The Secret War

by Max Hastings

  ‘Otto’, the Soviet agent whom Gourevitch joined in Brussels, was Leopold Trepper, born in 1904 the son of a Galician shopkeeper, one of the key figures in Russia’s European intelligence operations, and later a heroic Soviet legend. As a young man, Trepper ran a Paris network which was rolled up by the French in 1933. He fled first to Germany, then to Russia where he found employment with Stalin’s spymasters while moonlighting as editor of a Jewish journal. Early in 1939 he was dispatched to Brussels, which was deemed a secure base from which he could forward information from the GRU’s network inside Germany. Centre boasted of running two important Berlin agents: Ilse Stöbe, who worked in the press department of Ribbentrop’s Foreign Ministry, and a diplomat named Rudolf Shelia. Trepper carried a Canadian passport in the name of Adam Mikler, stolen during the Spanish Civil War. He was married with two sons, but only one accompanied him to Brussels – the other, seven-year-old Michael, remained in Moscow. Trepper became known to his sources in Western Europe as ‘le grand chef’, while Gourevitch was ‘le petit chef’. Soviet narratives lavish praise on the Trepper network for its services to the socialist cause, and it was plainly useful as a post office for the messages of Stöbe and Mikler. But it seems unlikely that Trepper recruited useful informants of his own. The foremost achievement of the GRU agents in Belgium was to stay at liberty, make some friends and create lifestyles that supported their cover stories.

  Of more importance to Moscow – certainly from 1941 onwards – were the GRU’s organisations based in Switzerland. These would later channel towards the Kremlin material derived from Berlin sources such as Western agent-runners could only dream of. One network had been established in 1937 by German-born Rachel Dübendorfer. A larger group, which became known as the ‘Lucy’ Ring, was run by Dr Alexander Radó – ‘Dora’ – a ‘sleeper’ permitted by his chiefs to slumber almost as long as Sleeping Beauty. A Hungarian, Marxist from his youth, Radó served as a commissar in Budapest’s 1919 Red Terror. Obliged to flee when Admiral Horthy became Hungary’s dictator, for a time he ran an émigré Resistance group in Vienna. He then decamped to Moscow, where he received intelligence training, and was deemed sufficiently significant to be introduced to Lenin. Posted to Western Europe, he served as an agent in Berlin and Paris, under cover as a correspondent for the Soviet news agency TASS. After marrying a German communist with whom he had two children, he tried to settle in Brussels, but was sent packing by the authorities, who held a thick dossier on him. Instead he went to Switzerland, where he parleyed a lifelong passion for maps into the creation of a cartographic publishing business, which quickly became profitable.

  The Swiss police watched Radó for a while, then left him alone when they decided he was what he seemed – a quiet-living fellow, forty in 1939, who simply wanted to turn an honest penny. Radó was word-painted by one of his wireless-operators, an Englishman named Alexander Foote: ‘With his mild eyes blinking behind glasses, he looked exactly like almost anyone to be found in any suburban train anywhere in the world.’ Moscow instructed its man to do nothing until Europe erupted. Radó settled down quite happily with his maps, which enabled him to make a living without much recourse to GRU funds. When his handler was recalled to Moscow during the Purges, Radó for a time lost contact with his chiefs. But he made useful local friends, some of them communists, others not. One was a Swiss socialist, Otto Punter, who admired the Soviet Union and had worked for the Republicans in Spain. Punter forged connections in Germany, and with some German émigrés in Switzerland such as Baron Michel von Godin. Von Godin recruited the Vichy French press attaché, Louis Suss, codename ‘Salter’. The Chinese press attaché Pao Hsien Chu – ‘Polo’ – was another source, and Punter also had connections with influential local Catholics.

  Radó’s comrade Alexander Foote always claimed to have been an adventurer rather than a communist ideologue. A round-faced, bespectacled, mildly seedy young Englishman, in September 1938 he returned from service in Spain with the International Brigade. A few months later, one of Moscow’s British recruiters offered him unspecified new employment for the workers’ cause in Switzerland. Cheap melodrama was not lacking. In obedience to instructions, Foote reported to the main post office in Geneva at noon one day, wearing a white scarf and holding a leather belt. He was approached by a woman who fulfilled her side of the identification procedure by holding a string shopping bag and an orange. She asked in English where he had bought his belt, and he replied implausibly, at an ironmonger’s shop in Paris. When he had then asked where he could buy an orange like hers, she introduced herself. She was ‘Sonya’, Ursula Hamburger* of the GRU, whom Foote was pleased to find was no squat commissar, but instead an attractive woman of thirty-one, with ‘a good figure and even better legs’. This remarkable personality was the daughter of a Berlin economist. At the age of eleven she was briefly a child actress before taking up an alternative career in espionage. She was already a veteran of exploits in China for which she had been awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

  Hamburger instructed Foote to travel to Munich, establish himself in the city, learn German and make friends. He was given 2,000 Swiss francs and told to meet her again in three months in Lausanne – once again, at the post office. Keeping this rendezvous after a German sojourn that was uneventful save for a chance glimpse of Hitler lunching in a restaurant, he was told that he was now on the GRU payroll as a ‘collaborator’, at a salary of US$150 a month plus reasonable expenses. Given the cover name ‘Jim’, and various means of making contact if ‘Sonya’ disappeared for any reason, he was then sent back to Munich with an advance of US$900 in cash. Nothing significant happened thereafter until in April 1939 he was visited by an old International Brigade comrade from Spain, Len Brewer, British-born son of German parents, whom he appears to have introduced to Hamburger, who promptly recruited him. In August he was summoned to yet another meeting, this time at Hamburger’s home, a chalet at Caux-sur-Montreux where she lived in incongruous bourgeois domesticity with her two children, Maik and Janina, and an old German nurse. Foote was disconcerted by the casualness with which his hostess left components of her wireless transmitter lying around the house.

  The GRU ring in Switzerland was as traumatised as many other communists around the world by the August 1939 Nazi–Soviet Pact. Foote felt that it hit Hamburger even harder than himself; that her faith in the omniscience of the Party was shattered: ‘I think that from that time onwards her heart was not in the work’ – this seems implausible, since she later became courier for the atomic spy Klaus Fuchs, and died an avowed Stalinist. Desperate to get out of Switzerland, she divorced her husband and married Len Brewer. Initially, according to Foote, this was merely an arrangement of convenience to secure a ‘shoe’ – a passport – but then the couple fell in love. Their plans were momentarily threatened when their maid, Lisa, became disaffected and telephoned the British consulate to denounce them anonymously as communist spies. But the girl’s English was so poor that nobody at the other end understood, or at least took notice.

  Days before the outbreak of war, Foote boarded a train bound for Germany once more, only to find his handler suddenly pushing her way along the carriage to reach him, just before departure time. She told him to get off, fast. New orders had come from Moscow: war was imminent; he must stay in Switzerland. During the period that followed, in which the ‘Lucy’ Ring was temporarily dormant, while living at a small pension in Montreux both Foote and Len Brewer learned how to operate a shortwave radio transmitter. They practised on Hamburger’s set, though its performance was not improved by being buried in her garden between transmissions – then waited to be given messages to transmit to Moscow.

  Even as the GRU’s Swiss networks were bedding down, Centre’s German sources were already producing information of extraordinary quality. The first musician in what became known to history as the ‘Red Orchestra’ was recruited following an approach to the Soviet embassy one day in 1929, by an ex-Berlin policeman named Ernst Kur. He offered his services
as an informant, and was promptly recruited by the local NKVD resident as agent A/70. Kur, a rackety and often drunken boor, had been dismissed from the police, but proved to have a critical contact in its counter-intelligence branch, who was soon designated by the Russians as agent A/201. On 7 September Moscow messaged its Berlin station: ‘We are very interested in your new agent, A/201. Our only fear is that you have got yourselves into one of the most dangerous predicaments where the slightest indiscretion on the part of either A/201 or A/70 could lead to multiple misfortunes. We think it necessary to look into the issue of a special channel of communication with A/201.’ Investigation showed that it was A/201 – an officer named Willy Lehmann, who had prompted Kur’s approach to the Russians, using him as a cut-out during their exploratory dealings.

  Lehmann was born in 1884, and served twelve years in the Kaiser’s navy before becoming a policeman. His NKVD file spoke in the highest terms of his character, though noting the existence of a long-term mistress, Florentina Liverskaya, a thirty-eight-year-old seamstress who lived and worked at 21 Blumenstrasse. She was described, somewhat ungenerously, as a short woman with reddish hair and a plump face. When Kur started using his payments from the Soviet embassy to fund extravagant drinking sprees, Lehmann and his handler agreed that this now redundant intermediary must be got out of the way. With unusual sensitivity for Centre, instead of being pushed under a tram, in 1933 the dissolute ex-cop was rehoused in Sweden, where he passed the rest of his days as a small trader, occasionally moonlighting as an informant.

  Lehmann, codenamed ‘Breitenbach’, thereafter became one of Moscow’s most valued German agents. For some time his handler was Vasily Zarubin, an NKVD star. Born in 1894, highly intelligent and personable though largely self-educated, Zarubin served successively in China and Europe as an ‘illegal’, latterly under cover as a Czech engineer. A cheerfully gregarious figure, though with ample blood on his hands, he spoke several languages and forged a warm relationship with Lehmann. Although Zarubin occasionally gave the policeman modest sums of money, Lehmann never appeared greedy, and seemed keen to assist the Russians simply because he disliked his own nation’s government – an animosity that became much more marked after the Nazis gained power.

  Lehmann gave Moscow details about the structure and activities of Germany’s various intelligence organisations, and warned of forthcoming operations against Soviet interests. He provided samples of Abwehr codes, and passed on gossip about Nazi power struggles. He himself worked latterly in the Gestapo’s Department IVE, ultimately under Himmler’s control, and was made responsible for security at especially sensitive defence plants. Thus in 1935 he attended some early German rocket tests at Peenemünde, and produced a report on them which reached Stalin. He also acquired considerable information about other military and naval technological developments. As the Nazis tightened their grip during the 1930s, Lehmann became increasingly nervous about meeting Zarubin, or indeed any Soviet agent. He found himself under surveillance, as a result of a bizarre coincidence. A woman quarrelled with her lover, and denounced him to the authorities as a Russian spy: this proved to be another Gestapo officer, also named Lehmann. The muddle was eventually cleared up, and the shadow was lifted from ‘Breitenbach’. But in 1935 he asked for a false passport in case he had to run in a hurry, and this was duly provided. When Zarubin reported that Lehmann had fallen seriously ill, the news prompted a panic in Moscow: Centre declared that its most precious German source must be kept alive at any cost, and that the NKVD would meet his medical bills if the money could somehow be laundered. ‘Breitenbach’ recovered.

  Later that year the GRU made a sudden decision to wind up its German networks amid the Nazis’ ruthless persecution of known communists, and to make a fresh start, beginning at the top. Both the Berlin station chief and his deputy were recalled to Moscow and liquidated. Early in 1937, the NKVD’s Zarubin also fell victim to the Purges. He was summoned home, and at an interview with Beria accused of treason. After interrogation, unusually he was neither executed nor cleared, but instead demoted. He remained for a time in Moscow, serving as assistant to a novice intelligence officer, Vladimir Pavlov.

  Before Zarubin’s abrupt departure from Berlin, he transferred the handling of ‘Breitenbach’ to a woman named Clemens, one of his staff. She scarcely spoke German, but there was nobody else, and he himself expected soon to return. As matters fell out, Clemens was obliged to assume ongoing responsibility for the relationship, exchanging envelopes containing orders and information, which were then passed to another NKVD illegal, Ruben, who soon found himself the sole surviving member of the Berlin station as the Purges claimed ever more victims – the GRU’s Major Simon Gendin, who had sent Gourevitch to Brussels, was shot in February 1939.

  Zarubin, in Moscow, contrived to send a note to ‘Breitenbach’, assuring him that he was not forgotten by his friends; that he should continue his intelligence activities, while exercising extreme caution. The Gestapo officer replied: ‘I have no reasons to worry. I am sure that they [in Moscow Centre] also know over there that everything is being done responsibly here, everything that can be done. So far there is no great need for anyone to visit from there. I will inform you if this will become necessary.’ As the NKVD’s silence became protracted, however, Lehmann grew frustrated and impatient. He sent another message to Zarubin via Clemens: ‘Just when I was able to make good deals, the company there stopped being interested in doing business with me, for completely unknown reasons.’ Zarubin responded soothingly that ‘the company’ tremendously valued his work, and besought him to keep going – which he did, until November 1938. But then, as the Soviet intelligence machine became paralysed by its domestic contortions, all contact between ‘Breitenbach’ and Moscow was lost: the relationship was not restored until the autumn of 1940.

  Willy Lehmann was by no means Moscow’s only German source, nor even any longer its most important. One day in 1935 a Luftwaffe officer named Harro Schulze-Boysen, who held a senior post in Hermann Göring’s Air Ministry, contacted the Soviet embassy in Berlin with an offer of information, which was immediately accepted. He was given the codename ‘Corporal’, and NKVD file 34122. Schulze-Boysen was a champagne socialist from a smart Berlin family of intellectual inclinations – Admiral Tirpitz was among his forebears. From his desk in the Air Ministry he forged contacts in army staff communications, among Abwehr officers, and also with Hans Henniger, a government inspector of Luftwaffe equipment. Göring gave away the bride at his 1936 wedding, to the beautiful and exuberant Libertas Haas-Heye, who had worked for a time as a Berlin press officer for MGM Films. She now learned to share Schulze-Boysen’s political convictions and the burden of his labours for the Soviet Union, and her bed with a legion of lovers.

  At about the same time, but independently, a senior civil servant in the economics ministry, Arvid Harnack, contacted the Soviet embassy, and was likewise recruited as agent ‘Corsican’, NKVD file 34118. Harnack was born in 1901 into a scholarly family in Darmstadt. He qualified as a lawyer and practised as an economist, spending some time in the United States. At the University of Wisconsin’s Madison campus he met Mildred Fish, a strikingly handsome and serious-minded student of English. They were married in 1929, and elected to live in Germany. Both were keenly interested in Marxism – they made a tour of the Soviet Union, and in 1932 launched a political study group. When Arvid began to pass information to the Russians, and to recruit fellow-foes of Hitler to his ring, he joined the Nazi Party to improve his protective colouring. Meanwhile both he and Schulze-Boysen steadily extended their groups of like-minded intellectual foes of Hitler. Between them, by 1939 they had opened windows into some of the most influential institutions in Nazi Germany.

  Moscow now made a serious security mistake: it ordered that the two networks should collaborate. Their guiding spirits had very different temperaments. Schulze-Boysen was an exuberant, impulsive extrovert; Harnack was a quiet, intense intellectual, whose impeccable middle-class background enabled
himself and his friends for years to escape the attention of the Gestapo and the Abwehr. The two men nonetheless forged a close relationship, driven by shared hatred of the Nazis and romantic enthusiasm for the Soviet Union. Until June 1941 they had no need of wirelesses, merely transmitting information through the Russians’ Berlin military attaché.

  One of the most striking aspects of espionage is that its processes, the mere business of living a covert existence, acquire a life of their own, heedless of spies’ achievements as collectors of information. Anatoli Gourevitch, in his memoirs, touches on a weakness in his own training which might be applied to the experience of many other agents. He was exhaustively instructed in techniques – secret inks, passwords for rendezvous and suchlike. No matching effort, however, was expended upon explaining the purpose of his mission: ‘Why was so little heed paid to the means by which I might obtain information, to the whole organisational aspect of the business of intelligence-gathering?’ In other words, and as Gourevitch’s subsequent career illustrated, for many secret agents the management and perils of daily existence consumed a lion’s share of their energies, often overwhelming the function that mattered – the acquisition of information of value to their service and its government.