who will be with a cross, Hitler will give him a good life” ...
There are cases when hostile elements in military garrisons distributed crosses, while agitating the Red Army soldiers to voluntarily surrender to German troops.
It is clear that in wartime this kind of agitation in favor of the enemy would not be tolerated by any normal and self-respecting state ...
Now it is difficult to establish whether the "true Orthodox" acted directly in contact with Hitler's intelligence or worked for the good of the Third Reich, so to speak, on their own initiative. But what is curious is that the current adherents of the "True Orthodox Church" on the pages of their Internet resources proudly write that during the war in the German-occupied regions of Russia, sectarians - for the sake of "fighting the Bolsheviks" - quite willingly went to serve in the police, in elders, burgomasters. They were distinguished by special zeal in front of the invaders, actively participating in punitive and other actions aimed at the foreign enslavement of our country.
That is why it seems to me that if the German troops had reached our region, we would certainly have seen home-grown sectarians not at all on church porches, but among those who would hang, burn and rob without mercy in the name of “Christ-loving Hitler” - how the comrades-in-arms really operated " truly Orthodox" in occupied Smolensk or in Bryansk...
The state security agencies, severely pursuing sectarian agitators, destroyed not only the ground for the spread of panic and anti-Soviet rumors, but also the basis for the emergence of a potential "fifth column". And hardly anyone can argue with this today ...
However, the enemy rushed about the idea of creating a "fifth column" until the very end of the war, when the "rebel idea" turned out to be associated with the so-called "Russian Liberation Army" of General Vlasov ...
This project has matured among the Germans for a long time. Back in 1942, Russian units began to appear at the front and in the occupied territory, dressed in German uniforms with a sleeve patch made in the form of a shield with the St. Andrew's blue cross. It was loudly stated that these were detachments of the new "Russian Liberation Army" under the command of the former Soviet Lieutenant General Andrei Andreevich Vlasov, who had defected to the Germans, allegedly to fight the Stalinist regime.
However, in reality, no ROA as an independent combat unit existed. Wearing the uniform of the ROA, the Vlasovites actually served in completely different German units and structures - some worked in the Abwehr, some in the auxiliary police, some simply conducted anti-Soviet agitation, and someone "fought" with Stalin "in the punitive detachments of the SS or the Wehrmacht. Thus, the ROA was, albeit an insidious, but very banal propaganda project designed to fool the heads of the peaceful Russian population living under the heel of the invaders, and even confuse the Soviet soldiers fighting on the front lines ...
The situation changed in the autumn of 1944.
Then, in the face of the threat of a complete military defeat, the leaders of the Third Reich began to seize on a variety of ideas and projects designed to ensure the salvation of the Nazi regime. One of these projects was the full-fledged creation of the ROA. The traitor General Vlasov, in negotiations with the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, and the Minister of Propaganda, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, managed to convince the Germans that the ROA was capable of turning the war back. Like, as soon as the Vlasov army appears, hundreds of thousands of defectors from the Red Army who “hate Stalin” will immediately rush into it, and a powerful anti-Soviet uprising will immediately flare up in Russia itself.
And so, on November 14, 1944, a special Manifesto was adopted in occupied Prague, proclaiming the creation of the "Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia." This Committee began to form divisions of the ROA under the auspices of the command of the armed forces of Germany. Together with the combat units, the Vlasovites began to prepare reconnaissance and sabotage detachments for guerrilla warfare in our rear ...
On the night of January 12, 1945, Soviet air defense posts over the northern regions of the Gorky region recorded an unidentified aircraft flying over. On the morning of the same day, in the vicinity of the village of Shurgovash, Voskresensky district, a cargo parachute with two boxes was found on the edge of the forest. On alert, operational groups of state security officers and police were urgently sent to the area, who cordoned off the surrounding area and began combing the forest. Soon a place with hidden parachutes was found. And the next day, in the village of Pogatikha, the thrown out saboteurs were also detained.
From the indictment in the case of traitors to the Motherland:
“The NKGB Directorate for the Gorky Region on the territory of the Voskresensky District detained and arrested on January 13 paratrooper agents of German intelligence: Litivinenko (“Oksamytny”) Mikhail Mikhailovich, Valko (“Voitov”) Stepan Andreevich and Pyurko (“Pyurkov”) Dmitry Frolovich.
The investigation carried out on the case established that Litvinenko, Valko and Pyurko, being Red Army soldiers of various units and participating in battles with the German invaders, at different times in 1942-1943. were taken prisoner by the Germans.
Being: Litvinenko in Riga, Valko in Pskov and Pyurko in the Reval prisoner of war camps and being hostile to the political system existing in the USSR, at the beginning of 1944 they expressed to the German command a desire to fight with arms against the Soviet government and the Red Army and for this purpose entered in the so-called ROA. Being members of the ROA Litvinenko, Valko and Pyurko in November 1944 were recruited by German intelligence for espionage and sabotage activities in favor of Germany and sent for special training to the Kalberg school of intelligence saboteurs.
After completing a special course on reconnaissance and sabotage activities, on the instructions of German intelligence, they were airlifted to the rear of the Red Army and parachuted into the territory of the Voskresensky district.
Let's pay attention to the equipment of the captured saboteurs. In addition to the standard espionage cargo - money, forms with blank documents, false seals, weapons, etc. - these people had a lot of propaganda literature with them: 500 pieces of all kinds of anti-Soviet leaflets, 12,000 appeals calling on the people to rise up "to fight Bolshevism", 500 copies of the Prague Manifesto of KONR. And about three thousand more pamphlets called "Lenin's testaments" - books of Trotskyist content, such as "forward for the cause of Lenin against Stalin."
Apparently, these people, in fact, were supposed to “raise the people” with such an ideological surrogate from the works of Trotsky and Vlasov’s appeals!
Did the saboteurs themselves and those who sent them believe in the viability of these propaganda materials and in the fact that such proclamations could inspire people to revolt? As for the saboteurs, they were definitely not going to engage in any kind of agitation. During interrogations, they showed that they intended to surrender to the Soviet authorities, but did not immediately turn themselves in confession only because they ended up in a remote, almost taiga corner of the Gorky region, from where they had to get out with great difficulty.
However, in the depths of their souls, their compilers themselves hardly believed in the seriousness and relevance of the Vlasov agitation. The war was already hopelessly lost. But, as they say, hope dies last - the drowning leaders of the Reich, as if at a saving straw, clutched at any illusion, for any hope, just to delay their inevitable end: they hoped for Hitler's "brilliant" providence, for some kind of "miracle weapon", for " impregnable fortress" in the Alps, against "allies" like Vlasov...
Alas, these illusions burst one after another, until in May 1945 the final and logical end was put in the history of German fascism.
Vadim Andryukhin, editor-in-chief
The period of Nazi occupation of the city of Stalino - from October 20, 1941 to September 8, 1943 - is one of the most tragic pages in the history of modern Donetsk. Then the Nazis killed more than 30 thousand civilians and underground workers, about the same number of Red Army soldiers were shot and died in prisoner of war camps in the city, and the industry of the capital of Donbass was almost completely destroyed.
To understand how the occupying authorities acted in our city, information is needed to more accurately assess the damage caused by the enemy. Not so many documents of that terrible period have been preserved. Only very recently new data began to appear, which had been stored in the most secret archives of the special services for almost seven decades.
General information about German military intelligence
In this article, we publish, with some author's additions, the text of a document that for many years was in secret storage in the Central Archive, first of the USSR State Security Committee, and then of the FSB of Russia, and only in 2007 published in the book “State Security Organs of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War. Collection of documents. Volume 5".
We are talking about the orientation of the Smersh Counterintelligence Directorate of the 3rd Ukrainian Front on the activities of German military intelligence and counterintelligence in the south of the Soviet-German front. On February 25, 1944, it was signed by the deputy. head of the Smersh counterintelligence department of the 3rd Ukrainian Front, Colonel Proskuryakov and deputy. Head of the 2nd Department of the Smersh Counterintelligence Directorate of the 3rd Ukrainian Front, Major Didus.
« Intelligence and counterintelligence work, the organization of sabotage, sabotage and other subversive activities in the rear of the Red Army, as well as the processing of information obtained about the political and economic state of our rear, is carried out by the Abwehr, the German military intelligence and counterintelligence agency.
The Abwehr is divided into three main parts: Abwehr-1 - intelligence, Abwehr-2 - organization of subversive activities (sabotage, terror, uprisings) and the decomposition of enemy troops, Abwehr-3 - counterintelligence work in parts of the German army in the territory temporarily occupied by the Germans and penetration into enemy intelligence agencies.
The Abwehr at the front has its own peripheral organs. Abwehr groups (reconnaissance, sabotage, counterintelligence) are assigned to army groups, and Abwehr groups to armies and army corps. The numbers of the teams and groups of the Abwehr-1, Abwehr-2 and Abwehr-3, respectively, begin at 1, 2, 3. In the south of the Soviet-German front (excluding the Crimea and the Black Sea coast), the following operate under the army group "Zuyd" ("South") Abwehr authorities: Abwehrkommando-101, Abwehrkommando-102, Abwehrkommando-103».
Presumably in 1942, the head of military intelligence of the Wehrmacht, Admiral Canaris (in a black raincoat) paid a visit to Stalino.
The correspondent of "DN" walked through the addresses indicated in the "Smersh" report in our city, and after that it would be possible to add to the document that the Abwehrgroups were located near the camps for prisoners of war for soldiers of the Red Army. Judge for yourself…
Abvergroup-101 (intelligence)
« In 1943, the Abwehrgroup was located in the city of Stalino in the village of mine No. 9 "Capital" and occupied the premises of the polyclinic - five buildings. Two of them were used as barracks for defectors and prisoners of war (up to 100 people), who were kept at the intelligence agency and were the base for recruiting agents. Through interrogation of defectors and prisoners of war, intelligence information was collected about the Red Army and the state of our rear.
For the same purpose, agents were thrown into our rear, which were trained on reconnaissance courses created under the group. Up to 20 agents recruited from among the criminal element in prisoner-of-war camps were trained at the same time on the courses ... In addition to intelligence work, the group actively fought against the partisan movement, forming for this purpose punitive detachments from among prisoners of war and civilians hostile to Soviet power ...
The main agent of the Pushkin group is a native of Odessa, a former count, a white émigré Alexander Sergeevich Malishevsky. In March 1943, the group was reorganized in the city of Voronovitsa, Vinnitsa region.(there, 20 km from Vinnitsa, was the headquarters of Reinhard Gehlen, head of the intelligence department "Foreign Armies of the East" of the General Staff of the Wehrmacht Ground Forces. At one time, a secret supergroup was also located there, headed by the famous fascist saboteur Otto Skorzeny. - Note. author).After arriving from Voronovitsa in Stalino, the group had operational units in Taganrog, Alchevsk. The agents of the avbergroup-101 for the return transition to the side of the Germans were supplied with the password "Eins-ze-Pushkin».
Here it should be noted that the members of the well-known in Donetsk underground organization Matekin, Skoblov and Orlov were desperately brave people, because they fought against the invaders in the very area where the Abwehrgroup-101 was located. It is clear that the Nazis wanted to keep their agents a secret and very zealously fought the underground. This was probably one of the factors that influenced the fate of our courageous fighters against the Nazis, many of whom were captured and then shot or thrown into the pit of mine No. 4/4-bis on Kalinovka.
Today, at the place where the polyclinic of the village of mine No. 9 "Capital" was located, there are no longer any traces reminiscent of it. Not even every old-timer can remember her. The building appears to have been demolished in the early 1950s. Some of the residents of the village, who came to this area in 1955 and built their personal homes, only remembered that at the site of the clinic at that time there were heaps of broken bricks.
This mining village is very interesting for history buffs. Here you can easily plunge into the 50s of the last century and even into the pre-revolutionary period. On the streets of Orlova, Zavetnaya, Blucher, many more houses built in the early twentieth century have been preserved. Their roofs are still covered with tiles with yats. There are products of enterprises with the stamps "B.M." from Avdiivka, "S. Malashko" from Ocheretino and "S. Vashchinkins" from Petropavlovka.
(for example, the production of the Vashchinkin factory from Petropavlovka, Pavlograd district) is often found on the roofs of residential buildings in the village of mine 9 Capital in modern Donetsk
Abvergroup-201 (field mail No. 08959)
« Attached to the 6th German Army, subordinated to the Abwehrkommando-201. The group is engaged in the transfer of saboteurs to our rear, reconnaissance of the front line of our defense and the capture of languages. Agents-saboteurs are also instructed to carry out disintegration work among the Red Army soldiers and the local population.
In 1943, before the retreat from the Donbass, Avbergrupp-201 was stationed in Stalino on the 13th line in houses No. 105, 107, 108, 111, 112, 113, on Larinka (factory district of the city) and Petrovka (mining district of the city). Head of the Abwehrgroup - Captain of the German Army Schlegel».
Now, on the site of the buildings in which the Nazis trained saboteurs, there are high-rise buildings, but on the former 13th line (modern Tramvaynaya Street) there are still several pre-war houses similar to those that housed the Abwehrgroup-201.
Abvergroup-304 (counterintelligence activities)
« Subordinated to the Abwehrkommando-305 and attached to the 6th Army. Previously, she was in Kharkov (there is a pass in the document). From February 15 to the beginning of September 1943, the group was stationed in Stalino on 5th Aleksandrovka in houses No. 14, 25, 26, 28, 29, 32, 33, 35, 37, 39, 40. From Stalino, the group relocated to the village of Pokrovskoye , then to the village of Romeyaki (Chaplino district) of the Zaporozhye region.
The main task of the Abwehrgroup-304 is the fight against Soviet agents, partisans. To do this, the group has an agent network of recruited, detained or surrendered intelligence officers and partisans and from among anti-Soviet local residents ...
The group uses agents from among former intelligence officers and partisans as identifiers and for infiltrating our intelligence and counterintelligence agencies, partisan detachments and headquarters of the partisan movement. Thus, the agents of the group are transferred to our rear only for counterintelligence purposes, often under the guise of returning from the rear of the enemy to complete the task.
With the permission of the higher authorities, the group has the right to recruit reconnaissance radio operators, conduct radio games and radio disinformation (there is another gap in the document). In addition to all this, the Abwehrgroup also has its own agents in prisoner of war camps to identify intelligence officers, commanders and political workers of the Red Army».
Recall that very close - near the former Palace of Culture them. Lenin (now the Palace of Metallurgists) - was the infamous camp for prisoners of war of Soviet soldiers. According to official archival data of the 60s of the last century, from 11 to 13 thousand people died in it.
The Abvergroup was located in pre-revolutionary buildings.
As the correspondent of "DN" was told by the current residents of the 5th Aleksandrovka, which is located in the Leninsky district of Donetsk, in the one-story brick house No. 14 there was a common yard for five families. They lived there until the demolition of the building in the mid-70s of the last century, then they were given apartments in high-rise buildings in new microdistricts. Houses No. 26 and 28 have been rebuilt, but the main elements of the pre-revolutionary building are still visible. Other houses are already post-war in appearance.
An interesting legend is told by residents of the 5th Aleksandrovka about house No. 9 (today only the remains of one wall with a porch have been preserved there, although it is clear that it was of good quality and made of good brick). People say that allegedly either a brewer from Yuzovka lived there, or an accountant from the Yuzovka plant. Everything can be...
Afterword
Some of the readers may ask: is there a need to know exactly what the Wehrmacht intelligence did in Stalino and in what places its units were located? Everyone knows that the Soviet counterintelligence outplayed the German Abwehr in all respects. So, out of 150 reconnaissance and sabotage groups trained from October 1942 to September 1943 by Abwehrkommando-104, only two returned back, bringing little information. The rest of the agents were either caught by Smersh, or immediately after being thrown out, they themselves appeared in the NKVD.
However, as the author of the article, I believe that any information from that time is very important, because thanks to it, professional historians can find new documents that will help establish fate or tell about the tragic share of thousands of innocent victims. And it must be admitted that this will not be easy and very difficult. Indeed, in the same once-secret document there is a mention that, in parallel with the organs of the Abwehr, intelligence and subversive activities were also carried out by the SD security service under the imperial head of the SS Himmler.
It was her Sonderkommando No. 6 that carried out mass executions of the inhabitants of the city of Stalino.
There is very little reliable information about this, not only in our archives, but also in foreign ones. But this is another story that is still waiting for its researchers ...