These sources included Lieutenant General Fritz Theile, a senior officer in the Wehrmacht’s communications branch, and Colonel Freiherr Rudolf von Gersdorff, who eventually became intelligence officer of Army Group Center on the eastern front. The Lucy Ring, perhaps the most important branch of the Red Orchestra, possessed some impeccable sources of information. These men, as well as several other men, reported extraordinarily sensitive information from key areas of the German bureaucracy in the German capital itself. The Berlin-based Red Orchestra agents included Harro Schulze-Boysen, an intelligence officer assigned to the German Air Ministry, and Arvid von Harnack, an employee of the German Ministry of Economics. The Red Orchestra spy ring consisted of three main branches: the network in France, Belgium, and Holland the Berlin network and a remarkable group of agents, known as the “Lucy Ring,” that operated from the relative safety of neutral Switzerland. At its height, the network carried out intelligence collection operations in Germany, France, Holland and Switzerland. In 1939, Leopold Trepper, an agent for the Soviet military intelligence service, established an intelligence network in Western Europe. However, the network that became known as the legendary “Red Orchestra” had humble beginnings. Intelligence professionals and historians alike have long regarded the Red Orchestra as one of the most successful spy rings that operated during the Second World War. These letters relate to early postwar efforts to ascertain the whereabouts of former German intelligence personnel, particularly members of the “Special Detachment Red Orchestra” ( Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle) who were believed to have extensive knowledge of the German investigation into the Red Orchestra espionage ring. Army file also contains several pieces of correspondence from British intelligence and U.S. Thus, the meeting with Roeder was intended to elicit information necessary to allow CIC agents to locate and exploit the Red Orchestra records. According to rumors, some “eight crates of documents” concerning the case had been hidden by German intelligence personnel in the LÜneburger Heide shortly after the war. At this time, the CIC was actively pursuing leads concerning the Red Orchestra case. The meeting, which took place in Hannover, Germany, was arranged through Graf Wolf von Westarp, a leading figure in the Sozialistische Reichspartei (Socialist Reichs Party, or SRP), a postwar German rightist party. Manfred Roeder, formerly the Judge Advocate of the German Air Force ( Luftwaffe) who served as the assistant prosecutor in the espionage case involving Red Orchestra agents. The report concerns a meeting between a special agent of the 66th CIC Detachment and Dr. One of the most interesting documents in the file is a report dated February 11, 1952. Army’s Investigative Records Repository (IRR) file on the Soviet espionage network, being released under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, contains documents related to an investigation of the Red Orchestra case during the early postwar period. The Red Orchestra is perhaps one of the best known espionage cases of the Second World War. Also, he is believed to have uncovered information that helped prevent ‘Operation Long Jump’, a Nazi plan to simultaneously assassinate Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin during the Tehran conference in 1943.World War II| The Nazi Party| Joseph Stalin Arvid von Harnack In the course of his work, he is said to have uncovered the location of Hitler’s secret headquarters named ‘Werwolf’. Kuznetsov had been successfully evading the Nazis’ revenge for years. Don’t worry, Herr Kapitan,” says one of the passengers, showing his Gestapo badge, “we are catching the same bandit.”Ĭommenting on his undercover job, Kuznetsov allegedly said: “I seem to be the most cheerful and the most confident officer out there!” Halt! Your papers! - threateningly orders Kuznetsov. In his memoirs, Medvedev described the ironic interaction between the Soviet spy and a Gestapo officer: Realizing the Nazis were stopping every car on the streets of Rivne to interrogate passengers in search of him, Kuznetsov, dressed in a Nazi uniform, parked his car and joined the effort, stopping other cars and interrogating the Nazis about the whereabouts of the most wanted undercover hitman in their ranks. Soviet scout Nikolai Kuznetsov in the uniform of a German officer.Īccording to colonel Dmitry Medvedev, one of the leaders of the Soviet partisan movement in occupied Ukraine, the Soviet spy avoided being caught thanks to a combination of quick wit and exceptional sense of humor.
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