Deadly Confrontation
The Great Patriotic War was not only a battle of huge armies on the battlefields. It was also a deadly battle between intelligence and counterintelligence. Soviet intelligence, partisans and underground workers in the territories occupied by the Nazis were opposed by the most powerful counterintelligence community. It permeated all the structures of German society, its armed forces, entangled the entire territory of the occupied countries. Nevertheless, Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence, Soviet partisans and underground fighters emerged victorious from the battle with this monster. Although this victory was given a lot of sacrifices.
So what were the structures in charge of counterintelligence and political investigation in Nazi Germany?
Unlike, for example, the USSR and the USA, where counterintelligence was the responsibility of the NKVD-NKGB and the FBI, and only for a short time these functions were transferred to the military departments, in Nazi Germany everything was different. From the moment the Nazis came to power, the creation of a branched structure of counterintelligence, political investigation and terror began there.
In addition to the structures of the criminal police, the order police and the security police (which was in charge of counterintelligence and political investigation) inherited from the Weimar Republic, already in 1933 G. Goering created in Prussia a secret state police subordinate to him personally - the Gestapo. And the SD - the security service of the Reichsführer SS - in addition to counterintelligence within the NSDAP and the SS, began to spread its activities to the entire German society.
As the SS (SS - Shuthstaffeln - security detachments) strengthened, they gradually absorbed all the police and counterintelligence structures of Germany. In 1935, the Gestapo and Kripo organizationally became part of the SS. Since 1936, the chief of the SS, G. Himmler, led the entire German police in the rank of Minister of the Interior, and Reinhard Heydrich, the chief of the SD, from June 26, 1936, also headed the Security Police. And on September 27, 1939, Heydrich finally realized his innermost dream: he completed the unification of all the police forces of the Reich as part of the SS.
Until September 1939, counterintelligence and political investigation were within the competence of the following structures:
- security services of the Reichsführer SS - SD (SD - Sicherheitsdienst - security service), unit "Inland SD";
- until 1936 - separately by the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei; Geheime (geheim) - secret, Staatspolizei (statistical police) - state police) and the Main Directorate of the Security Police (inherited from the Weimar Republic), since 1936 - the Security Police ("ZIPO" ; SIPO - Sicherheitspolizei - literally "Security Police"), uniting the Gestapo and the criminal police (Kripo) and numbering up to 100 thousand people.
- in the Wehrmacht - the department "A-III" of the Abwehr (military counterintelligence) and the GFP (GFP - Geheime Feldpolizei; Geheime (geheim) - secret, (Feldpolizei) field policeman - field police) - the secret field police, which was a special police department in the Abwehr.
After unification as part of the SS, the German police were organizationally part of two departments:
– Main Imperial Directorate of Security;
- Main Department of Police for Ensuring Order.
What were these controls?
Reich Main Security Office - RSHA
1. Main Imperial Security Directorate - RSHA (RSHA - Reichssicherheitshauptamt) (in Soviet literature, this department was usually referred to as the Main Directorate of Imperial Security, and not a literal translation):
R - Reichs - imperial,
S - Sicherheits - security,
H - Haupt - the main thing,
A - Amt - control.
From 1939 to 1942, the RSHA was led by SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, and from 1943 by SS Obergruppenführer Ernest Kaltenbrunner.
It should be noted that the German population did not know about the existence of the RSHA, even the very name of this institution remained a secret. Officially, in the center and in the localities, the leaders of the RSHA were called "chiefs of the security police and SD."
When creating the RSHA, the following were merged:
- Main Directorate of the Security Police of the Ministry of Internal Affairs;
- Main Directorate of the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS (SD);
- The Central Directorate of the Secret State Police - the Gestapo;
- Department of Criminal Police.
The RSHA of the 1939 model had six departments:
- I management - administrative and legal;
- II management - analysis of the press, psychological warfare and the development of racial theory;
- III management - "Inland SD";
- IV department - the secret state police, the Gestapo;
- V department - criminal police, Kripo;
- VI Directorate - "Ausland SD", political intelligence.
I control dealt with administrative and legal matters. It was headed by V. Best.
II management analyzed the press, prepared and waged psychological warfare. The chief of department was Dr. O. Ziks. In addition, this department was in charge of the development of the racial theory of the Nazis.
III control - Inland SD.
As early as 1938, the SD was transformed from the security agency of the SS and the NSDAP into a security service of state status, its total number was 8-10 thousand people. The circular of the German Ministry of the Interior of November 11, 1938 provided for a significant expansion of the powers of the SD. The cases handled by the security service were not subject to the jurisdiction of ordinary courts.
After being included in the RSHA, the functions of this department have changed significantly. The "Inland SD" was entrusted with the control of particularly important areas of society and the preparation of analytical reviews, which were a guide to action for the ZIPO and the Gestapo.
Structurally, the SD consisted of four departments.
This ominous department was headed by Oberführer, and then SS Brigadeführer Otto Ohlendorf.
IV management - Gestapo.
The Gestapo was headed by Oberführer - Brigadeführer - SS Gruppenfuehrer Heinrich Müller.
In domestic literature, as a rule, the distorted name of this department of the RSHA is used - the state secret police, which is fundamentally wrong, the correct name is the secret state police.
It was the most bloody and sinister administration of the RSHA, at the mere mention of which the people of all Europe were seized with horror. The secret state police dealt with the problems of political security, intelligence and counterintelligence, border guards (since 1944), sabotage, foreign exchange, churches, concentration camps, Soviet prisoners of war, enemy paratroopers and others.
Thus, the Gestapo carried out political investigation and counterintelligence throughout Germany and in the occupied territories, being the main counterintelligence and political detective body of Nazi Germany.
In 1939, the Gestapo consisted of five departments, subdivided into abstracts according to areas of work, the central apparatus of the secret state police consisted of about 1500 people. Subsequently, the number of departments increased. In particular, in January 1942, the secret field police, the GFP (GFP), was merged into the structure of the Gestapo, which later received the name “field Gestapo”.
V control - Kripo. Criminal police. Kripo led the fight against criminality, and within the framework of ZIPO, she assisted the Gestapo in the fight against anti-fascists and in counterintelligence activities. Chief Kripo was SS Gruppenführer Artur Nöbe.
VI management - "Ausland SD" - political intelligence. Until 22.06.1941/2/1941, the department was headed by Heinz Jost, then on July 24, 1943, Walter Schellenberg was transferred to the VI department of the RSHA and took the post of deputy head of the department, actually led the work of the department, on February XNUMX, XNUMX, he was approved as head of the VI department with the rank of oberführer first SS, then SS Brigadeführer. At the same time, Schellenberg, a sort of Nazi "intellectual", boasted of his alleged cleanliness, but before moving to Ausland SD, he served as head of the counterintelligence department in the Gestapo.
Along with the Abwehr, Ausland SD was the main sabotage and espionage agency of Nazi Germany, focused on working outside the country, and was one of the tools of the total espionage strategy.
Like other departments of the RSHA, the VI department was divided into groups and abstracts, formed on a political and geographical basis. In 1941, there were 7 departments in the Ausland SD, later 2 more groups and the Zeppelin headquarters were added.
However, as part of the six departments of the RSHA, it lasted only a year after its formation and in 1940 it underwent a reorganization, it included seven departments:
I department - was in charge of the selection of personnel, their education and training;
II management - dealt with the solution of all organizational, administrative and economic issues;
III management - "Inland SD";
IV Department - Gestapo;
V department - criminal police;
VI management - "Ausland SD";
VII department - was engaged in scientific information service and the development of racial theory.
In October 1941, in addition to the departments that existed in the structure of the RSHA, a special command headquarters was created to manage the "actions" of the Einsatzgruppen, which carried out a policy of genocide on the territory of the USSR and other European countries.
In general, the RSHA, excluding Kripo employees, numbered up to 70 thousand personnel.
In this form, the RSHA existed until February 1944, when the next reorganization of the security service took place, and it absorbed the Abwehr. Most of the units of the central apparatus of the Abwehr, all the Abverstelle in the military districts and the front-line Abwehr teams, merged respectively into the IV and VI departments of the RSHA, as well as into the newly created military department "Miles" under it.
At about the same time as the Abwehr, the “Research Directorate” also joined the RSHA, which was engaged in the control of telephone, telegraph and radio communications.
Thus, the RSHA took the dominant, dominant and all-encompassing position in the German Reich, turning into a global intelligence agency that controlled all aspects of German life.
However, the structure of the RSHA was by no means strictly parallel; it included structural divisions that united several of its departments at once. – Security Police and SD (Sicherheitspolizei und SD) - a structure that united SD and ZIPO.
Under this abbreviation in the Reich as a whole, the RSHA itself was hidden, the open mention of which was forbidden, as well as its subdivisions in the field. Locally, this structure was headed, as a rule, by the chief of the SD.
As a result, the relatively small III Directorate - the SD - controlled the work of the main political investigation and counterintelligence services not only as an internal security body, not only by preparing guiding reviews of the situation, but also by operational management.
The chiefs of the "security police and SD" within the framework of the Einsanzgruppen also carried out the leadership of the military police units subordinate to the Main Directorate of Police for the Maintenance of Order.
Security Police - "ZIPO"
ZIPO united the Gestapo and Kripo. Oddly enough, the chief of the ZIPO was not the chief of the Gestapo, Müller, but the chief of Kripo, the SS Gruppenfuehrer Artur Nebe, who had a much longer experience in the NSDAP.
Thanks to such a structure, in Germany, the criminal police, which had numerous and experienced personnel, were also involved in political investigation and counterintelligence. This made it possible to manage with a relatively small number of the Gestapo proper.
The combination of the efforts of the SD, Gestapo and Kripo within the framework of both the Security Police and the SD, and the ZIPO, coupled with the system of total surveillance, made it possible to effectively and quickly use all the information that fell into the hands of the counterintelligence and political investigation services. In most cases, the loss of the threads that led to underground cells or Soviet intelligence groups was ruled out. The information that came into the possession of one of the structural divisions of the RSHA, unfortunately, sooner or later ended up in the right place and was used for its intended purpose.
Thus, with the creation of the RSHA, a powerful and extensive structure of counterintelligence and political investigation was formed, which had ample opportunities both inside Germany and abroad.
Police Headquarters for Ensuring Order
2. Police Headquarters for Ensuring Order - in domestic literature, this department is usually referred to as the Main Directorate of Police and Order, in short - GUPP. The German abbreviation for this office was ORPO - Ordnungpolizei.
The functions of this department included ensuring public order in the Reich and performing police, military-police and punitive functions in the occupied territories. The chief of the department was SS Obergruppenführer K. Dalyuge.
The structure of this department included:
- regular or municipal police - Gemeinderpolizei;
– regular police performing military tasks;
– spare parts of the police;
- field police - Feldpolizei, or, as it was also called in a different way - field gendarmerie;
- security police in Germany and in the occupied territories - Shutzpolizei (Shupo).
The field police (gendarmerie) and security police were the main instrument of Hitler's policy of genocide against many peoples of Europe - Slavs, Jews, Gypsies. These units were also assigned the task of fighting the partisans. It was the field policemen (field gendarmes) who were the executors of most of the actions of the Gestapo and SD, while the Gestapo - 2-3 people - only carried out general leadership.
Sonderkommandos and Einsatzkommandos were also formed from the military police units and security police units, engaged in the mass extermination of civilians and prisoners of war and left a bloody trail throughout the territory occupied by the Nazis.
And it was precisely these two police structures that included Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian security battalions, which were distinguished by their particular cruelty towards the civilian population.
Organizationally, being part of the Main Police Directorate for Ensuring Order, the Sonderkommando, Einsatzkommando, military police units and local security police units were operationally subordinate to the local departments of the Security Police and the SD.
Like the RSHA, the Police Headquarters for Enforcement is guilty of horrendous crimes against humanity. The punitive units subordinated to this administration left a bloody trail throughout Europe, but they were especially atrocious on the territory of the USSR. Only punishers from the 4th Einsatzgruppen "A", "B", "C" and "D" in 1941-1944 destroyed more than two million Soviet citizens.
In general, considering the punitive apparatus of Nazi Germany, it is necessary to note one of its remarkable features. Prior to merging into the RSHA, the main departments and departments were an organic part of any central department of which they were part, and its head was responsible for their activities. A distinctive feature of both the RSHA and the Police Headquarters for Ensuring Order was that they were not part of any department, reporting personally to the Reichsfuehrer SS.
In addition, the delimitation of the competence of the Gestapo and the SD was deliberately carried out not clearly by G. Himmler himself, in order to prevent the acquisition of unlimited independence by at least one of the SS structures. Moreover, all kinds of competition and rivalry between the Gestapo and various departments of the SD were encouraged.
However, the path to omnipotence in the field of intelligence and counterintelligence, even for such heavyweights in the Hitlerite hierarchy, was not easy. For many years, the Gestapo, the SD, then the RSHA as a whole waged an uncompromising struggle against one of their competitors, the Abwehr.
Abwehr
The Abwehr was a military intelligence and counterintelligence body in Germany, formed back in 1919. In 1935–1944 The Abwehr was headed by V. Canaris. Having navy rank, Canaris especially favored the officers, who also did not part with the naval uniform and ranks. That is why, hundreds of kilometers from the sea, there were all kinds of frigate captains and zur see captains.
Counterintelligence as part of the Abwehr was handled by the third department - Abwehr-III. At the headquarters of military districts, army groups, fleets and naval bases, Abverstelle-III operated - departments of the "Abwehr-III" management, Abwehrkommando-III operated at the armies and in the occupied territories. The head of the Abwehr-III department was Franz Eckart von Bentivenyi.
The structure and functions of the Abwehr-III department reflected two main areas of its activity: suppressing attempts by foreign intelligence to penetrate the troops and strategic facilities of Germany and preventing the possibility of disclosing military and state secrets.
The Abwehr-III department was divided into ten groups (subsections), which in turn were divided into many subgroups and abstracts according to areas of work. The counter-espionage group was the most numerous and important. If other groups were instructed to categorically avoid contacts with enemy intelligence, then the counter-espionage group, on the contrary, was charged with establishing and developing these contacts in every possible way in order to identify anti-Hitler agents in Germany and the countries occupied by it.
The Abwehr III department also controlled the entire German postal and telegraph system. He was given a radio interception service to detect the places where undercover short-wave transmitters of anti-Hitler intelligence agents went on the air.
Until January 1942, the structure of the Abwehr also had a special police department - the GFP, the secret field police (GFP), created on June 21, 1939 by the directive of V. Keitel, and staffed by the Gestapo and Kripo.
The main structural unit of the HFP was a group at the headquarters of the armies, subdivided into 2–5 commissariats. In 1939–1940 The staff of the group was 50 people. On June 22, 1941, the number of groups was increased to 95 people. The HFP groups were fully motorized.
In addition to the GFP groups, each division of the Wehrmacht had a platoon of field police (gendarmerie), in the army corps - a company, and in the army - a battalion, which were entrusted with the task of maintaining order.
The functions of the GUF were as follows: counterintelligence; measures for the protection of headquarters and personal protection of command personnel from the division commander and above; monitoring military correspondence; control over postal, telegraph and telephone dispatches of the civilian population, protection of postal messages; search and capture of enemy military personnel remaining in the occupied territories; conducting an inquiry, supervising suspicious persons in the Wehrmacht and among the civilian population in the combat zone.
Employees of the GUF had the right to free passage through checkpoints and free entry to the location of any units, headquarters and institutions of the Wehrmacht.
In January 1942, the GUF was transferred to the Gestapo, and the field gendarmerie units were transferred to the SS military police units.
Formally, the interests of the Abwehr-III department lay only in the fight against the intelligence services of other states and with opponents of the Nazi regime in the Wehrmacht, but in fact, at the behest of its head V. Canaris, this unit scattered its networks throughout Germany.
It is customary to underestimate the role of the Abwehr-III department in the fight against Soviet intelligence, underground fighters and partisans. Actually it is not.
The Abwehr had at its disposal the most experienced cadres of counterintelligence officers who knew how to work, who perfectly mastered the methods of operational-search activity, methods of surveillance and provocations. Where the Gestapo often acted rudely and straightforwardly, with the help of torture and torture, the Abwehr approached with Jesuit refinement and deceit.
In addition, often the underground and partisans did not have a sense of threat, and they underestimated the danger posed by the Abwehr. After all, they practically did not stand out from the general mass of Wehrmacht officers, in contrast to the immediately conspicuous employees of the Gestapo and the SD. And it cost the lives of thousands of Soviet patriots.
But the Abwehr and the RSHA fought not only against the opponents of the Nazi regime and Soviet intelligence. In 1933–1944 there was an invisible undercover struggle between the Abwehr and the RSHA. Each service sought to prove its exceptional value to the Reich and the complete failure of the competitor. And only in February 1944, the Abwehr was finally crushed and in the period from March to August 1944 it was merged into the RSHA, replenishing the SS punitive and detective apparatus.
In the Wehrmacht system, after the reorganization, only a few units of the former Abwehr III remained, on the basis of which a new department was created responsible for counterintelligence support of parts of the German army. But the possibilities and scope of work of this department were no longer comparable with the previous ones.
However, in addition to the RSHA and the Abwehr, there was another formation in the structure of the German special services, personally subordinated to G. Goering.
Office of Brown Birds
An important role in the system of Nazi total intelligence and counterintelligence after the RSHA and the Abwehr was played by the carefully classified "Research Directorate", directly subordinate to Reichsmarschall G. Goering.
It was a secret technical organization that united 15 departments and 6 groups, with the help of which telephone, telegraph and radio communications were controlled, both within Germany and abroad. Only in Berlin, employees of the department read about 34 thousand telegrams of domestic importance and about 9 thousand telegrams from abroad every day. On average, one thousand telephones were eavesdropped on a monthly basis.
The "Research Directorate" kept under its control not only foreigners, but also functionaries of the NSDAP and the state. His certificates, printed on brown paper with the image of an eagle and therefore in a narrow circle called "birds", often sowed the seeds of panic and confusion in the institutions of the Reich.
The "brown birds" paved the way for persecution actions that often ended in a concentration camp or the gallows for those who fell on the brown lists. The Office was granted the right to secretly use political and economic information and the results of covert surveillance carried out on the personal instructions of Goering for SD and GESTAPO employees.
But in 1944, under pressure from the SS, Goering agreed to transfer the "Research Directorate" to Himmler.
In general, the following figures give an idea of the size of the police apparatus of Nazi Germany:
- if in 1939 the RSHA numbered about 141 people, then in 000 its number (including the customs (border) police) increased to almost 1944 people;
- the main department of the order police from 1939 to 1944 increased the number from about 183 people to more than 000, while the field police units increased in number from 454 to 000 people, that is, almost four times.
In total, in 1939, the RSHA and the GUPP numbered about 324 people, and in 000 their number exceeded 1944 people.
Thus, it is clearly seen that in Germany there was a powerful machine of political investigation and counterintelligence, a powerful punitive apparatus. From year to year there was a continuous increase in the number of both the regular police and the security police.
At the same time, the relative small number of Gestapo employees themselves was compensated by the large number of Kripo structures.
In addition, the SD, the SFG, the Abwehr, and ordinary policemen worked in the same direction. The effective work of the Gestapo was also facilitated by the creation of a pyramid of cells, which spread from top to bottom and penetrated into every house. Gatekeepers of residential buildings and block guards were involved in surveillance of the population. So, in the summer of 1943, the Gestapo had 482 quarter guards, who, although they were not full-time employees of the secret police, were required to submit weekly reports on all suspicious events and incidents, and report on the appearance of strangers or suspicious behavior of the residents of the quarter immediately.
It must also be borne in mind that the RSHA had a colossal network of informers, in addition to quarter wardens. In Germany, it was very difficult to hide from their eyes. The slightest inaccuracy in the behavior of a scout abandoned on German territory, and immediately followed by a call to the RSHA department from a vigilant housewife, tradeswoman, or tram conductor.
Soviet reconnaissance groups
But even under these conditions, Soviet intelligence groups that operated both in Germany itself and in the countries of Europe occupied by the Nazis, as well as in Switzerland and Italy, provided invaluable information. The most famous of them are the "Red Chapel" and the group of Shandor Rado.
But for some reason, very little is known about such intelligence officers as Alexander Kvapishevsky, who died in 1960, who served in 1944-1945. courier in the Hitlerite Headquarters and had the rank of captain of the Wehrmacht, and before being appointed to the post of courier, this Soviet intelligence officer served in the Gestapo.
For many years, practically nothing was known about the intelligence network of Jan Chernyak (belonging to the GRU of the Red Army), which operated in the West, including Germany in 1936–1946. His group even included high-ranking officials of the RSHA. Moreover, not one of the scouts of the Y. Chernyak group was ever discovered by the Nazi special services.
It should also be noted the excellent work of our intelligence agencies when it came to undercover intelligence on the territory of the USSR occupied by the Nazis and in Eastern Europe. Although in the occupied territories the Nazis quickly created extensive police structures from collaborators, planted a wide network of secret informants. Baltic, Ukrainian and Belarusian nationalists were widely involved in cooperation, who were ready to serve with anyone, to sell everything and everything, if only against the Russians they hated.
However, the enemy failed to paralyze the work of Soviet intelligence, partisans and underground fighters. Only the 1st and 4th departments of the NKVD-NKGB (not counting military intelligence), which were in charge of reconnaissance and reconnaissance and sabotage activities, abandoned and introduced more than 1 legendary intelligence officers into the structures of the Nazi authorities, the Wehrmacht and the SS in the occupied territories of the USSR. And the vast majority of them were never revealed by enemy counterintelligence.
The destruction of the Hitlerite governor of Cuba in Belarus, the actions of the scouts of the D. Medvedev detachment in Rovno, the Soviet intelligence officers in Vinnitsa, the disruption of Hitler's plans for the destruction of Krakow, and many, many more operations when Soviet intelligence outright beat the German counterintelligence services. Hitler's counterintelligence did not manage to reveal that the operation "Monastery" by the intelligence of the NKVD-NKGB in 1942-1945. a large-scale campaign to misinform the command of the Wehrmacht is being carried out.
In the same way, Abwehr-III and the Gestapo failed to prevent the penetration and work of Soviet intelligence officers in many intelligence schools of the Abwehr, as a result of which most of the reconnaissance and sabotage groups thrown into the Soviet rear were either almost immediately neutralized by Soviet counterintelligence, or simply turned up. In particular, two Soviet intelligence officers infiltrated the Smolensk (Krasny Bor village) intelligence school of the Abwehr, as a result of which the work of this school was largely paralyzed.
Hitler's counterintelligence failed to prevent the legalization of the Soviet intelligence officer in the area of Kassel in order to eliminate the intelligence school, where saboteurs were trained from children and adolescents. As a result, the Soviet intelligence officer managed to persuade the deputy head of the school to cooperate and, with his help, bring all the children and teenagers to the location of the Red Army units.
One of the biggest failures of Hitler's counterintelligence can be considered the collapse of the operation to prepare an assassination attempt on the Supreme Commander of the Soviet Armed Forces I.V. Stalin. The Gestapo and the SD could not prevent the leakage of information even at the very initial stage of preparing the operation, as a result of which the Soviet counterintelligence was waiting for the Nazi agent Tavrin literally with open arms.
But along with examples of the successful activities of Soviet intelligence, there were also heavy losses of underground fighters and partisans, when the SD, Gestapo and Abwehr managed to open and almost completely destroy underground organizations in cities and villages, when it was possible to track down, surround and destroy partisan detachments. The crushing blows of the Nazi security services and counterintelligence were inflicted on the Soviet underground in Minsk, Kyiv, Odessa, Simferopol, Vinnitsa. In the Bialystok region, the Nazis, with the help of fake resistance groups, managed to identify and defeat the anti-fascist underground.
However, the self-sacrifice of the Soviet patriots was not in vain.
Nazi Germany was defeated, and the leaders of its punitive organs suffered a well-deserved punishment. In 1945, G. Himmler, W. Schellenberg and E. Kaltenbrunner were taken prisoner. Fearing trial, Himmler committed suicide, and Kaltenbrunner was hanged by the verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal. The SS and RSHA themselves were recognized as criminal organizations, disbanded and banned.
Information