The Spy Who Changed History

by Svetlana Lokhova

  As a telegram from Moscow made clear, Zarubin had one further delicate mission to fulfil. Moscow Centre had telegraphed ahead to say that BLÉRIOT was returning for a short business trip and something should be said to him in the course of a ‘friendly conversation’ about the dangers of dalliances with women. A sex scandal had rocked the New York Rezidentura. In breach of security arrangements, Yershov (GLAN) had begun an affair with an American and had got her pregnant. Moscow Centre wanted all their agents in the field to be on their best behaviour.22

  • • •

  The Soviet party’s final destination was Washington, now a crowded city with its population doubling to one million during wartime as workers, mostly women, flocked to the city to take on new jobs in the expanding administration. Politics had overtaken business as the controlling force in America for the duration of the war; business had to perform its civic duty, and the government was now the major customer in town. With only one theatre showcasing touring companies, Washington lacked the attractions of New York. It was a quiet, low-rise city with little industry. The visiting Russians were puzzled that the city’s excellent museums with expensively acquired art collections were nearly always empty while the cinemas were always packed.

  The headquarters of the Purchasing Commission was 1610 Park Road, NW Washington, an address selected to keep its leadership close to the politicians. The first task of the arriving members was to sort out the problems encountered by the previous group and find a new way to unblock the supply log-jam. The angry Russians had met their match when dealing with Washington bureaucracy. They came from a system where if the leader ordered that aircraft should be delivered, it happened. Washington had ways and means of pouring sand into the machine, whatever the President might want. Few in Washington initially shared Roosevelt’s belief that the Soviet Union could survive the Nazi onslaught for more than a few weeks or months. Many in the War Department believed America risked losing its secrets to its enemies or dissipating its resources on wasteful aid to an ally that was likely before long to surrender.

  The Commission soon realised that to fulfil their mission the direct approach had to change. They were now in a town of influence peddling, compromises, back channels and deals over dinners. Out went the military uniforms, to be replaced with smart suits. Stan coached the career Soviet soldiers in the nuances of American manners and ways of doing business, informing them that America worked on a system of personal relationships and recommendations. General Belyaev, the overall head of the Commission, and Shumovsky spent their evenings swapping hunting stories with bureaucrats and jokes with politicians, finding this a far more effective way of getting business done than banging tables at angry meetings. The Commission leaders’ charm offensive gradually secured allies in Congress and the administration. It was never going to be an easy task, but it would get easier once the Red Army became winners on the battlefield.

  Initially, the pressure from Moscow was for planes, and any American planes would do. Some simply had to be delivered as a symbol that Russia was not fighting alone. The decision was taken to buy what could be delivered immediately. This turned out to be the ineffective Curtiss-Wright Kittyhawk, of which the US and Britain had a large surplus stock. The plane had been designed by a committee to be a multi-purpose aircraft and in combat was soon found not to be particularly good at anything. The main issues were its light armament and poor manoeuvrability. As the Soviets faced the renewed German spring and summer offensive into southern Russia in 1942, every available aircraft was desperately needed at the front.

  The goal of the German offensive was to capture the Caucasus oilfields and knock Russia out of the war. Over the dinner tables of Washington, a different offensive was being fought to win a broad coalition of support to supply more and better planes. Many American armchair generals were quick to offer opinions that the Soviet Union was doomed. The frustration of these conversations and the resulting painfully slow progress contrasted with the action on the ground, where two of Russia’s greatest cities – Leningrad and Stalingrad – were now under siege. One debate between two American army officers in front of a Russian diplomat demonstrated the ignorance of decision makers about events in Russia: ‘When Byrd spoke about the urgent need for medicines given the scale of fighting by the Red Army in Stalingrad, Colonel Pink said in a retort that our battles in the Solomon Islands are much greater than Stalingrad, and therefore we must first of all take care of our army.’ Soviet casualties in the Battle of Stalingrad were 1,129,619, of whom 650,878 were sick or wounded; by comparison total Allied casualties in the Solomon Islands campaign amounted to 10,600 dead. Shumovsky explained to the team it was a long game. The Soviets needed to keep smiling and gradually build a coalition of personal relationships.

  The decision was taken on Shumovsky’s advice to concentrate future purchases with a few top aircraft manufacturers who had the proven capacity to deliver scores of planes on time, and to eliminate from the debate many small companies. The chosen manufacturers were Bell, Douglas, Curtiss-Wright and Republic. The Commission selected just a few models, deciding to stick wherever possible with those planes for the duration of the war. The Russians would work with the manufacturer to suggest improvements straight from the battlefield, based on combat experience. By concentrating on a few models the challenges presented by logistical supply and ground crew training would be minimised. Aircraft, especially in combat, wear out quickly and require frequent maintenance, and a plane could be rendered moribund if a missing spare part was thousands of miles away when suddenly required on the Eastern Front. There were also the peculiarities of the battle conditions of the Soviet Union – including the extreme cold – which demanded the making of adjustments to planes. Battlefield conditions in Russia were rough. The planes had to be robust. The Russians always found the planes supplied undergunned and underprotected, requiring much further work to modify them on arrival.

  The most important changes were to the engines. The Soviet Union had very little high-octane fuel for thirsty aviation motors, and what fuel they did have tended to be dirtier than the American equivalent. Eventually, under Lend Lease the Allies would supply half of the Soviets’ need, around 1.5 million tons of clean high-octane fuel.

  The air war on the Eastern Front was itself of a different character from that fought in the skies over Western Europe. It was highly tactical, with dogfights at close range and low altitude. Fighters and dive bombers were deployed in support of attacking ground forces rather than acting independently as a strategic bombing force. The advantage in choosing the time and altitude of encounters lay with the attacking side. As the Red Army advanced, thousands of Il-2 Shturmovik ground attack aircraft were deployed as mobile artillery and tank busters. Fighters, including American-supplied Airacobras, were used in vast air armies to protect the ground attack aircraft. Luftwaffe fighters were forced to confront the Soviet air force at a time, place and height of the Russians’ choosing in order to protect German troops under attack on the ground. The Soviet goal in combat was not to shoot down enemy fighters per se, but to frighten them off to allow the army and ground attack aircraft to do their work unmolested. Fast bombers attacked targets such as airfields, troop concentrations, and supplies in the enemies’ rear. The result was to allow the VVS to achieve superiority in numbers and gain control, first in sectors, then eventually across the whole Eastern Front.

  In the skies of Western Europe, the British and Americans were fighting a high-altitude war of round-the-clock strategic bombing, or saturation bombing of industrial towns. In the early days of the war in the East, the Russians found strategic bombing expensive and hence an ineffective use of scarce resources and pilots. The Soviet 1941 propaganda revenge raids on Berlin resulted in little but symbolic damage and high casualties in the crews and planes. Regarding numbers of planes downed, the Luftwaffe was matched and then destroyed on the Eastern Front from mid-1943 onwards. In the battles over the Kuban pocket, the VVS achieved decisive superiority in n
umbers and in the quality of its planes from late 1943, as the types of planes the Purchasing Commission had envisaged back in early 1942 were delivered in bulk.

  To the Soviets, it seemed that the Americans had only committed to supplying Russia with scores of aircraft once it became convinced that victory was inevitable. When the Soviets needed aid, it had not been forthcoming. It was only after the crushing Soviet victory in February 1943 at Stalingrad that suddenly American fighters were being supplied in large numbers. Now, though, with hundreds of newly built planes being flown along the newly constructed air bridge from Alaska via Siberia to Moscow – a journey that took five days – the proportion of American fighters deployed on the front line by the Soviets reached 17 per cent by 1944, a very significant contribution.

  To achieve this level of supply, the approach the Commission adopted was to integrate American aviation factories into their established delivery methods. Unlike other buyers of American aircraft, the Soviets were very closely involved during the production process. They insisted on having their own engineers on site in America to supervise every stage of construction. Planes had often failed to meet expectations on arrival and there were no facilities in Russia where faults could be remedied. The American manufacturers appreciated that the Russians had to achieve an intimate understanding of the aircraft they were putting into combat. They were very welcoming to their Soviet guests – who were, after all, their best customers – and built close friendships.

  The Russians in turn provided detailed feedback on the combat performance of the American planes. Several of the Soviet engineers posted to American factories had front-line experience or were test pilots with valuable knowledge to pass on. Learning the benefit of Stan’s 1937 public relations exercise, the Russians sent aces from the battle front on extensive tours of American aircraft factories to thank the workers personally for their contribution to victory. It was a means of uniting pilot and factory worker in the struggle against Nazism. Russians insisted on the handover of the planes destined for the Eastern Front at the plant, so ‘receiver engineers’ were brought in their hundreds from Russia to work in US factories. In the process, these workers learned new skills and manufacturing methods that proved transferable to Soviet factories.

  There were three main delivery routes for the planes from America to Russia. The first was the highly risky western route via the convoys across the Atlantic, then on to the Arctic. Losses of ships and their cargoes in the early years of the war were daunting. A second, safer route was built overland to the Caucasus from Iran. Eventually, the most efficient way proved to be the transpolar air bridge from Alaska to Siberia. A series of intermediate airfields were built across Siberia in 1942 and air transport divisions created to fly the planes from Fairbanks in Alaska to the front. A direct route ran from the factories of the US, located as they now were in virtually every state, to a new giant air force base in the remote north-west at Great Falls, Montana. Planes were either assembled at Great Falls or flown there before being loaded with supplies and dispatched on the journey to Fairbanks, and on to the heart of the USSR.

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  The prospects for Shumovsky’s secret mission seemed in worse shape than his work with the Commission. As he discussed with his colleagues in New York, the environment for espionage since his departure in 1939 had toughened. With his aviation espionage network having withered through neglect, his initial efforts to rebuild were driven by extreme urgency. The NKVD’s New York office had sent no reports on the state of US aviation for two years. Using the Purchasing Commission as cover, Shumovsky started gathering a vast amount of the technical information that had been so sorely missed. Within two months the flow of publications to Moscow had been re-established.23 He began by supplying in bulk documents with the lowest level of classification, shipping over 700 confidential and secret items to Moscow by March 1942 via the People’s Commissariat (Ministry) of Foreign Trade. These included the Army and Navy Air Force standards for aircraft.24 By November he had shipped a further large tranche of secret reports, including the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) Standards Board specifications for all engineering tools used in aviation manufacture and ‘all reports of the air forces on tests of planes, motors, assemblies, and materials. The total of reports is over 600 for the period 1938–1942.’ Shumovsky next promised to source all the missing NACA reports from 1938 to 1942. Additionally, he forwarded all the technical specifications he had received from US aircraft assemblers, component suppliers and machine tool makers. There were many advantages to being the third largest customer in town (after the US Army Air Force and the British Empire). Stan reported that between 1941 and 1942, of every one hundred planes built in America, fifteen were Lend-Leased, three sold to allies and eighty-two delivered to the US military. He was the spider at the centre of a vast information web. And the Soviets had one other advantage: Ray Bennett’s old contact, Nathan Silvermaster, had gained a position at the US War Production Board and was telling the Russians exactly how many planes were manufactured each month and where they were going. The breadth of intelligence Moscow received on aircraft production was perhaps better even than that supplied to Roosevelt. As they were doing the bulk of the fighting and receiving little of the equipment, Russian resentment grew.

  • • •

  While Shumovsky was succeeding, his fellow MIT alumni Semyonov, Novikov and Yershov were finding excuses. Ovakimian, now head of global S&T in Moscow, was very unhappy. As the former head of the New York Rezidentura and an indefatigable worker, he knew what could be achieved. He wrote a stinging telegram to MAXIM, the current head of the Rezidentura, on 25 June 1942, sparing only Shumovsky from criticism:

  Results on the tech. line are unsatisfactory. There should be 3 operatives working – TWAIN, GLAN, and LAUREL. GLAN and LAUREL don’t do anything. TWAIN is not functioning at full capacity. Inadequate training and management of sources, departure of agents and decline in activity. For my part, I think that the most important aspects of this work should be transferring active probationers to illegal connections using such group handlers as GOOSE, BLACK et al., seeking out new candidates capable of providing us with materials on defence-related topics, and engaging in political education work with everyone – our comrades as well as probationers. CHARON does not understand his assignments, even though the XY is primary in his area. LINK is not working.25

  The pressure for results was intense.

  With the Americans belatedly becoming security conscious, the FBI had finally installed officers at each key factory, research facility and government office. Workers in sensitive industries were briefed about the dangers of espionage. Large new aircraft factories were even built without windows; there were security checkpoints, and ID was inspected. The Careless Talk campaign launched by the US War Department effectively linked Allied losses with ‘loose lips’. In the face of such heightened security, Shumovsky adapted his methods. Arranging to have himself appointed a liaison officer to the USAAF, he was given a letter from the State Department demanding the bearer be given unimpeded access to all areas. The fox was in the hen house.

  It was Hollywood and the US government who had unwittingly come to Stan’s rescue once again. The administration had launched an effective propaganda campaign to rally support in America for their allies the Russians. In a series of films made by Frank Capra called Why We Fight, the episode entitled ‘The Battle for Russia’ was by far and away the strongest. Any potential political problems were sidestepped, and the word ‘communism’ was not mentioned. Instead, the film’s focus was on the heroism of the ordinary Russian people in their life-and-death struggle with Nazism. The American audience was not spared footage of the victims of Nazi atrocities. In one striking scene, the narrator explained to the public that the burnt bodies on the screen were not animals but massacred Russian children slaughtered by the retreating Germans.

  Joseph E. Davies, the former US ambassador to the Soviet Union, sold 700,000 copies of his book on hi
s experiences in Moscow. It was later made by Warner Brothers into a strongly pro-Soviet film entitled Mission to Moscow. Fellow film studio RKO’s 1943 The North Star, featuring top American stars in the role of partisans from a collective farm fighting off the Nazis, was nominated for six Oscars. MGM’s 1944 romantic adventure Song of Russia was later heavily criticised by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) for its unrealistic portrayal of the Soviet Union. When a glossy edition of Life magazine focused on the sacrifices of the Russian people, Stalin kept a copy in his archive. Surprised to learn that Americans were putting an individual bay leaf in each of the millions of cans of pork exported to feed his armies, he asked the question in the margin ‘is this true?’ From 1941 onwards, Americans were bombarded with tales of the heroic Russian people’s fight on behalf of everyone’s freedom, which must be supported at all costs. The message was clear: if Russia goes under we will all be defeated.

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  On 29 July 1942, the NKVD in New York, responding to complaints, reported back to Moscow that since the start of the war in Europe, and especially after 7 December 1941 – when America actively joined the war – working conditions on the XY line had undergone a radical change. They noticed that ‘feelings of patriotism have grown’, which presented a problem not only when cultivating new candidates but when working with long-time agents as well.