Smersh: Stalin's Secret Weapon: Soviet Military Counterintelligence in WWII
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16. Details in N. N. Luzan (N. Abin), Lubyanka: Podvigi i tragedii (Moscow: Kuchkovo Pole, 2010), 218–358 (in Russian).
17. Michael R. D. Foot, SOE: An Outline History of the Special Operations Executive 1940–46 (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1984).
18. Abshagen, Canaris, 86.
19. Andre Brissaud, Canaris: The Biography of Admiral Canaris, Chief of German Military intelligence in the Second World War, translated and edited by Ian Colvin (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), 274.
20. Heinz Höhne, The Order of the Death’s Head: The Story of Hitler’s SS, translated from the German by Richard Barry (New York: Ballantine Books, 1969), 289–92.
21. Detailed biography in Reinhard R. Doerries, Hitler’s Intelligence Chief Walter Schellenberg (New York: Enigma Books, 2009).
22. Höhne, Canaris, 471.
23. Oscar Reile, Tainaya voina. Sekretnye operatsii Abvera na Zapade i Vostoke (1921-1945) (Moscow: Tsentropoligraf, 2002), 135–36 (in Russian, translated from the German).
24. I. L. Bunich, ‘Groza’. Krovavye igry diktatorov (Ct. Petersburg: Oblik, 1997), 297 (in Russian).
25. H. Buchheit, Abver: shchit i mech’ III reikha (Moscow: Eksmo, 2005), 247–8 (in Russian, translation from German).
26. Paul Leverkuehn, German Military Intelligence, translated from the German by R. H. Stevens and Constantine FitzGibbon (London: Weidensfeld and Nicolson, 1954), 156.
27. OO Directive No. 29670, dated May 25, 1941. Document No. 215 in Organy gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti SSSR, T. 1. Nakanune, Kn. 2 (Moscow: Kniga i bizness, 1995), 158–60 (in Russian).
28. Short descriptions of Stab Walli in Heinz Höhne and Hermann Zolling, The General Was a Spy: The Truth About General Gehlen and His Spy Ring, translated from the German by Richard Barry (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc., 1971), 15–22; Heinz Höhne, Canaris, translated from the German by J. Maxwell Brownjohn (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc, 1979), 436–59; Kahn, German Military Intelligence, 248–9.
29. P. P. Stefanovsky, Razvoroty sud’by: Avtobiograficheskaya povesti. T. 1. Abver–SMERSH (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo RUDN, 2002), 19 (in Russian).
30. Brissaud, Canaris, 235.
31. Kahn, Hitler’s Spies, 249.
32. Höhne and Zolling, The General Was a Spy, 18.
33. Page 208 in Arnold M. Silver, ‘Memories of Oberursel: Questions, Questions, Questions,’ Intelligence and National Security 8, No. 2 (April 1993), 199–213.
34. In ‘Debriefing of Eric Waldman’ on September 30, 1969, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB146/doc09.pdf, retrieved September 6, 2011.
35. S. G. Chuev, Spetssluzhby III Reikha. Kniga 1 and II (St. Petersburg: Neva, 2003), 53–54 (in Russian).
36. E. H. Cookridge, Gehlen: Spy of the Century (New York: Random House, 1971), 54, 369.
37. Erwin Stolze’s testimony, quoted in Mader, Hitlers Spionagegenerale, 132.
38. Mader, Hitlers Spionegenerale, 259; Linda Hunt, Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scienticts, and Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1990 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 203.
39. Von Bentivegni’s testimony during the MGB investigation, in Mader, Hitlers Spionagegenerale, 259–61.
40. Reile, Tainaya voina, 158–62; Kahn, German Military Intelligence, 248–9.
41. E. G. Ioffe, Abver. Politsiya bezopasnosti i SD, tainaya polevaya politsiya, otdel ‘inostrannye armii–Vostok’ v zapadnykh oblastyakh SSSR. Strategiya i taktika. 1939-1945 (Minsk: Kharvest, 2007), 62, 78–79 (in Russian).
42. Kahn, Hitler’s Spies, 249.
43 Page 208 in Silver, ‘Memories of Oberursel.’
44. Abwehr I squads acquired numbers 101–106, and their groups, numbers 101–110, 114–115, 143–144, Abwehr II squads became 201–206 with groups 201–212, 214–215, 217–218, 220, and Abwehr III squads were provided with numbers 301–305, and the groups, with numbers 301-329. Details in Chuev, Spetssluznby, I, 56–163.
45. Mader, Hitlers Spionage Generale, 357–8.
46. Ioffe, Abver. Politsiya bezopasnosti, 56–84.
47. Höhne and Zolling, The General Was a Spy, 19.
48. Mader, Hitlers Spionagegenerale, 365.
49. Details in ibid., 368–89.
50.
Reile, Tainaya voina, 165–6; Höhne, Canaris, 462–3.
51. Richard Rhodes, Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgrupen and the Invention of the Holocaust (New York: Vantage Books, 2002), 61–63.
52. Details, for instance, in Alfred J. Rieder, ‘Civil Wars in the Soviet Union,’ Kritika: Explorations in Russian History, 4, No. 1 (Winter 2003), 129–62.
53. Chuev, Spetssluzhby, I, 295–8.
54. David Thomas, ‘Foreign Armies East and German Military Intelligence in Russia 1941–45,’ Journal of Contemporary History 22, no. 2 (1987), 261–301. From November 1938 to March 1942, Lieutenant Colonel Eberhard Kinzel headed the FHO, then General Franz Halder (March–April 1942), and finally, Lieutenant Colonel (later Major General) Reinhard Gehlen (April 1942–April 1945).
55. Kahn, Hitler’s Spies, 429.
56. Cited in Cookridge, Gehlen, 64. Chiefs of the German General Staff after Halder: Kurt Zeitzler (September 1942–June 1944), Adolf Heusinger (June 1944–July 1944), and Heinz Guderian (July 1944–March 1945).
57. Details in Thomas, ‘Foreign Armies East.’
58. Höhne and Zolling, The General Was a Spy, 21–23.
59. Höhne, Canaris, 467.
CHAPTER 14
Abwehr’s Failures and Successes
In fact, the real problem was the FHO’s poor evaluation of information received from Walli. Gehlen’s personal great reliance on ‘Max’ messages from ‘Klatt Bureau’ in Sofia (Bulgaria), and from 1943, from Budapest (Hungary) became a classic example of the Abwehr’s and Gehlen’s poor judgment.1
Fritz or Richard Klatt was an alias name of Richard Kauder, a converted Jew, born in Vienna, who volunteered for the Abwehr to protect his Jewish mother. His ‘Klatt Bureau’ reported to Vienna’s Abwehr post on two main situations: Soviet troop dispositions on the Eastern Front (‘Max’ messages) and British dispositions in the Middle East (‘Moritz’ messages from Turkey). The number of messages received in Vienna from ‘Max and Moritz’ was enormous: 3,000 in 1942, 3,700 in 1943, and 4,000 in 1944.2 However, the true source of Klatt’s information remains one of the main spy mysteries of World War II.
‘Max’ and ‘Moritz’ Cables
The Abwehr’s Viennese post Ast XVII (the number means the German military district) that received Klatt’s cables was organized after the Anschluss with Austria in 1938, and in 1940 it became Ast Vienna. Therre were two departments in it, I (espionage) and III (counterintelligence), and the Ast was responsible for collecting intelligence in the countries to the South East from the Reich and, after June 1941, in the Soviet Union.3 Colonel Rudolf Count von Margona-Redwitz, a close friend of Admiral Canaris, headed Ast Vienna until April 1944, when he was transferred to the Army High Command (OKH) in Berlin, and another of Canaris’s friends, Colonel Otto Amster, succeeded him in Vienna.
In July 1944, after the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Hitler, the Gestapo arrested both colonels as the Abwehr anti-Hitler plotters. On October 12, 1944 Count Margona-Redwitz was sentenced to death and executed, while Amster escaped from prison in April 1945 and in May SMERSH arrested him. In Vienna, in August 1944 Colonel Otto Wiese succeeded Amster.
In October 1940, Kauder and Ira Longin (or Iliya Lang), a White Russian and a close associate of the White Russian general Anton Turkul, established Dienststelle I or ‘Klatt Bureau’ in a villa in the central part of Sofia, Bulgaria. Sofia was important for the German intelligence and counterintelligence because Bulgaria was the only German ally country that continued to have diplomatic relationships with the Soviet Union, and the huge staff of the Soviet Embassy in Sofia included NKVD/NKGB and military spies. General Turkul was the leader of a fascist group of White Russian military emigrants in Europe, and in 1938 he move
d from France to Berlin. After the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was signed, Turkul left Berlin for Rome, where he organized his own intelligence network. Later, in 1944, he joined the Russian Liberation Army under General Andrei Vlasov’s command. In 1940, Turkul agreed to supply Sofia’s outpost with information gathered by his agents.
David Kahn described Kauder in his book Hitler’s Spies: ‘[Kauder] was of middle height, with a round face, well fed and well dressed… He spent his days in his office and on the move, apparently also doing some private business and paying off the Bulgarian police so he would not be bothered. He spent his nights in restaurants and cafes dining well and dating women.’4 The radio call sign of the ‘Klatt Bureau’ was ‘Schwert’, meaning ‘Sword’.
Presumably, Kauder’s agents, including ‘Max’, were stationed inside the Soviet Union, even in high positions in Moscow.5 Kurt Geisler, a former Abwehr officer who worked in the Stab Walli from 1941 to 1943 and was later captured by the Soviets, testified in 1947: ‘“Max” is a former Czar’s Army officer and a colonel in the Red Army signal troops. During the war he was the head or a deputy head of signals at the staff of one of the southern Red Army’s fronts located subsequently in Rostov-on-Don, near Baku and in Tbilisi.’6 Colonel Friedrich Schildknecht, head of the FHO group from October 1941 till September 1942, and captured in 1943 in Stalingrad, was of a similar opinion: ‘[“Max”] was an officer of the Red Army’s General Staff or a senior staff officer working at the front or army headquarters of the Soviet Armed Forces.’
Geisler also mentioned that ‘BAUN, who was in the town of Nikolaiken (East Prussia) with his Walli I, was making a monthly map, on which he marked information from “Max” reports every day. Each week he reported the data on the map to Colonel [Eberhard] Kintzel [Gehlen’s predecessor as FHO head]… I also know that Admiral CANARIS sent a number of the “Max” reports to HITLER’.7 The Fremde Luftwaffe Ost (German Air Force intelligence) also considered Max’s reports the best intelligence the Luftwaffe ever had. But, in fact, it is not known if the information was real.
In December 1941, British intelligence began to intercept and decipher Kauder’s messages between his bureau in Sofia and the Ast Vienna, and soon MI6 started to suspect the Soviets of being behind Kauder’s activity.8 At the same time, Moscow received some of the British-intercepted materials through John Cairncross and Kim Philby, the Soviet agents in MI6. Additionally, the GRU (Soviet military intelligence) received deciphered ‘Moritz’ messages through the agent ‘Dolly’ (presumably, James MacGibbon) and his handler Ivan Sklyarov (alias ‘Brion’), Soviet Military Attaché in London.9 In July 1942, the NKVD also began to intercept and decipher Kauder’s messages. However, Kauder’s modus operandi remained unknown.
The ‘Klatt Bureau’ operated independently of the main Abwehr office in Sofia attached to the German Legation and headed by Colonel Otto Wagner (alias ‘Dr. Delius’). Colonel Wagner was skeptical regarding Kauder’s activity. In 1946, he told the American investigator Arnold Silver: ‘One wall of Klatt’s office was covered with a map of the USSR west of the Urals, with a small light near each city. Whenever [an] Abwehr officer visited Klatt, one or more lights flashed repeatedly, whereupon Klatt would exclaim, for example, “Ah! A report from Kiev has just come in.”’10
At the end of 1942, Wagner complained to Admiral Canaris and Hans Piekenbrock, suggesting that Kauder might be a Soviet spy, and ordered an investigation of Kauder’s activity.11 It was found that there was no radio station handling Kauder’s traffic in Bulgaria. When confronted with this fact, Kauder responded that he received information from Turkey by phone. This coincides with Ira Longin’s statement to Arnold Silver, the American investigator, in 1946 that he called from Istanbul to Kauder in Sofia. Also, Geisler told his Soviet interrogators that because of the problem with receiving radio messages from ‘Max’ in Berlin, in 1942 he met with Longin in Sofia twice and discussed this problem with him. But in 1943 Wagner’s investigators also discovered that Kauder and Longin had contacts with the Soviet Legation in Sofia and, possibly, were given information there.
Despite the suspicion, in September 1943 Kauder was allowed to move to Budapest, where he headed his own Abwehr outpost, Luftmeldekopf Südost (Air Intelligence Outpost, Southeast).12 By this time, Kauder’s group consisted of 25–30 members, of whom 6–7 were ciphering operators, and 4–5 were radio operators. All Kauder’s staff members were Jews or half-Jews, and being employed by the Bureau was crucial for their survival. Until August 1944, cables were sent to Vienna, and after that, to both Vienna and Berlin. For cover, the Bureau’s signboard said Bureau of the Preserve Plant ‘Fruits and Vegetables’.
After August 1944, when Abwehr I was included in Schellenberg’s SD as part of the Amt Mil (Military Department), Lieutenant Colonel Werner Ohletz, head of the Branch C (operations in the east), became responsible for Kauder’s network.13 In November 1944, the SD moved the ‘Klatt Bureau’ to the small town of Csorna in Hungary, while the Ast Vienna was relocated to the village of Obing in Bavaria.14
On February 12, 1945, two days before the Red Army took over Budapest, Kauder and his staff members were brought to Vienna. Austrian customs officers interrogated Kauder on suspicion of planning an escape to Switzerland.15 They confiscated his three metal boxes with cash, as well as an expensive stamp collection and jewelry that belonged to his mother and his mistress, Ivolia Kalman. Besides these valuables, Kauder declared that he had left 252 golden coins and 5,800 Swiss francs in the bank of Csorna.
Finally, Colonel Wiesel, head of Ast Vienna, arrested Kauder on Schellenberg’s order.16 SS-Hauptsturmführer Alfred Klausnitzer, who specially arrived from Berlin, continued interrogations, now about the Bureau. After being imprisoned for two months, Kauder was released because of the approaching Red Army.
Kauder’s Channels
While Kauder, Ivolia Kalman, Ira Longin, and General Turkul were caught by the Americans and British in 1945 and then intensely interrogated, SMERSH operatives arrested staff members of the ‘Klatt Bureau’, including Kauder’s wife, Gerda Filitz. This is known from a short description by Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev of the still secret Soviet archival file ‘Klatt’ in their book The Crown Jewels.175 The file contains materials from the SMERSH/MGB investigation of the Kauder case conducted in 1945–47. The SD investigator Klausnitzer was also captured and interrogated by SMERSH. Additionally, Franz von Bentivegni, former head of the Abwehr III, and Otto Armster, former head of the Ast Vienna, were questioned about Kauder.
Recently several excerpts from the transcripts of interrogations of these prisoners were published in Russian.18 On April 19, 1945 Gerda Filitz testified: ‘The “Klatt Bureau” was subordinated to the central intelligence organ Luftwaffe-1 Abwehr [Ast] in Vienna. At first Klatt was in contact with Lieutenant Colonel [Roland] von Wahl-[Welskirch] and then with Colonel Wiese… Additionally, “Klatt” had a direct connection with Berlin through SS-Brigadenführer [Walter] Schellenberg.’19 Von Wahl-Welskirch, whom Filitz mentioned, headed the referat Abwehr I Luft (intelligence on the air force) in the Ast Vienna. He was a friend of Kauder’s mother and employed Kauder in the Abwehr in 1939.20
According to Filitz, Ira Longin (she called him Langin) played the main role in providing Kauder with information about the Soviet Union:
The White Russian emigrant Langin Ivan [?], alias ‘Longo’, a Russian, an officer of the old [Czar’s] and White armies, emigrated [from Russia] in 1919 and lived in Budapest… While the Bureau was located in Budapest, Klatt personally involved Langin in its work.
Langin was connected with a counterrevolutionary organization, located in the Soviet Union… At first Langin was in contact [with the organization] through messengers, but from 1942 on, he contacted it by radio.
There was an agent who radioed cables from a military detachment located in the town of Tiflis [Tbilisi, Georgia]. A Russian military counterrevolutionary organization provided him with materials, and he sent the information to the ‘Klatt Bureau’. I know that this
agent worked with Langin until February 12, 1945, the day when the Gestapo arrested me.21
Later Filitz added that ‘Klatt didn’t know personally Langin’s people who provided him with information’.22 Valentina Deutsch, the arrested Kauder’s radio operator, added that Longin was subordinate to General Turkul. She described Kauder’s system of cables:
After receiving intelligence from the Soviet Union, Klatt used to personally look it through and make some changes, mostly editorial. Usually, Klatt took out the details that could have been unfavorable for the German high command. Then he gave the text of the radiogram to ciphering operators…
Klatt always marked Lang’s radiograms with the intelligence on the Soviet Union by [the name] ‘Max’…
Klatt marked the data about the British troops in the Near East by the name ‘Moritz’, the data about Turkey he marked ‘Anker’ or ‘Anatol’, and about Egypt, by the word ‘Ibis’.23
However, only Kauder, whom SMERSH interrogators did not have in their hands, could identify the meaning of his marks. Later he described to the British interrogators his system of sorting out cables from Turkey.24 ‘Ibis’ was a ship that sailed in the Black and Aegean seas, and Kauder paid the captain of this ship, who was a friend of Ira Longin, for gathering and transmitting the intelligence information. Most of these telegrams were sent to Sofia by the coastal police station in the port of the city of Burgos (Bulgaria).
In Ankara the Spanish pro-German diplomat Pedro Prat y Soutzo, a friend of General Turkul, agreed to use the Spanish Embassy for sending cables to Sofia. His assistant was trained in Sofia as a radio operator. George Romanoff, another of Ira Longin’s friends, used to bring the intelligence materials to the Embassy, and the Germans paid him for the information. These telegrams Kauder marked ‘Anchor’.
The same Romanoff also provided another of Kauder’s agents, his old friend Wilhelm Goetz, with the intelligence information. Goetz was a Jewish businessman from Budapest who had had problems with the Germans. With the help of Colonel Otto Hatz, the Hungarian Military Attaché to Sofia from 1941 and Ankara from 1943, Goetz was employed at the Hungarian Embassy in Ankara and sent cables from there. Kauder marked them ‘Islam’. However, in October 1944 Goetz defected to the British.