Smersh: Stalin's Secret Weapon: Soviet Military Counterintelligence in WWII
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Vlasov refused to follow Yakushev’s order to get out of his car and follow Yakushev to the headquarters of the 162nd Tank Brigade. His reason was that he was going to the American Army headquarters and that they were on the territory controlled by American troops.
Only after Yakushev threatened to shoot Vlasov on the spot was Vlasov forced to take a place in the car. On the way Vlasov tried to jump out of the car, but he was recaptured…
Yakushev handed Vlasov over to Colonel Mishchenko [Commander of the 162nd Tank Brigade].
In a conversation with Com.[rade] Mishchenko, Vlasov repeated that he needed to go to the American headquarters.
After a short conversation, on May 12 [1945], at 18:00, Com.[rade] Mishchenko brought Vlasov to me…
After questioning Vlasov and talking to him, I suggested that he write an order to all [his] units to give up arms and join our side.
Vlasov agreed and immediately wrote the order.
The order was typed in four copies and signed by Vlasov…54
On May 12, 1945, at 22:00, Vlasov was brought to the headquarters of the 13th Army. Colonel Zubkov, head of the Staff of the 25th Tank Corps, and Lieutenant Colonel Simonov, head of the OKR SMERSH, escorted him. On May 13, he was handed over to the OKR SMERSH of the 13th Army. Most probably, Fominykh and Zubkov fabricated the story that Vlasov, a man almost six feet tall, had tried to hide under a blanket in his car. It is also unclear whether Vlasov or Fominykh wrote the order to the troops because Bunyachenko’s name was misspelled in it the same way as in Fominykh’s report. Furthermore, knowing the Soviet treatment of traitors, it is hard to believe that Vlasov himself wrote the order’s last phrase: ‘The safety of everyone’s life and their return to the Motherland without repercussions are guaranteed.’55
In a 1996 interview, Yakushev described the details of Vlasov’s seizure more realistically than in his report, and the story was different.56 In fact, there was a jeep with American officers in Vlasov’s column, and a second jeep with Americans arrived after the officers in the first jeep contacted their headquarters by radio when the incident started. Yakushev claimed that to prevent an American intervention, he told them that Vlasov was a traitor and he would bring him to the American headquarters. It remains unclear how he could explain all this to the Americans in Russian. Probably, the Americans simply did not understand what was going on and did not intervene.
According to Yakushev’s account, he climbed into Vlasov’s car and ordered Vlasov’s driver to turn around and drive to the Soviet-controlled territory instead of going to the American headquarters. Vlasov tried to escape, but Yakushev threatened to shoot him. Apparently, Vlasov was unarmed and could not resist. At 8:00 p.m. Yakushev handed Vlasov over to Major General Fominykh.
Abakumov immediately informed Beria of Vlasov’s capture:
According to the SMERSH Directorate of the 1st Ukrainian Front report, on May 12 of this year [1945], the traitor Vlasov was detained near the city of Prague. He was going by car in the direction of the Allies.
On the suggestion of…Maj. Gen. Fominykh, Vlasov ordered his servicemen to join the Red Army’s side. Yesterday a division of 10,000 men surrendered to our troops.
I have ordered head of the SMERSH Directorate of the 1st Ukrainian Front, Lt. Gen. [Nikolai] Osetrov, to bring Vlasov under heavy guard to the Main Directorate SMERSH.
Abakumov.57
Vlasov was transported to Moscow and placed in Lubyanka Prison as Prisoner No. 31, which meant that he was held as a secret prisoner in Cell 31. Abakumov was waiting to conduct the first interrogation by himself.
Notes
1. Mikhail Koryakov, I’ll Never Go Back, translated from the Russian by Nicholas Wreden (London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1948), 59–61.
2. Zhukov’s orders to the 1st and 2nd Tank Armies on April 20), quoited in O. A. Rzheshevsky, ‘Poslednii shturm: Zhukov ili Konev,’ Mir istorii, no. 5 (2001) (in Russian), http://militera.lib.ru/research/rzheshevsky1/02.html, retrieved September 9, 2011.
3. Table on page 171 in G. F. Krivosheev et al., Velikaya Otechestvennaya bez grifa sekretnosti. Kniga poter’ (Moscow: Veche, 2009) (in Russian).
4. Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab, 424–6, 436
5. G. K. Zhukov, Vospominaniya i razmyshleniya Vol. 2 (Moscow: OLMAPress, 2002), 330–2 (in Russian).
6. Antony Beevor, The Fall of Berlin 1945 (New York: Viking, 2002), 403–5.
7. Memoirs by Lyushen’ka Glushkova, the NKVD cook (the NKVD had its own schools for cooks) in Tat’yana Romashenkova, ‘Lichnyi povar Zhukova,’ Rossiiskaya gazeta, no. 3768, May 13, 2005 (in Russian), http://www.rg.ru/2005/05/13/povar.html, retrieved September 9, 2011.
8. GKO Order No. 8377ss, dated May 2, 1945. Document No. 306 in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD, 511.
9. An interview with Colonel Ivan Klimenko in Yekaterina Sazheneva and Yurii Rabotin, ‘Ispoved’ posle smerti,’ Moskovskii komsomolets, May 7, 2005 (in Russian).
10. Details in James P. O’Donnell, The Bunker: The History of the Reich Chancellery Group (New York: Da Capo Press, 2001), 177–215.
11. Traudl Junge, Until the Final Hour: Hitler’s Last Secretary, translated from the German by Anthea Bell (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2004), 180–1.
12. Details in ibid. and Joachim Fest, Inside Hitler’s Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004).
13. Ye. M. Rzhevskaya, Berlin, mai 1945: Zapiski voennogo perevodchika (Moscow: Voennaya literatura, 1986), 146 (in Russian).
14. Details in Martyn Merzhanov, Tak eto bylo (poslednie dni fashistskogo Berlina) (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1975) (in Russian), http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/WEGER/merzhanow.txt, retrieved September 9, 2011.
15. An interview with L. G. Ivanov in Il’ya Zubko, ‘Tovarishch polkovnik, ya Gebbelsa nashel!’, Samara segodnya, May 8, 2005, http://news.samaratoday.ru/news/57530/, retrieved September 9, 2011.
16. Rzhevskaya, Berlin, 73–75.
17. For instance, Ada Petrova and Peter Watson, The Death of Hitler: The Full Story with New Evidence from Secret Russian Archives (New York: W. W.Norton and Company, 1995).
18. Rzhevskaya, Berlin, 86–156.
19. Weidling’s testimony on May 8, quoted in Vladimir A. Kozlov, ‘Gde Gitler?’ Povtornoe rassledovanie NKVD–MVD SSSR obstoyatel’stv ischeznoveniya Adolfa Gitlera (1945–1949) (Moscow: Tri kvadrata, 2003), 48 (in Russian).
20. Rzhevskaya, Berlin, 154.
21. Ibid., 158–9.
22. Photos of fragments of Hitler’s and Braun’s jaws in Hitler’s Death: Russia’s Last Great Secret from the Files of the KGB, edited by J. E. Pogonyi et al., 97–98 (London: Chaucer Press, 2005).
23. Mark Benecke, ‘Hitler’s Skull and Teeth,’ Annals of Improbable Research 9 (2003), no. 2, 9–10; http://wiki.benecke.com/index.php?title=2003_AIR:_ Hitler%C2%B4s_Skull_%26_Teeth, retrieved September 9, 2011.
24. This group included Rattenhuber, Voss, Weidling, Möhnke, and Wilhelm Eckhold, head of Goebbels’s guards.
25. Rzhevskaya, Berlin, 171–2. Dr. Hugo Blaschke was captured by the Americans and released in 1948.
26. Shkaravsky’s medical report in Lev Bezymensky, Operatsiya ‘Mif,’ ili skol’ko raz khoronili Gitlera (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1995), 92–98, 121 (in Russian).
27. Rzhevskaya, Berlin, 173–4.
28. Abakumov’s letter to Beria, dated June 22, 1945, quoted in Petrov, Pervyi predsedatel’ KGB, 60–61.
29. Kozlov, Gde Gitler?, 66–67; the report by Vadis, in Bezymensky, Operatsiya ‘Mif,’ 111–7.
30. An interview with Vasilii Gorbushin in ibid., 121.
31. Rzhevskaya, Berlin, 453–4.
32. Klimenko’s recollections quoted in Boris Sokolov, Neizvestnyi Zhukov: Portret bez retushi v zerkale epokhi (Minsk: Rodiola-Plus, 2000), 545–6 (in Russian).
33. K. Simonov, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniya (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo APN, 1988), 414 (in Russian).
34. R. C. Raack, ‘With Smersh in Berlin: New Light on the
Incomplete Histories of the Führer and the Vozhd’,’ World Affairs 154, no. 2 (1991), 47–55.
35. Photos on pages 114–5 in Hitler’s Death. Also, reports in Bezymensky, Operatsiya ‘Mif,’ 162–7.
36. Uki Gonui, ‘Tests on Skull Fragment Cast Doubt on Adolf Hitler Suicide Story,’ The Observer, September 27, 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/27/adolf-hitler-suicide-skull-fragment, retrieved September 8, 2011.
37. Details in Kozlov, Gde Gitler?, 168–76.
38. Boris Khavkin, ‘“Satrap” i general “Prezus”,’ Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, February 4, 2006 (in Russian), http://nvo.ng.ru/history/2006-02-03/5_paulus. html, retrieved September 9, 2011.
39. The English version: The Hitler Book: The Secret Dossier Prepared for Stalin from Interrogations of Otto Guensche and Heinz Linge, Hitler’s Personal Aides, edited by Henrik Ederle and Matthias Uhl, translated from German by Giles Mac-Donogh (New York: PublicAffairs, 2005).
40. Documents on the Operation ‘Archive’ in Hitler’s Death, 331–7.
41. Vladislav Kramar, ‘Gruppa v Drezdene byla nebol’shaya, no moshchnaya,’ Voenno-promyshlennyi kur’er, no. 47 (114), December 14–20 (2005), 7 (in Russian), http://vpk-news.ru/site_media/pdf/issue_114.pdf, retrieved September 9, 2011.
42. Quoted in Petrov, Pervyi predsedatel’ KGB, 49.
43. Details in Aleksandrov, Russkie soldaty Vermakhta, 319–56. c
44. Romanov, Nights Are Longest There, 150.
45. The date of Schörner’s arrest on his prisoner card in Vladimir Prison Archive.
46. Nicola Sinevirsky, SMERSH (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1950), 141–2.
47. For instance, Catherine Andreyev and Ivan Savicky, Russia Abroad: Prague and the Russian Diaspora, 1928–1939 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004).
48. Sinevirsky, SMERSH, 163.
49. Dolgorukov’s prisoner card from Vladimir Prison Archive.
50. Quoted in Tatiyana Galanshina, Igor Zakurdaev and Sergei Loginov, Vladimirskii tsentral (Moscow: Eksmo, 2007), 74 (in Russian).
51. A note on Pyotr Dolgorukov’s prisoner card, the Vladimir Prison Archive.
52. Lyudmila Bobrovskaya, ‘Rozhdenie i gibel’ Russkogo Arkhiva v Prage,’ Russkii zhurnal, October 3 (2003) (in Russian), http://old.russ.ru/ist_ sovr/20031003_bobrov.html, retrieved September 9, 2011.
53. Romanov, Nights Are Longest, 150.
54. Report to the Military Council of the 1st Ukrainian Front signed by Major General Fominykh and Colonel Zubkov. Document No. 129 in Russkii Arkhiv. Velikaya Otechestvennaya. Bitva za Berlin. Dokumenty i materially, T. 15 (4–5) (Moscow: Terra, 1995), 170–2 (in Russian).
55. Document No. 128 in Russkii Arkhiv. Velikaya Otechestvennaya. Bitva za Berlin, T. 15 (4–5) (Moscow, Terra, 1995), 170.
56. M. I. Yakushev, ‘Kak ya vykral generala Vlasova,’ Argumenty i fakty, No. 19 (May 1996) (in Russian).
57. Cited in O. S. Smyslov, General Abakumov. Vsesil’nyi khozyain SMERSHa (Moscow: Veche, 2005), 273 (in Russian).
CHAPTER 24
The End of Abwehr
Hans Piekenbrock, head of Abwehr I from 1939 to March 1943, was among SMERSH’s important prisoners captured in May 1945 not far from Prague. Promoted to Major General in April 1943, he commanded the 208th Infantry Division, which participated in the Kursk Battle in Russia, the biggest tank battle and the greatest German tank failure. In March 1944, Piekenbrock became Lieutenant General, and his division fought in Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, and Silesia. While Piekenbrock was fighting, the Abwehr ceased to exist as an independent intelligence organization.
Abwehr’s Decline
The Abwehr’s decline occurred gradually in 1943–44. In mid-March 1943, Canaris, together with Piekenbrock, Erwin Lahousen (head of Abwehr II) and Franz von Bentivegni (head of Abwehr III) visited the headquarters of Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, commander of the German Army Group Center, located near Smolensk. General Henning von Tresckow, chief of Kluge’s General Staff, and his adjutant Fabian von Schlabrendorff, were also present at the meeting. All participants came to a mutual understanding that, as von Schlabrendorff put it, ‘Only Hitler’s death will put an end to this mad slaughter of people in the concentration camps and in the armies fighting this criminal war.’1 A few days later Schlabrendorff smuggled a time bomb, disguised as bottles of cognac, onto an aircraft that carried Hitler. The bomb failed to detonate because of the extreme cold in the aircraft’s cargo space. Schlabrendorff managed to retrieve the bomb. Later, on July 20, 1944 the Gestapo arrested Schlabrendorff and he was kept in a number of concentration camps. On May 5, 1945 the Fifth U.S. Army liberated Schlabrendorff along with a group of other prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp.
In the spring of 1943, Wilhelm Keitel, commander in chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces (OKW), irritated by the Abwehr’s inefficiency, ordered the replacement of heads of the Abwehr I-III.2 Soon Piekenbrock and Lahousen were sent to the Eastern Front and did not participate in the further plots to kill Hitler. From March 1943 onwards, Colonel Georg Hansen headed Abwehr I, while Colonel Wessel Freiherr von Freytag-Loringhoven headed Abwehr II. Both Hansen and Freytag-Loringhoven were also members of the anti-Hitler plot, and in July 1944 Freytag-Loringhoven even supplied Graf Claus von Stauffenberg with explosives for killing Hitler.
In February 1944, Hitler dismissed Canaris after the Gestapo arrested two high-ranking Abwehr officers on charges of treason, and Colonel Hansen replaced him.3 In June 1944, Abwehr I and II were merged together and became the Militarisches Amt (or Mil Amt) of Walter Schellenberg’s SD. Hansen headed Mil Amt until he was arrested as a member of the July 20, 1944 plot, and Schellenberg headed both the SD and Mil Amt until the end of the war. In the Mil Amt Erwin Stolze, who was previously responsible for diversions in Soviet territory, was charged with the training of terrorists sent to the rear of the Allied troops.4
On July 22, 1944, two days after von Stauffenberg’s unsuccessful attempt on Hitler’s life, the Gestapo arrested Hansen and, on the next day, Canaris.5 Freytag-Loringhoven committed suicide on July 26, before the Gestapo could get him. Soon, on September 8, Hansen was executed in Plötenzee Prison in Berlin.
In August 1944, the Gestapo investigators found Canaris’s diary in which he had written that since 1938 he headed a resistance group within the Abwehr. The diary was given to the above-mentioned Rattenhuber, head of Hitler’s guards, who handed it over to Ernst Kaltenbrunner, head of the RSHA. Hitler read it on April 6, 1945, and on his order, the next day a special SS tribunal sentenced Canaris to death.
Two days later he was hanged slowly with a piano-wire noose in the Flossenbürg concentration camp. The SS-executioners were in a hurry to finish off Canaris: American troops were not far away from the camp. Before he left his cell, Canaris tapped out a message to an imprisoned Danish officer Hans Lunding, who was in the neighboring cell: ‘I am dying for my country. I have a clear conscience…I did no more than my patriotic duty in trying to oppose the criminal madness of Hitler, who was leading Germany to its ruin. It was in vain, as I know now that my country will go under, as I knew already in 1942.’6
After Hansen and Canaris’s arrests more reorganization of the former Abwehr followed. Abwehr III was divided among the SD, the Gestapo, and the OKW.7 The latter part, known as the Truppenabwehr, included counterintelligence in the German troops, navy, and air force, as well as in the POW camps and the German Field Police (GFP). Part of the Brandenburg-800 division (within Abwehr II) joined Otto Skorzeny’s special commandos unit SS-Jagdverband attached to the SD. The other part was included in the tank corps Grossdeutschland.
On December 1, 1944, Walli I and III were transferred to Schellenberg’s Mil Amt and became its Branch F. Later, in April 1945, escaping the advancing Soviet troops, Walli I moved to Bavaria.
As for Bentivegni, he headed Abwehr III until March 1944, when he joined the army. In August 1944, Bentivegni was promoted to Major General, and in January 1945, to Lieutenant General. On May 15, 1945
SMERSH operatives captured Bentivegni, at the time commander of the 81st Infantry Division, among numerous prisoners taken in the Courland Pocket in Latvia.8 The Army Group Courland of about 181,000 men was the last German unit that fought on Soviet territory until their surrender on May 9, 1945.
Bruno Streckenbach, Heydrich’s former deputy in the RSHA and the Einsatzgruppen supervisor, was also captured in Courland. In September 1942, he was transferred from the RSHA to the Waffen SS, and from April 1944 onwards, Streckenbach commanded the 19th SS Waffen Grenadier Division, part of the Latvian Legion. Later promoted to Waffen-SS Lieutenant General, he was captured on May 22, 1945.9
On May 31, 1945 SMERSH operatives caught Erwin Stolze in Berlin in civilian clothes.10 In 1947, he testified: ‘At the beginning of April 1945…Walter Schellenberg issued an instruction that prescribed…in case the Red Army threatens to take over Berlin, to prepare false documents in advance, to destroy operational documents, to go into hiding and wait for new instructions. I followed this order.’11 In the underground, Stolze headed a network of 800 Nazi terrorists.
In February 1946, Soviet prosecutors presented testimonies of Piekenbrock, Bentivegni, and Stolze, written during interrogations in GUKR SMERSH, at the International Nuremberg Trial.12 Lahousen, a rare survivor of the Abwehr resistance, personally testified in the courtroom against the Nazi defendants.
Piekenbrock, Bentivegni, Stolze, and Streckenbach remained in Moscow MGB investigation prisons until February 1952, when the Military Tribunal of the Moscow Military District sentenced Stolze to death, and Bentivegni and Streckenbach, to twenty-five years in labor camps.13 On March 26, 1952 Stolze was executed.
However, the Military Collegium changed Bentivegni and Streckenbach’s punishment to imprisonment, and convicted Piekenbrock to the same term. After spending three years in Vladimir Prison, in October 1955 the three were released and returned to Germany.