Which member of the Soviet General Staff was a spy for the Nazi Abwehr. Secret war. Sabotage in the rear of the Red Army German spies in the USSR during the war

Indeed, it is hard to believe that the USSR managed to create an agent network in Germany and the countries occupied by it (the most famous is the Red Chapel), but the Germans did not. And if German intelligence officers during the Second World War are not written in Soviet-Russian histories, then the point is not only that it is not customary for the winner to confess his own miscalculations.

In the case of German spies in the USSR, the situation is complicated by the fact that the head of the Foreign Armies - East department (in the German abbreviation FHO, it was he who was in charge of intelligence) Reinhard Galen prudently took care of preserving the most important documentation in order to surrender to the Americans at the very end of the war and offer them a "goods face".

His department dealt almost exclusively with the USSR, and in the conditions of the beginning of the Cold War, Gehlen's papers were of great value to the United States.

Later, the general headed the intelligence of the FRG, and his archive remained in the United States (some copies were left to Gehlen). Having already retired, the general published his memoirs “Service. 1942-1971", which were published in Germany and the USA in 1971-72. Almost simultaneously with Gehlen's book, his biography was published in America, as well as the book of British intelligence officer Edward Spiro "Ghelen - Spy of the Century" (Spiro wrote under the pseudonym Edward Cookridge, he was a Greek by nationality, a representative of British intelligence in the Czech resistance during the war). Another book was written by the American journalist Charles Whiting, who was suspected of working for the CIA, and was called Gehlen - German Master Spy. All of these books are based on the Gehlen archives, used with the permission of the CIA and the German intelligence BND. They contain some information about German spies in the Soviet rear.

General Ernst Kestring, a Russian German born near Tula, was engaged in "field work" in Gehlen's German intelligence. It was he who served as the prototype of the German major in Bulgakov's book Days of the Turbins, who saved Hetman Skoropadsky from reprisals by the Red Army (in fact, the Petliurites). Kestring was fluent in the Russian language and Russia, and it was he who personally selected agents and saboteurs from Soviet prisoners of war. It was he who found one of the most valuable, as it turned out later, German spies.

On October 13, 1941, 38-year-old Captain Minishkiy was taken prisoner. It turned out that before the war he worked in the secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and earlier in the Moscow City Party Committee. From the moment the war began, he served as a political instructor at the Western Front. He was captured along with the driver when he was driving around the advanced units during the battle of Vyazemsky.

Minishky immediately agreed to cooperate with the Germans, citing some old grievances against the Soviet regime. Seeing what a valuable shot they got, they promised, when the time came, to take him and his family to the west with the provision of German citizenship. But first, business.

Minishki spent 8 months studying in a special camp. And then the famous operation "Flamingo" began, which Gehlen carried out in cooperation with the intelligence officer Bown, who already had a network of agents in Moscow, among which the radio operator with the pseudonym Alexander was the most valuable. Baun's men ferried Minishkiy across the front line, and he reported to the very first Soviet headquarters the story of his capture and daring escape, every detail of which was invented by Gelen's experts. He was taken to Moscow, where he was hailed as a hero. Almost immediately, mindful of his previous responsible work, he was appointed to work in the military-political secretariat of the GKO.

Through a chain through several German agents in Moscow, Minishki began to supply information. The first sensational message came from him on July 14, 1942. Gehlen and Gerre sat all night, drawing up a report based on it to the Chief of the General Staff, Halder. The report was made: “The military conference ended in Moscow on the evening of July 13th. Shaposhnikov, Voroshilov, Molotov and the heads of the British, American and Chinese military missions were present. Shaposhnikov declared that their retreat would be as far as the Volga, in order to force the Germans to spend the winter in the area. During the retreat, comprehensive destruction should be carried out in the territory being abandoned; all industry must be evacuated to the Urals and Siberia.

The British representative asked for Soviet assistance in Egypt, but was told that the Soviet manpower resources were not as great as the Allies believed. In addition, they lack aircraft, tanks and guns, in particular because part of the supply of weapons destined for Russia, which the British were supposed to deliver through the port of Basra to Persian Gulf, was diverted to defend Egypt. It was decided to conduct offensive operations in two sectors of the front: north of Orel and north of Voronezh, using large tank forces and air cover. A distraction attack must be carried out at Kalinin. It is necessary that Stalingrad, Novorossiysk and the Caucasus be kept.”

It all happened. Halder later noted in his diary: “The FCO has provided accurate information on the enemy forces newly deployed since June 28, and on the estimated strength of these formations. He also gave a correct assessment of the energetic actions of the enemy in the defense of Stalingrad.

The above authors made a number of inaccuracies, which is understandable: they received information through several hands and 30 years after the events described. For example, the English historian David Kahn gave a more correct version of the report: on July 14, the meeting was attended not by the heads of the American, British and Chinese missions, but by the military attaches of these countries.

There is no consensus on real surname Minishkia. According to another version, his surname was Mishinsky. But perhaps it is not true either. For the Germans, it passed under the code numbers 438.

Coolridge and other authors report sparingly on the further fate of agent 438. The participants in Operation Flamingo definitely worked in Moscow until October 1942. In the same month, Gehlen recalled Minishkiy, arranging, with the help of Bown, a meeting with one of the leading reconnaissance detachments of the Wally, who ferried him across the front line.

In the future, Minishkia worked for Gehlen in the information analysis department, worked with German agents, who were then transferred across the front line.

Minishkia and Operation Flamingo are also named by other respected authors, such as the British military historian John Eriksson in his book The Road to Stalingrad, by the French historian Gabor Rittersporn. According to Rittersporn, Minishkiy actually received German citizenship, after the end of the Second World War he taught at an American intelligence school in southern Germany, then moved to the United States, having received American citizenship. The German Stirlitz died in the 1980s at his home in Virginia.

Minishkia was not the only super spy. The same British military historians mention that the Germans had many intercepted telegrams from Kuibyshev, where the Soviet authorities were based at that time. A German spy group worked in this city. There were several "moles" surrounded by Rokossovsky, and several military historians mentioned that the Germans considered him as one of the main negotiators for a possible separate peace at the end of 1942, and then in 1944 - if the assassination attempt on Hitler would be successful. For reasons unknown today, Rokossovsky was seen as a possible ruler of the USSR after the overthrow of Stalin in a coup of the generals.

The British knew well about these German spies (it is clear that they know now). This is also recognized by Soviet military historians. For example, the former military intelligence colonel Yuri Modin, in his book The Fates of the Intelligence Officers: My Cambridge Friends, claims that the British were afraid to supply the USSR with information obtained through the decoding of German reports, precisely because of the fear that there were agents in the Soviet headquarters.

But they personally mention another German superintelligence officer - Fritz Kauders, who created the famous Max intelligence network in the USSR. His biography is given by the aforementioned Englishman David Kahn.

Fritz Kauders was born in Vienna in 1903. His mother was Jewish and his father was German. In 1927 he moved to Zurich, where he began working as a sports journalist. Then he lived in Paris and Berlin, after Hitler came to power he left as a reporter in Budapest. There he found himself a profitable occupation - an intermediary in the sale of Hungarian entry visas to Jews fleeing Germany. He made acquaintances with high-ranking Hungarian officials, and at the same time met the head of the Abwehr station in Hungary, and began working for German intelligence.

He makes acquaintance with the Russian emigrant general A.V. Turkul, who had his own intelligence network in the USSR - later it served as the basis for the formation of a more extensive German spy network. Agents are thrown into the Union for a year and a half, starting in the autumn of 1939. The annexation of Romanian Bessarabia to the USSR helped a lot here, when at the same time they “attached” dozens of German spies, abandoned there in advance.

With the outbreak of war with the USSR, Kauders moved to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, where he headed the Abwehr radio post, which received radiograms from agents in the USSR. But who these agents were has not been clarified so far. There are only fragments of information that there were at least 20-30 of them in various parts of the USSR. The Soviet super-saboteur Sudoplatov also mentions the Max intelligence network in his memoirs.

As mentioned above, not only the names of German spies, but also the minimum information about their actions in the USSR is still closed. Did the Americans and the British pass information about them to the USSR after the victory over fascism? Hardly - they needed the surviving agents themselves. The maximum that was then declassified was secondary agents from the Russian émigré organization NTS.

(quoted from the book by B. Sokolov "Hunting for Stalin, hunting for Hitler", publishing house "Veche", 2003, pp. 121-147)

History is written by the victors, and therefore it is not customary for Soviet chroniclers to mention German spies who worked behind the lines in the Red Army. And there were such scouts, and even in the General Staff of the Red Army, as well as the famous Max network. After the end of the war, the Americans transferred them to their place, to share their experience with the CIA. Indeed, it is hard to believe that the USSR managed to create an agent network in Germany and the countries occupied by it (the most famous is the Red Chapel), but the Germans did not.

And if German intelligence officers during the Second World War are not written in Soviet-Russian histories, then the point is not only that it is not customary for the winner to confess his own miscalculations.

Reinhard Gehlen - first, in the center - with cadets of the intelligence school

His department dealt almost exclusively with the USSR, and in the conditions of the beginning of the Cold War, Gehlen's papers were of great value to the United States.

Gehlen's personal card

Real German agents; something like this could look like other German spies

The British representative asked for Soviet assistance in Egypt, but was told that the Soviet manpower resources were not as great as the Allies believed. In addition, they lack aircraft, tanks and guns, in part because part of the supply of weapons destined for Russia, which the British were supposed to deliver through the port of Basra in the Persian Gulf, was diverted to protect Egypt. It was decided to conduct offensive operations in two sectors of the front: north of Orel and north of Voronezh, using large tank forces and air cover. A distraction attack must be carried out at Kalinin. It is necessary that Stalingrad, Novorossiysk and the Caucasus be kept.”

Secret Intelligence School OKW Amt Ausland/Abwehr

There is no consensus about the real name of Minishkia. According to another version, his surname was Mishinsky. But perhaps it is not true either. For the Germans, it passed under the code numbers 438.

In the future, Minishkiy worked for Gehlen in the information analysis department, worked with German agents, who were then transferred across the front line.

Minishkiy wasn't the only super spy. The same British military historians mention that the Germans had many intercepted telegrams from Kuibyshev, where the Soviet authorities were based at that time. A German spy group worked in this city. There were several "moles" surrounded by Rokossovsky, and several military historians mentioned that the Germans considered him as one of the main negotiators for a possible separate peace at the end of 1942, and then in 1944 - if the assassination attempt on Hitler would be successful. For reasons unknown today, Rokossovsky was seen as a possible ruler of the USSR after the overthrow of Stalin in a coup of the generals.

It looked like a unit of German saboteurs from Brandenburg. One of his most famous operations was the capture of the Maykop oil fields in the summer of 1942 and the city itself.

General Turkul - in the center, with a mustache - with fellow White Guards in Sofia

(quoted from the book by B. Sokolov "Hunting for Stalin, hunting for Hitler", publishing house "Veche", 2003, pp. 121-147)

"Tell me who your friend is and I'll tell you who you are"

Euripides

To date, materials that would name the names of Soviet and German spies during the Second World War are mostly not available. But this does not mean that the names of spies cannot be revealed.

If not with 100% accuracy, then at least approximately it can be done.

Now we can say that the German spy(s) in the USSR had the following features

-- they held high positions, from the headquarters of the front and probably up to the highest ranks of the NPO

- they had access to the strategic plans of the Red Army

-- they had access to the materials of secret negotiations with allied countries

Already these conclusions make it possible to narrow the circle of the search, the spies were from the highest command staff. Until now, the truth is, there are two versions of who and what it was. -- agent 438 is it one spy or is it a group of spies in the Red Army

Refine spying opportunities
Clarify which of the commanders of the Red Army fought badly
to clarify the names of all the friends of those who were repressed for espionage in the years 37-38 of the military

Who were they?

No. 1. Semyon Timoshenko, People's Commissar of Defense in 1940-41, commander of the Western Front, South-Western Front in 41-42.

In 1930-37. was a close friend of I. Yakir and I. Uborevich, convicted of spying for Germany

No. 2. Kliment Voroshilov, was a member of the Politburo, GKO

Voroshilov was a close friend of Y. Gamarnik, A. Egorov, convicted of spying for Germany and was a friend of V. Blucher, convicted of working for Japanese intelligence

3. N. Khrushchev, secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian SSR, during the Second World War, a member of the council of military fronts

Khrushchev was a Trotskyite, he was close friends with I. Yakir, convicted of espionage, and then in 1956-57. rehabilitated all German-Japanese spies

Battle performance

As far as we know from the materials of the 1937-38 trials of high-ranking leaders of the Red Army, among the ways to undermine the defense capability was not only the transfer of specific military plans to the Red Army.

The traitors had, among other things, through concrete actions, to destroy the defenses of the front during the enemy’s offensive and, on the contrary, to make sure that the retaliatory offensive actions of the Red Army were a failure.

And now it’s worth looking at what defeats the Red Army had and whose command they fell on.

--First defeat ZF teams. General Pavlov

--the second defeat of ZF, teams. S. Timoshenko

--defeat ZF near Smolensk, teams. S. Timoshenko

--defeat of the South-Western Front, teams. M. Kirponos, S. Timoshenko

--retreat of the NWF to the outskirts of Leningrad, teams. M. Popov, K. Voroshilov

--The defeat of the South-Western Front near Vyazma, teams. I. Konev, M. Lukin (betrayed)

--the defeat of the South-Western Front near Kharkov, teams. S. Timoshenko

--retreat of the South-Western Front to Stalingrad, teams. With Tymoshenko

In total, the Red Army suffered the most terrible defeats under the command of Timoshenko.

And here is a list of slightly less significant defeats:

Mikhail Kirponos, contributed to the defeat of the Red Army in the battle for Kyiv
General I. Kuznetsov, commander of Pribovo, lost the Baltic States in a few days
Marshal Kulik, contributed to the loss of Kerch
Admiral Oktyabrsky, contributed to the loss of Sevastopol
Rodion Malinovsky, contributed to the loss of Rostov-on-Don, opened the way for the Wehrmacht to the Caucasus

…………………..

Pure English warning

The Soviet military command and counterintelligence felt the leakage of strategic information. And they weren't the only ones who felt it.

As the legendary Soviet intelligence officer Yuri Ivanovich Modin recalls, this idea was suggested by our then allies in the anti-Hitler coalition - the British.

The fact is that during the war, the British managed to capture the German Enigma cipher machine and decipher the secret codes used by the German military.

So, once they managed to intercept the negotiations of important Wehrmacht officials, from which it became clear that they had a reliable top-secret agent in Moscow. After that, writes Modin, the British refused to share their military and political information with our side, believing that the Germans might have this information.

The British military command was afraid to transfer the intelligence received from Enigma to the USSR, because they believed that there were German spies in the Red Army who would report this to Berlin

Yuri Ivanovich Modin, in his book The Fates of Scouts: My Cambridge Friends, claims that the British were afraid to supply Soviet Union information obtained through the decoding of German reports, precisely because of the fear that there were German agents in the Soviet headquarters:

“The Germans used a very good, light and fast Enigma cipher machine, invented immediately after the First World War ... Stuart Menzies, head of British intelligence (MI6), attracted the talented mathematician Alan Turing to study Enigma. Cooperation between England, France and Poland (in deciphering German codes) continued until the start of the war in Europe ... During the war, the Poles managed to capture several badly damaged Enigmas as trophies. But the Germans continued to improve their system.

In the summer of 1940, Turing and his colleagues at Bletchley Park (the government cipher school where Soviet agent John Cairncross worked ..), using one of the earliest computers (Colossus), eventually cracked the Enigma code. The importance of this success cannot be overestimated, because it gave the Allies access to all the transmissions that went on the radio between the German government and the high command of the Nazi army. All units of the German troops were equipped with Enigma.

During Battle of Stalingrad Soviet troops captured at least twenty-six Enigmas, but they were all damaged, for German operators were given strict orders to destroy them in case of danger. After German prisoners of war gave out the cipher used on these machines, Soviet experts were able to decipher several passages from German telegrams, but they never found the master key to the Enigma system, which Bletchley Park's experts had already received by that time. Between themselves, British experts called the interception of coded texts "ultraintelligence."

The British Secret Service, which also knew the codes of the German Navy and Air Force, allowed only a few absolutely trusted operators to operate Ultra. The decrypted telegrams were sent to strictly limited addresses: intelligence chiefs, the prime minister and some members of the government ...

To hide the fact that the Enigma code had been deciphered, the British used to say that this kind of work was done for them by German agents in Germany or in Nazi-occupied countries. They made inscriptions on documents: “received from X from Austria” or “from Y from Ukraine”

Only a limited number of Bletchley Park employees were aware of the actual origin of these materials. In addition to Turing and his assistants, Churchill, one or two intelligence chiefs, and - thanks to our British agents - the Soviet Union were also privy to the secret.

The British refused to share their information with us, not only for political reasons. They were sure that

"German spies infiltrated the highest echelons of the Red Army."

This confidence had some basis. The NKVD had its own suspicions about this. During the war, two or three employees of the Soviet General Staff arrested and shot as German agents; others may have gotten away with it."

1943-1944

After the defeat of the 6th Army of Friedrich Paulus near Stalingrad and the failure of Operation Citadel, Agent 438 continued to send his reports.

In the book of John Erickson "The Road to Berlin", published in 1983, there is a report by an unknown agent presented by Gehlen to the General Staff on May 3, 1944 that

“At the end of March, at the Soviet headquarters, under the chairmanship of Stalin, two options for the Soviet summer offensive were discussed.

The first provided for the main attack in the area of Lvov, Kovel with a simultaneous attack on Warsaw and a Polish uprising in the German rear.

According to the second option, which was adopted, the main blow was delivered in the direction of the Baltic, and in the course of it it was planned to capture Warsaw and the armed action of the Poles was calculated.

The auxiliary strike was planned to the south, in the direction of Lvov.

Agent 438 reported to the German command about the details and the approximate date of Operation Bagration, the preparation and conduct of which was no longer a secret for the Germans.

It is easy to see that this is exactly how the Soviet troops acted in the summer of 1944, when the main offensive - the famous operation "Bagration" - led to the defeat of the enemy army group in Belarus and Lithuania and led the Red Army to the Vistula near Warsaw and to the Baltic coast, to the approaches to East Prussia.

An auxiliary attack on Lvov made it possible to occupy part of Eastern Galicia and seize the Sandomierz bridgehead beyond the Vistula.

Hitler could have tried to prevent the defeat of his forces in Belarus if, back in May, believing the intelligence report, he had withdrawn the troops of Army Group Center from the so-called “Belarusian balcony” that protruded far to the East.

However, they would have to retreat very far - at least to the Bug, and even to the Vistula.

Hitler did not accept this decision, realizing what it was fraught with.

And it is fraught with the fact that in this case the Red Army by June would be on the outskirts of the borders of Germany. But then Hitler was no longer fighting for victory, but only for gaining time, hoping either for a split in the coalition opposing him, or for the invention of some kind of “wonder weapon” that could radically change the course of the war in his favor.

With regard to gaining time, even the loss of significant German forces in Belarus was justified, since thereby the advance of the Red Army to the borders of the Reich was delayed at least one and a half to two months.

Therefore, Hitler forbade the withdrawal of Army Group Center and, despite the risk of encirclement, decided to defend on the former lines.

Adolf Hitler, knowing from agent 438 about the Bagration plan, did not withdraw the troops, thereby dooming them to defeat.

Hitler, in fact, he sacrificed the armies of the GA "Center" in order to save precious time

There was another case when the German command, most likely, received reliable information from an agent who sat at least in the headquarters of the front, and based on it made a strategic decision.

In addition, the actions of the German generals point to its existence.

On August 8, Marshals G.K. Zhukov and K.K. Rokossovsky proposed a plan for an operation to liberate Warsaw, which could begin on August 25th.

However, Stalin, having soberly judged that it would not be possible to take it so easily, having assessed the availability of forces and means, he did not give the order to carry it out.

And almost certainly the German command also learned about this in a timely manner.

At the same time, the Germans concentrated five tank divisions against the bridgeheads beyond the Vistula.

But then all these tank divisions were sent north in the second decade of August to carry out an operation to restore land communications between Army Groups Center and North, disrupted by the Soviet breakthrough to the Baltic Sea near Tukums.

The operation began on August 16, and by the end of the month the Germans managed to hold back Soviet troops from the Baltic coast and restore land communications with Army Group North.

This was very beneficial for the Germans, because if at that time the Red Army had launched an offensive on the Vistula, the German counterattack in the north would have lost all meaning.

In this case, the Wehrmacht would have practically no chance to keep Warsaw. We would have to retreat at least to the Oder.

In August 1944, Hitler ordered 5 tank divisions to advance against the Rokossovsky front, thereby exposing the Warsaw direction

But from agent 438, Hitler knew for sure that the Red Army would not attack Warsaw these days, and he transferred tanks to the north without risk

The Germans had no chance to hold their positions from the Baltic to the mouth of the Oder; for such a vast front, they simply would not have had enough troops. And the Oder line, which by the autumn of 1944 had not yet been prepared for defense, would also have been very difficult for German troops to hold, and the Red Army could already really threaten Berlin.

On such a risky maneuver as the transfer of tank divisions from near Warsaw to the north, the German command could only decide if it was firmly convinced that the Soviet troops on the Vistula would not budge in the coming weeks.

For such confidence, one statement by TASS was, of course, not enough.

So a reliable German agent informed his people about the plans of the Red Army.

Stalin, on the other hand, delivered the main blow in Romania in order to establish control over the long-desired Balkan Peninsula before the Allies.

Agent 438's last report

In December 1944, Gehlen managed to “predict” quite accurately that

"The Red Army will now deliver the main blows in the direction of Berlin and East Prussia"

And what

The head of the FHO even suggested

"evacuate troops from East Prussia in advance in order to concentrate maximum forces for the defense of the capital of the Reich"

So, but this time did not meet Hitler's understanding. Gelen relied on a report from an agent from some Soviet headquarters no lower than the front.

Reinhard Gehlen received from agent 438 the extremely accurate directions of the Red Army strikes and even the exact date of the start of the operation in East Prussia and in the direction of Berlin

Agent 438's reports and Gehlen's conclusions that in January 1945 the main blow of the Red Army would fall on East Prussia were fully justified.

This created problems for the advancing troops of the Red Army.

The former commander of the 2nd Belorussian Front, Marshal K.K. Rokossovsky, noted in his memoirs:

“In my opinion, when East Prussia was completely isolated from the west, it would be possible to postpone the liquidation of the group of Nazi troops surrounded there, and by strengthening the weakened 2nd Belorussian Front, speed up the denouement in the Berlin direction. The fall of Berlin would have happened much earlier.

But it turned out that 10 armies at the decisive moment were involved against the East Prussian grouping ... and the weakened troops of the 2nd Belorussian Front were not able to fulfill their task.

The use of such a mass of troops against the enemy, cut off from his main forces and remote from the place where the main events were decided, was clearly inappropriate in the situation that had developed by that time in the Berlin direction.

Note that this initially withdrawn fragment of memoirs was restored only in the 1997 edition.

Konstantin Rokossovsky wrote that his troops in East Prussia were in a very disadvantageous position, and the Wehrmacht, on the contrary, knowing about the deployment of the Red Army, concentrated significant forces there

All this was again explained by the fact that Agent 438 informed Hitler of information about the actions of the fronts of the Red Army, but in this case there were other sources.

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

I will give one more curious addition to the rather meager data on German agents that could supply information about the strategic plans of the Soviet command.

Walter Schellenberg, in the American version of his memoirs, published posthumously in 1956 under the title "Labyrinth", wrote that through one of the centers for collecting and processing information on Russia,

"the existence of which was known only to three persons in the Main Directorate, we were able to make direct contact with two officers from the headquarters of Marshal Rokossovsky."

Later, when the military intelligence department of Admiral Canaris came under my control (this happened after the resignation of the “land admiral” in February 1944), I added another very important intelligence center. His boss was a German Jew who used completely unusual methods work.

His staff consisted of only two people; all work was mechanized. His network covered several countries and had an extensive network of agents in all walks of life.

He managed to get the most accurate information from sources who worked in the highest echelons of the Russian army, and the intelligence department of the headquarters German army(FHO. -.) highly appreciated them. This man did a really good job.

He could report on major strategic plans, and on the movements of troops, sometimes even individual divisions. His reports usually arrived two or three weeks before the predicted events, so that our leaders had time to prepare appropriate countermeasures, or rather they could have done so if Hitler had paid more serious attention to such reports.

I had to fight desperately to protect such a valuable employee from Müller (Chief of the Gestapo. -.), And also to protect him from the envy and intrigues that existed in my office and in the headquarters of the Luftwaffe.

Behind the backs of Kaltenbrunner and Müller there was a clique that decided to eliminate the "Jew". It was not only Jewish origin that was blamed on him. His enemies resorted to the most insidious tricks, trying to prove that he was secretly working for Russian intelligence, which supposedly provides us with reliable information so far in order to mislead us at the decisive moment.

Walter Schellenberg wrote that in the Red Army he had his own residency (Gehlen had another) and his spies were, among other things, at Rokossovsky's headquarters

In the German version of Schellenberg's memoirs, it is specified that

"communication with two officers of the General Staff seconded to the headquarters of Marshal Rokossovsky" was maintained through one of the "particularly important informants" and that

“after the merger of the department of Canaris with the 6th department of Schellenberg, another very Schellenberg put at his disposal "another very valuable informant, who was led by a German Jew." ............................

Indeed, it is hard to believe that the USSR managed to create an agent network in Germany and the areas occupied by it (the most famous is the Red Chapel), and the Germans - pipes. That doesn't happen...

In the case of German spies in the USSR, the situation is complicated by the fact that the onion of the “Foreign armies - East” department (in the German abbreviation FHO, in fact, he was in charge of reconnaissance) Reinhard Galen prudently took care of preserving the most majestic documentation in order to fall into captivity to the Americans in the very coffin of the war and offer them a "goods face".

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

In the summer of 1941, Soviet intelligence officers launched an operation that is still considered "aerobatics" of covert combat and entered the textbooks on reconnaissance craft. It lasted almost the entire war and at different stages was called differently - "Monastery", "Couriers", and then "Berezino".

Her plan was originally to bring to the German intelligence center a targeted "misinformation" about an anti-Soviet religious-monarchist organization allegedly existing in Moscow, to force enemy intelligence officers to believe in it as a real force. And thus penetrate the intelligence network of the Nazis in the Soviet Union.

The FSB declassified the materials of the operation only after 55 years of the Victory over fascism.

The Chekists recruited a representative of a noble noble family, Boris Sadovsky, to work. With the establishment Soviet power he had lost his fortune and was naturally hostile towards her.

He lived in a small house in the Novodevichy Convent. Being an invalid, he almost did not leave it. In July 1941, Sadovsky wrote a poem, which soon became the property of counterintelligence, in which he addressed the Nazi occupiers as "brother liberators", called on Hitler to restore Russian autocracy.

They decided to use him as the head of the legendary Throne organization, especially since Sadovsky was really looking for an opportunity to somehow contact the Germans.

Alexander Petrovich Demyanov - "Heine" (right) during a radio communication session with a German

In order to "help" him, Alexander Demyanov, a secret employee of the Lubyanka, who had the operational pseudonym "Heine", was included in the game.

His great-grandfather Anton Golovaty was the first ataman of the Kuban Cossacks, his father was a Cossack captain who died in the first world war. Mother, however, came from a princely family, graduated from the Bestuzhev courses at the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens, and in the pre-revolutionary years was considered one of the brightest beauties in the aristocratic circles of Petrograd.

Until 1914, Demyanov lived and was brought up abroad. He was recruited by the OGPU in 1929. Possessing noble manners and a pleasant appearance, "Heine" easily converged with film actors, writers, playwrights, poets, in whose circles he rotated with the blessing of the Chekists. Before the war, in order to suppress terrorist attacks, he specialized in developing relations between the nobles who remained in the USSR and foreign emigration. An experienced agent with such data quickly won the trust of the poet-monarchist Boris Sadovsky.

On February 17, 1942, Demyanov - "Heine" crossed the front line and surrendered to the Germans, declaring that he was a representative of the anti-Soviet underground. The intelligence officer told the Abwehr officer about the Throne organization and that it had been sent by its leaders to communicate with the German command. At first they did not believe him, they subjected him to a series of interrogations and thorough checks, including an imitation of execution, tossing a weapon from which he could shoot his tormentors and escape. However, his endurance, a clear line of conduct, the persuasiveness of the legend, backed up by real people and circumstances, finally made the German counterintelligence believe.

It also played a role that even before the war, the Moscow Abwehr station * took note of Demyanov as a possible candidate for recruitment and even gave him the nickname "Max".

* Abwehr - military intelligence and counterintelligence agency of Germany in 1919-1944, was part of the Wehrmacht High Command.

Under it, he appeared in the card file of the Moscow agents in 1941, under it, after three weeks of learning the basics of espionage, on March 15, 1942, he was parachuted into the Soviet rear. Demyanov was to settle in the Rybinsk region with the task of conducting active military-political intelligence. From the Throne organization, the Abwehr expected the activation of pacifist propaganda among the population, the deployment of sabotage and sabotage.

For two weeks there was a pause in the Lubyanka, so as not to arouse suspicion among the Abwehrs at the ease with which their new agent was legalized.

Finally "Max" relayed his first misinformation. Soon, in order to strengthen Demyanov's position in German intelligence and to supply the Germans through him with false data of strategic importance, he was appointed a communications officer under the Chief of the General Staff, Marshal Shaposhnikov.

Admiral Canaris

Admiral Canaris, head of the Abwehr (nicknamed Janus), " Cunning fox”) considered it his great luck that he had acquired a “source of information” in such high spheres, and could not help but boast of this success in front of his rival, the head of the VI department of the RSHA, SS Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg. In his memoirs written after the war in English captivity, he testified with envy that military intelligence had "its own man" near Marshal Shaposhnikov, from whom a lot of "valuable information" was received. In early August 1942, "Max" informed the Germans that the transmitter in the organization was becoming unusable and needed to be replaced.

Soon, two Abwehr couriers came to the secret apartment of the NKVD in Moscow, delivering 10 thousand rubles and food. They reported the location of the radio they had hidden.

The first group of German agents remained at large for ten days, so that the Chekists could check their appearances and find out if they had any connections with anyone else. Then the messengers were arrested, the walkie-talkie delivered by them was found. And the Germans "Max" radioed that the couriers had arrived, but the transmitted radio was damaged upon landing.

Two months later, two more messengers with two radio transmitters and various spy equipment appeared from behind the front line. They had the task not only to help “Max”, but also to settle in Moscow themselves, collect and transmit their intelligence information via the second radio. Both agents were recruited, and they reported to the headquarters of the "Valli" - the Abwehr center - that they had successfully arrived and started the task. From that moment on, the operation developed in two directions: on the one hand, on behalf of the monarchist organization Throne and the resident Max, on the other, on behalf of Abwehr agents Zyubin and Alaev, who allegedly relied on their own connections in Moscow. A new stage of the secret duel has begun - Operation Couriers.

In November 1942, in response to a request from the headquarters of "Valli" about the possibility of expanding the geography of the organization "Throne" at the expense of the cities of Yaroslavl, Murom and Ryazan and sending agents there for further work, "Max" conveyed that the city of Gorky, where a cell was created, was better suited "Throne". The Germans agreed to this, and the counterintelligence officers took care of the "meeting" of the couriers. Satisfying the requests of the Abwehrites, the Chekists sent them extensive disinformation, which was being prepared at the General Staff of the Red Army, and more and more enemy intelligence agents were called to front safe houses.

In Berlin, they were very pleased with the work of "Max" and the agents introduced with his help. On December 20, Admiral Canaris congratulated his Moscow resident on being awarded the Iron Cross of the 1st degree, and Mikhail Kalinin signed the Decree on awarding Demyanov with the Order of the Red Star. The result of the radio games "Monastery" and "Couriers" was the arrest of 23 German agents and their accomplices, who had with them more than 2 million rubles of Soviet money, several radio stations, a large number of documents, weapons, equipment.

In the summer of 1944, the operational game received a new continuation called Berezino. "Max" reported to the headquarters of the "Valli" that he was "seconded" to a newly occupied Soviet troops Minsk. Soon the Abwehr received a message from there that numerous groups of German soldiers and officers, who had been surrounded as a result of the Soviet offensive, were making their way through the Belarusian forests to the west. Since the radio interception data testified to the desire of the Nazi command not only to help them break through to their own, but also to use them to disorganize the enemy rear, the Chekists decided to play on this. Soon the People's Commissar of State Security Merkulov reported to Stalin, Molotov and Beria a plan for a new operation. "Good" was received.

On August 18, 1944, the Moscow radio station "Throne" informed the Germans that "Max" accidentally ran into a military unit Wehrmacht, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Gerhard Sherhorn. "Encircled" are in great need of food, weapons, ammunition. Seven days in the Lubyanka they waited for an answer: the Abwehr, apparently, made inquiries about Sherhorn and his "army". And on the eighth, a radiogram came: “Please help us contact this German unit. We intend to drop various cargoes for them and send a radio operator.”

On the night of September 15-16, 1944, three Abwehr envoys landed by parachute in the area of Lake Pesochnoe in the Minsk region, where Sherhorn's regiment was allegedly "hiding". Soon two of them were recruited and included in the radio game.

Then the Abwehrs transferred two more officers with letters addressed to Sherhorn from the commander of the Army Group Center, Colonel-General Reinhardt, and the head of Abwehrkommando-103, Barfeld. The flow of cargo "breaking out of the encirclement" increased, with them all the new "auditors" arrived, who had the task, as they later admitted during interrogations, to find out if these were the people they pretended to be. But everything was done cleanly. So pure that in the last radiogram to Scherhorn, transmitted from the "Abwehrkommando-103" on May 5, 1945, after the surrender of Berlin, it was said:

“It is with a heavy heart that we have to stop helping you. Due to the current situation, we are also no longer able to maintain radio contact with you. Whatever the future brings us, our thoughts will always be with you.”

It was the end of the game. Soviet intelligence brilliantly outplayed the intelligence of Nazi Germany.

The success of the operation "Berezino" was facilitated by the fact that it involved real German officers who went over to the side of the Red Army. They convincingly portrayed the surviving regiment, including recruited paratroopers and liaison officers.

From archival data: from September 1944 to May 1945, the German command made 39 sorties in our rear and dropped 22 German intelligence officers (all of them were arrested by Soviet counterintelligence officers), 13 radio stations, 255 cargo places with weapons, uniforms, food, ammunition, medicines, and 1,777,000 rubles. Germany continued to supply "its" detachment until the very end of the war.