Where the order of intelligence Kent
Before the war, the USSR had two intelligence services operating abroad: the military, subordinate to the People's Commissariat of Defense, and the foreign intelligence, the structure of the NKVD.
The rink of repression 30-s and walked through the special services. But, despite the losses, it was possible to create an extensive, well-disguised network in almost all European countries, including Germany. By the beginning of the war, about a thousand only military intelligence officers and their informers acted abroad. More than half of them are illegal. They supplied the political and military leadership of the USSR with complete and truthful information about the situation in the aggressor countries and their plans.
Before 22 June 1941, a few more years, and the first serious battle with the enemies had already begun: in Spain, a fascist insurgency. Volunteers from Germany, Italy, and distant Latin America reached the Iberian Peninsula. And from the USSR too. Some went straight to the rebellious General Franco, others to defend the republic. Among the latter was yesterday's student at the Leningrad Institute who trained personnel for Intourist - Anatoly Gurevich, who was amazingly easy to learn foreign languages.
Among other young people - volunteers, Tolya filed an application: I want to defend the Spanish Republic ... He was invited to Smolny, talked in both Spanish and French. Soon the Republican lieutenant fleet Antonio Gonzalez - Gurevich received such a name and surname - was in Madrid. And a few days later he met with the commander of the Spanish submarine S-4 Ivan Burmistrov, to whom he was appointed adjutant translator.
A man of purely civilian and land, Gurevich quickly mastered difficult things. And even, as acknowledged by Anatoly Markovich himself, sometimes it was necessary to directly replace the commander in separate combat posts.
C-4 became famous for its audacity, skillful performance of combat missions. Ivan Alekseevich Burmistrov, the first of the submariners, was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. Already in Leningrad, Gurevich learned that he too was presented for a government award. But ... They say that Stalin remarked: they say, the republic was defeated, why should he be awarded?
REGULAR SUBMISSION
In Moscow, Anatoly Gurevich reported on work in Spain. The divisional commander (corresponding to the military rank of Lieutenant General - V.Sh.) asked him to stay in the office and offered to remain in the service in the staff of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army.
"After some hesitation," writes Anatoly, "I agreed." All the same divisional commander said that he would have to master a new business. And, probably, apply it in a foreign country. Anatoly understood: he would have to become a radio operator and coder. There was no talk about intelligence activities.
Omitting months of intense training, the rationale in Belgium, where Gurevich (excuse me, Uruguayan businessman Vincente Sierra, and for the Center also Kent), since the beginning of the war in Europe (September 1939) has been engaged in exploration. 10 May 1940, Germany attacked Belgium, the Center ordered all Jewish intelligence officers to leave the country immediately. Leopold Trepper, the head of the station, also left. Gurevich - “Uruguayan citizen” remained and soon became the head of the residency.
With the German attack on the USSR, the work increased, and it became complicated at times. Already 22 June 1941, the tracking station in East Prussia has detected dozens of hitherto unknown radio transmitters in Holland, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Poland and even in ... Berlin! And they all worked for Moscow!
Hitler was furious and ordered to immediately collect the best specialists, to find the "pianists" (in the jargon of the special services - radio operators) of this red orchestra and to liquidate it. So there was a special Sonderkommando "Red Chapel".
After the war, after the war, the entire branched Soviet spy network was called the Red Chapel. But in the nature of this very Soviet "Red Chapel" was not. There were separate groups of both intelligence services who did not even know about the existence of each other.
Speaking of two explorations. Each had its own tasks, but cooperation was not excluded. And it took. In Berlin, there were two reconnaissance groups: the Harro Schulz-Boysen group (pseudonym of the First Sergeant) and the Arvid Harnack (Corsican) group — they collaborated with foreign intelligence. The other was headed by a cadre military scout Ilze Stebe (Alta). Both supplied extremely reliable information, which often lay on the table to Stalin.
September 1941 of the year. Communication with Berlin intelligence officers deteriorates, and then completely interrupts. So you need information about the nearest plans of the German command, the number and location of troops. But Berlin is silent. The only way out is to send a person there and find out on the spot. But the leadership of foreign intelligence does not have such a person. And she turns to the Commissariat of Defense.
The Center wondered briefly who to send. Of course, Kent! In the 1940 year, he was already performing a similar task: without contact with Moscow, the reconnaissance group Sandor Rado (pseudonym Dora) in Switzerland. Kent coped brilliantly with the task. Inquisitive Uruguayan tourist Vicente Sierra in Geneva looked into the well-known agency "Geopress", where he was kindly received by the head of the company. Gestapo agents would be expensive to attend this conversation. "Tourist" gave the "geographer" new codes, ciphers, trained to work with them.
October 10 1941 telegram from Moscow:
"Top secret. Kentu. Personally.
Immediately go to Berlin at the three indicated addresses and find out the causes of radio communication problems. If the breaks resume, take care of the broadcasts. The work of the three Berlin groups and the transfer of information are of paramount importance ... "Then followed detailed addresses with indication of floors, turns, passwords.
Report the addresses and names of the scouts ?! It was a monstrous mistake of the two intelligence leaders. The Germans learned the cipher. Dozens of patriots were captured, executed, Soviet intelligence lost the most effective groups.
Formalities at the border were calm. First Kent goes to Prague - the connection with the local reconnaissance group has ceased. Late in the evening, the call to Brussels for the woman I love: dear, everything is going well for me, only now I get tired and often have a headache. The director, as the scouts call the head of the GRU, will find out: the reconnaissance team has failed, the scouts have been arrested.
Berlin. Kent calls Alte. Failure: Ilse Stebe is not in the city. Kent travels to the suburbs of Berlin, where Kurt Schulz lives - Alta radio operator. Kent works with him for several hours: he transmits a radio communication program, he thoroughly teaches him how to work with the encryption code.
A day later, meeting with Harro Schulze-Boysen. After the exchange of passwords by phone, they decide about the venue. Kent arrives at the appointed place, stops, lights a cigar and ... gets cold from horror: an officer approaches him. Nobody warned Kent: Harro - chief lieutenant.
Then they go to Harro’s apartment, retreat, and for a few hours Kent in irresistible ink writes down in a notebook the intelligence that Harro has collected. He sends a program of direct communication with Moscow to the German, making sure that the anti-fascists know how to use the encryption code.
Already in Brussels all night Kent encrypted intelligence, in the morning he handed over a batch of encryption to a radio operator for transmission to Moscow. There is so much material that Kent himself takes the key. The most important messages come first. Among them is this:
“Kent to the Director. Source Koro (Koro, Horo - pseudonym Harro Schulze-Boyzen). The implementation of the 111 plan, the purpose of which the Caucasus, originally scheduled for November, has been postponed to the spring of 1942. The redeployment of parts must be completed by May 1. The logistics of the operation begins on February 1. The deployment line for the attack on the Caucasus: Lozovaya – Chuguev – Belgorod – Akhtyrka – Krasnograd. Headquarters in Kharkov. Details later. "
The radiogram was transmitted on November 12, 1941. Researchers will call her historical. Germany is catastrophically short of fuel. Romania’s oil wells are not able to provide a motorized army. Only having mastered the Caucasian crafts, you can continue the war.
19 November 1941, the head of the General Staff of the Land Forces of Germany, Franz Halder, writes: “The meeting with the Fuhrer. Tasks for next year. First of all, the Caucasus (highlighted by me. - V.Sh.). The goal is to reach the southern border of Russia. Deadlines are March – April ... ”And now compare the dates: the meeting with Hitler is November 19, the Kent telegram is November November 12, that is, a week before the meeting! Need more comments?
Kent informs the Center: in Norway and Finland, the Germans captured and deciphered the diplomatic code used by the Soviet missions. And also recruited the head of intelligence Committee, Charles de Gaulle.
When the Red Chapel specialists managed to get the Soviet intelligence cipher, they began to read these radiograms of Kent. And they often fell into a state of shock: many documents came from the highest government circles of Germany and came to Moscow before the German addressees received them.
They read the Germans and the telegram of Director Kent. He reported that the Big Boss had been acquainted with his information (as the scouts correspondence was called IV Stalin), and he thanked the resident and presented him for a government award.
However, the corresponding decree was not, and therefore there was no order.
ORDER OF THE DOMESTIC WAR
23 June 1944, Kent receives a telegram from the Center: "You are presented to the award by the Order of the Great Patriotic War 1 degree."
Slight inaccuracy: the word “Great” is not in the title of the order. I was awarded such an order and also 1 degree. And there are two words on it - the Patriotic War.
The telegram of the Center says nothing, for which the reward. In the 1941 year, too, it was not mentioned, but it was clear: for the brilliant performance of the secret task of reestablishing communication with the Berlin underground workers. What for in 1944 year?
After the failure of the Brussels station, Trepper and Gurevich moved to France. Trepper settled in Paris. And Kent went to Marseille, there created a residency from scratch.
9 November 1942 was arrested in Marseille Gurevich, and on November 23 in Paris, Trepper was also taken over by the Gestapo.
Anatoly Markovich Gurevich. Photo courtesy of the author
The Germans decided to start a radio game with Moscow. The main goals were two: try to break the anti-Hitler coalition - the USSR, the USA and the UK. They understood that the landing of the Allies in Europe was inevitable, and they could not stand the war on two fronts. Separate peace with the USSR? In no case will Stalin accept the German emissary. But if Churchill and Roosevelt find out that “Uncle Joe” is conducting secret talks with Hitler on the radio ... And the second goal is military: The Red Army General Headquarters should receive disinformation, plausible, and from intelligence officers who trust them completely.
25 December 1942, the Center received another radiogram from Otto, compiled by Gestapo chief Muller. Karl Giring, the head of the Red Capelder command, suggested that Kent participate in the Gestapo Center radio game. Kent decisively refused, citing the fact that he was not a military man and had nothing to do with intelligence.
One day, Giering presented him with a decoded radiogram of the Center with the congratulations of February 23 and the assignment of the title "Captain". He understood: exposed.
3 March 1943, the first radiogram from Kent’s transmitter, also prepared by the Gestapo, went to the Center. It is believed that Moscow did not know until June 1943 that Kent was working under the Gestapo cap. German political intelligence chief Walter Schellenberg writes: “This is the first time that we, using the Kent transmitter, have been able to communicate with the central station in Moscow. For several months, we sent disinformation on issues that were essential for the Russian secret service, which caused a lot of confusion in Moscow. ” Some Soviet researchers adhere to this chronology.
But this is what the doctor of historical sciences Vladimir Lot, the author of a number of books and essays about military intelligence, based on indisputable facts and documents, reports: “A new study of all (highlighted by me. - V.Sh.) Soviet documents of this radio game allows us to draw a different conclusion. It consists in the fact that the Center became aware that the Kent radio transmitter was operating under the control of the Gestapo much earlier. Namely 5 March 1943 of the year. That is, two days later, as the Gestapo included Kent into the game.
On that day, Kent was brought another "misinformation" prepared by the Gestapo. Suddenly, he asked to add a few words and dictated: “Convey congratulations to Comrade Stalin in connection with being awarded the title of Marshal and the 25 anniversary of the Red Army. Thank you for assigning the title of "captain". Say hello to my parents. ”
The Gestapo men sniffed every letter of the supplement, did not find anything criminal, and a message was sent to the Center, which, as Vladimir Lot remarked, "no Soviet resident would ever pass on."
Moscow understood everything, the radio game went according to its scenario. Kent achieved that the reports on the dislocation, movement, number of German troops were true: they say, Moscow will check, find out the discrepancy ... Gritting his teeth, the High Command went for it.
Kent transmitter worked with full load. The exchange of radiograms is daily. Maybe it is for this valuable information presentation to the award? Or is it for what happened after 16 August 1943 of the year? Kent gets two telegrams that day. The second plunges him into shock. The director writes: “The failure of the German offensive on our front, the events in Italy and the inevitable close defeat of Germany create a favorable recruiting environment. Get to the development of people, send to the relevant brief information. When recruiting Germans, you can give guarantees of our patronage if you work for us. ”
Here is the task! But the Gestapo men will be the first to read the telegram. Kent understood: she was meant for them! The assignment must be carried out, and Anatoly Markovich brilliantly does it: the head of the Red Chapel, Colonel SS Pannwitz (in some editions Panvits, with one "n"), his secretary (and mistress) Kemp, radio operator Stluka agree to work for Soviet intelligence. This is very important - there is another communication channel with Moscow, which the Gestapo does not know about.
The prisoner recruited his jailer! This intelligence was not. For this submitted to the award? Or for the fulfillment of tasks, when the Center vests Kent with broad powers: “I trust you to fulfill this extremely responsible government task.” “Consider that I authorize you to personally conduct negotiations with these people.” "Make your own decisions."
This is from the Kentu Center telegrams. And why not Trepper, he is here, in France, in charge. In September 1943, Trepper runs out of the Gestapo. And for almost a year no one sees him. He lay on the bottom so that neither the Gestapo, nor the French, nor the Soviet intelligence can find him. However, the wording of Vladimir Lot is more plausible - the Gestapo allowed him to escape.
Trepper appeared in Paris only in August 1944, when the city already had allies. Not a single intelligence service showed interest in him: he was a waste material. The center ferried him at the beginning of 1945 to Moscow, where in 1947, the Special Meeting at the State Security Commissariat gave him 15 years of camps. Freed in 1954 year after Stalin's death, rehabilitated. This punishment was not fair.
6 June 1944, the Allies landed in Normandy. And on June 9, the Center demands from Kent: “Urgently (i.e. urgently transmit) information on the course with the Allied troops”. "What is being done by the Germans and the Vichy ..."
Five days later, on June 14, Kent radiates to the Center: "Immediately after the landing, I went to the capital (ie, to Paris) and assumed the personal leadership of all agents."
Five days later: “I was able to establish contact with the three agents who are in the battle zone in Normandy, and with the four agents who are operating in the areas before Normandy and in Brittany. On the basis of their first reports, he established the following ... "And then followed clear, concise information.
For this submitted to the award?
HODYNKI - ON Lubyanka
At the end of May 1945, Kent was in Paris, frantically compiled a report and managed to observe the recruited Gestapo officers and suitcases with the secret documents of this special service. The center required to deliver them safe and sound.
Finally, in early June, a plane arrived from Moscow. A few hours of flight, landing on the Khodynka field. Kent, each German - in a separate car. I was surprised that I was taken straight from the airfield to Lubyanka and I was stunned when we were led to the door with a sign "Reception of the arrested."
Already after midnight, Gurevich was brought into a large office, where there were several generals and two in civilian clothes: the cabinet owner, the head of Smersh Viktor Abakumov, and the USSR Commissar of Internal Affairs Vsevolod Merkulov. Without saying hello, Abakumov ordered Kent to sit down and in a sharp form asked the first question:
- Did you come to Moscow for the next government awards?
Kent replied that he was told in an encrypted radiogram: Stalin announced his thanks and presented him to a government award, but he did not receive it.
But there were telegrams about what is presented! And by whom! Supreme Commander! Where are the awards? My appeals to the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces and even the meeting with its employees did not clarify the situation. They only confirmed to me: there were telegrams, but there are no documents in the archives. Where are they going? Submissions were made as many as three times and in different years, and now inexplicably disappeared at once.
The facts (and these are all the documents) cited above state that intelligence officer Kent deserves awards. Did the scout have any mistakes? There were, and the same Directors pointed to them in telegrams. Evidence of errors, failures remained, but no orders.
BASES FOR BASES NO
This wordplay will become clear a little later. I confess I was shocked by several lines of one letter. Answering my question, the commander of the 61379 military unit, O. Karimov, wrote in March 2013 of the year: “As for his question (ie, Gurevich. - V.Sh.) awarding during the period of the Great Patriotic War, The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, there are no grounds for this (highlighted by me. - V. Sh.).
I was taken aback: the Supreme Commander ordered in November 1941 of the year to award the intelligence officer for a specific feat, and the “foreign intelligence agency” sees no reason for this. It is terribly interesting: the reassessment of the results of intelligence activities - the initiative of the "body" or someone's indication?
Reason for award? Here they are - recorded in the documents. The grounds for the assertion that everything was not so, is an investigative case on charges of treason against Gurevich.
On one of the winter days of 1947, Gurevich was announced the decision of the Special Meeting at the State Security Committee People's Commissariat: 20 years of forced labor camps. 16 months state security investigators fabricated the case, based mainly on the German evidence that it was Kent who delivered to Moscow. Among them is the notorious “Müller's Letter” - a striking example of the provocative creativity of the Gestapo chief. Kent knew this “Letter” by heart, he could have destroyed it a hundred times, but the shore was clearer than his eyes.
Anatoly Markovich was released in 1960 year. In 1991, the Chief Military Prosecutor approved the “Conclusion” in the criminal case of A.M. Gurevich, in which he convincingly rejected all the accusations and decided: Gurevich Anatoly Markovich to be considered rehabilitated ...
It is regrettable that even today, other members of the security services believe more than the writings of German detectives, rather than domestic researchers.
Detractors Gurevich not without malice say: but he himself confessed to crimes. Indeed, other interrogation protocols have his signatures. But whether it is necessary to remember, how then they sought confessions. I am not a linguist, but in the word “sought” there is something from the word “beat”. It is worth recalling that the state security officers Abakumov (the head of Smersh personally interrogated Kent) and Likhachev (then deputy head of the 3 General Directorate of Smersh who interrogated Kent during the preliminary investigation) for gross violations of socialist law in 1954 were arrested and sentenced to be shot. Need to explain what were the gross violations?
31 May 1945, a week before Kent arrives in Moscow, the head of the GRU sends a paper in Smersh, in which he stigmatizes the traitor Gurevich with shame and demands his severe punishment. It is incomprehensible to mind: with one hand to sign important tasks to his intelligence officer, and with the other to accuse him of treason. How could this be? I do not know…
WHO AND WHEN WILL PUT A POINT
In an interview, Colonel-General Fedor Ivanovich Ladigin, head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces in 1992 – 1997, said: “People come to intelligence once and for all life.” Wonderful words. Under them will sign hundreds of intelligence officers. But I am about Kent. From the GRU they wrote that it “never abandoned the fact that in 1930 – 1945. A.M. Gurevich was a military intelligence officer. ” And after the year 1945 was not? But what about the statement - for life? In 1960, he was free, but he remained an outcast for the GRU and the Council of Intelligence Veterans. Why?
I see two reasons.
First: three weeks after the Victory, 31 May 1945, the head of the GRU called Kent a traitor, a traitor. Who wants to communicate with the fiend of hell?
The second reason: litter from the hut. In May, 1945, waiting for a plane from Moscow in Paris, Kent made a report on his work. A solid section in that paper was devoted to deficiencies in the training of intelligence officers. “For the sole purpose,” Anatoly Markovich told me, “so as not to repeat mistakes.” The document this “Smersh” scooped out even at the aerodrome, although it was intended only for the Director. When Abakumov was arrested, a report was found in his safe.
For 48 years after the liberation of Anatoly Markovich from the camp, the GRU never invited any celebrations, did not send him greeting cards, did not award him with certificates. They invited, congratulated, rewarded others: Councils of committees of war veterans, district committees and the Komsomol regional committee, museums, schools, vocational schools, universities ...
Since 1960, Kent is free. He died in 2009 year. For half a century not a single head of the GRU had found the time to invite him for a conversation in order to stop all talk.
7 November 2013, Anatoly Markovich, turned 100 years old. Will you celebrate this anniversary? From the GRU responded: events dedicated to the 100 anniversary of the birth of A.M. Gurevich, we do not provide.
I also received the names of several outstanding scouts - Heroes of the Soviet Union, whose anniversaries were marked by official events. They also named the names of the scouts executed in the Gestapo dungeons, who, I quote, “did not cooperate with the Nazis, were subjected to cruel torture ...”.
I suspect that I will be blamed for bias and God knows what else, but the mention of the refusal of these Heroes to cooperate with the Gestapo is not at all accidental. I read between the lines: they say they did not go for it and paid with their lives. And Kent went.
The charges of Kent in collaboration with the Gestapo are one of the main ones in the Smersh documents in 1945 – 1947. But in the “Conclusion” of the Chief Military Prosecutor of the USSR from 1991, all of them are convincingly rejected. “Acting in a particularly difficult situation,” it is written in, “and without having the intention to change the Motherland, he gave false consent to the German counterintelligence to conduct a radio game with a view to ascertaining its activities against the USSR and preserving the life of individual Soviet intelligence agents.”
As is known, it was precisely this Kent tactic that helped the GRU to carry out a number of unique intelligence operations in the 1943 – 1945 years. For some reason, current employees have forgotten about it.
A long preamble was needed in order to ask the GRU leadership the question: where are the orders of Kent? No answer. In the GRU there were no fires, tsunami, and the award lists disappeared. Maybe their "inadvertently" seized by the investigators and they are in the archives of "Smersh" or state security? Here it is not just the honor of the Office’s uniform, but also the prestige of the state, the authority of the authorities. What respect will she use if she can do this?
What to do? I have the following sentence: someone (who has the right to do so) should call (invite) intelligence chiefs and tell them: I give you two weeks (three, four), deal with Kent's awards. You know where to look for documents and the orders themselves. And at the same time, establish who decided to revise the documents of the war years, in particular, the instructions of the Supreme Commander.
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