When Hitler invaded
the Soviet Union in 1941, Stalin’s spy network
was thrown into disarray. But Soviet intelligence soon
began to fight back… Originally produced
for Russian television in 2011, this is the story
of Russia’s Great Patriotic War and the Red Army’s long road
from defeat to victory. 21st June, 1941. Moscow. An express train from Berlin arrived
at the Byelorussky Terminal. On board was Mikhail Vorontsov, naval
attaché at the Soviet Embassy in Berlin. He was taking no chances
with his briefcase. Two days before, Vorontsov
had received a high priority telegram from Moscow ordering his immediate return. An escort arrived to meet him
on the platform — an official from
the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, accompanied by two officers
of the NKVD secret police. A government car pulled up outside.
Vorontsov was ushered onto the back seat, between the two policemen. He could relax
for the first time since leaving Berlin. His precious briefcase
was now someone else’s concern. Mikhail Alexandrovich Vorontsov fought with
the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War, before joining the Naval Academy. After
graduation he was sent to the Far East, where he rose to become Deputy
Chief of Staff of the Pacific Fleet. In 1939 he was sent to Berlin
as the Soviet naval attaché. The driver stopped outside the Spasskaya
Tower, the entrance to the Kremlin. Ten minutes later, Mikhail Vorontsov
entered Stalin’s office. Amongst the documents
he’d brought from Berlin, was a copy of a message he’d been
given by the Swedish naval attaché. The document was headed:
“Official enquiry from Berlin, regarding the routes of Swedish ships
and aircraft in the Baltic Sea, after 22nd June 1941, to avoid engaging
them during war with the USSR”. Soviet intelligence work
was carried out both legally, by agents travelling under
Soviet passports, and illegally, by agents with forged documents. Foreign intelligence work was carried out
by networks known as "residencies". Each member of a residency,
whether working legally or illegally, had a specialised role: One agent recruited
and managed local agents; another was responsible
for radio communications; another acted as courier of secret
or stolen documents; and the Resident himself oversaw
all the group’s operations. In the early 1920s Soviet intelligence
began to establish legal and illegal residencies
across Europe. After 1933, and Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, it became clear which country posed
the greatest threat to the Soviet Union. Therefore many Soviet agents
were reassigned to Nazi Germany, to gather information on the country’s
military potential, and its intentions. After war broke out in 1939, the number of illegal Soviet residencies
in Germany increased by 50%. Similar networks were active in Belgium,
the UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Japan,
Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. Military intelligence residencies worked
legally in many of the same countries. Each agent had a cover job
at the Soviet embassy or with some other Soviet delegation. The agent might be a diplomatic official,
a chauffeur or a technical expert. In June 1941, the Military Intelligence
Central Office employed 914 people abroad, 316 of whom worked
as part of legal residencies, and 598 of whom were illegal agents. Even Stalin knew most of these men
only by their codenames. He himself had enough experience
of working in the underground to know that the more times
an agent’s name was mentioned, the greater the danger he faced. From the autumn of 1940, an increasing
number of reports began to warn about the buildup of German forces
along the Nazi-Soviet frontier in Poland. Soviet military intelligence desperately
sought the answer to the questions: would Hitler attack, and if so, when? The incoming reports offered many different
dates for a German invasion of the USSR. Initially it was supposed to take place
in March or April 1941. Then new reports said it had been
postponed to the summer, but depended on Britain’s surrender. Then there was fresh information that
it had been postponed until 1942. The situation was further complicated
by the fact that only one person knew Hitler’s exact intentions —
Adolf Hitler himself. He only signed the order authorising
Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union,
on 10th June 1941 — twelve days before it was launched. On 18th June, Moscow began to receive
reports from agents on the frontier that German military units
were preparing for something big. It was clearly no longer a matter
of months or weeks, but of days. But despite the growing warnings, Soviet
intelligence failed to produce anything, even Vorontsov’s Swedish telegram, that could persuade Stalin
that war was imminent. In just a few weeks,
Vorontsov would be promoted to Chief of Staff of Naval Intelligence,
and by September he would be its Commander. It was a job he would hold
for more than 10 years. But he would inherit an intelligence
service rendered blind and deaf by the sudden German invasion.
Operation Barbarossa had begun, and despite all the warnings,
the Soviet Union was not prepared... In the first days of the war,
all Soviet legal residencies in Germany, in the countries of her allies,
and in countries occupied by the Axis, were terminated, and all embassy workers
were deported back to the Soviet Union. Soviet military intelligence lost contact
with its agents in 11 European countries. The agents themselves remained at large. But if they couldn’t contact Moscow,
they were of little use. A similar situation occurred with
intelligence networks that had been established along the frontiers.
As the Germany army swept forwards, contact with most of these agents
was lost until the end of the war. Soviet agents working abroad
did not have access to enough radio sets or skilled operators. The radio equipment
they did have was bulky and unreliable. There was even
a shortage of radio batteries. The range of these radio sets
was no more than 600 miles, which meant their signal could
only reach the western Soviet Union. It wasn’t strong enough
to reach Moscow, let alone Kuybyshev, where military intelligence
headquarters had been moved to. The codes and encryption keys
used by Soviet intelligence at the start of the war were complex
and difficult to work with. It took a long time to encode
and decode even the simplest message. Radio transmissions could also be picked up
by German counter-intelligence, who patrolled the cities
with direction finding equipment to locate illegal transmitters. Direction finding used directional antennae
to establish the source of a radio signal. By the mid 1930s, it was in use
by most counter-intelligence services. Three vans, equipped
with mobile directional antennae, would patrol a city looking
for unusual radio transmissions. They would triangulate their findings
to pinpoint the exact location of the radio transmitter. Once the exact building was identified,
police units would surround it, force their way in,
and arrest the operator. German counter-espionage
made it almost impossible for Soviet agents to communicate
directly with Moscow. Communications with most Soviet prewar
agents with only re-establish in 1945 as the red army advance to Eastern Europe. Improvised lines of communication,
often using couriers, were used to deliver
the most important information. But while couriers could move
across Europe with ease in peacetime, during the war, it was another matter. They not only ran the risk of being
arrested by the Gestapo, but also of being killed in attacks
on ships, trains and roads. In Japan and China,
Soviet agents remained active. A few illegal residencies
continued to operate in occupied France, Belgium, and Holland. Soviet intelligence remained highly
effective in the USA, the UK, and in neutral Sweden and Switzerland. July, 1941, Stockholm,
3 weeks into the German-Soviet war. From the outside, the fish warehouse
near the docks of the Swedish capital looked like any other building in the area. But this one harboured a secret. It was
the home of the code and cipher department of the General Staff
of the Swedish armed forces. Allan Nyblad,
a Swedish War Ministry courier, was considered a master of his trade. The General Staff trusted him with
their most urgent and important papers. He was a stickler for the rules,
only ever handing his package to the exact person to whom
it was addressed. It annoyed a lot people, but the War Minister had been impressed
by his punctilious courier. What none of the Swedish
authorities knew... was that Nyblad was
a secret Communist and Soviet agent. To make it easier
for the couriers to get around town, their bicycles carried
special license plates. This meant they wouldn’t be stopped
by the local police. One day, after receiving a package
addressed to the General Staff, Allan Nyblod set off on his bike
through quiet Stockholm streets, but then took an unexpected turn down
a deserted alley, and dismounted. After checking the coast was clear,
he took off his special license plate... and replaced it with an ordinary one. He arrived at a two-storey house...
and went in. Semyon Starostin worked officially
for a Russian tourist agency — he also worked
for Soviet military intelligence. Semyon Kuzmich Starostin, codenamed Kent, joined Soviet military intelligence in
1937, and was sent to Scandinavia in 1939. His cover-story included a job
as director of the Russian tourist agency "Intourist" in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, as well as a representative of Aeroflot,
the Soviet state airline. In November 1941, he returned to the USSR
when one of his agents was captured. When all the documents
had been photographed, Starostin put the papers in a new envelope. Rubber stamps from numerous Swedish
institutions were at his disposal. Thanks to Kent, Moscow received
daily reports on enemy movements along the entire Eastern Front — because the
Swedes were listening in on the Germans... and had broken their codes. In 1940, Sweden had suspected Germany
of planning to occupy the country. Stockholm set out
to uncover Hitler’s intentions. Swedish maths professor Arne Beurling,
working alone with just pad and pencil, was able to crack German military
and diplomatic ciphers in just 2 weeks. It allowed the Swedes to intercept
and decode German cable traffic, and what the Swedes saw...
now also went to Moscow. In January 1942,
Nyblad was picked up by the Swedes and sentenced to 12 years
hard labour. But by then, Moscow had information on how the Swedes
had broken the German encryption. In June, when the Germans were tipped
off that the Swedes were listening in, Soviet cryptographers were able to decipher
the new German codes themselves. 18th October, 1941.
Tokyo. The Japanese empire and the Soviet Union observed
an uneasy peace. But tension remained high. At dawn, Japanese counter-espionage
launched an operation to smash an illegal Soviet spy network. One of the men they arrested that morning
was Richard Sorge, the group’s resident. As he was led away under heavy guard,
a thorough search was made of his flat. The Japanese found incriminating documents,
cameras and a Photostat copying machine. When they searched the house of Max
Klausen, the group’s radio operator, they found his transmitter
and his codebooks. Richard Sorge, also known by codenames
Sonter, Schwartz, Ramsay and Inson, was born in Tsarist Russia but
as a boy moved with his family to Germany. After fighting for Germany
in the First World War, Sorge became an ardent Communist
and moved to Moscow. There he was recruited
by Soviet military intelligence, and sent back to Germany
to build a cover story as a journalist and a Nazi sympathiser. It served him well… until October 1941, when he was arrested by the Japanese.
They hanged him 3 years later. In 1964 he was posthumously
awarded the state’s highest award, the title "Hero of the Soviet Union". Sorge’s network included
32 Japanese agents, 4 Germans, 2 Yugoslavians, and one Briton. They included German radio operator
Bruno Wendt and his successor Max Klausen; Manchester Guardian
journalist Gunter Stein; Yugoslavian journalist Branko Vukelic;
Japanese journalist Miyagi Yotoku; And Japanese journalist Hotsumi Ozaki,
an advisor to the Japanese prime minister. Another valuable source
for the group was Eugen Ott, German ambassador to Japan,
and confidante of Richard Sorge. Sorge’s arrest and the dismantling
of his Tokyo network was a bitter blow to Soviet intelligence. He had been an invaluable source on Japanese
and German intentions in the Far East. Sorge’s greatest coup had been
to establish that Japan did not intend to attack the Soviet Union in 1941,
as Stalin feared. He sent a telegram from Tokyo in September. “According to the Secretary
of the Cabinet Ozaki, the Japanese government has decided to take
no action against the USSR this year, but armed forces will remain stationed in
Manchuria for a possible attack next spring, if the USSR is defeated by Germany.
After 15th September, the Soviet Far East can be considered safe
from the threat of a Japanese attack.” This vital information came as the Germans’
made their final push on Moscow. It allowed the Stavka High Command
to rush 32 divisions from Siberia and the Far East
to help defend the capital. On 5th December 1941, these divisions
spearheaded a massive counter-attack that threw the Germans back
from the gates of Moscow. It was a crucial victory,
which owed much to Richard Sorge. Soviet military intelligence also
had its eyes and ears in Washington. From there too, news reached Moscow
about Japanese intentions in 1941. Lev Sergeev worked at the Soviet embassy
as the military attaché’s driver. He was also an intelligence agent,
codenamed Moris. All that summer, he sent messages to Moscow stating
that Japan had no plans to attack the USSR. “16th July 1941, Moris to Moscow: The attitude of Japan toward
the USSR is — wait and observe” February 1942, Berlin. The Head of the German military
intelligence service, the Abwehr, was a man named Admiral Wilhelm Canaris.
That spring, he was in low spirits. Hitler blamed Canaris for not
providing accurate information on the size of Soviet reserves,
and for allowing the Wehrmacht to be caught off-guard
by the Soviet counter-attack that winter. This, and the weather, was how German
generals explained their failure. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris became
head of the Abwehr in 1933. He was a dedicated anti-communist, which is why he initially gave his support
to Hitler and the Nazis. But by 1938 he’d become convinced
that Hitler would lead Germany to ruin. He began to actively conspire
against the Fuehrer, and in 1942 established a secret line
of communication to British intelligence. The SS had its suspicions about Canaris, and he was dismissed
from his post in February 1944. He was arrested following
the July Bomb Plot against Hitler, and hanged in a concentration camp,
one month before the end of the war. As an anti-Communist,
Canaris still had a vested interest in the war against the Soviet Union. But the Abwehr failed to provide the Army
High Command with an accurate estimate of Soviet military strength in the run up
to the German invasion. They also failed to place any agents
within the Soviet High Command. The NKVD was extremely adept
at exposing enemy agents. Numerous Soviet prisoners-of-war
were recruited as spies by the Abwehr
and smuggled back across the lines. But almost all of them disappeared
into the vast Russian hinterland. Some turned themselves in, some were picked
up by the NKVD, others simply went home. Very few of these agents made it back, and
their reports contained little of value. Canaris’s mood improved
in December 1941, when he received an unexpected report from the
Intelligence Chief of Army Group Centre: “There exists in Moscow
an underground anti-soviet organization called "The Throne". It is attempting to spread anti-Soviet
feeling amongst the people. The leaders are Sadovski,
a royalist and poet, and his wife, a former lady in waiting to the Tsarina.
One of its members, Demyanov, the grandson of a Cossack chief and
former noble, risked his life crossing the front line to tell us about
the existence of "The Throne”. During his interrogation,
Demyanov claimed to have been in contact with German intelligence since 1940.
His contact had been a man named Stoltz. After his story was rigorously vetted,
Demyanov was given a codename, Max, and sent back to the Soviet Union. Max’s mission was to organise underground
anti-soviet cells in major cities, to orchestrate a campaign of sabotage,
and to establish a network for gathering information
about the movement of Red Army forces. Most importantly, Max was to use
his contacts in the Soviet General Staff and the Ministry of Transport to find out
about military movements by rail. At the end of the war, Richard Kauder,
an officer of the Abwehr, was captured by the Americans.
During one of his interrogations, he told them that in 1942 and ’43,
Max supplied valuable information that was often passed on
to the Wehrmacht High Command. The Germans believed
that Demyanov had infiltrated the Soviet General Staff
as a junior signals officer. Kauder further claimed that the
"The Throne" had set up several cells in Moscow and Gorky, which communicated
directly with the Abwehr in Berlin. They did this using three transmitters
supplied to them by the Germans. And all of this under the noses of the
famed Soviet counter-espionage services. The Germans did not discover until
after the war that this underground, anti-soviet organization had been created…
by the NKVD. Soviet intelligence had meticulously
created plausible anti-Soviet agents, which they then used to
infiltrate the Abwehr. These agents then fed
the enemy misinformation. It was called "Operation Monastery". Since the 1930s, the poet Boris Sadovski
had been used by the NKVD as bait, to trick opponents of the regime into
revealing their "anti-Soviet" sentiments. On three occasions, the secret police
had arrested his associates, but the poet himself always remained free. Alexander Demyanov was a former noble
who became an NKVD agent in 1929. He successfully infiltrated
German intelligence in 1942, and even received specialist
training from the Abwehr. He was later awarded
the Order of the Red Star for his exceptional service
in Operation Monastery. Meanwhile, German intelligence continued its
attempts to recruit Soviet prisoners of war. From the spring of 1942, Canaris’s
agents brought him regular reports about the progress made
with former soldiers of the Red Army. German intelligence
was well-versed in techniques for turning Soviet citizens
against Stalin and Soviet Communism. The Admiral hoped that these recruits
would provide valuable intelligence. But he would be disappointed once again. October, 1942. Poltava — occupied Ukraine. At the Intelligence school
of Abwehr Group 102, former Soviet soldiers
were listening to a lecture on how to gather military secrets
whilst operating behind enemy lines. The door opened,
and the head of the school walked in. What no one in the Abwehr
knew was that Pyotr Pryadko, former depot commander
of the Soviet 5th Army, had infiltrated German military
intelligence under the orders of the NKVD. All the information he was giving them was
in fact misinformation prepared in Moscow. Pryadko’s role in Abwehr Group 102
was to forge papers for the students. He always made small mistakes
that would ensure the agent was arrested when his papers
were properly examined. His misinformation also
succeeded in compromising several high-ranking German intelligence officers,
who were dismissed from their posts. Pryadko sent back information
on 101 agents working for the Gemans, and 24 members of the Abwehr. In December 1942, he rejoined the Red Army. He was subsequently awarded the Order of
the Red Banner for his courage and heroism. Over the course of the war, the Abwehr was
infiltrated by hundreds of Soviet agents. They gathered information about the enemy, and planted false information
about the Red Army and its intentions. They had effectively succeeded in turning
Germany’s own intelligence services into its High Command’s biggest
source of enemy misinformation... 13th September 1943, Paris. A car carrying two passengers drove up
to a pharmacist’s shop on Rome Street. One man left the car and went in. After a few moments,
the other man went in too. The man on the run was Leopold Trepper, a Soviet agent who’d agreed to work
for the Germans two weeks before. But now he’d given
his Abwehr handlers the slip. The furious Germans launched
a city-wide manhunt. As early as 1938, Trepper had established
a powerful Soviet intelligence network across Belgium, the Netherlands, France,
and Italy. It had about 300 members, and Trepper was its head until his arrest
by the Abwehr in November 1942. Through his group, the Soviets also
received intelligence from Rudolph Rössler. Rudolph Rössler, codename Lucy,
was one of the most valuable agents of the Second World War.
A German refugee living in Switzerland, he began working for Soviet intelligence
for ideological reasons. He supplied the Soviets
with vital information about the German Kursk offensive of 1943. Rössler’s own source, codenamed Woerter,
remains a mystery. At the Nuremberg Trials, Alfred Jodl,
of the German Armed Forces High Command, said that information
about the Kursk offensive reached Moscow before it reached his own desk. After the war Rössler continued to feed the
USSR information gathered in West Germany, leading to his arrest
and a year in a Swiss prison. He died soon after his release in 1958. After Trepper’s arrest,
German counter-intelligence succeeded in shutting down
most of his networks. In Berlin, they referred to Soviet
radio operators as "pianists". Trepper’s network involved
at least ten "pianists", hence the nickname — the Red Orchestra. German counter-intelligence
was able to force some of the Red Orchestra’s former radio
operators, including Trepper himself, to start feeding misinformation to Moscow. Admiral Canaris had made a breakthrough. The Soviets did not only believe
the misinformation — they asked for more. After his escape, Trepper,
with the help of French Communists, managed to get word to Moscow
that his network had been compromised. The information coming in
from its former radio operators was finally seen for what it was. November, 1944. Two Soviet agents were conducting
round-the-clock surveillance on the Norwegian coast. Twelve hours later,
a staff officer entered the office of the Chief of Naval Intelligence,
Mikhail Vorontsov. The Tirpitz was one of the few remaining
threats posed by the German navy. She had played little direct part
in the war so far, but her presence in Norway threatened
the Arctic convoys to the Soviet Union, and tied down a significant
number of British warships. The sister-ship of the Bismarck, she might
still prove a formidable adversary. On 12th November 1944,
British Lancaster bombers — carrying 5-ton Tallboy bombs —
set off for the Norwegian fjord of Tromso. The Germans had no warning of the raid —
the Luftwaffe was nowhere to be seen. Two of the huge bombs hit
the port-side of the Tirpitz, blowing a massive hole in the ship’s hull. As water poured in, she took on
a heavy list, and capsized. The destruction of the Tirpitz at Tromso cost the lives of 1,000
of her 1,700-man crew. It was a final nail
in the coffin of Hitler’s navy. Since the summer of 1941,
the Soviets had had their spies in Norway, including units gathering intelligence
for the Soviet Northern Fleet. They also recruited agents
from the local population, and worked with the Norwegian Resistance. Some Norwegian agents were sent
to a Soviet training camp near Murmansk, where they were given basic instruction
in radio communications and intelligence gathering. The agents were then sent back
to Norway by submarine. After nightfall, they would be landed
on a secluded stretch of coastline. Groups would also be resupplied,
and finally extracted, by submarine. The agents’ orders were to observe
German fortifications, troop movements, and military supply depots. They were also ordered to find German
warships hidden in the Norwegian fjords, and transmit this information
back to Murmansk. Soviet and British air forces
were able to use this intelligence to make raids against valuable German
targets in Norway and Finland. Following Germany’s surrender in May 1945,
for most, the celebrations could begin. But there was not let up for the secret
services. It was clear that in Washington, and London, the rise of Soviet
power aroused great mistrust. Mutual suspicion came to the fore —
now the common enemy had been defeated. In April 1945, the British Prime Minister,
Winston Churchill, ordered his military staff to investigate
the feasibility of an attack against the Soviet Union,
codenamed Operation Unthinkable. The study was conducted by the British
Armed Forces’ Joint Planning Staff. Their report envisaged a scenario
in which 47 British and American divisions, fighting alongside Polish forces,
and 12 re-armed German divisions, launched a surprise attack
against the Red Army in Northwest Europe. The Planning Staff concluded that Britain would have to commit
to a long and costly war, and that even so, the prospect
of success was "extremely doubtful". In his comments on the plan,
Churchill stated that it was a “precautionary measure”
for a “highly hypothetical situation”. On 18th May 1945 the Soviet
Military attaché in London, Major General Ivan Skliarov,
passed information on the top-secret
Operation Unthinkable to Moscow. Skliarov’s source was ‘Agent X’ - whose
identity to this day remains a mystery. Over the next few weeks,
this same agent was able to pass Skliarov more details about Operation Unthinkable, including the size of British
and American forces involved. In June 1945, Marshal Zhukov
received details of the plan, and immediately regrouped
Soviet forces in eastern Germany. He issued orders for the Red Army
to strengthen its defences, and to closely observe
the western Allied forces. Churchill knew British and American forces
were outnumbered by the Red Army. More importantly, he knew
that there was neither the public nor political will for such a war in 1945. The Americans were more
interested in getting Soviet help in the war against Japan. Operation Unthinkable
remained... just that. In July 1945, during the Potsdam Conference,
American President Harry Truman, as agreed with the British Prime Minister,
mentioned to Stalin that the US had developed "a new weapon
of unusually destructive force". Truman was surprised
by the reaction of the Soviet leader. A few minutes later,
as they waited outside for their cars, Churchill asked Truman how it had gone. “He never asked a question”,
replied the President. The British and American
leaders assumed simply that Stalin had failed to understand
the significance of what he was being told. But they were mistaken.
Since 1942, Soviet intelligence had been gathering information
on the Allies’ atomic bomb programme. More than 10 agents
were feeding information to the Soviets. Thanks to their efforts, the USSR tested
its first atomic bomb as early as 1949. In February 1945, in a letter to
Truman’s predecessor President Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin had even hinted at the
effectiveness of Soviet intelligence. “As to my informers, I assure you they
are all very honest and modest people, who carry out their duties carefully
and without giving offence. These people have proven themselves
by their deeds many times”.
