Smersh: Stalin's Secret Weapon: Soviet Military Counterintelligence in WWII

by Vadim Birstein

  Rudenko’s letter and his agreement with the Allied delegations did not save the Soviet prosecution from a courtroom discussion of secret protocols that were part of the Soviet–German Non-Aggression Pact signed in August 1939. On March 25, 1946, Dr. Alfred Seidl, counsel to Rudolf Hess, presented to the court an affidavit written by the former chief of the legal department of the German Foreign Office, Dr. Friedrich Gaus.71 Gaus had participated in negotiations with the Soviets in Moscow in 1939, and his affidavit attested to the existence of secret protocols. Then, during the cross-examination by Seidl, the defendant Joachim von Ribbentrop, former German foreign minister, and then the witness Ernst von Weizsäcker, former state secretary in the German Foreign Office, confirmed Gaus’s affidavit and details of the secret protocols it contained.72

  After a recess, the president ruled: ‘The Tribunal has decided not to put the document to the witness.’ Apparently, during the recess a confidential agreement was worked out with Rudenko.

  For Rudenko’s assistant, Major General of Justice Nikolai Zorya, Seidl’s démarche ended up being fatal. On May 21, 1946, Seidl visited the Soviet prosecutors’ office, wishing to discuss photocopies of the secret protocols with Rudenko. Only General Zorya was in the office, and Seidl talked to him instead. As Seidl recalled, after thinking over the matter of the photocopies, General Zorya answered: ‘There is no point in having such a conversation.’73

  The next day the American newspaper St. Louis Post-Dispatch published texts of the protocols. It is unknown whether Seidl had given a copy to the newspaper. The day after that, on May 23, Gennadii Samoilov, a SMERSH officer, found General Zorya dead in his hotel room with a wound to his head.

  Until his own death in 1998, General Zorya’s son, Yurii, was convinced that his father’s death was connected with the presentation of the Katyn massacre question by Soviet prosecutors in Nuremberg, an issue tightly connected with the secret Soviet–German protocols.74 From the beginning Rudenko and other Soviet prosecutors tried to include in the indictment the accusation that German defendants had killed 11,000 Polish officers taken as prisoners of war in 1939 by the Red Army. Despite Rudenko’s objections, on March 12, 1946, the Tribunal complied with the request of Goering’s counsel, Dr. Otto Stahmer, to call witnesses to rebut the Soviet version of events.75 The cross-examination of witnesses presented by both sides took place on July 1 and 2, 1946.76 The testimonies of German witnesses destroyed the Soviet version. Tatiana Stupnikova, the Russian translator of the German testimony, recalled that all Soviet representatives who were in the courtroom on July 1, 1946, called that day ‘the black day of the Nuremberg Trial.’77 However, the Tribunal did not make any conclusive statement on the issue, and the Soviet prosecutors made no attempt to return to the Katyn question again.

  No direct evidence presented in Nuremberg connected General Zorya with the issue of the Katyn massacre. The published minutes of the meeting of the Vyshinsky Commission on May 21, 1946, containing instructions regarding Katyn, did not mention Zorya.78 Abakumov was ordered to prepare Bulgarian witnesses, while Merkulov’s duties included preparing Soviet medical experts, medical documents (which were forged), and a German witness. Vyshinsky was placed in charge of a documentary film about the massacre, and USSR Chief Prosecutor Safonov was responsible for preparing Polish witnesses. Since this was a plan involving massive falsification, it is possible that Zorya opposed it.

  Prosecutors Rudenko and Gorshenin informed Stalin that Zorya had committed suicide. This is also possible if Zorya was afraid of Stalin’s retaliation after the secret protocols appeared in an American newspaper.79 In Nuremberg, Likhachev disseminated a rumor that Stalin said about Zorya: ‘Bury him like a dog!’80

  The Soviet delegation was suspiciously hasty in getting rid of the body. On the morning of the death, Rudenko went to the office of chief U.S. prosecutor Robert Jackson to ask his permission to move Zorya’s body from Nuremberg in the American occupation zone to Leipzig in the Soviet zone.81 Rudenko told Jackson that Zorya had accidentally killed himself while cleaning his gun. When Jackson sent two of his people to check out the story, they informed him that it was highly unlikely that a Soviet general would have been cleaning his own gun with the muzzle pointed between his eyes. It looked more as if somebody had shot Zorya at close range. If so, either Likhachev or his subordinate Samoilov, who supposedly found the body, would most likely have carried out the assassination.

  The events that followed were even more suspicious. D. M. Reznichenko, Soviet Military Prosecutor in Leipzig, later recalled having received two phone calls from Stalin’s secretariat regarding Zorya’s funeral.82 First he was ordered to bring the body to Moscow. The second order was to bury Zorya’s body in an unmarked grave in Leipzig without performing an autopsy. By the next day, May 24, Prosecutor Yurii Pokrovsky had escorted Zorya’s body from Nuremberg to Leipzig. The documents identify Zorya as a private instead of a major general, and later both the name of General Zorya and his photos were removed from all records and reports published in the USSR on the International Nuremberg Trial.

  The circumstances of Nikolai Zorya’s death remain a mystery. Since Stalin personally ordered that the body be buried secretly without an autopsy, it is most likely that Stalin gave the earlier order to kill Zorya and that the murderer was Likhachev or his subordinate. Or Stalin deeply hated Zorya for killing himself and this way escaping Stalin’s punishment.

  The Team Leaves Nuremberg

  Soon after Zorya’s death Likhachev and his team were ordered to leave Nuremberg. In 1951, the arrested Lev Sheinin testified on the reason for Likhachev’s dismissal: ‘Likhachev forced a young interpreter who resided in our building to live with him. After she got pregnant, Likhachev forced her to have an abortion. The operation was performed by a German doctor—unsuccessfully.’83 Rudenko informed Chief USSR Prosecutor Gorshenin about the situation, and Gorshenin reported Likhachev’s behavior to the Central Committee and Abakumov. Likhachev was ordered back to Moscow, and the team left Nuremberg.

  In Nuremberg, Colonel Vsevolod Syuganov, deputy head of the 1st Department of the GUKR SMERSH, replaced Likhachev.84 Syuganov joined the OGPU in 1927, and from 1932 on, he worked in Moscow. At the beginning of the war he served in the 3rd UOO Department (counterintelligence in armored troops and artillery), then in the 1st GUKR SMERSH Department (operational work in the NKO). Syuganov’s team included five officers from GUKR in Moscow and an officer from the UKR SMERSH of the GSVOG.85 The fact that one of the officers was from the 8th GUKR Department (ciphering) points to the possibility that the team reported directly to GUKR.

  In Moscow, according to Sheinin, Likhachev was reprimanded and spent ten days under arrest as a punishment for his immoral behavior in Nuremberg. However, this brief episode did not ruin his career. He was appointed deputy head of the MGB Department for Investigation of Especially Important Cases or OVD (former 6th GUKR SMERSH Department). Grishaev continued serving in the same department, while Solovov remained in the Investigation Division of the 4th Department of the 3rd MGB Main Directorate (military counterintelligence). All three participated in investigating prisoners from Europe and in 1947–53, of the Soviet ‘enemies of the people.’ Syuganov’s team returned to Moscow soon after that of Likhachev.

  Notes

  1. Joseph E. Persico, Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial (New York: Viking, 1994), 32–34.

  2. Arkadii Vaksberg, Stalin’s Prosecutor: The Life of Andrei Vyshinsky, translated from the Russian by Jan Butler (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991), 101 and 134.

  3. A report of the Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party to the Presidium of the Central Committee, signed by P. Pospelov and A. Aristov and dated February 9, 1956. Document No. V-15 in Reabilitatsiya: Kak eto bylo. Mart 1953–fevral’ 1956 gg. Dokumenty Presidiuma TsK KPSS i drugie materially, edited by A. Artizov et al., 317–65 (Moscow: Demokratiya, 2000) (in Russian).

  4. Ibid., 343–4.

  5. George Ginsburgs, Moscow’s Road to Nuremberg:The Sovie
t Background to the Trial (The Hague: Martinus Nujhoff Publishers, 1996), 95–115.

  6. Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., Roosevelt and the Russians: The Yalta Conference (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1949), 334.

  7. Telford Taylor, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 63.

  8. Ibid., 64.

  9. Yurii Shcheglov, ‘Pered Nurenbergom…’ Kontinent, no. 120 (2004) (in Russian), http://magazines.russ.ru/continent/2004/120/shegl14-pr.html, retrieved September 9, 2011.

  10. Aleksandr Zvyiagintsev and Yurii Orlov, Prokurory dvukh epoch. Andrei Vyshinsky i Roman Rudenko (Moscow: Olma-Press, 2001), 208–12 (in Russian).

  11. On the arrest of the sixteen Polish leaders see Document Nos. 42-44 in Iz Varshavy. Moskva, 148–59.

  12. Politburo decision P45/277, dated June 13, 1945. See text in ibid., 216.

  13. Although many sources claim that General Okulicki was killed, medical documents in his prison file (a copy of the file was handed over to Polish officials in 1990) point to death from natural causes.

  14. ‘On the inclusion in the list of main defendants,’ dated August 18, 1945. GARF, Fond R-9401, Opis’ 2 (Molotov’s NKVD/MVD Special Folder), Delo 103, L. 356–7.

  15. ‘A list of War Criminals Who Should Be Tried by the International Tribunal,’ dated August 27, 1945. GARF, Fond R-9401, Opis’ 2 (Molotov’s NKVD/MVD Special Folder), Delo 103, L. 330–6.

  16. See, for instance, a transcript of Friedrich Jeckeln’s interrogation on December 14, 1945, http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/ftp.py?people//j/jeckeln. friedrich/jeckeln-interrogation.1245, retrieved September 9, 2011.

  17. GUPVI’s registration cards of Bernhardt and Richert in I. V. Bezborodova, Generaly Vermakhta v plenu (Moscow: Rossiiskii gosudarstvemmyi gumanitarnyi universitet, 1998), 61 and 140 (in Russian). In 1947, Generals Klammt and Traut were sentenced to a 25-year imprisonment in labor camps; in October 1955, they were repatriated to Germany. Their cards in ibid., 99 and 146.

  18. I will cite the Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945 –1 October 1946 (Buffalo, NY: William S. Hein & Co., Inc.) as The Nuremberg Trial. The Nuremberg Trial, Vol. 8, 105, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/02-22-46.asp, retrieved September 9, 2011.

  19. Politburo decisions P46/238 and P46/240, dated September 5 and 6, 1945. Politburo TsK RKP(b)-VKP9b). Povestki dnya zasedanii. T. 3, 1940–1953, edited by G. M. Adibekov, 399 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2001) (in Russian). In April 1946, the new MVD Minister Sergei Kruglov replaced Merkulov in the Commission.

  20. Politburo decision P47/131, dated September 21, 1945. Politburo, 409.

  21. Yu. Zorya, ‘“Prokurorskaya diplomatiya” Vyshinskogo,’ in Inkvizitor. Stalinskii prokuror Vyshinskii (Moscow: Respublika, 1992), 208-88 (in Russian); N. Lebedeva, ‘Kak gotovilsya Nurenbergskii protsess,’ Mezhdunarodnaya zhizn’, No. 8 (1996), 99–108 (in Russian).

  22. Vaksberg, Stalin’s Prosecutor, 260.

  23. Details, for instance, in Richard Overy, Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945 (New York: Viking, 2001), 41–42.

  24. SMERSH. Istoricheskie ocherki i arkhivnye dokumenty, edited by V. S. Khristoforov et al., 322 (Moscow: Glavarkhiv Moskvy, 2003) (in Russian).

  25. Vladimir Abarinov, ‘V kuluarakh dvortsa yustitsii,’ Gorizont, no. 5 (1990), 61–70 (in Russian).

  26. Biography of M. T. Likhachev (1913–1954) in Petrov, Kto rukovodil organzmi gosbezopasnosti, 548.

  27. SMERSH. Istoricheskie ocherki, 271.

  28. Ibid., 325.

  29. P. I. Grishaev and B. A. Solovov, ‘Domyslami nel’zya snyat’ ‘khrestomatiinyi glyanets’ s istorii Nyurenbergskogo protsessa,’ Gorizont, No. 5 (1990), 38–43 (in Russian).

  30. Communication by Vladimir Abarinov, 1990.

  31. Tupikov was in Nuremberg until January 1946. He left for Moscow and then escorted the Japanese arrestees to the trial in Tokyo.

  32. Declarations written by Fritzsche and Raeder on October 18, 1945. The Nuremberg Trial, Vol. 1, http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/v1-08.htm, retrieved September 9, 2011.

  33. G. M. Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary (New York: Da Capo Press, 1995), 7.

  34. Erich Raeder, My Life, translated from the German by Henry W. Drexel (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute, 1960), 386.

  35. Ibid., 386–7.

  36. Minutes of the Vyshinsky Commission meeting on November 16, 1945, in Nataliya Lebedeva, ‘Neizvestnyi Nurenberg,’ Rodina, no. 6-7 (1991) (in Russian).

  37. Vyshinsky’s telegram to Gorshenin, dated November 19, 1945, in ibid.

  38. Cited in Overy, Interrogations, 204.

  39. Anton Joachimsthaler, The Last Days of Hitler: Legend, Evidence and Truth, English translation by Helmut Bogler (London: Cassell & Co., 2000), 288; ‘Hans Fritzsche’ in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Vol. II, Chapter XVI, 1035–52, http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/nca/nca-02/nca-02-16-21-index.html, retrieved September 9, 2011.

  40. Document No. 193 in Russkii Arkhiv, 15 (4/5), 281–2.

  41. Echtmann’s testimony on April 27, 1953, quoted in Joachimsthaler, The Last Days, 238–9.

  42. Hans Fritzsche, The Sword in the Scales, as told to Hildegard Springer, translated by Diana Pyke and Heinrich Fraenkel (London: Allan Wingate, 1953), 41.

  43. The Nuremberg Trial, Vol. 6, 72, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/01-23-46. asp, retrieved February 20, 2011.

  44. Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary, 163–4.

  45. The Nuremberg Trial, Vol. 17, 202, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/06-28-46.asp, retrieved September 9, 2011.

  46. Ibid., 203.

  47. Ibid., 215.

  48. Ibid., 215–6.

  49. Ibid., 231.

  50. Nikitchenko’s speech, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/juddiss.asp, retrieved September 9, 2011.

  51. Ingeborg Kalnoky and Ilona Herisko, The Witness House (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1974), 228–9.

  52. Ellensburg Daily Record, September 26, 1953, 14.

  53. Quoted in Abarinov, ‘V kuluarakh.’

  54. Grishaev and Solovov, ‘Domyslami nel’zya snyat’ ‘khrestomatiinyi glyanets’, 41.

  55. Quoted in Abarinov, ‘V kuluarakh,’ 68–69, and discussed in Francine Hirsch, ‘The Soviets at Nuremberg: International Law, Propaganda, and the Making of the Postwar Order,’ The American Historical Review 113, no. 3 (June 2008), 701–30.

  56. Arkadii Vaksberg, ‘Zasluzhennyi deyatel,’ Literaturnaya Gazeta, March 13 (1989), 13 (in Russian).

  57. I. F. Finyaev, ‘General-feldmarshal F. Paulus svidetel’stvuet,’ VIZh, no. 5 (1990), 52–54 (in Russian).

  58. Report by Vyshinsky and Kruglov with an attached draft of Decision of the USSR Council of Ministers, dated March 29, 1950. Cited in Arkhiv noveishei istorii Rossii. T. 1.’Osobaya papka’ I. V. Stalina, edited by V. A. Kozlov and S. V. Mironenkom 307 (Moscow: Blagovest, 1994) (in Russian).

  59. Anatrolii Tereshchenko, SMERSH v boyu (Moscow: Yuza-Eksmo, 2010), 187 (in Russian).

  60. Fitin’s report, dated December 8, 1945. GARF, Fond R-9401, Opis’ 2 (Molotov’s NKVD/MVD Special Folder), Delo 105, L. 354–5.

  61. Quoted in Abarinov, ‘V kuluarakh.’

  62. Drafts (LX-1 and LX-2) and the final version of the report ‘General Observations on the Soviet Intelligence Mission in Nuremberg’ dated October 16, 1946 (February 1—June 15, 1946). NARA (Washington), RG 226, Entry 213, Box 2.

  63. Richard W. Cutler, Counterspy: Memoirs of a Counterintelligence Officer in World War II and the Cold War (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, Inc., 2004), 125—31.

  64. The final report, NARA, RG 226, Entry 213, Box 2.

  65. Report LX-1 dated February 1–June 15, 1946, NARA, RG 226, Entry 213, Box 2.

  66. Ibid.

  67. Vaksberg, Stalin’s Prosecutor, 232–3.

  68. Boris Yefimov, Desyat’ desyatiletii. O tom, chto videl, perezhil, zapomnil (Moscow: Vagrius, 2000), 416–7, 428 (in Russian).

  69
. Pravda, December 12, 1945.

  70. Abarinov, ‘V kuluarakh,’ 69–70.

  71. Details in Zorya, ‘Prokurorskaya diplomatiya,’ 279–82.

  72. The Nuremberg Trial, Vol. 10, 310–4, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/04-01-46.asp; Vol. 14, 285, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/05-21-46.asp, retrieved September 9, 2011.

  73. Alfred Seidl, Der Fall Rudolf Hess 1941—1987: Dokumentation des Verteidigers (München: Universitas, 1988), 170.

  74. Krystyna Kurczab-Redlich, ‘Doklad Zori,’ Russkii Zhurnal, November 24, 2000 (in Russian), http://old.russ.ru/ist_sovr/other_lang/20001124.html, retrieved September 9, 2011.

  75. Application of Dr. Otto Stahmer on March 8, 1946, in The Nuremberg Trial, Vol. 9, 2–3, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/03-08-46.asp, retrieved September 9, 2011.

  76. Ibid., Vol. 17, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/07-01-46.asp; http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/07-02-46.asp, retrieved September 9, 2011. More information in Taylor, The Anatomy of Nuremberg, 466–72.

  77. T. S. Stupnikova, ‘…Nichego, krome pravdy…’ Nurnberg—Moskva: Vospominaniya (Moscow: Russkie slovari, 1998), 104 (in Russian).

  78. Transcript of the meeting on March 21, 1946. Document No. 222 in Katyn. Mart 1940 g.—sentyabr’ 2000 g. Rasstrel. Sud’by zhivykh. Ekho Katyni. Dokumenty, edited by N. S. Lebedeva, N. A. Petrasova, B. Voshchinski, et al. (Moscow: Ves’ Mir, 2001), 555–6 (in Russian).

  79. An interview with the historian Nataliya Lebedeva, in Yekaterina Latartseva, ‘Nepriyatnaya pravda Nyurnberg’, Trud, no. 149, August 31, 2011 (in Russian), http://luke.trud.ru/index.php/article/31-08-2011/267017_neprijatnaja_pravda_njurnberga.html, retrieved September 9, 2011.

  80. Stupnikova, ‘…Nichego krome pravdy…’ 104.

  81. Persico, Nuremberg, 343–4.

  82. A letter of D. M. Reznichenko to Yu. N. Zorya, quoted in Abarinov, ‘V kuluarakh,’ page 68.